In her book “Gender Trouble,” Judith Butler explained why both gender and sex are socially constructed: “Gender ought not to be conceived merely as the cultural inscription of meaning on a pregiven sex…gender must also designate the very apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are established. As a result, gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “a natural sex” is produced and established as “prediscursive,” prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts…There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results.” In other words, gender is the structural force through which an anatomical difference between human beings is transformed into a principle of practical division with social implications (sex). As a result, sex, instead of remaining just another physical trait, becomes the classificatory criterion according to which hierarchies are created and roles distributed. Thus, we can say that sex is “the way a given society represents ‘biology’ to itself”. The social constructedness of both gender and sex means that the dual categories of “male” and “female” are themselves artificially created through various practices. By abstracting biological differences in a selective manner, sex determines those differences as discrete naturalized characteristics of the bodies themselves; anatomical differences are hardened into always-already sexuated bodies. An entire cultural complex of exclusionary meanings (gender) is built upon this base – the naturalization of gender’s heterosexuality finds its projection upon sexed bodies. Capitalism’s social construction of gender and sex is geared toward the need to normatively underpin the exploitative sex-differentiated division of labor. According to Rosemary Hennessy, women’s status as a major source of cheap and submissive labor “depends on a heterosexual matrix in which woman is taken to be man’s opposite; his control over social resources, his clear thinking, strength, and sexual prowess depend on her being less able, less rational, and never virile. As a pervasive institution within other institutions (state, education, church, media), heterosexuality helps guarantee patriarchal regulation of women’s bodies, labor, and desires.” Even today, “heterosexual marriage and the gendered division of labor remain the prevailing, pervasively naturalized social arrangements whose coherence is still assured and legitimized in law and common sense by reference to an abject homosexual other.” The continued dominance of heterosexual codes is visible in the relatively conservative agendas of marriage and adoption rights that the mainstream Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) has adopted. While rigid gender binary remains hegemonic, capitalism has allowed the superficial releasement of genderless desire by channeling sexual energies into commercialized forms of advertising and entertainment, which are isolated from broader forms of erotic life and fulfilling work environments. Instead of being liberated, sexuality has been liberalized. In the words of Theodor Adorno: “sexuality, turned on and off, channeled and exploited in countless forms by the material and cultural industry, cooperates with…[the] process of manipulation insofar as it is absorbed, institutionalized, and administered by society. As long as sexuality is bridled, it is tolerated.” Sexuality has been “desexualized” and “neutralized” even as it seems to be omnipresent. Commodification has marketized sexuality by tying sexual recognition to the emergence of new market opportunities, where inclusion is on the basis of consumption. The mediation of sexual identities through commodities has reproduced the inequalities that are inherent to capitalist market. For example, a new gay middle class has risen which enjoys a rarefied environment of respectability, at the same time as poor queer people are subjected to economic oppression, police repression, and cultural marginalization. This is indicative of the genera; distortion of sexuality into a business asset and status symbol. The commercialization of sexuality has entailed its individualization. In “Women’s Liberation in China,” Claudia Broyelle writes: “In a society where the division of labor becomes more accentuated, where the vast majority of people are deliberately deprived of creativity, where work has no other value than its explicit monetary one, sexuality becomes a means of escaping from society through self-centered sexual consumption, rather than the full expression of interpersonal relationships”. Capitalism formed a culture in which sexuality has been reduced to a form of capital which involves the use of the other for the creation of the self. Tara Isabella Burton talks about the “disembodiment of sex, which is to say the way in which it becomes about our own fears, our own pride, our own narratives about ourselves and our worth and our status, rather than about the union with those we love”. In opposition to the privatization of sex and love in bourgeois society, Alexandra Kollontai, a prominent Bolshevik leader, advocated the embedding of sexual love in a socialist collective: “The bourgeois world gave its blessing to the exclusiveness and isolation of the married couple from the collective; in the atomized and individualistic bourgeois society, the family was the only protection from the storm of life, a quiet harbor in a sea of hostility and competition. The family was an independent and enclosed collective. In communist society this cannot be. Communist society presupposes such a strong sense of the collective that any possibility of the existence of the isolated, introspective family group is excluded.” Kollontai argued for free and easy divorce, and also criticized “any formal limits on love,” any discouragement of short-term relationships, and any imposition of monogamy. She emphasized “the value of experimentation in…love relationships,” pointing out that even “fleeting passion” could be a legitimate basis for a sexual relationship. In short, “complete freedom, equality and genuine friendship,” were important elements of communist sexuality. This vision of “love-comradeship” retains relevance because present-day reality is marked by an erotomania which – to use Pier Paolo Pasolini’s words – does not bring “lightness and happiness to young people,” but makes “them unhappy, closed and as a consequence stupidly presumptuous and aggressive”. Peter Drucker comments that Kollontai’s communist conception of sexuality “implied a valorization of friendship and shared commitment over a mere consumerist pursuit of orgasms”. In today’s world, we direly need such a sexual politics so that we can fully abolish gender-sex and march forward to a communist future wherein everyone is equal. AuthorYanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com. His articles have been published in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and several countries of Latin America. Archives March 2022
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3/7/2022 US Officials Meet Maduro, Fail to Drive Wedge Between Venezuela and Russia. By: José Luis Granados CejaRead NowWashington is seeking to isolate Moscow from its allies in Latin America but Venezuela has maintained support for Russia. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro speaks with his Russian counterpart during an official visit to Moscow in 2018. (Prensa Presidencial) Mexico City, Mexico, March 7, 2022 (venezuelanalysis.com) – A high-level United States (US) government delegation that visited Venezuela on Saturday failed to produce an agreement with the government of Nicolás Maduro. News of the delegation was first broken by the New York Times, which described the trip as the highest-level visit by US officials in years. Outlets subsequently reported that no agreement was reached. Caracas had not publicly commented on the meeting at the time of writing. According to Reuters, the US team was led by White House Latin America adviser Juan González and made “maximalist” demands concerning electoral guarantees. Citing three people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that the US was seeking new presidential elections, a larger participation of foreign private capital in Venezuela’s oil industry and a public condemnation of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. The Biden administration representatives reportedly offered Venezuela a temporary return to the SWIFT financial transaction system. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who directly participated in the meeting, instead demanded broader sanctions relief and the return of foreign assets such as oil subsidiary CITGO. US officials reportedly brought up the cases of US citizens jailed in Venezuela, including six oil executives imprisoned for corruption and two former Green Berets who took part in a failed coup effort. The meeting in Caracas was the latest US effort to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin from his allies in the region. US officials told the Times that Washington views Russia’s Latin American allies as a potential “security threat” should the tensions continue to escalate in light of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which has ratcheted up conflict between the US and Russia. Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with the US in 2019 after the latter recognized opposition figure Juan Guaidó as “interim president.” The US and its allies refused to recognize the results of the 2018 election that saw Maduro reelected to a six-year term. Washington then proceeded to engage in and support a series of unsuccessful coup plots, ultimately failing to oust Maduro from power. US strategy toward Venezuela has more recently been focused on isolating Maduro, imposing crippling sanctions on the country’s energy sector and seizing, together with its allies, the country’s assets abroad. In public statements, the Biden administration has expressed its unwillingness to seriously negotiate with Caracas absent new elections. Nonetheless, due to the failure of the US to successfully install Guaidó as an authority with any real power inside Venezuela, Caracas and Washington have maintained back-channel communications despite the lack of formal diplomatic relations. Guaidó, despite being recognized by the US as the country’s president, was only informed of the high-level delegation the morning of the meeting. Venezuelan geopolitical analyst Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein told Venezuelanalysis that the leak of the news of the visit of senior US officials was motivated by an effort to drive a wedge between Caracas and Moscow and leave the impression that there was a “chill” in relations between the two countries. Rodríguez maintained that Washington and Caracas would nonetheless leave the door open to dialogue. “I believe that there will be continued attempts at rapprochement, especially because the Mexican [dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the opposition] was exhausted,” he said. “The Mexico talks were totally absurd since the opposition was being directed from within the United States, any step they took had to be consulted with Washington. In that sense it is much more feasible for the United States to negotiate directly with Venezuela.” President Maduro has repeatedly expressed a willingness to negotiate an end to US-led sanctions on the country. The lack of a deal stemming from the visit by the senior-level delegation suggests Venezuela did not find it to be a workable proposal. Reuters reported that US officials agreed to a follow-up meeting. It would take a considerable reversal of US policy toward the Caribbean nation to get the country to walk away from its Russian ally. Relations between the two countries have only grown in light of US efforts to isolate Caracas. Russian assistance has played an important role in Venezuela’s efforts to attend to the economic crisis in the country, providing support and expertise to the country’s key industries as well as steady investment in Venezuela’s energy sector. Venezuela likewise recently strengthened its ties with Russia following a visit by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov in February. Caracas has called for a “peaceful resolution” to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine but has stopped short of condemning the Russian military operation. Venezuela did not vote in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly’s resolution concerning the Russian offensive in Ukraine. The country’s voting rights have been suspended as a result of unpaid UN membership dues due the impact of sanctions. In light of coercive measures applied on Russia by the US and the European Union, Maduro has insisted that Venezuela will maintain its commercial relations with the Eurasian nation. The Venezuelan leader also spoke directly by phone with Putin last week, with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reporting that the Venezuelan president expressed his “firm support” for Russia and condemned destabilization efforts by the US and NATO. Maduro has publicly called NATO’s handling of the Minsk Agreements a “mockery” and argued that their “derailment” constituted a violation of international law. The Russian ambassador in Caracas Sergey Melik was invited to greet the opening 5th Congress of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, held this Saturday, and was met with strong applause from the delegates. AuthorJosé Luis Granados Ceja This article was produced by Venezuela Analysis. Archives March 2022 Featured image: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during the closing ceremony of the 5th PSUV congress. Photo: Presidential Press. “Zero tolerance for corruption and the moral rottenness of a few,” Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro said at the Fifth Congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) on Saturday. “If they are involved in acts of corruption, in criminal acts, wherever they are, whatever they have been,” added the head of state, “they will be taken to court and to prison, and punished with the greatest penalties.” PSUV President Maduro recalled that the Venezuelan government, in recent months, has detained mayors, deputies, and other public officials involved in gasoline trafficking, and others implicated in drug trafficking. Noting the Congress’ prioritization of ethics and revolutionary values that oppose corruption, bureaucracy, and bureaucratism, Maduro expressed his desire that justice be meted out to those who get involved in “narcopolitics,” whether from the left or from the right. “Let them know, those involved in that,” said the president, “that we are coming for them and we are going to get them. We are not going to allow a project as beautiful as Bolivarianism, socialism of the 21st century, to be contaminated by Colombian narco-politics.” The gasoline dealers are going to fall From the Teresa Carreño Theater in Caracas, the PSUV president stated that “all those who traffic in gasoline are going to fall … Go for them. Punish them harshly.” Venezuela also faces corruption in the trafficking of COVID-19 treatments by illegal crime networks within the healthcare system, added the president. “It is a bitter struggle, sometimes painful, because you have to get rid of people that you loved, that you valued,” recalled President Maduro. “It is the great theme of