Today is the birthday of anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon. This intellectual giant taught us that colonization is fundamentally violent.  It destroys one’s self-sufficiency, dignity and indigenous institutions, language and culture through murder and war leaving only wretchedness (dehumanized impoverishment, alienation and trauma) in its place. Fanon knew early on that you cannot protest occupations away because the relation between the colonizer and colonized was not dialectical.  This means that no synthesis comes out of the opposing categories of the colonizer and colonized other than perpetual exploitation. This important radical black thinker and active revolutionary professed that the only way out of colonization is for the wretched of the earth to violently drive out their exploiters. Nothing less than complete elimination of the category of the colonizer in all its dimensions (social, economic, military, political and cultural) was the way out.
​
Violence was not only an instrument for liberation but also the birthgiver of a new revolutionary culture and identity. For Fanon the struggle against the colonizer can only succeed if it is based on indigenous native culture. Without a strong nativist basis to liberation the decolonized will remain vulnerable for recolonization through other means. Fanon posited that the estrangement from one’s own self, his/her own heritage was a weakness only to be exploited by Eurocentric political prescriptions and identities.

In chapter 6 of wretched of the Earth Fanon writes:
​
“Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth.

Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.

Comrades, have we not other work to do than to create a third Europe?”
​
As both Iraqis and Palestinians are now being faced with Europe’s monster and its secondary offspring, the United States of America and Israel, we should study Fanon’s ideas to understand the way out of the wretchedness that defines our modern political struggle.

Operation Condor was a U.S.-directed secret intelligence program in the 1970s and early ’80s in six South American U.S.-backed dictatorships—Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay—that resulted in the torture and “disappearance” of thousands of people.
​
The victims included dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, students and teachers, intellectuals and suspected guerrillas.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has recently suggested that the 2019 coup directed against him is part of a new U.S. Plan Condor—whose aim is to rollback the renewed left-wing ascendancy in South America.
​
In a speech in early July, Morales stated:

“The sending of war materials by the former presidents of Ecuador (Moreno), and Argentina (Macri), and the letter of thanks from General Terceros are further evidence that, together with the assassination of the President of Haiti, by former Colombian military personnel, show the execution of a second Condor Plan under U.S. direction.

We alert the Latin America social movements about #PlanCóndor2 and the need to strengthen the struggle for peace with social justice and democracy to preserve the sovereignty and independence of our States and the dignity of the people.

In the face of the Bolivian right wing and its U.S.-paid media that lie and do not show a single piece of evidence of the alleged fraud [2019 elections], more evidence continues to appear about those who participated in the 2019 coup d’état and the support given by anti-popular governments with war material and money.

We reaffirm that #PlanCóndor2 is under way and we must agree on measures so that the right-wing governments of Latin America do not continue to participate in coups d’état under the leadership of the United States, causing mourning and pain to our peoples.

We warn the people, militants, sympathizers, patriotic military and professionals committed to their country: We are in the sights of the U.S. because we recovered our natural resources, nationalized strategic companies and closed the military base in Chimoré. They do not forgive us.”

That the new Operation Condor represents an extension of the old one is evident in Washington’s continued subversion efforts directed against Cuba, a country that has defied U.S. imperial designs since the 1959 Cuban revolution.
​
As CAM reported, on June 23 of this year 184 countries of the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba. It was the 29th consecutive year where virtually all countries, except the U.S. and Israel, made this demand.

In recent years, the Cuban media have denounced the millions of dollars of U.S. funding, through organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to create and fund opposition media and the organization of youth.

The NED programs are an adjunct of the new Condor operation, whose goal is regime change of left-wing governments.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez on July 11 rejected the smear campaigns of the U.S. media hegemony in the midst of the Covid pandemic with the intensification of the illegal economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the United States.

“In a subtle, cowardly and opportunistic manner, those who have maintained the blockade and those who have been used as mercenaries and lackeys of the empire, appear with humanitarian doctrines to strengthen the criterion that the Cuban government is not capable of dealing with this situation; if they are worried about the people of Cuba, they need to end the blockade,” said the Cuban president.
​
The U.S. is intensifying the blockade hoping to cause an internal implosion. “They want to suffocate us and try to put an end to the Revolution … I am giving this information to ratify that the streets belong to the Revolution; that the party and the Government have all the disposition to debate and help,” said President Díaz-Canel.