the ethical, spiritual and moral rebirth of the Bolivarian Revolution, of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.” Focus of the morals of civil servantsThe PSUV must strive to “apply a process of rebirth of revolutionary ethics and morality in all men and women leaders who hold public office,” encouraged Maduro, “a rebirth of morality, of commitment, of consciousness.” For several minutes, Maduro insisted on the need to reinforce revolutionary values in the face of corruption and bureaucracy. “It should not be a theoretical issue, it should serve to unmask the values of capitalism, of consumerism.” He insisted that the PSUV Congress serve for the prioritization of the ethical and moral values of revolutionary leaders. Concrete proposalsHe invited PSUV members to advance concrete proposals to confront corruption, in addition to presenting complaints. In some institutions, the president related, he has heard that they make statements such as “Maduro rules there, but I rule here.” For those individuals who say such things, said Maduro, the law will come for them if it is appropriate. He recalled that the people are the only ones ruling in Venezuela. The president also urged PSUV national delegates to contribute concrete proposals for the configuration of the 1X10 Plan for Good Governance, the roadmap of solutions, and the Concrete Action Agendas (ACA) of the Bolívar-Chávez Battle Units (UBCh). President Maduro also emphasized that the Congress must be held “with open doors for our people, to listen to the truth of the people, [to] bring our truth to the people, and define the guidelines for resistance, rebirth, and the changes that Venezuela needs.” The event also marked the Fourth Congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela Youth (JPSUV). Translation: Orinoco Tribune AuthorOrinoco Tribune. This article was produced by Orinoco Tribune. Archives March 2022 A joint rally in between CPUSA, PSL, FRSO and DSA against NATO aggression in Louisiana Over the past few days, many people have either asked me what’s going on with Ukraine and Russia or have expressed their opinions, many of which demonstrate some concerning misunderstandings of the situation. It’s led to some interesting and rather heated debates in our society and even among communists and different progressive factions. It’s important to have a grounded and historical understanding of the situation so that ideals in the abstract don’t turn into words and actions that serve the reaction. After the dissolution of the USSR and the independence of Ukraine, there arose the question of what to do about Ukraine’s massive stockpile of Soviet nuclear warheads, along with the related question of the security of its independence. After years of wrangling, and in response to the economic ruin created by the fall of the USSR, Ukraine agreed in 1994 to become a non-nuclear state in exchange for economic aid, U.S. assistance in dismantling its nuclear infrastructure and protection assurances from both the U.S. and Russia. Also during that time a reprogramming of NATO took place. Formerly, NATO had existed primarily as an anti-Soviet alliance. With the Soviet Union gone, the imperialist forces needed to find a new architecture for what they called “global security.” The tocsin would sound for the reformulation of this “defensive” alliance with the bombing of Yugoslavia. Later, 9/11 would provide the precedent needed to use the alliance to prosecute a “war on terror” that would find its way to nearly every corner of the globe. Many countries would be added to the alliance during this time, mostly to the east of Germany, towards Russia. Putin himself had asked about entry into NATO in 2000, but was denied. He recalled: “I will not reveal all the details of that conversation, but the reaction to my question was, let us say, quite restrained, and the Americans’ true attitude to that possibility can actually be seen from their subsequent steps with regard to our country. I am referring to the overt support for terrorists in the North Caucasus, the disregard for our security demands and concerns, NATO’s continued expansion, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and so on. It raises the question: why? What is all this about, what is the purpose? All right, you do not want to see us as friends or allies, but why make us an enemy? Ukraine’s position between Russia and the expanding NATO and EU has led to many debates about which direction the country should lean. Former president Viktor Yushchenko favored NATO to the point that relations with Russia deteriorated. His successor, Viktor Yanukovych, however, was elected on a platform of repairing relations with Russia and killed the movement to join. Pew reported in 2010 that just 31% of Ukrainians had a favorable view of NATO. In 2013, Ukraine had the option to sign a trade pact to move closer to Europe economically. This ultimately was rejected, primarily because it was unclear if it would actually benefit Ukraine and because of an IMF loan attached to the deal that would have required huge budget cuts and a 40% increase to gas prices. Russia, meanwhile, was offering cheaper gas prices and a similar loan without the harsh restrictions, along with the stick of a mini trade embargo if Ukraine moved towards Europe. This sparked off the U.S.-backed Euromaidan protests, which did not have majority support, particularly in primarily Russian-speaking Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Nevertheless, the protests escalated and the police cracked down with arrests and violence, which prompted a violent response led primarily by the far right. Groups like Svoboda, which had a nationalist platform including the re-nuclearization of Ukraine and included pro-Goebbels members, were held up as “democratic” by the U.S. media machine. A peace deal was brokered with the opposition parties, but the very next day Yanukovych was ousted in a violent coup and exiled. As armed neo-Nazi thugs took to the street, John McCain and Chris Murphy met with Svoboda, the main fascist party, proclaiming their support, while U.S. assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland handed out sandwiches to them. This is because for decades the U.S. has been funneling billions of dollars all over the world through organizations such as the congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID in order to overturn hostile governments and promote Western-friendly replacements. This has been true everywhere from Ukraine to Hong Kong to Venezuela. In fact, the NED claims to have operations in 100 countries. Its current president said in 1986 of the CIA’s régime change work, “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA. We saw that in the 60s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created.” After this NED-backed, undemocratic, nationalist-led coup, political repression began. The eastern parts of the country fell into heavy unrest. Crimea, being primarily Russian-speaking and not willing to submit to the anti-Russian, undemocratic platform of Svoboda and other far-right-wing parties that had seized power, voted 97% with an 83% turnout to secede and join Russia, a series of events the media calls an “annexation.” The eastern oblasts of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, declared their independence in May of 2014. The Eastern regions of the Ukraine that declared their independence The official U.S. position was feigned outrage that Russia had violated the earlier security agreements made during Ukraine’s denuclearization. Russia’s official position was that that agreement had been with the legitimately elected government of Ukraine, not its new U.S.-backed nationalist government, the product of a violent coup. The result was the war in Donbas, where the Ukrainian military was deployed and beat back the separatists nearly to the Russian border. As a result, Russia began sending forces into eastern Ukraine to support the Russian-speaking Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and prevent a genocide, turning the tide of the war. In September 2014, they agreed to the Minsk Protocol, which provided for a ceasefire, a withdrawal, an independent organization to monitor the situation and the release of prisoners. This agreement did not last more than a few weeks, as fascist paramilitaries like the Right Sector refused to withdraw and fighting continued. Another attempt was made a few months later with Minsk II. It provided for constitutional reforms which would have provided Donetsk and Luhansk more autonomy and given the entire border region back to Ukraine with a complete withdrawal of all foreign combat formations. This too was not to last, as the nationalist Right Sector leader declared it unconstitutional and vowed to keep fighting until “complete liberation of Ukrainian lands from Russian occupants.” It was a promise of complete ethnic cleansing. From 2015 until 2022 numerous attempts have been made to implement the Minsk agreements, with Russia pressing the issue numerous times. Current president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected in Ukraine on a platform of finally getting peace done in 2019, but soon caved, not wanting to lose popular support to the far right, who had vowed numerous times to overturn the government should any such peace agreement be implemented. He even went so far as to say it was “normal and cool” that many people saw infamous Ukrainian fascist Stepan Bandera as a national hero. Meanwhile, the U.S. provided $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine for its “defense,” much of which finds its way into neo-Nazi formations such as the Azov Battalion, which uses old German Nazi symbols such as the swastika and Wolfsangel. Essentially, groups that vowed to rid Ukraine of all ethnic Russians by force have been receiving U.S. weapons and then using them in the DPR and LPR at the cost of many thousands of lives. The ultimate goal of this is to move all of eastern Europe into NATO to keep Russia and China contained. This is a strategic red line which Russia made clear at least as early as 2008. Much like when the U.S. nearly invaded Cuba (again) over the Cuban Missile Crisis, Russia sees the potential for U.S. nuclear warheads four minutes from Moscow to be an unacceptable risk to its security. Indeed, some of the main demands of the right wing in Ukraine include re-nuclearization. Map showing NATO’s continuing expansion towards the Russian border In the context of U.S.-armed and -backed anti-Russian neo-Nazis fighting against the DPR and LPR, threats to attempt to retake Crimea by force (by some of those same genocidal U.S.-backed forces), moves to bring NATO into Ukraine, the threat of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of those fascist forces on Russia’s border and the abject failure of the Minsk agreements that Ukraine had accepted but failed to implement because of those fascist forces, Russia decided—right or wrong—it had no other choice but to carry out this special operation. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) stated in this regard: To put an end to hostilities in Donbass a compromise was reached in the shape of the Minsk Agreements whereby the DPR and LPR could remain part of Ukraine enjoying broad autonomy. However, Russia’s attempts to secure compliance with the agreements failed. Other measures were urgently needed in order to protect 800,000 Russian citizens and prevent a genocide of civilians in Donbass. This now brings us to a conundrum on the left: what line is it we should take? Of course, the social democrats and ideologically bankrupt “progressive” liberals are taking a hawkish line of decrying the invasion and then advocating for economic warfare in the form of sanctions and even more lethal military aid (to give to the Banderites). We know this path of escalations has only one logical conclusion: the destruction of humanity. Among the Communist movements in the West, and even all over the world, there has been some amount of confusion as to what line exactly to take. The debate is fierce! Is this two imperialist powers? Is this one imperialist power and a nuclear-armed target of its imperialism fighting a proxy war? Is this a defensive war started by NATO-armed Banderites as the CPRF has asserted? For the CPUSA, “peace is our line,” as Joe Sims has noted. Of course—but what does that mean? Even the Republicans want “peace.” The Banderites want “peace.” The Russians and Ukrainians want “peace.” Some have erroneously interpreted the need for peace to mean a return to the status quo prior to February 23 as a starting point so that “diplomacy” can take place. That cannot be considered peace, as many brutal fascistic crimes were perpetrated then against the communists fighting in the trenches for the people of the DPR and LPR. An examination of history shows that the roadblock to peace is in fact the fascist forces who have time and again scuttled the peace agreements reached already in 2015. The logic then progresses: if the existence and arming of fascist forces in Ukraine are the principal barrier to peace, then it’s the fascist forces that must be dealt with to achieve peace. The weapons shipped to the neo-Nazis in Ukraine are built here. The organizational tools of the world’s most prolific imperialists such as the NED and USAID originate here. What good is it to demand peace from the Russian Federation when it’s our weapons being recovered from the bodies of these neo-Nazis Russia has vowed to run out of Ukraine? How can we square telling Russia to cease fire while our country is still dumping hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons into a war our country started in 2014? Demand instead that we spend the hundreds of millions we’re spending arming fascists on dealing with our own rising neo-Nazi danger, on housing the homeless, on providing our youth with education instead of crippling debt, on healthcare. Biden is trying to send even more weapons there as we speak—no question of cost from Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, who have held up the progressive domestic agenda Biden was elected to enact. Four separate corporate journalists asked why we weren’t thinking about sending troops to fight Russia at a recent White House press briefing. There are even people pressuring NATO to create a no-fly zone such that NATO pilots would engage and kill Russian pilots. The sheer insanity of such a thought in a nuclear age! If peace is our line, peace is our special responsibility and we must take an initiating role in it. AuthorTravis Smith is a pest control worker and father in Iowa who became an active member of the Communist Party in 2019 where he's been working to build the Edna Griffin Club, so named for a famous Iowan activist and Party member. His interests outside of politics include woodworking, sailing, and PC gaming. His son enjoys attending protests and fiddling with Daddy's boat This article was produced by Red World Review. Archives March 2022 Marx’s first sentence in Capital Volume One is: “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as an “immense accumulation of commodities”, its unit being a single commodity.” (Moore and Aveling translation). So, from the beginning, Marx makes a distinction between wealth in societies and how it appears in the capitalist mode of production. And in Grundrisse, Marx explains what he means by ‘wealth’: “when the limited bourgeois form is stripped away, what is wealth other than the universality of human needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc., created through universal exchange? The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity’s own nature?” (p488). For the pioneer of capitalist economics, Adam Smith, the wealth of nations is to be found in the accumulation of commodities. But for Marx, wealth is more than just a collection of commodities owned by capital and valued in money. That is the form that wealth takes under capitalism. Wealth is the accumulation of products and activities that meets human needs; ie the accumulation of use values. And those use values include natural resources as well as the products of human labour. Under capitalism, the meaning and substance of wealth is restricted to the value of commodities produced for sale and profit, accumulated as capital and measured in money -the universal measure of human labour time involved in commodity production. This meaning of wealth excludes human social needs as well as the impact on wealth from environmental degradation, pollution, exploitation and inequalities. These are not accounted for the capitalist accumulation of private wealth. Because of that, capitalist economies are not only destructive and wasteful; capitalism is unfit for the purpose of delivering real wealth to humanity. Global warming, climate change, environmental disasters have become so serious that the contradiction between capital and wealth accumulation has become obvious. This has forced even mainstream economics to consider ways of measuring ‘wealth’ as opposed to the production of value (GDP) and its accumulation into capital. Recently, the World Bank has tried to measure wealth. In its latest report, The changing wealth of nations 2021, it provides an analysis of the world’s wealth accounts spanning 146 countries, with annual data from 1995 to 2018. It also contains the widest set of assets covered so far, including the value of human capital broken down by gender, as well as many different forms of natural capital, spanning minerals, fossil fuels, forests, mangroves, marine fisheries, and more. Even so, the Bank’s analysis remains inadequate, leaving out the impact of climate change, the social impact of carbon emissions from fossil fuels and, as the report adds, “economic sustainability is not the same as human well-being.” The Bank defines global wealth as ‘produced capital’ (the means of production, machinery, computers etc), renewable and non-renewable natural capital (the land, forests, water, mineral resources etc);, ‘human capital’ (what Marx called human labour power), and net foreign assets held by each nation. Wealth (as the Bank defines it – MR), like GDP, “is intended to represent material well-being, not broader human well-being.” The Bank considers the contradiction. While “wealth accounting—the balance sheet for a country—captures the value of all the assets that generate income and support human well-being. Gross domestic product (GDP) indicates how much monetary income or output a country creates in a year; wealth indicates the value of the underlying national assets and therefore the prospects for maintaining and increasing that income over the long term.” So the Bank considers GDP and wealth as “complementary indicators for measuring economic performance and provide a fuller picture when evaluated together. By monitoring trends in wealth, it is possible to see whether GDP growth is achieved by building capital assets, which is sustainable in the long run, or by liquidating assets, which is not. Wealth should be used alongside GDP to provide a means of monitoring the sustainability of economic development.” If rising GDP today comes at the expense of declining wealth per capita, then prosperity will be unsustainable. Economic growth will erode its own base. So the measure of the change in wealth per capita over time is perhaps the most important metric to consider in addition to GDP and, according to the Bank, it provides an actionable way to track sustainability. And what does the Bank find on that? That “our material well-being is under threat: from unsustainable exploitation of nature, from mismanagement and mispricing of the assets that make up national wealth, and from a lack of collective action at local, national, and regional levels.” Despite a global expansion in total wealth per capita between 1995 and 2018, many countries are on an unsustainable development path because their natural, human, or produced capital is being run down. In countries where GDP growth is being achieved by consuming or degrading assets over time, for example by overfishing or soil degradation, total wealth is declining. Global total wealth grew significantly between 1995 and 2018. Global wealth grew 91 percent from 1995, reaching US$1,152 trillion by 2018. All income groups saw increasing total wealth and per capita wealth over the period. The strongest performance was found among upper-middle-income countries, which had increases in wealth of over 200 percent between 1995 and 2018. Low-income countries saw per capita wealth growth by less than the global average, at 22 percent compared with 44 percent. Between 1995 and 2018, low-income countries’ share of global wealth increased only from 0.5 to 0.6 percent. The performance of lower middle-income countries was better, increasing in share from 5 to 7 percent by 2018. But this cohort only achieved this because of one country: China. China’s share of global total wealth transformed from a modest 7 percent in 1995 to 21 percent by 2018. The Bank concludes “This means that low-income countries are falling further behind the rest of the world, creating a significant divergence in global wealth per person.” This further proof that there is no ‘convergence’ between rich and poor countries globally and that imperialism is still with us. That’s the share of global wealth (as defined). But more important is what happened to wealth per person globally? On a per capita basis, average wealth grew from US$111,174 to US$160,167. This represents a real rate of growth of 2 percent per year. But 26 countries saw a decline or stagnation in per capita wealth as population growth outpaced net growth in asset value, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over time, population growth affects per capita wealth, especially in low- and lower middle-income countries. Between 1995 and 2018, global wealth grew by 91 percent, but population grew by 32 percent, so that the net increase in per capita wealth was only 44 percent. Per capita wealth grew fastest in middle-income countries, raising their share of global wealth, but the largest growth occurred in upper-middle-income countries (at 179 percent), in part because of China. Low-income countries increased their total wealth by nearly 132 percent—more than high-income OECD countries or the global average—but only by 22 percent on a per capita basis because population growth was highest in those countries. Large disparities in per capita wealth around the world persist. On average, an individual in an OECD country was implicitly endowed with US$621,278 in wealth at birth in 2018. For an individual born in a low-income country, the estimate was just US$11,462. I did a little exercise on comparing wealth per capita between various countries using the World Bank results. Source: World Bank Changing Wealth of Nations 2021, p94 The graph above shows the wealth per capita for various countries as measured by the World Bank. I have highlighted in red the G7 economies. You can see that the average wealth per capita in those countries is some six times larger than the selected so-called ‘emerging economies’ in this graph. And the latter includes China. The divergence in wealth (as defined) between the imperialist bloc and the rest is huge. For topicality, I included Russia and Ukraine. The US wealth per capita is five times larger than Russia, while in turn Russia’s wealth per capita is over three times larger than Ukraine – perhaps a measure of the relative strength of each country in the world order. The measure above is in market dollar exchange rates (MER). The World Bank also measures wealth per capita in purchasing power parities (PPP), which supposedly provides a better measure of what can be purchased in each country with the wealth available. This produces higher wealth per capita results for some poorer nations. But it does not significantly alter the overall trends. So I have not done a PPP comparison (although the report does). Also, the MER measure is, in my view, a better international comparison measure of the economic strengths of countries relative to the US. When we look at the composition of wealth as defined by the Bank (natural resources; human labour power; means of production and net financial assets), there are more revealing facts. Human capital remains the most important component of wealth. Its share in total wealth increased from 62 percent in 1995 to 64 percent in 2018. Produced capital’s share decreased from 32 to 31 percent. But note that produced capital (means of production) is largest as a share of wealth in the advanced capitalist economies. Natural capital represented just 6 percent of total global wealth in 1995 and 2018. This share was equally divided between renewable and non-renewable natural capital (3 percent each) in 2018 at the global level. Because low-income countries have so few other assets, proportionately, natural assets such as land and ecosystems are crucial for them, comprising around 23 percent of their total wealth. ‘Blue’ natural capital (mangroves and marine capture fisheries) are a critical part of total wealth for some countries. But blue natural capital fell by half from 1995 to 2018, as the value of fisheries collapsed by 83 percent. The main reason for the decline in the value of fisheries is a physical depletion of fish stocks “due to the failure to coordinate fishing activities between countries and the private sector.” Low- and middle-income countries, where land accounts (forests, protected areas, and agricultural lands) are a large component of total wealth, have seen declining forest wealth but rising agricultural wealth. While forest wealth (timber plus ecosystem services) per capita decreased by 8 percent between 1995 and 2018, driven by population growth and a loss of forest area, agricultural land wealth (cropland plus pastureland) per capita has increased by 9 percent due to area expansion and increasing value per square kilometre. Industrial farming is replacing natural resources. The Bank measures ‘human capital’ (as the Bank wants to call it in true capitalist fashion) as the value of earnings over a person’s lifetime. Self-employed workers account for 13 percent of global human capital, but a much larger share of the total in many low-income countries, where the agriculture sector and informal employment are significant. The slower annual wage growth in high-income countries (roughly 1 percent), combined with the aging of the labour force, reduces their share of global human capital. Meanwhile, higher rates of wage growth in some middle-income countries such as China (up to 4 percent) increases their relative share. However, the World Bank admits that “Although the full, long-lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are still unknown, the resulting economic downturn and associated unemployment and loss of earnings have already set back the long-term progress in poverty reduction, especially in low-income countries.” Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia suffered the greatest setbacks, losing 15 and 7 percent of human capital. There are huge gaps in the World Bank’s measure of ‘wealth’. It does not include the value of carbon retention or sequestration services as part of wealth embedded in biological ecosystems (for example, forests, soils, and oceans). Nor does it subtract the social cost of carbon from fossil fuels. How can the wealth divergences globally be closed and how can the growing disaster of climate change and environmental degradation be averted? The World Bank’s answer is the conventional mainstream one. Having told us that the production of commodities for the market is not a proper reflection of wealth in society, it proceeds to offer market solutions to this contradiction. “Going forward, policy interventions—such as carbon taxes and payments for ecosystems services—are urgently needed to make market prices explicitly reflect the social cost of carbon dioxide emissions and the value of global climate regulation services provided by nature.” And it promotes the private sector as the funding source of policy action, arguing for “major progress on incorporating ESG considerations into investing choices.” This is ironic when the evidence of the failure of ‘ethical investing’ is growing by the day. The World Bank sums up the issue. “Natural and human capital are therefore at the core of our prosperity, but few of these assets are accounted for in the national balance sheets and hence appear invisible or worthless to policy makers. When we think of wealth, most of us might think about financial assets, or companies, computers, and cars. But what about forests, mangroves, water, fish, or clean air? What about healthy people and their capacity for productive work? And can we cooperate when the challenges in managing our prosperity transcend national boundaries?” AuthorThis article was produced by The Next Recession. Archives March 2022 3/7/2022 Ukraine is burning left-wing books as Russian military advances. By: Benjamin NortonRead Now
Ukrainian fighters are filling tires with left-wing Soviet-era books and burning them in the streets of the capital Kiev as Russian troops advance.
Ukrainian fighters are burning left-wing books in the capital Kiev, as Russian troops advance.
The chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, Richard Engel, is reporting inside Ukraine, after Russia invaded the country on February 24. Engel does not hide his bias; he is extremely supportive of the Ukrainian government and its Western-backed forces, and has helped spread propaganda from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. But even Engel has had to sometimes acknowledge the grim reality on the ground in Ukraine. On March 7, the NBC correspondent tweeted a photo of tires full of books, on a street in Kiev. He said many of the texts were “about communism and political theory in the USSR.” A local commander told Engel that the Ukrainian militants were planning on setting fire to the books and tires as Russian soldiers move on the capital. The Ukrainian commander said, “We don’t need them.”
Ukraine has a systematic problem with Nazi infiltration of the government.
Far-right neo-fascist groups played a key role in a violent US-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014. After the putsch, neo-Nazi militias like the Azov Battalion were directly incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard. These Ukrainian neo-Nazis have been supported by Western governments, including the United States and Canada.
AuthorBenjamin Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the founder and editor of Multipolarista, and is based in Latin America. // Benjamín Norton es un periodista, escritor, y cineasta. Es fundador y editor de Multipolarista, y vive en Latinoamérica.
This article was produced by Multipolarista.