The President called on the base of the Revolution to go into the streets to face the provocations of manipulators who promote protests and support illegal sanctions against their own country; “we know that there are revolutionary masses facing small anti-revolutionary groups, we are not going to let any mercenary of the U.S. empire provoke destabilization,” he added.

The head of state emphasized that the provocations of small groups intend to create a scenario so that the U.S. can justify an invasion. “In the second half of 2019 we explained to our people that we were going through a difficult juncture, from the signs that the U.S. was giving against Cuba,” he recalled.
​
“The financial, economic, commercial and energy persecution increased, they [Washington] want to provoke internal social problems in Cuba in order to call for humanitarian missions that translate into military invasions and interference,” denounced President Díaz-Canel. The president recalled that Cuba was included in the infamous list as sponsors of terrorism, “a unilateral list; they believe they are emperors of the world,” he added.

According to historian J. Patrice McSherry, Peru was one of the target countries for the original Operation Condor. In June 1980, Peruvian President General Enrique Morales Bermudez (1975-1980) collaborated with Argentine security forces in hunting down Argentine leftists in Peru who were tortured and “disappeared.”
​
The U.S. later provided security assistance to help Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) destroy the left-wing Sendero Luminoso guerrilla movement.

Fast forward two decades, and Washington appears to be pulling out all the stops under the new Condor to try to orchestrate a coup designed to empower Alberto’s daughter, Keiko—who like her father, would advance policies that favor Peru’s wealthy classes and transnational corporations.

As CAM reported, in the June 6 elections, Pedro Castillo, a teacher and candidate of the Free Peru Party, won the elections in the second round. But Fujimori—who is facing a long jail sentence on corruption charges—refused to concede. With 100% of the votes counted Castillo won 50.127% of the vote (8.84 million votes), beating Fujimori of the Fuerza Popular Party, who received 49.873% (8.79 million votes).

Just six weeks before the election the U.S. sent a new ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna. Kenna was an adviser to former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a nine-year veteran at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a U.S. State Department official in Iraq.

What dirty tricks she may be trying to help pull remains uncertain, but if Morales is correct about the new Condor, she is definitely someone who is supporting it.

The U.S. has seven military bases in Colombia and a history of support for the narcotics-dealing paramilitary forces that are the political base of right-wing President Iván Duque and his sinister narco-terror implicated mentor, former president Álvaro Uribe.
​
So, it makes sense that Colombians may well have been part of the commando group that killed President Moïse. There has been a lot of disinformation given about the assassination to try to confuse people, but it is not difficult to surmise which country is most likely behind the killing.

Moïse to be sure was no progressive. He was groomed by the corrupt former president Michel Martelly, a close ally of the Clintons, and received only 11 percent of the vote in 2016.

In a March interview, former U.S. ambassador to Haiti Pamela White talked about a plan to “put aside” President Moïse, leaving power in the hands of an interim Prime Minister. All this to avoid democratic elections which the population have been calling for since early 2020.

​How do you “put aside” a president? The U.S. government has a long record of assassinating presidents and leaders or supporting coups to overthrow elected governments, as it did in 2004 to remove President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who had wide support among Haiti’s poor.

In 2020 when Moïse should have stepped down and when the most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, was calling for elections, the U.S. backed him staying in power.
​
Polls show that the progressive party Lavalas is very popular and, if the U.S. were to allow fair elections, they would very likely win. Whoever murdered President Moïse and for whatever immediate reason, the principal medium-term result is continued chaos for Haiti’s people, including possibly another military intervention, putting a stable political settlement further out of reach than ever.

The above photo shows the men the Haitian Police accuse of being “specialized commandos” who allegedly executed the president. The photo shows the weapons these men were caught with. There are no heavy weapons, only old weapons and only enough for about half of these men. They were found with only two walkie talkies and not a single bullet proof vest.
​
There is nothing about this group to indicate any kind of “specialized commandos” and very unlikely that such a ragtag group could have gotten past the President’s ten body-guards without resistance.

There has been no presentation of what was found on security cameras—neither from the President’s home nor from any neighboring homes. And now the police are saying that a progressive Haitian doctor who lives in the U.S. and has had pretensions of running for president in the past was the mastermind. This scenario being pushed by the Haitian Police wreaks of a cover-up—as had occurred with many of the assassinations in the original Operation Condor.

In Nicaragua, U.S. policies under the new Condor show great continuity from the era of the 1980s Contra War.

In 2018, with careful direction and millions of dollars from U.S. agencies and foundations, a coup was attempted against Nicaragua’s government—headed by the original Sandinista revolutionary leader, Daniel Ortega, who had won the 2016 elections with over 72% of the vote.[1]
​
The failed coup attempt left more than 260 people dead, including 24 police.
​
Along with executions, hundreds of Sandinista supporters and government workers were kidnapped and tortured. With destruction of government and private buildings, vehicles and equipment, loss of 130,000 jobs and business closures, Finance Minister Ivan Acosta calculates the cost to the economy of more than a billion dollars—more than the combined losses caused by the Covid pandemic and the two devastating hurricanes of November 2020.

These activities violate Nicaragua’s Constitution, the country’s 2007 criminal code, national security legislation and money laundering laws in compliance with international standards, as well as the law relating to non-profit organizations.
​
The current U.S. administration under Joe Biden has maintained President Trump’s designation of Nicaragua as an “extraordinary and unusual threat to the U.S. national security and foreign policy.” This means that Nicaraguans accepting money from the U.S. government and participating in U.S. programs to promote a “democratic transition” are actively collaborating with a hostile foreign power. 

Since June of this year more than 20 Nicaraguans involved in these unlawful and potentially treasonous activities have come under investigation.

The offenses they are accused of committing involve not only possible treason for organizing, financing and participating in a coup d’état, requesting foreign economic and even military aggression, and promoting coercive measures against the government and individual citizens.

Additionally, some are under investigation for money laundering, financial fraud relating to abuse of non-profits, and the law on registration and financial reporting as foreign agents, similar to the U.S. FARA legislation. Moreover, among the detained are people who, by engaging in this broad range of law breaking, violated the terms of the Amnesty Law from which they benefited in 2019.

Nicaragua had been designated by the Trump administration as part of a “troika of tyranny” along with Cuba and Venezuela.
​
Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro, on July 12 at a dialogue with National Assembly lawmakers, denounced two assassination attempts against his life in just the preceding two weeks. Maduro stated: “They had prepared an attack against me on June 24 in the bicentennial of Carabobo this year. Another attack with drones, we dispelled it, we knocked it down, we neutralized it. First time I say it, because the investigation is still ongoing until we get to the person behind everything.

They had prepared [yet another] a desperate attack against me on July 5 in the middle of the parade …” referring to the July 5th Independence Day civic-military parade.

All of these attacks—and other assassination attempts directed against Maduro—fit under the rubric of the new Operation Condor disclosed by Morales.
​
Venezuela is a key target because it is led by a socialist government that since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez has been committed to Pan-American solidarity and the integration of Latin American economies so that they can develop independently and rid themselves of Yankee exploitation.

In May 2020, a large group of U.S.-funded terrorists, including two U.S. citizens, after training in Colombia, entered Venezuela by boat, hoping to kidnap or assassinate President Maduro. Their presence was quickly reported by local fishing workers and the group was intercepted by the Venezuelan authorities.

U.S. Southern Command has long openly proposed plans and advocated measures to facilitate the overthrow of Venezuela’s elected government.

Recently, President Maduro denounced the U.S. Southern Command and the Central Intelligence Agency for designing plans to attack Venezuela from Colombian territory. Maduro accused the CIA of planning to assassinate him. He alerted the Venezuelan people and urged them to be prepared “to respond forcefully to any destabilization plan in perfect civil-military union.”