ArchivesMarch 2022 3/7/2022 Book Review: The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography. By: Marcello Musto. Reviewed By: Carlos L. GarridoRead NowMarcello Musto’s The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography provides an illuminating glance at the work and life of Karl Marx during the most unexamined period of his life. Musto’s oscillation between Marx’s work and life provides readers with both an intellectual allurement towards research in Marx’s later years, a task facilitated by the 1998 resumed publication of the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2) (which has sense published 27 new volumes and expects to conclude with 114), and with a warm image of Marx’s intimate life sure to guarantee both laughs and tears. The last few years of Marx’s life were emotionally, physically, and intellectually painful. In this time he had to endure his daughter Eleanor’s extreme depression (she would commit suicide in 1898); the death of his wife Jenny, whose face he said “reawakens the greatest and sweetest memories of [his] life”; the death of his beloved first born daughter, Jenny Caroline (Jennychen); and a lung disease which would keep him sporadically, but for substantial periods, away from his work (96, 98, 122). These conditions, among other interruptions natural to a man of his stature in the international workers movement, made it impossible for him to finish any of his projects, including primarily volumes II and III of Capital, and his third German edition of Capital volume I. The time he spent with his grandchildren and the small victories the socialist struggle was able to achieve (e.g., the more than 300k votes the German Social Democrats received in 1881 for the new parliament) would give him and Jenny occasional moments of joy (98). A facet of his latter life that might seem surprising was the immense enjoyment he took in mathematics. As Paul Lafargue commented regarding the time when Marx had to endure his wife’s deteriorating health, “the only way in which he could shake off the oppression caused by her sufferings was to plunge into mathematics” (97). What started as a “detour [to] algebra” for the purpose of fixing errors he noticed in the seven notebooks we now know as the Grundrisse, his study of mathematics ended up being a major source of “moral consolation” and what “he took refuge in [during] the most distressing moments of his eventful life” (33, 97). Regardless of his unconcealed frailty, he left a plethora of rigorous research and notes on subjects as broad as political struggles across Europe, the US, India, and Russia; economics; mathematical fields like differential calculus and algebra; anthropology; history; scientific studies like geology, minerology, and agrarian chemistry; and more. Against the defamation of certain ‘radicals’ in bourgeois academia who lift themselves up by sinking a self-conjured caricature of a ‘Eurocentric’, ‘colonialism sympathizing’, ‘reductive’, and ‘economically deterministic’ Marx, Musto’s study of the late Marx shows that “he was anything but Eurocentric, economistic, or fixated only on class conflict” (4). Musto’s text also covers the 1972 Lawrence Krader publication of The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx, containing his notebooks on Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society, John Budd Phear’s The Aryan Village, Henry Sumner Maine’s Lectures on the Early History of Institutions, and John Lubbock’s The Origin of Civilisation. Out of these by far the most important was Morgan’s text, which would transform Marx’s views on the family from being the “social unit of the old tribal system” to being the “germ not only of slavery but also serfdom” (27). Morgan’s text would also strengthen the view on the state Marx had since his 1843 Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, namely, that the state is a historical (not natural) “power subjugating society, a force preventing the full emancipation of the individual” (31). The state’s nature, as Marx and Engels thought and Morgan confirmed, is “parasitic and transitory” (Ibid.). The studies of Morgan’s Ancient Society and other leading anthropologist would also be taken up by Engels who, pulling from some of Marx’s notes, would publish in 1884 The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, a seminal text in the classical Marxist corpus. More unknown in Marxist scholarship are his notebooks on the Russian anthropologist Maksim Kovalevsky’s (one of his close “scientific friends”) book Communal Landownership: The Causes, Course and Consequences of its Decline. Its unstudied character is due to the fact that it had, until almost a decade ago, been only available to those who could access the B140 file of Marx’s work in the International Institute of Social History in the Netherlands. This changed with the Spanish publication in Bolivia of Karl Marx: Escritos sobre la Comunidad Ancestral (Writings on the Ancestral Community) which contained Marx’s “Cuadernos Kovalevsky” (Kovalevsky Notebooks). Although appreciative of his studies of Pre-Columbian America (Aztec and Inca empires) and India, Marx was critical of Kovalevsky’s projections of European categories to these regions, and “reproach[ed] him for homogenizing two distinct phenomena” (20). As Musto notes, “Marx was highly skeptical about the transfer of interpretive categories between completely different historical and geographical contexts” (Ibid.). The study of Marx’s political writings has usually been limited to the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), the “Critique of the Gotha Program” (1875), and The Civil War in France (1871). Musto’s book, in its limited space, goes beyond these customary texts and highlights the importance of Marx’s role in the socialist movements in Germany, France, and Russia. This includes, for instance, his involvement in the French 1880 Electoral Programme of the Socialist Workers and the Workers’ Questionnaire. The program included the involvement of workers themselves, which led Marx to exclaim that this was “the first real workers’ movement in France” (46). The 101-point questionnaire contained questions about the conditions of employment and payment of workers and was aimed at providing a mass survey of the conditions of the French working class. Concerning Marx’s political writings, Musto’s text also includes Marx’s critiques of the prominent American economist Henry George; his condemnations of the Sinophobic Dennis Kearney, the leader of the Workingmen’s Party of California; his condemnations of British colonialism in India and Ireland and his praise of Irish nationalist Charles Parnell. In each case, Musto stresses the importance Marx laid on the concrete study of the unique conditions pertaining to each struggle. There was no universal formula to be applied in all places and at all times. However, out of all of his political engagements, the most important of his involvements would be in Russia, where his considerations on the revolutionary potential of the rural communes (obshchina) would have a tremendous influence on their socialist movement. Russian socialist philosopher Nikolay Chernyshevsky (1828 - 1889) In 1869 Marx began to learn Russian “in order to study the changes taking place in the tsarist empire” (12). All throughout the 1870s he dedicated himself to studying the agrarian conditions in Russia. As Engels jokingly tells him in an 1876 letter after Marx recommended him to take down Eugene Dühring, You can lie in a warm bed studying Russian agrarian conditions in general and ground rent in particular, without being interrupted, but I am expected to put everything else on one side immediately, to find a hard chair, to swill some cold wine, and to devote myself to going after the scalp of that dreary fellow Dühring Out of his studies, he held the Russian socialist philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky[i] in highest esteem. He said he was “familiar with a major part of his writing” and considered his work as “excellent” (50). Marx even considered “’publishing something’ about Chernyshevsky’s ‘life and personality, so as to create some interest in him in the West’” (Ibid.). Concerning Chernyshevsky’s work, what influenced Marx the most was his assessment that “in some parts of the world, economic development could bypass the capitalist mode of production and the terrible social consequences it had had for the working class in Western Europe” (Ibid.). Chernyshevsky held that When a social phenomenon has reached a high level of development in one nation, its progression to that stage in another, more backward nation may occur rather more quickly than it did in the advanced nation (Ibid.). For Chernyshevsky, the development of a ‘backwards’ nation did not need to pass through all the “intermediate stages” required for the advanced nation; instead, he argued “acceleration takes place thanks to the contact that the backward nation has with the advanced nation” (51). History for him was “like a grandmother, terribly fond of its smallest grandchildren. To latecomers it [gave] not the bones but the marrow” (53). Chernyshevsky’s assessment began to open Marx to the possibility that under certain conditions, capitalism’s universalization was not necessary for a socialist society. This was an amendment, not a radical break (as certain third world Marxists and transmodernity theorists like Enrique Dussel have argued) with the traditional Marxist interpretation of the necessary role capitalism plays in creating, through its immanent contradictions, the conditions for the possibility of socialism. In 1877 Marx wrote an unsent letter to the Russian paper Patriotic Notes replying to an article entitled “Karl Marx Before the Tribunal of Mr. Zhukovsky” written by Nikolai Mikhailovsky, a literary critic of the liberal wing of the Russian populists. In his article Mikhailovsky argued that A Russian disciple of Marx… must reduce himself to the role of an onlooker… If he really shares Marx’s historical-philosophical views, he should be pleased to see the producers being divorced from the means of production, he should treat this divorce as the first phase of the inevitable and, in the final result, beneficial process (60) This was not, however, a comment from left field, most Russian Marxists at the time also thought the Marxist position was that a period of capitalism was necessary for socialism to be possible in Russia. Further, Marx had also polemicized in the appendix to the first German edition of Capital against Alexander Herzen, a proponent of the view that “Russian people [were] naturally predisposed to communism” (61). His unsent letter, nonetheless, criticizes Mikhailovsky for “transforming [his] historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophical theory of the general course fatally imposed on all peoples, whatever the historical circumstances in which they find themselves” (64). It is in this context that the famous 1881 letter from the Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich must be read. In this letter she asks him the “life or death question” upon which his answer the “personal fate of [Russian] revolutionary socialists depended” (53). The question centered around whether the Russian obshchina is “capable of developing in a socialist direction” (Ibid.). On the one hand, a faction of the populists argued that the obshchina was capable of “gradually organizing its production and distribution on a collectivist basis,” and that hence, socialists “must devote all [their] strength to the liberation and development of the commune” (54). On the other hand, Zasulich mentions that those who considered themselves Marx’s “disciples par excellence” held the view that “the commune is destined to perish,” that capitalism must take root in Russia for socialism to become a possibility (54). Marx drew up four draft replies to Zasulich, three long ones and the final short one he would send out. In his reply he repeated the sentiment he had expressed in his unpublished reply of Mikhailovsky’s article, namely, that he had “expressly restricted… the historical inevitability’ of the passage from feudalism to capitalism to ‘the countries of Western Europe’” (65). If capitalism took root in Russia, “it would not be because of some historical predestination” (66). It was then, he argued, completely possible for Russia – through the obshchina – to avoid the fate history afforded Western Europe. If the obshchina, through Russia’s link to the world market – “appropriate[d] the positive results of [the capitalist] mode of production, it is thus in a position to develop and transform the still archaic form of its rural commune, instead of destroying it” (67). In essence, if the internal and external contradictions of the obshchina could be sublated through its incorporation of the advanced productive forces that had already developed in Western European capitalism, then the obshchina could develop a socialism grounded on its appropriation of productive forces in a manner not antagonistic to its communistic social relations. Marx would then, in the spirit of Chernyshevsky, side with Zasulich on the revolutionary potential of the obshchina and argue for the possibility of Russia not only skipping stages but incorporating the productive fruits of Western European capitalism while rejecting its evils. This sentiment is repeated in his and Engels’ preface to the second Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which would be published on its own in the Russian populist magazine People’s Will. Musto’s text also provides an exceptional picture of the largely unexamined 72 days Marx spent in Algiers, “the only time in his life that he spent outside of Europe” (104). This trip came at the recommendation of his doctor, who was constantly moving him around in search of climates more favorable to his health condition. Eleanor recalled that Marx warmed up to the idea of the trip because he thought the favorable climate could create the conditions to restore his health and finish Capital. She said that “if he had been more egoistic, he would have simply allowed things to take their course. But for him one thing stood above all else: devotion to the cause” (103). The Algerian weather was not as expected, and his condition would not improve to a shape where he could return to his work. Nonetheless, the letters from his time in Algiers provide interesting comments about the social relations he experienced. For instance, in a letter to Engels he mentions the haughtiness with which the “European colonist dwells among the ‘lesser breeds,’ either as a settler or simply on business, he generally regards himself as even more inviolable than handsome William I” (109). After having experienced “a group of Arabs playing cards, ‘some of them dressed pretentiously, even richly” and others poorly, he commented in a letter to his daughter Laura that “for a ‘true Muslim’… such accidents, good or bad luck, do not distinguish Mahomet’s children,” the general atmosphere between the Muslims was of “absolute equality in their social intercourse” (108-9). Marx also commented on the brutalities of the French authorities and on certain Arab customs, including in a letter to Laura an amusing story about a philosopher and a fisherman which “greatly appealed to his practical side” (110). His letters from Algiers add to the plethora of other evidence against the thesis, stemming from pseudo-radical western bourgeois academia, that Marx was a sympathizer of European colonialism. Shortly after his return from his trip Marx’s health continued to deteriorate. The combination of his bed-ridden state and Jennychen’s death made his last weeks agonizing. The melancholic character of this time is captured in the last writing Marx ever did, a letter to Dr. Williamson saying “I find some relief in a grim headache. Physical pain is the only ‘stunner’ of mental pain” (123). A couple months after writing this, on March 14th, 1883, Marx would pass away. Recounting the distress of the experience of finding his life-long friend and comrade dead, Engels wrote in a letter to Friedrich Sorge an Epicurean dictum Marx often repeated – “death is not a misfortune for the one that dies but for the one that survives” (124). In sum, it would be impossible to do justice, in such limited space, to such a magnificent work of Marxist scholarship. However, I hope I have been able to clarify some of the reasons why Musto is right to lay such seminal importance on this last, often overlooked, period of Marx’s life and work. Notes [i] Chernyshevsky was the author of What is to be Done (1863), a title V. I. Lenin would take up again in 1902. Marcello Musto, The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2020. 