Maduro’s statement comes in relation to the arrival in Colombia of the commander of the Southern Command, Admiral Craig Faller, and the director of the CIA, William Burns, whose visit, as the Colombian ambassador to the U.S. explained, was a “delicate mission,” taking place right before criminal attacks in Haiti and Venezuela. 

President Maduro noted, “We have received Information … they are behind plans to continue threatening and attacking peace and democracy, the institutions and the leadership of our country.”

The Venezuelan government’s warnings about the continuing conspiracies, violence and preparation of mercenary groups in Colombia to attack Venezuela were borne out recently by attacks in Venezuela’s capital. Various criminal gangs staged attacks in different parts of Caracas including one on an important police center.

The attacks were clearly coordinated to create a climate of fear and uncertainty during a visit by a European Union delegation to assess the possibility of EU observers monitoring the important elections scheduled for later this year.
​
The Venezuelan security forces took action to control the areas under attack and dismantled the criminal gangs responsible.

Their actions in turn signify a key difference from the 1970s—notably that Latin American countries are stronger and better able to defend themselves from U.S.-backed subversion and terrorism.

Evo Morales among others has made clear that the U.S. elites and their regional allies are desperate to impose a new Plan Condor in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Historically, the U.S. has always sought to suppress regional emancipation in the form of progressive movements and governments. But in a global context, they now also fear the growth of the region’s economic links with Asia, especially China.

Despite their enormous political influence, economic power and military presence, the U.S. and its allies face a losing battle, just as Spain did 200 years ago.

One model of U.S. and allied control is the kind of anti-democratic intervention developed in Haiti and Honduras by the U.S., Canada and Western Europe. This model ensures a neutered, corrupt central government and neocolonial rule via international agencies and Western NGOs.

But the collapse of Haiti and Honduras into neocolonial subjugation is still mostly an exception in the region. Apart from Haiti, the other Caribbean nations have proven to be very resilient against U.S. pressure, consistently blocking moves against Venezuela by the U.S. and Canada in the Organization of American States (OAS), for example.

Also Nicaragua’s decisive 2012 legal victory regaining over 90,000 square kilometers of Caribbean maritime territory, usurped by Colombia for decades, has meant that Nicaragua has joined Cuba and like-minded progressive Caribbean island nations in regional bodies, reinforcing the presence of revolutionary influence in those forums.
​
In practice, that means promotion of development policies focused on people rather than on corporate profits.

From Mexico and the Caribbean to Chile and Argentina, despite the aggressive offensive against Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, it is the right-wing allies of the U.S. that are in crisis, precisely because the mean, bitter, sterile Western vision of capitalist development condemns people to misery and despair.
​
So, it is no surprise that widespread popular protests have arisen with varying levels of intensity in Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and Brazil. Guillermo Lasso’s right-wing government in Ecuador will soon face the inevitable consequences of implementing repressive neoliberal economic measures.

While the U.S. and its allies managed to destabilize Argentina thanks to its elites looting the country under Mauricio Macri and taking on debilitating foreign debt, the country’s foreign policy remains an important force for progressive regional integration against U.S. wishes. The same is true of Mexico.
​
Despite economic, diplomatic and military power, the intense, well-coordinated U.S. and allied efforts to destabilize Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua and the region generally are failing. China’s influence is growing as that of the U.S. declines.

Haiti and Honduras may for now have become tragic showcases of what the U.S. and its allies want to impose on Latin America and the Caribbean but Bolivia’s heroic people showed that even a successful right-wing coup can be reversed.

The current U.S.-led Plan Condor may not be the Monroe Doctrine’s swan song in Latin America. But the writing is on the wall for anyone who cares to see.

Foreign Affairs Minister of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Jorge Arreaza, labeled as ”clumsy” the denial-of-services cyberattack perpetrated on Cuba by US imperialism, highlighting that this is another action that evidences a plan of aggression against the Republic of Cuba.

In his Twitter account @jaarreaza, Minister Arreaza wrote, “Another characteristic of the international incitement of aggression against #Cuba. Imperialism is clumsy enough to leave traces of its misdeeds.”

Minister Arreaza’s tweet referred to a public complaint made by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, via its Twitter account @CubaMINREX, where it was reported that ”the ministry has been suffering a denial of services (DoS) cyberattack in its website since July 11. This attack has generated false accesses into the website in large numbers, compromising our servers.”

In said Twitter thread, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that “the IP addresses that generated the attack are located in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Turkey. However, these may be from people in other countries masking their address.” The ministry emphasized that “these actions are part of a cyber and communication warfare that is being carried out against Cuba.”

The West Coast of North America is, once again, on fire. Last month, Phoenix, Arizona, recorded temperatures of 46 degrees Celcius five days in a row. A new record. Every afternoon, the surface temperature of concrete and tarmac climbed to 82 degrees Celsius — hot enough to cause third-degree burns. In California and Texas, where temperatures were marginally lower, energy grid operators feared a prolonged heat wave would wreak havoc on energy infrastructure, forcing a repeat of last years’ rolling blackouts. For many dependent on air conditioning to stay cool in the sweltering heat, this would cause health complications or even death.
​
North America’s ongoing heatwave follows months of dry weather across the West Coast that have established the conditions for a summer of unprecedented water shortages, crop failures and wildfires. California and Arizona’s wildfire season started unusually early. One of Arizona’s first fires roared for four days, incinerating 27 square miles of countryside and forcing the evacuation of two townships. As this interview is prepared for publication, more than 60 wildfires are raging across the West Coast, some two times the size of Portland. As has become commonplace in the US, state officials are sending prisoners in to tackle the flames, paying them as little as $1.50 an hour.

Already this year Pakistan and Northern India have been wracked by temperatures reaching 52 degrees Celsius. While the small town of Lytton, 124 miles outside Vancouver, hit 49.6 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada. Meanwhile, Brazil has suffered under its worst drought in 100 years, sending food prices spiraling upwards. At these extremes, life as normal is suspended. People die. Ecosystems collapse. And out of the disarray, reactionary social forces make their move.

Through a toxic combination of long-established anti-immigrant and racializing tropes and a regressive denialist climate agenda, far-right parties and social movements are exercising increased influence across Europe and the Americas. The Zetkin Collective’s White Skin, Black Fuel: The Danger of Fossil Fascism charts the rise of these movements and ideas and, with an eye to the horizon, forecasts the emergence of “fossil fascism.”

Zetkin Collective member Andreas Malm’s most recent individually authored works How to Blow up a Pipeline and Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, were rapidly-written conjunctural analyses of our intersecting ecological, epidemiological and political predicaments. Both books sought to drive a red-and-green wedge into conversations about capitalism’s breathless trajectory towards ecological collapse and the limits of prevailing strategies among elements of the capitalist core’s climate movements.

While none of the urgency of these works is lost in White Skin, Black Fuel, it drops into the background as a richly detailed analysis of the interrelations of racial capitalism, fossil fuel extraction, nationalism and climate breakdown takes precedence. The book is an example of engaged scholarly research at its best. A clarion call to movements and a forceful reminder of the reactionary forces that are stacked against us as we fight to realize an eco-communist future.

In this interview Kai Heron speaks to Zetkin Collective members Andreas Malm, Laudy van den Heuvel and Ståle Holgersen about the Collective’s writing process, climate denial and resistance to fossil fascism.

Laudy van den Heuvel: The Zetkin Collective is a pretty diverse group of scholars, students, alumni and activists that each have their own field of expertise within the subject of ecology and the far right. Some hold positions at different universities, but most of us are voluntary members. For the book, everyone basically did research within their own field of interest and expertise and delivered that to Andreas Malm, who compiled the information and turned it into a running and coherent text.
​
As the Zetkin Collective does try to be as transparent and democratic as possible, the development of the book did take quite some time, as Andreas processed all the information which Zetkin members provided, to then hand it back to all of us and ask for approval, feedback, comments, et cetera, to be sure that all the information was actually correct, clear and used as much as possible.