194 pp., $22. ISBN 9781503612525 AuthorCarlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American graduate student and instructor in philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His research focuses include Marxism, Hegel, and early 19th century American socialism. His academic work has appeared in Critical Sociology, The Journal of American Socialist Studies, and Peace, Land, and Bread. Along with various editors from The Journal of American Socialist Studies, Carlos is currently working on a serial anthology of American socialism. His popular theoretical and political work has appeared in Monthly Review Online, CovertAction Magazine, The International Magazine, The Marx-Engels Institute of Peru, Countercurrents, Janata Weekly, Hampton Institute, Orinoco Tribune, Workers Today, Delinking, Electronicanarchy, Friends of Socialist China, Associazione Svizerra-Cuba, Arkansas Worker, Intervención y Coyuntura, and in Midwestern Marx, which he co-founded and where he serves as an editorial board member. As a political analyst with a focus on Latin America (esp. Cuba) he has been interviewed by Russia Today and has appeared in dozens of radio interviews in the US and around the world. Archives March 2022 3/6/2022 Ukraine: A Conflict Soaked in Contradictions and New Patterns in War and Media. By: Vijay PrashadRead NowSurprise and horror have defined the reaction to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. That’s likely because although the intervention has followed the contours of a modern land war, it has also marked a break with the past in a number of ways. The world has become used to military interventions by the United States. This is, however, not a U.S. intervention. That in itself is a surprise—one that has befuddled reporters and pundits alike. Even as we deplore the violence and the loss of life in Ukraine resulting from the Russian intervention (and the neofascist violence in the Donbas), it is valuable to step back and look at how the rest of the world may perceive this conflict, starting with the West’s ethnocentric interest in an attack whose participants and victims they believe they share aspects of identity with—whether related to culture, religion, or skin color. White Wars War in Ukraine joins a sequence of wars that have opened sores on a very fragile planet. Wars in Africa and Asia seem endless, and some of them are rarely commented upon with any feeling in media outlets across the world or in the cascade of posts found on social media platforms. For example, the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which started in 1996 and which has resulted in millions of casualties, has not elicited the kind of sympathy from the world now seen during the reporting on Ukraine. In contrast, the startlingly frank comments from political leaders and journalists during the conflict in Ukraine have revealed the grip of racism on the imaginations of these shapers of public opinion. It was impossible recently to get major global media outlets interested in the conflict in Cabo Delgado, which grew out of the capture of the bounty of natural gas by TotalEnergies SE (France) and ExxonMobil (U.S.) and led to the deployment of the French-backed Rwandan military in Mozambique. At COP26, I told a group of oil company executives about this intervention—which I had covered for Globetrotter—and one of them responded with precise accuracy: “You’re right about what you say, but no one cares.” No one, which is to say the political forces in the North Atlantic states, cares about the suffering of children in Africa and Asia. They are, however, gripped by the war in Ukraine, which should grip them, which distresses all of us, but which should not be allowed to be seen as worse than other conflicts taking place across the globe that are much more brutal and are likely to slip out of everyone’s memory due to the lack of interest and attention given by world leaders and media outlets to them. Charlie D’Agata of CBS News said that Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European—I have to choose those words carefully, too—city, where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that… [a conflict] is going to happen.” Clearly, these are the things one expects to see in Kabul (Afghanistan) or Baghdad (Iraq) or Goma (the Democratic Republic of the Congo), but not in a “relatively civilized, relatively European” city in Ukraine. If these are things that one expects in the former cities respectively, then there is very little need to be particularly outraged by the violence that is witnessed in these cities. You would not expect such violence in Ukraine, said the country’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor David Sakvarelidze to the BBC, because of the kind of people who were caught in the crossfire: “European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed every day.” Sakvarelidze considers the Ukrainians to be Europeans, although D’Agata calls them “relatively European.” But they are certainly not African or Asian, people whom—if you think carefully about what is being said here—certain world leaders and international media outlets expect to be killed by the violence unleashed against them by the global great powers and by the weapons sold to the local thugs in these regions by these great powers. Worst War? On February 23, 2022, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres—in a heartfelt statement about the Russian military intervention in Ukraine--said, “In the name of humanity do not allow to start in Europe what could be the worst war since the beginning of the century.” The next day, on February 24, with Russia launching “the biggest attack on a European state since World War II,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned this “barbaric attack” and said that “it is President Putin who is bringing war back to Europe.” “Bringing war back to Europe”: this is instructive language from Von der Leyen. It reminded me of Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism (1950), where the great poet and communist bemoaned Europe’s ability to forget the terrible fascistic treatment of the peoples of Africa and Asia by the colonial powers when they spoke of fascism. Fascism, Césaire wrote, is the colonial experiment brought back to Europe. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, neither the United Nations secretary-general nor the president of the European Commission came forward to make any immediate condemnation of that war. Both international institutions went along with the war, allowing the destruction of Iraq, which resulted in the death of more than a million people. In 2004, a year into the U.S. war on Iraq, after reports of grave violations of human rights (including by Amnesty International on torture in the prison of Abu Ghraib) came to light, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the war “illegal.” In 2006, three years after the war had begun, Italy’s Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who had been the president of the European Commission in 2003, called the war a “grave error.” In the case of the Russian intervention, these institutions rushed to condemn the war, which is all very well; but does this mean that they will be just as quick to condemn the United States when it starts its next bombing campaign? War StenographyPeople often ask me, what’s the most reliable news outlet? This is a hard question to answer these days, as Western news outlets are increasingly becoming stenographers of their governments (with the racist attitudes of the reporters on full display more and more often, making the apologies that come later hardly comforting). State-sponsored outlets in Russia and China now increasingly find themselves banned on social media sites. Anyone who counters Washington’s narrative is dismissed as irrelevant, and these fringe voices find it hard to develop an audience. So-called cancel culture demonstrates its limits. D’Agata has apologized for his comment about Ukraine being “relatively civilized, relatively European” compared to Iraq and Afghanistan and has already been rehabilitated because he is on the “right side” of the conflict in Ukraine. Cancel culture has moved from the chatter of social media to the battlefields of geopolitics and diplomacy as far as the Russian-Ukraine conflict is concerned. Switzerland has decided to end a century of formal neutrality to cancel Russia by enforcing European sanctions against it (remember that Switzerland remained “neutral” as the Nazis tore through Europe during World War II, and operated as the Nazi bankers even after the war). Meanwhile, press freedom has been set aside during the current conflict in Eastern Europe, with Australia and Europe suspending the broadcast of RT, which is a Russia state-controlled international media network. D’Agata’s reliability as a reporter will remain unquestioned. He “misspoke,” they might say, but this is a Freudian slip. Calculations of War Wars are ugly, especially wars of aggression. The role of the reporter is to explain why a country goes to war, particularly an unprovoked war. If this were 1941, I might try to explain the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II or the Japanese assumption that the Nazis would soon defeat the Soviets and then take the war across the Atlantic Ocean. But the Soviets held out, saving the world from fascism. In the same way, the Russian attack on Ukraine requires explanation: the roots of it go deep to various political and foreign policy developments, such as the post-Soviet emergence of ethnic nationalism along the spine of Eastern Europe, the eastward advance of U.S. power—through NATO—toward the Russian border, and the turbulent relationship between the major European states and their eastern neighbors (including Russia). To explain this conflict is not to justify it, for there is little to justify in the bombing of a sovereign people. Sane voices exist on all sides of ugly conflicts. In Russia, State Duma Deputy Mikhail Matveev of the Communist Party said—soon after the Russian entry into Ukraine—that he voted for the recognition of the breakaway provinces of Ukraine, he “voted for peace, not for war,” and he voted “for Russia to become a shield, so that Donbas is not bombed, and not for Kyiv being bombed.” Matveev’s voice confounds the current narrative: it brings into motion the plight of the Donbas since the U.S.-driven coup in Ukraine in 2014, and it sounds the alarm against the full scale of the Russian intervention. Is there room in our imagination to try to understand what Matveev is saying? AuthorVijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including "The Darker Nations" and "The Poorer Nations." His latest book is "Washington Bullets," with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives March 2022 3/6/2022 Literature and Academia – Review of Terry Eagleton’s ‘Literary Theory – An Introduction’. By: Suryashekhar BiswasRead Now“There is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory: as with South African sport, it has been there from the beginning.” Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory – An Introduction, in the author’s own words “sets out to provide a reasonable comprehensive account of modern literary theory for those with little or no previous knowledge of the topic.” The stated purpose of Eagleton’s book is to provide introduction to beginner readers. Having read it, alongside a host of other books intended for similar purposes, gives me some hint as to how successful this book has been in comparison to others of its kind. Eagleton’s book provides a critical overview of literary theory, while problematizing the very process of categorisation of literature itself and identifying the games of power and their legitimising ideologies involved in the process. He goes on to suggest the role of power structures involved in the rise of English literature in great detail, without glossing over the complex contradictions of political economy. Subsequently, he introduces his readers to some tenets and live debates within and about the fields of semiotics, psychoanalysis, deconstruction and among other things. His most contentious and controversial remarks come in the section ‘Conclusion: Political Criticism’. Here, Eagleton provocatively claims that just as ‘literature’ is not a definable entity, so ‘literary criticism’ is hardly a concrete discipline in itself. He appeals to us to revive some aspects of the archaic study of ‘rhetoric’, which he deems to be broad enough to accommodate cultural practises along with their political and economic context into the grunt of analysis. He clarifies that this call is not reactionary or revivalist, but historically grounded and dialectical. This section also involves some contributions to a critique of bourgeois academic institutions in general, and literary and cultural studies departments in particular (Eagleton, Literary Theory - An Introduction, 2005). Reception In his review of Eagleton’s book, Philip Corrigan states that Eagleton’s selection of works to criticise the defined canon, ignores a dearth of working-class literature whose existence Eagleton alludes to, only in passing. Perhaps, a detailed overview of those working-class works and the studies about them, would not have changed the core structure of Eagleton’s thought. However, they would certainly elevate the study and assert the presence of a dialog that those works will exist in (Corrigan, 1986). Jonathon Culler applauds the book’s proficiency and scope, and then sets about on a reactionary polemic about the author’s Marxist predilections (Culler, 1984). Both William E Cain and Priscilla P Clark, in their separate reviews, mention that Eagleton often deserts in-depth understanding and engagement, by resorting to high-headed snobbery and gross oversimplification. For instance, as Cain points out, in Eagleton’s attempt to portray the elitism of academic institutions as embodied by Leavis, he makes no mention of essays such as “Education and University – A Sketch for an English School” where the latter’s nuances can be appreciated. Whereas Eagleton mentions Foucault’s influence on his analysis, he hardly elaborates the claim to any considerable length (Cain, 1986). Clark makes the point that, throughout the book, the author provides no insight into the Marxist and feminist schools of criticism, to which he claims allegiance in his conclusion. The beginner reader is therefore left overwhelmed by Eagleton’s call to cancel literary theory in favour of ‘political criticism’, and by the author’s half-baked suggestions about what that might even mean. Unlike his earlier works Marxism and Literary Criticism and Criticism and Ideology, his overview of ‘political criticism’ is limited to the recognition of Marxist and feminist schools of literary criticism and nodding at the fact that working-class literature is growing somewhere (Clark, 1984). In the light of Clark’s review, I could add that Eagleton himself had certain things to say about Marxist literary criticism elsewhere, that clarify that a blanket call for ‘political criticism’ of literature without also adding certain specific features to that criticism, would be to completely miss the point of Marxist criticism and to bastardise it (Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism, 2006). To quote Eagleton from his earlier work: “The sociology of literature concerns itself chiefly with what might be called the means of literary production, distribution and exchange in a particular society—how book? are published, the social composition of their authors and audiences, levels of literacy, the social determinants of ‘taste’. It also examines literary texts for their ‘sociological’ relevance, raiding literary works to abstract from them themes of interest to the social historian. There has been some excellent work in this field and it forms one aspect of Marxist criticism as a whole; but taken by itself it is neither particularly Marxist nor particularly critical. It is, indeed, for the most part a suitably tamed, degutted version of Marxist criticism, appropriate for Western consumption.” (Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism, 2006) In this, I resonate with the old Eagleton of specificity and precision, as opposed to the new Eagleton of high-headedness. Banality of Bourgeois AcademiaOne of the crucial point Eagleton makes, that escapes the succinct attention of the critical reviewers, is his plain and straightforward critique of the bourgeois academia. He is talking in the context of the departments of literary studies. But as he himself asks his readers to extend the boundaries of theory from literature to other things including global political economy, so can his critique be extended to all sections of the academic institutions that exist within the capitalist economic system. In this regard, Eagleton does not replace nuance with whooping generalisations. Literature departments in higher education, contends Eagleton, embody immensely complex and contradictory structures of thought. So, even if academia is an ideological state apparatus, it is not a reliable one - since the practise of critical research and study that happens in these institutions will posit the tendency to question some of the concealed ideological claims that the academia legitimises. True to the inherent hypocrisy of liberal democracy, these academic institutions do not try to crudely indoctrinate their participants into the mythology of the market. Rather, they imbibe it into the people by subtly safeguarding the discourse, allowing the study of tiny bits of every school, but conflating over those theoretical apparatuses that are capable of truly challenging the system’s very existence. Eagleton recognises that liberal humanism goes best with these academic institutions as they exist today. He writes, “The truth is that liberal humanism is at once largely ineffectual, and the best ideology of the 'human' that present bourgeois society can muster.” This is because this ideology does the best job at reconciling the potential radicalism that may arise in the academia from critical studies, with the parasitical nature of the academia as it exists within capitalism. This plays an important role in deriving legitimacy for capitalism. We can see this manifest in the flowery CSR organisations and NGOs that university students waste their time working with, to satisfy the questions and guilt that might arise in their minds after some exposure to critical studies. Eventually of course, as Eagleton posits, the academia will certify its students not based on what their political inclinations are, but how well the articulate the language of the academia’s ideology. He writes, “Those employed to teach you this form of discourse will remember whether or not you were able to speak it proficiently long after they have forgotten what you said.” ConclusionTerry Eagleton’s Literary Theory – An Introduction is anything but an introduction to literary theory. Perhaps to understand the basics of literary theory, one could refer to a host of other selections. Eagleton’s book is an important, albeit imperfect, reflection on literature, literary theory, and the power structures concealed underneath the snobbish academic discussions about the same. It must certainly be given a read by Marxists interested in the subject. Bibliography Cain, W. E. (1986). Review: Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton. Comparative Literature , 362-366. Clark, P. P. (1984). Review: Literary Theory An Introduction by Terry Eagleton. Contemporary Sociology , 452. Corrigan, P. (1986). Book Review: Literary Theory: An Introduction, by Terry Eagleton. Insurgent Sociologist , 75-77. Culler, J. (1984). Review: Literary Thoery An Introduction by Terry Eagleton. Poetics Today , 149-156. Eagleton, T. (2005). Literary Theory - An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Eagleton, T. (2006). Marxism and Literary Criticism. London: Routledge. AuthorSuryashekhar Biswas is an independent journalist and researcher, based in Bangalore, India. His research areas include political economy, media studies and literature. He is a member of AISA - a communist student organisation. He runs a YouTube channel called 'Humour and Sickle' (https://www.youtube.com/c/HumourandSickle) Archives March 2022 3/6/2022 The War-Profiteering Gangsters Will Kill Us All Unless We Unite Against Them. By: Roger WatersRead NowWestern media simplifies the conflict in Ukraine in ways that divide us. But what if instead, we chose to unite against those who profit from all wars throughout the world? I figured something out after tossing and turning all night. We on the left often make the mistake of still looking upon Russia as a somewhat socialist enterprise. Of course, it isn’t. The Soviet Union ended in 1991. Russia is an unadulterated neoliberal capitalist gangster’s paradise, modeled during the time of its horrific restructuring under Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) on the United States of America. It should come as no surprise that its autocratic, and possibly unhinged leader, Vladimir Putin, has no more respect for the UN Charter and international law than recent presidents of the United States or prime ministers of England have had. (For example, remember George W. Bush and Tony Blair during the Iraq invasion.) I, on the other hand, do care about international law and the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and can unequivocally state that if I had been eligible to vote in the General Assembly on March 2, I would have voted with the 141 ambassadors who supported the resolution condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and demanding that it withdraw its armed forces. Would that the General Assembly had a mandate to govern, sadly it doesn’t, which means it’s even more beholden on all us freedom-loving, law-abiding anti-war activists to stand shoulder to shoulder with all our brothers and sisters all over the world, irrespective of race, religion, or nationality, in pursuit of elusive peace. That of course means standing with the Russian people and the Ukrainian people, the Palestinian people, the Syrian people, the Lebanese people, the Kurds, African Americans, Mexicans, Ecuadorian rainforest dwellers, South African miners, Armenians, Greeks, the Inuit, the Mapuche and my neighbors the Shinnecock, to name but a few. It has been monstrous to hear white Western news reporters (such as Charlie D’Agata of CBS News) bewailing the plight of Ukrainian refugees on the grounds that “they look like us” when addressing what they must assume are white Western audiences and that the conflict in Ukraine is exceptional because “this isn’t Afghanistan or Iraq.” That is outrageous. The implication is that it’s somehow more acceptable to make war on people whose skin is brown or black and drive them from their homes than people who “look like us.” It’s not. All refugees, all people who struggle are our brothers and sisters. In these difficult days, we should resist the temptation to pour good guy/bad guy gasoline on the fire; demand a ceasefire in the name of humanity; support our brothers and sisters fighting for peace internationally, in Moscow and Santiago and Paris and Sao Paulo and New York, because we are everywhere; and stop pouring weapons of war into Eastern Europe, further destabilizing the region just to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the international armaments industry. Maybe we should raise our voices to encourage the idea of a neutral Ukraine, as has been repeatedly suggested by wise individuals of good faith for many years. First things first, of course, Ukrainians should demand a ceasefire; but after that, maybe Ukrainians would welcome such an arrangement. Maybe someone should ask them. One thing’s for sure: It can’t be left up to the gangsters. Left to their own devices, the gangsters will kill us all. AuthorRoger Waters is a musician. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives March 2022 3/4/2022 The Overton Window Is Being Shoved Toward Warmongering Extremism. By: Caitlin JohnstoneRead Now
A substitute teacher at an Arlington, Virginia middle school has been suspended for teaching an insufficiently one-sided perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Apparently one of the students recorded the lesson and showed it to their parents who complained to the school.
This happens as RT America shuts its doors following an astonishingly aggressive censorship campaign against Russia-backed media outlets throughout the western world. The virulent post-9/11-like hysteria about Russia that has been promoted by one-sided mass media reporting on the war, and by the five years of fact-free conspiracy mongering which preceded it, has created an environment where you’ll get shouted down on social media for voicing any opinion about this conflict apart from saying Putin invaded because he is evil and hates freedom. Voices calling for diplomacy, de-escalation and detente are being systematically drowned out.
Meanwhile you’ve got massively influential pundits like Sean Hannity calling for a direct NATO airstrike on a Russian military convoy in Ukraine, without the slightest risk of losing his immense platform for advocating a move that would probably lead to a very fast, very radioactive third world war.
“You know, if we can see on satellite imagery where the convoy is, I don’t know, maybe some smart country, maybe NATO might take some of their fighter jets, or maybe they can use some drone strikes and take out the whole damn convoy,” Hannity said on Premiere Radio Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show on Wednesday. “And then nobody takes credit for it, so then Putin won’t know who to hit back.” Hannity hastily adds that he’s “not talking about nuclear war,” but then adds a “but” which completely contradicts him. “But at what point is this gonna end?” Hannity asks. “Cuz nobody did anything after Georgia was taken in ’08, nobody cared about Crimea being annexed in 2014.” Hannity has also made repeated calls for Putin’s assassination, saying that “if you invade an innocent sovereign country, and you kill innocent men, women and children, you don’t deserve to live.” An interesting position for one of the most aggressive defenders of Bush’s Iraq invasion.
On the other side of illusory US partisan divide you’ve got MSNBC pundits like Richard Engel and Clint Watts also calling for direct hot war with Russia.
“Perhaps the biggest risk-calculation/moral dilemma of the war so far,” tweeted Engel on Monday. “A massive Russian convoy is about 30 miles from Kyiv. The US/NATO could likely destroy it. But that would be direct involvement against Russia and risk, everything. Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?” “Strangest thing – entire world watching a massive Russian armor formation plow towards Kyiv, we cheer on Ukraine, but we’re holding ourselves back,” tweeted Watts less than two hours later. “NATO Air Force could end this in 48 hrs. Understand handwringing about what Putin would do, but we can see what’s coming.” “Putin knows stop the West throw ‘nuclear’ into discussion and we’ll come to a stop, but the world should not be held hostage to a killer of societies, the west has nuclear weapons too, and Putin’s track record is clear, every war he wins is followed by another war,” Watts added. You’ve also got increasingly bold calls for no-fly zones and close air support from the western political/media class, which would also mean hot war with Russia.
Now, theoretically, the actual decision-makers of the imperial war machine know better than to initiate a hot war with Russia because it would likely lead to an unthinkable chain of events in which everyone loses. But what these insane Strangelovian calls for nuclear armageddon do, even if they never come to fruition, is push the acceptable spectrum of debate far toward the most hawkish extremes possible.
When you’ve got the hawks screaming that Putin is Hitler and calling for airstrikes on the Russian military while the doves are using extremely mitigated both-sides language and taking great pains to forcefully condemn Putin to avoid being shouted down and censored, what you wind up with is a spectrum of debate that has been pulled so far toward insanity that the “moderate” position becomes support for unprecedented acts of economic warfare and funding a brutal insurgency in Ukraine. As a result, advocating for western powers to initiate de-escalation, diplomacy and detente becomes an extremist position, comparable to or worse than advocating for hot war with a nuclear superpower. In reality it’s the obvious moderate, sane position on the table, but taking that position unequivocally would be disastrous for the career of any mainstream politician or pundit in today’s environment, because the spectrum of debate has been pulled so far toward hawkish brinkmanship. Noam Chomsky outlined this problem clearly when he said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” And that’s exactly what we are seeing here. Look at this soup-brained take by comedian Tim Dillon, for example:
Ideally this kind of insane extremist talk would get you chased out of every town and forced to live alone in a cave eating bats, but because the Overton window of acceptable debate has been dragged so far away from its center, people think it’s a moderate, heterodox position. Dovish, even.
This spectrum of debate has been further shoved away from moderation with the help of pseudo-left narrative managers like George Monbiot and The Intercept, who have both published obnoxious finger-wagging articles scolding leftists who’ve been insufficiently servile to the US/NATO line on Ukraine. As though there’s somehow not enough promotion of the State Department narrative on this subject by every single one of the most powerful governments and media institutions in the entire western world, rather than far, far too much. The worst people in the world have their foot on the accelerator driving us toward escalations that should terrify anyone with gray matter between their ears, while those who want to tap the brakes get their foot immediately slapped away. This is not leading good places. And we know from experience how profoundly unwise the power structure overseeing all this can be. Treasure each moment, my lovelies. AuthorCaitlin Johnstone: Take a second to support Caitlin Johnstone on Patreon!
Originally published in Caitlin's website.