The Zetkin Collective as a group is what we make of it: we all have different points of focus, yet we all work roughly with the same topic. Moreover, the collective has a clear activist foundation, in the sense that we believe that action is needed now. The way we express this activism might be different from person to person, but we have a rather coherent set of values, and the Zetkin Collective is, besides working collectively on the same topics, also a place to get together with people with shared visions.

Ståle Holgersen: The writing process has been as unconventional as the title of the author. In short it was like this: all the members of the Collective wrote a few pages on relations between far right parties, racism/anti-immigration and ecology within countries they had profound knowledge about. Andreas then composed these parts into the symphony one can read today.

In addition, the chapters not directly building on contemporary case studies — like more general discussions on fossil fascism or racial history of fossil fuel — are, to a large extent, originally written by Andreas. Then, in an organic, chaotic yet somehow structured manner, everyone commented, made changes, modified and sometimes even rewrote parts of the manuscript throughout the process.

LH: The term “fossil fascism” was actually introduced in an essay by Cara Daggett on the topic of petro-masculinity, fossil fuels and authoritarian desire. In WSBF, we argue that, when it comes to fascism, a distinction should be made between fascism as a set of ideas, as the famous scholar on fascism, Roger Griffin, understands it, and fascism as a real historical force, whose classical case is the fascism we saw in the interwar period. What we can see right now is a rise of far-right parties, tendencies and sympathies, which in fact never have died out, but have experienced a general — albeit not liner — resurgence in recent years.
​
Yet, for fascism to become a historical force, there needs to be an actual crisis, and fascists need to come into power. We do face an enormous crisis right now, which is of an environmental nature, and the far right is on the rise, defending the fossil industry — fossil capital — with all its might. That means that there is the risk that we are heading towards a fossil fascism.

Andreas Malm: To give a very simplified definition, I would say that fossil fascism is the aggressive defense of privileges called into question in the climate crisis, combined with systematic state violence against non-white people defined and treated as enemies of the white nation. We stress that this is not something that exists in any of the countries we study — we do not claim that the Trump administration was fascist, or that any of the far-right parties in or close to power is yet of that nature — but we see tendencies pointing in this direction. And the climate crisis is bound to get worse. As it deepens, it can, we argue, take two ideal-typical forms: a mitigation crisis, where fossil fuels as such are called into question and a swift and radical transition away from them is commenced; or an adaptation crisis, in which climatic impacts strike so hard as to demand the redistribution and opening of access to basic resources held in abundance by the rich in the metropolitan core — this could be land, water, essentially anything. Needless to say, these two forms of crises could converge in a messy reality. We consider various scenarios in which the far right could come to power and aggressively defend the privileges called into question through turning the fire of state violence against non-white people. Unfortunately, these scenarios do not seem entirely far-fetched, or so we argue.

SH: One central research question for fascism scholars is “what kind of crisis enables fascism”? In the book we simply explore the obvious follow-up question: can the climate crisis be such a crisis? Although we cannot of course know anything for sure about the future, there are certain unmistakable signs: in a highly unstable world, future organic crises will develop, with potentially rising numbers of immigrants due to climatic impacts. Racist actors will need to come up with candidates on whom to blame the problems — given that it cannot be rich, white men.

As the term “fascism” is conventionally linked strongly to two particular states, interwar Italy and Germany, we need to discuss its “return” in terms of features and trends — or processes of fascisation — rather than wait for Adolf Hitler to reappear. One thing we need to keep in mind in this respect is that fascism was always a highly modern way of organizing capitalism. This stands in sharp contrast to some of its rhetoric and aesthetics and means that “eco-fascism” as in a proper ecological society is about as unlikely as a capitalism with a sustainable relation to nature. In the construction of the “modern” capitalist societies fossil fuels have so far been the outstanding source of energy. It is these connections we explore in the book.

LH: As the book describes, every time the far right says something about climate change, it also makes a statement about immigration. This takes several forms: some may say something in line with: “the climate is not our main problem, immigration is”; some would argue that African and/or Muslim countries are to blame because they overpopulate the world with their high birth rates; and others would even say that immigration itself would cause environmental degradation by overpopulating the West and inviting the immigrants from poor countries to copy the Western lifestyle. All research suggests that such statements are absolute nonsense, yet for the European far right in particular, immigration is the main topic, as it derives every societal problem from (Muslim) immigration.

LH: Commenting on the second section of the question, to what extent green capitalism and green growth etc. are forms of denialism blocking meaningful political action: I would definitely endorse this view. These are strategies for prolonging business-as-usual, while giving it a green sheen. A powerful narrative, which lures many: to seemingly solve “the problem” without demanding any actual change. It is a too comfortable image. Michael Redclift published an article back in 2005 in which he argues that sustainable growth is an oxymoron; the concepts are opposite each other and therefore do not go together. The exact same applies for green growth. I personally also think that a main problem is that “wealth” is exclusively a monetary measure, often expressed in abstract and incomplete GDP’s. These economic measures never really take into account the actual cost of things, such as long-term environmental impacts. So this can indeed by regarded as a form of denial.
​
AM: I have lost count of the phases and forms of denial… Denial is indeed absolutely central to our current predicament, and it comes in hundreds of guises. I would not, however, place Green New Deal in any iterations known to me in this category. Implicatory denial is the practical maintenance of business-as-usual and the refusal to support and initiate radical emissions cuts — despite formal recognition of the existence of the crisis. The GND is a program precisely for radical emissions cuts and is different in nature from, for example, carbon trading, various “net zero” visions for compensating continued emissions with carbon capture and most if not all other known programs at the green capitalism end of the spectrum. One can have various criticisms of the GND framework, of course, but I do not see how it could be legitimately labelled climate denial of any kind.

Now, the types of such denial we deal with in our book are primarily of two sorts: classical hard core literate denial, still the predominant positions on the far right, from Trump and Bolsonaro to Vox and the AfD; and green nationalism, which nominally accepts the existence of the climate crisis and then goes on to blame it on non-white people in general and immigrants in particular.

We consider the latter a secondary denial, because while it (purportedly) recognizes the ABCs of climate science, it denies the totality of the evidence about what drives global warming. So, the far right is deeply invested in two kinds of fairly extreme climate denial. A key point we make, however, is that this investment is one logical product of how capitalist societies work, far beyond the confines beyond the organized far right. The denial of the far right and that of capital are communicating vessels. More deeply still, there is a primordial link between racism and fossil-fueled technologies that we explore at some length in the book — but still we only scratch the surface here. Far more research is needed on this link, and thankfully, a lot seems to be underway.

​SH: All analyses of capitalism must start from the fact that the system is highly flexible, as you point to. Capital will try to accumulate wherever it can: first by creating the ecological crisis — as it has done for 200 years — then by trying to solve it at least rhetorically and through greenwashing — as it has done for decades — and then through massive adaptations to a warming world, which will become increasingly important in the coming years. In principle, the last five persons on the planet could be a capitalist who orders four workers to use their latest modern technology to produce yet another survival kit.

Has capital become more green since the book was written? Perhaps rhetorically, yes. But in reality? Well, here every trend towards a “greener capitalism” must be seen in the light other trends: pre-pandemic consumption of petroleum is, for example, expected to be surpassed in 2022.

AM: There might of course be business opportunities in renewable energies and electrical cars and vegan food and what not. However, a transition that can minimize climate catastrophe is fundamentally about something else: it is about obliterating a whole planet of value. The climate is not stabilized by one iota if we build thousands of wind farms and billions of solar panels while we also maintain, not to mention expand, oil platforms and coal-fired power-plants and fossil gas terminals and airports and all the rest.
​
What we are seeing so far is not a transition — as in closing fossil fuel sources down for good and replacing what needs to be replaced with renewable energy — but an addition of green tech on top of a fossil foundation that is nowhere near dismantling. This is because capital cannot bring itself to kill all of these investments before they have yielded the maximum profit. Believing that this could happen spontaneously is a belief in the desire of capital to amputate its limbs, if not commit outright suicide. So, there might be factions of capital preparing to profit from renewable energy and similar things, but I have not seen any of them arming themselves to shut down ExxonMobil and Total tomorrow. Nor are capitalist states planning for this — just look at Biden or Trudeau or Macron or any other similar leader and how they continue to greenlight further expansion of oil and gas.