ArchivesMarch 2022 For socialists, the fundamental understanding of imperialism goes back to World War I and is found in the pamphlet written by V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.” Imperialism is not a policy chosen by one government and dropped by another. Imperialism is a system. The first world war was the outcome of imperialism, Lenin wrote, an imperialist war waged for the political and economic exploitation of the world, export markets, sources of raw material, spheres of capital investment, etc. The imperialist powers raised huge armies and navies, not only to forcibly subjugate oppressed people in the colonies, but to make war against other imperialist countries competing for control. According to Lenin, the world was already divided among the great capitalist powers when he wrote “Imperialism” in 1916. The war resulted from inter-imperialist rivalries to redivide the world. The wars since WWI have changed circumstances. And World War II signaled a turning point in world imperialist relations. The United States emerged from WWII as the world’s most powerful imperialist country, gaining control of former European empires in Asia and Africa. The overturn of the socialist Soviet Union and the breakup of the Soviet republics into individual nation states was a dismantling of a planned economy, resulting in capitalist economies that are under-developed. There has not been a sudden, almost magical appearance of an imperialist Russia. Lenin thought that there were a few characteristics of imperialism, including the rise of finance capital and the export of capital, not just commodities. The U.S., for example, exports not just commodities but capital — mostly in the form of loans or investments. U.S. banks are at the center of world commerce. Russia’s economy almost neocolonial Today, capitalist Russia’s GDP is smaller than that of South Korea or India. Russia’s economy is almost neocolonial, dependent on the exchange of raw materials such as oil and ores. This is the classic economic relationship of a colony to imperialist finance capital. In the list of the top 50 banks in the world, not one is Russian. The ruble is not a currency of trade. Russia does not export capital. During the Soviet period, Russia and the other republics that formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics made remarkable industrial progress. Indeed, between 1921 and 1988 there were no years of negative economic growth — no recessions — except for the World War II years. The Soviet economy fell into recession only in 1989 as the Gorbachev government began to dismantle the planned economy. Under Gorbachev and then even more drastically under the openly anti-communist, anti-socialist government of Boris Yeltsin in the Russian Federal Republic, and in the new non-Russian former Soviet republics including Ukraine, socialist industry was dismantled. Yeltsin finished the job of dismantling the Soviet economy that Gorbachev began. The years of Yeltsin are now remembered as perhaps the worst period in Russia’s 1,000-year history. This was the greatest economic disaster any country has seen in modern times, in war or peace. Ukraine had the second-largest economy in the USSR. “Independent” Ukraine is now the poorest country in Europe. By the end of 2020, some 45% of the population were in the poor category, according to a study by the Ptukha Institute. The deep poverty has created the conditions for fascist gangs to emerge. Putin’s role Putin, who was Yeltsin’s prime minister and chosen successor, took a more protectionist direction, unlike Yeltsin and Gorbachev, who had fawned on the West. Does that mean Putin moved away from the policies of Yeltsin and Gorbachev that had oriented the economy to exporting raw materials? Did Putin adopt a policy of industrialization? Under Putin, there has been little growth of Russia’s manufacturing production that had been demolished by the “perestroika” reforms. Manufacturing is the foundation of any successful modern economy. Yet, under Putin, Russia continues mainly as an exporter of raw materials. Russia now accounts for about 6% of the global aluminum supply, 3.5% of the copper supply, and 4% of the cobalt supply. And Russia is the world’s largest producer of crude oil and second-largest producer of dry natural gas, after the U.S. Russia is in the top 10 exporters of grain crops, including barley, corn, rye, oats and especially wheat. From 2017-2019, it was the biggest exporter of wheat, accounting for about 20% of the world market. Russia is a capitalist state, but that does not make it imperialist. Not all capitalist countries are imperialist nations. For example, Mexico is a capitalist country with an economy that’s similar in size to Russia’s, but is Mexico an imperialist country or an exploited country? Saying that it is capitalist is not enough to know the answer. Lenin named at least four characteristics of imperialism: concentration of production into monopoly; merging of bank capital with industrial capital, creating finance capital; the export of capital; the fusion of finance capital and the state. The role of finance capital may be most important. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have taken over the economies of the world. The dollar (not gold) is the currency of world trade. Today almost every country is capitalist, and most of those are exploited by imperialism, by finance capital. Mexico is capitalist but it is not imperialist. Russia, too, is an exploited country in relation to imperialism, like Mexico. NATO targets Russia Russia is the primary provider of gas and oil to much of Europe. The European Union imports 40% of its gas from Russia. That’s put Russia in competition with the U.S., the biggest producer of gas in the world. The U.S. has been on a drive to control the world market in oil and gas. This can be seen in its attacks, actually acts of war (sanctions), against Iran and Venezuela as well as its war on Iraq. These are countries that had sought national sovereignty over oil and gas. Russia, too, has been a target, especially its Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but not just for that. Look at a map of NATO’s expansion since the breakup of the USSR. The countries put under NATO include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria. In 2008, NATO put the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia, both bordering Russia, on the table. NATO war on Yugoslavia Despite the war propaganda that’s presented as news these days, the first war in Europe since World War II didn’t just start. That war was launched by the U.S. and NATO against Yugoslavia in 1999. For 78 days, from March 24 to June 10, 1999, NATO bombers hit Belgrade, Pristina in Kosovo, Podgorica in Montenegro and several other cities. On the first day more than 20 buildings in Belgrade were leveled. Much of the U.S./NATO bombing hit civilian targets. A passenger train was bombed. Cruise missiles could be seen flying down the streets. The U.S. directly bombed the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Belgrade, killing three Chinese reporters. Russia understood the lesson of Yugoslavia and told the U.S. and NATO “no” to expansion to Ukraine and Georgia, on Russia’s borders – 5 minutes by missile to Moscow. The former U.S. ambassador to Russia, William J. Burns, who is now director of the CIA, said in a February 2008 embassy cable that Ukraine joining NATO constituted a security threat for Russia. Burns noted that to push for this “could potentially split the country [Ukraine] in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” The U.S. never withdrew the proposal to include Ukraine. Maidan coup In Ukraine, the so-called Maidan coup in 2014 that was openly supported and financed by NATO put in a government that made NATO membership a policy mandate. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly requested Ukraine’s entrance into NATO. On Feb. 19, Zelensky demanded, once again, entry to NATO, saying, “Eight years ago, Ukrainians made their choice [the Maidan coup].” Actually, many Ukrainians resisted the Maidan coup, particularly in the working class. In the Maidan civil war, fascist gangs emerged as a force for the coup. Resistance to the coup was strongest in the eastern section of the country. In Odessa, a neo-nazi pro-Maidan gang targeted the Odessa House of Trade Unions, near the center of the resistance. The building was firebombed and at least 46 anti-fascists and labor activists were burned alive. The resistance to the Maidan coup has continued from 2014 to today. The independent Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic were created when the people there voted overwhelmingly (89% and 96%) to secede from the Maidan regime. They have been subjected to continuous attack since then, particularly by the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov regiment, a neo-nazi stormtrooper-like operation. More than 14,000 have been killed in Ukraine’s war on Donetsk and Lugansk. As U.S. Ambassador Burns predicted, Russia was pushed into a corner by the unrelenting drive for NATO entry to Ukraine as well as the growing buildup of neo-nazi militias and the war on Donetsk and Lugansk. Ukraine had promised in the Minsk agreements it signed in 2014 and 2015 there would be a ceasefire, an end to all fighting, withdrawal of heavy weapons, release of prisoners of war, and the recognition of self-government in Donetsk and Lugansk. Ukraine fulfilled none of these promises. Putin may not be an anti-imperialist leader, but the Russian military operation to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine and recognize the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic is a move against imperialism, U.S. and NATO imperialism. AuthorOriginally published in Struggle La Lucha. Archives March 2022 After celebrating the birthday of the invincible and legendary Red Army, on February 24, President Putin announced a military-political operation to protect Donbass, fight against Nazism and fascism, which took root in native Ukraine. We believe that this operation is justified. We understand everything, and we have always supported and will continue to support those who defend the freedom and independence of our Motherland. But, I want to remind you that in the last century, two world crises of capitalism ended in two world wars. The Great October and the ingenious Leninist-Stalinist modernization pulled the planet out of the First World War, and our Great Victory in May 1945 from the Second World War. Then we laid 27 million lives of the best sons and daughters of our Motherland on the altar of the fight against fascism. Then the Soviet country, during the reign of Brezhnev and Kosygin, created a nuclear-missile parity that curbed the aggressive appetite of the Anglo-Saxons and Americans. After the surrender of all Soviet conquests in 1991 to the vile, disgusting team of Gorbachevs, Yeltsins, Gaidars, Chubais, this thieves, drunken, treacherous pack, everything fell apart. The Americans promised that they would be partners for us, but in fact they tried to finally finish off, first of all, our military-industrial complex, education, science and the army. The Communist Party has always resisted such a policy. Our party and the people's patriotic forces saved the country from a new civil war, which was about to be unleashed by market reformers. We saved it after the default, when we created a center-left government headed by Primakov. We helped the country overcome all crisis moments. I think it is very useful to remember that when the top leadership of Russia agreed to hold NATO exercises near Arzamas using heavy equipment and weapons, we rebelled against this, raised people up, and did not allow NATO to the holy land of Nizhny Novgorod. When it was already decided to organize a jump base in Ulyanovsk, in Lenin's homeland, supposedly to take the Americans out of Afghanistan, we opposed this. We held a nationwide procession and they were not allowed to go there. When the NATO troops had already landed in the Crimea, in Feodosia, together with Kharitonov and our friends in Ukraine, we gathered ten thousand people. We besieged this base for five days, and the NATO troops were forced to leave our legendary Crimean land. When NATO-led Saakashists unleashed a war in South Ossetia, we insisted that President Medvedev make an immediate decision. There were one hundred American advisers under three generals. Georgian militants were given alcohol to drink, which relieves fear and pain, which is used in NATO armies. And what did these bastards do in the first place? They shot all our peacekeepers and destroyed forty-nine out of fifty schools. Then we were forced to immediately bring in peacekeeping forces through the Roki Tunnel in order to calm the scoundrel Saakashvili within three days. But, in general, he had to be caught, put in a cage and taken to The Hague to be dealt with there. Instead, he ended up in Ukraine, where, under the guidance of the Americans, he was made an overseer of the amazing city of Odessa. We conducted a whole series of operations to support our friends and brothers in Ukraine. What did the Americanized Bandera government do there in the first place? She expelled the communists from the Rada, who fought very actively and with dignity to strengthen ties with our country. Then the Bandera government dragged those who hate Russia to all managerial posts. They adopted legislative acts by which they recognized the Russian language as illegal, and the Russian people as non-indigenous. Although before that, 83% of the inhabitants of Ukraine in a referendum said that the Russian language is their native language. The Americans raised in Ukraine such a pack of bastards, which history does not know. They gave power to the main accomplices of Hitler, who destroyed people by the thousands. When I studied the tragedy of Babi Yar, I was shocked that the punishers were mostly Nazi Bandera. In Volhynia, Bandera massacred almost sixty thousand Poles. It was they who burned people in the Belarusian Khatyn. And this maddened public decided, having seized Ukraine, to organize a war with Russia. Prior to that, under the leadership of NATO, they ruined the entire Ukrainian industry: the best aircraft factory named after Antonov, the best rocket factory in Dnepropetrovsk, the best engine factory in Zaporozhye, the best shipyards in Nikolaev. The NATO members handed over their weapons to the Ukrainian formations, and drove 130 thousand to the Donbass in order to unleash another war. Therefore, the decision to conduct a special operation in Ukraine was, although belated, but absolutely correct. And we should all be well aware that if this fascist and Nazi hydra is not destroyed, it will continue to spoil the blood of entire generations. We gave too many lives of our best sons and daughters to defend our homeland from fascism. I have not survived a single village in the Oryol region. There was only one house left from Orel, on which a red flag was hoisted. Everyone in my family fought against the Nazis. And today, when American-led fascists say they will dictate terms to us, we say no to them. Therefore, we will support everyone who, being a patriot, faithfully serves our beloved, long-suffering Fatherland. As for sanctions against Russia, far from all countries of the world support them. They are supported by the United States, they are supported by NATO satellites in Europe, which have long lost their subjectivity. And it's all. In Latin America, no one supported the sanctions: neither Brazil, where the president is on the right, nor Argentina, where the president is on the left. Neither Mexico is one of the largest countries in the region. Not to mention our friends in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. My First Deputy and First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Melnikov is a great friend of Cuba. And I helped the Cubans build three factories. And when the Americans tried to organize a “boiling” there, we, together with twice Hero of the Soviet Union, cosmonaut Sevastyanov, flew to Cuba and helped Fidel Castro. If we take Asia, then the sanctions were again supported by only American satellites. The same Japan has long been occupied by the Americans. But South Korea does not want to support the sanctions. China also said no. India said no. But China today in terms of GDP is the first economy in the world, and India is the third. In the Middle East, sanctions were not supported by Iran and Pakistan. Even Saudi Arabia, which has always supported the Americans, said no. Therefore, when they yell that their total sanctions will bring the Russian economy to its knees, this is complete nonsense! But in order for the sanctions to really not do much damage, Prime Minister Mishustin needs to involve, first of all, our team with the Ten Steps to a Decent Life program. Our team saved the country after the default. At that time, Primakov, Maslyukov, and I took only three measures. We have stopped the outflow of capital. We have banned raising prices for diesel fuel, gasoline and kerosene. And we have done everything to allocate funds directly and without interest for specific projects. And, as a result, the factories started working and all construction projects resumed. Only the industry in that year gave 24% growth. And now, when the refinancing rate was raised to 20%, it's just killing all life! They almost provoked a panic, because the citizens realized that they would be left without money tomorrow! Therefore, real action must be taken. The first and main of them is to create people's enterprises in each district. And if this bastard engaged in raider seizures comes to us again at the state farm named after Lenin, we will chase him stronger than in the Donbass. Moreover, this bastard is covered by the administration of the Moscow region. Although the state farm named after Lenin is the best enterprise that pays huge taxes to the budget. There is one of the highest salaries and a full social package. Such enterprises should be proud of and adopt their best practices. This also applies to the Kazankov farm in Mari El, which won all the main prizes at the international exhibition in Frankfurt. And if tomorrow we create such people's enterprises throughout the country, the situation will change dramatically. The first decision that Prime Minister Mishustin must now make is to ensure the availability of gasoline and diesel fuel for the peasants. And that the price per kilowatt hour of electricity should not be four times higher than in the city. Now it reaches eight rubles. This is much higher than in industry, which is completely unacceptable! Abandoned lands that have not been used for two years must be immediately nationalized. We must support everyone who wants to plow them up today, plant vegetable gardens and grow a wonderful harvest. We are able to feed five hundred million people, and instead we buy someone else's dirty products. Now there is a real opportunity to support high technologies. Raise all my speeches for five years when the budget is adopted by the State Duma. I screamed out that a country with eleven time zones could not exist without its aviation. I have been to all aircraft factories. And when they wanted to close the legendary Voronezh Aviation Plant, I spoke from the wing of the plane in front of a team of five thousand. Then I went to the president and told him: you will have nothing to fly on! Our Il-86 was the only aircraft in the world that had never crashed with passengers in thirty years. And for a long time it was possible to debug the production of its successor Il-96. There is no need for us to get involved with Boeings, because our planes are better and more reliable! This applies to electronics and much more. And we can calmly and confidently rush forward. St. Petersburg has an amazing educational institution founded by Zhores Alferov. But it continues to be "pressed" only because it stands on expensive land. But this educational institution trains geniuses in the field of mathematics, cybernetics, robotics! That's what we all need to work on today. As for the sanctions, the American nuclear industry cannot work without our fuel rods. And two-thirds of the titanium needed for the production of aircraft, the Boeing company receives from our country. The same applies to the fertilizers that Russia and Belarus supply to the whole of Europe. So we have our own very powerful leverage. And those who now "got excited" with the sanctions will soon begin to reverse. The same Germany, if it buys expensive liquefied gas from the United States, will be uncompetitive. It is more profitable for them to use Nord Stream. Therefore, now it is necessary to show will, character and move forward. But once again I appeal to the authorities: stop the anti-Soviet and the persecution of our comrades. We face this both in Moscow and in other regions. But those who do this are provocateurs. And our party and left-patriotic forces will do everything to ensure that the country is strengthened, our army honestly and worthily fulfills its duty. We have always stood on the side of those who fight for socialism. No to fascism in our land! AuthorGennady Andreyevich Zyuganov has been the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and served as Member of the State Duma since 1993. He is also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe since 1996. Originally published in KPRF
3/4/2022 On the Predictable Demise of RT America: A Chance for Grassroots Global Media? By: Sam HusseiniRead NowThe closure of RT America follows effective censorship of the channel. The ultimate decision to close was made following a cut off of service by DirecTV and Roku. Big Tech firms were also increasingly targeting RT. Reuters reported: "Tech companies in recent days have moved to restrict Russian state-controlled media including RT and Sputnik in response to requests from governments and calls to prevent the spread of Russia propaganda." Many will try to argue that the developments in the U.S. are completely different from the European Commission recently banned RT and Sputnik. But it more clearly highlights the congruence of government and major corporate agendas. And indeed, as with Big Tech censorship generally, sometimes the collusion is outright, see my interview last year with Nadine Strossen, former head of the ACLU. Contrary to the common mantra that Big Tech platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter get to decide what content they want, Strossen argues "Private sector actors are directly bound by constitutional norms, including the First Amendment" if they are being coerced by or colluding with the government. And direct censorship has been done by the U.S. government. For example, in 2020, the Trump administration seized the internet domain for the American Herald Tribune, claiming it was controlled by Iran. The following year, the Biden administration seized the domains for Press TV and over 30 others on similar grounds. The mechanism for this was sanctions that were placed on Iran -- thus, sweeping sanctions can be used effectively as an instrument against the First Amendment. Such compulsions go back. In 2008, a New York man who was trying to make Al-Manar, a TV station backed by Hezbollah in Lebanon, available to people in the U.S. was sentenced to at least five years in prison. There were at best minimal efforts to oppose this on First Amendment grounds. But RT America was different from many of these in that RT America reached a lot of people. I remember chatting with an elderly man several years ago in rural Maryland who I happened to strike up a conversation with in a store. After our talk turned to politics, he excitedly told me about this great outlet he was watching for news -- RT. In all honesty, I was surprised at first when I saw RT's substantial operations in DC. The U.S. government had shut down Press TV's offices in DC. But there RT's offices were -- rows and rows of producers and other workers. I began to suspect that RT and RT America were allowed to blossom in part because a pretext could always be found to pull the plug on them. I worked for a time in 2007 with The Real News, then based in Toronto, which aimed to be a genuinely independent media outlet. The Real News had relatively modest funding but a lot of promise. I thought The Real News at that point was a terribly important project -- what could challenge the power of the U.S. establishment more than an independent, vibrant 24/7 media outlet? But part of a strategy of preventing the emergence of a global independent media outlet might have included allowing the emergence of national outlets which tapped into dissent and discontent in the U.S., but which could easily have the rug pulled out from under them at any time chosen by the U.S. establishment. So, did RT end up effectively syphoning off the viewers that could have helped build up The Real News? In January of 2021, in explaining the lack of a vibrant independent media outlet in the U.S., I wrote: "The possibility of something emerging was ironically hindered by other nationalist outlets. After Al Jazeera dudded out, instead of people in the U.S. and elsewhere trying to build something, people turned to RT etc with obvious problems, I *suspect that RT was allowed to become entrenched by the U.S. establishment for exactly this reason -- its rise and funding helped preclude people from building a grassroots network and RT could obviously be dismissed when the establishment chose to do so." Given the secretive nature of U.S. government institutions, it's virtually impossible to show that that's what happened, but regardless, clearly the U.S. establishment is now gunning for RT. To be clear, beyond the obvious limitations, I have thought that RT, perhaps because of its governmental backing, was at times quite limited in its critique of U.S. government policy, see my piece "Stated Goals vs Actual Goals: 'CrossTalk' Lives Up to Its Name" from 2015. I end that piece: "We have these media outlets of various nationalities -- RT for Russia, France 24 for France, CNN for the U.S. establishment, Fox for the U.S. establishment rightwing, MSNBC for U.S. establishment corporate liberals, Al-Jazeerafor Qatar, Al-Arabia for Saudi Arabia, CCTV for China, etc. "They all foster shallowness and ultimately prize hacks over real journalists. "We desperately need a global, real network dedicated to real facts and meaningful dialogue between various viewpoints." So, ironically, there may be a silver lining: The demise of RT America might in fact be an opportunity to build the global media structures we so desperately need. Such an attempt, if it were even mildly successful, will likely face brutal attack. In 2010, following pressure from then Sen. Joe Lieberman, VISA, Mastercard and Amazon pulled the plug on WikiLeaks, which had become a major sensation based on the "Collateral Murder" video. When "Collateral Murder" came out, one could see the promise of WikiLeaks, getting direct support from millions around the world and developing a new type of journalism that could powerfully hold governments and corporations to account. But of course, WikiLeaks has been savagely attacked, such that most of their resources had to be directed at defending their founder. Still, the assaults on WikiLeaks have come at a cost for the U.S. government, exposing their tortured onslaughts on the group. Given the seemingly ever more demented state of affairs, the lack of focus on the facts that people need to know, the manipulation of information by Big Tech, the lack of meaningful dialogue or debate on large media outlets and so many other obstacles, the need for an independent, global media outlet is more urgent than ever. AuthorSam Husseini is an independent journalist. click HERE to read his prior writing on pandemic origins and biowarfare. Originally published in Sam Husseini's substack. Archives March 2022 3/4/2022 The War Crimes of Nazi-Bandera Nationalists Must Be Condemned by the Whole World. By: Gennady ZyuganovRead NowStatement by Chairman of the CC CPRF Gennady Zyuganov The tactic of the punitive Nazi battalions which are suffering defeat in the clash with the DPR and LPR troops is very clear. It is the same “scorched land” tactic as that used by the Nazi occupiers as they were driven by the Red Army out of the territory of the USSR, including Ukraine. The Germans blew up the Dneproges Power Plant, destroyed hundreds of factories, mines and bridges and burned tens of thousands of Ukrainian homes. The Nazis of the “territorial battalions” are engaged in the same business. Even as they are retreating from Donbass, they continue shelling with 122- and 152-mm guns the cities and villages of this long-suffering region. Civilians die every day. These are war crimes. The West does not even try to stop the shelling of Donbass residential neighborhoods, which makes the “moralists” and “humanitarians” in the European Union and the USA accomplices in war crimes. Trying to create the impression that civilians are dying at the hands of the Russian army, they resort to grisly provocations by shelling the cities under their own control. A powerful explosion has rocked the center of Kharkov. All the “world” media outlets which are totally controlled by Washington, are trumpeting that Russia is to blame. And yet it was obviously an explosion of a vehicle stuffed with hundreds of kilograms of explosives, which points to those who ordered and executed the crime. These are the tactics used by numerous CIA-controlled terrorist organizations across the world. The West and its “fifth column“ in Russia are defending out-and-out Fascists and terrorists who have seized power in Ukraine and turned its citizens into hostages of their grisly Russophobia and anti-Sovietism. Hostages in the direct sense of the word. For example, in Mariupol, surrounded by LPR-DPR forces, the Nazis from the Azov and Aidar regiments are preventing civilians from leaving the city. They are placing gunmen on top stories of residential blocks to prevent people from leaving. The Nazi units are using these people as human shields. We appeal to the European Union and the USA to condemn the terrorism of Bandera nationalists against Donbass cities, the practice of taking hostages as human shields and of placing guns and mortars in residential quarters of cities under their control. If the West does not prevent this flagrant violation of elementary norms of warfare the responsibility for the crimes of its vassals will rest with their patrons. The West should take a closer look at those it is so strenuously defending. These are the followers of Hitler’s hireling Bandera and his thugs. It was Bandera’s followers who committed the most heinous crimes on Soviet territory occupied by the German troops. It was Bandera’s thugs who massacred Jews at Babiy Yar, butchered Poles in Volyn and burned people alive in the villages of Byelorussia. The way they burned alive tens of people in Odessa in 2014 indicates that these monsters have inherited from their Hitler forerunners a readiness to commit crimes against humanity. No decent person can associate oneself with them. We are amazed at the duplicity and hypocrisy of the “peace champions.” We ask one simple question: why have you been silent for eight years when Donbass residential neighborhoods were shelled almost every day. Civilians died every day. Why did you not show even a little sympathy for the relatives and close ones of those who were killed and maimed? You were silent all these years. So we have very grave doubts about the sincerity of these new “champions of peace.” Would you have protested if the Ukrainian forces and the Nazi battalions had invaded Donbass, as was being planned, and staged a massacre of the defenders of DPR and LPR? Or would you have kept silent? Unfortunately, I have no doubt that not even rivers of blood in Donbass would have induced you to take to the street and demand an end to the genocide of the Russian people and the Russian-speaking population. We are also for peace and always come out for a peaceful solution of any conflict. We are against bloodshed. And we very much hope that serious losses can be avoided not only among Russian army men, but also among the soldiers and officers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces among whom there are many Russians and deceived Ukrainians. We sincerely hope for an early end to the hostilities and a political settlement through negotiations. We are doing all we can toward that end. We appeal to the West, especially the USA, not to obstruct the search for a peaceful settlement. We are well aware that the USA is more interested than anyone in the preparation and fomenting of a conflict between Russia and fraternal Ukraine. However, many honest political and public personalities, journalists and scientists in the USA, Europe and many other countries know full well the real essence of what is taking place. We sincerely appreciate their deep understanding of the West’s responsibility for unleashing this conflict. America and the European Union are not struggling for Ukraine. They seek to use the local Nazis in a bid for the right to plunder Ukraine and turn it into a bridgehead for aggression against Russia. We call on the international community to understand the danger of this course for the cause of peace and genuine democracy in the world and to actively resist attempts to disrupt the process of political settlement in Ukraine. AuthorGennady Andreyevich Zyuganov has been the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and served as Member of the State Duma since 1993. He is also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe since 1996. Originally published by the KPRF Archives March 2022 |
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