So far, then, Miliband’s law unfortunately seems to hold. It would be a miracle if it were to be broken in time to avert uncontrollable climate catastrophe. The alternative, of course, is to build counter-power that can ram through a transition from popular bases outside of the capitalist state and outside of any factions of dominant classes. But that alternative is not the focus of our book. It is about understanding the most aggressive, advanced detachment of the enemy.

LH: How to tear down the apparatus of fossil fascism — or rather prevent it from materializing — is perhaps the most important, yet the hardest question to answer, as there is not one easy way to do it. Friday’s for Future demonstrations are one step in the right direction, legal cases against governments and Shell in the Netherlands are others, as are blockades against fracking sites, pipelines or coal pits. Still this is a bit as if you try to tear down a wall by scratching out the cement with your finger nails. We need bulldozers. As the book also mentions in the beginning: “Things might well get ugly. Indeed, they already are.” Yet crises do regularly instigate change, and sometimes — although far too rarely — in a progressive direction. For change to turn in the direction of environmental justice, the left obviously needs to be stronger. And how can that happen? This, it should be admitted, is not something we try to answer in the book.
​
SH: The book is basically a call for the climate and anti-fascist and anti-racist movements to join forces. Both in a defensive and an offensive sense: the climate movement need to understand what is going on when fascists pick up a “green” rhetoric, and realize just how deeply race and racism structure our warming world. In Europe, the movement remains overwhelmingly white and often blind to the politics of race — this has to change. Anti-fascists, on the other hand, need to understand the environmental destruction that can come with fascism and vice versa. But this convergence must also be offensive: in a common ecosocialist struggle. Only in this way can we confront the underlying processes that constitute both climate change and fascism: capitalism and its crises.

Laudy van den Heuvel is an independent investigative journalist writing about alternative and esoteric worldviews and soon to be teaching assistant at Maastricht University.
​
Ståle Holgersen is a human geographer at Uppsala University, in Sweden. Research interests include political economy, urban planning and housing, economic and ecological crises. They are finalizing a new book on the relations between ecological and economic crises.
​
Andreas Malm is an Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University. Besides White Skin, Black Fuel, his most recent books are How to Blow up a Pipeline and Corona, Climate, Chonric Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century, published by Verso Books.

“Well, Fred, are you ready to begin with the Doctrine of the Mean?”

“Yes, but what is its background?”

“It is one of the Four Books (Analects, Mencius, Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean) that Zhu Xi (1130-1200) selected as the basis of Confucianism and was used in all the ‘civil service’ tests in China up to modern times. Zhu was in the Song Dynasty [960-1279 AD]. Just as the Great Learning it was originally part of the Book of Rites which, before Zhu Xi’s time, was one of the Five Books which was the original canon of Confucianism (Spring and Autumn Annals, Book of Rites, Book of Changes, Book of History, Book of Odes.) Chenyang Li in Great Thinkers of the Eastern World, says the four main points in this work are 1) heaven and man are one; 2) following our heaven endowed nature constitutes virtue; 3) sincerity is the way of Heaven and of human morality; 4) the way to exemplify the Mean is to become a ‘superior person’ by following the moral ideal. I hope this agrees with what Chan, Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, has to say!”

“Chan is basically in agreement with that. He says The Great Learning deals with social and political matters, while the Doctrine of the Mean is a discourse on psychology and metaphysics. The Great Learning discusses the mind but not human nature, whereas with the Doctrine of the Mean the opposite is true. The Great Learning emphasizes method and procedure, whereas the Doctrine of the Mean concentrates on reality. The Great Learning is generally rational in tone, but the Doctrine of the Mean is religious and mystical.’”

“From my point of view that makes it less important for our age since we must stress the rational at the expense of the religious and mystical. It is the religious and mystical that is at the root of all the present social upheaval associated with religious conflict and justifications for war. That is to say, the real economic factors responsible for the sad conditions of the present world order are obfuscated and hidden because so many people are under the darkness of religious and mystical beliefs. Therefore, I think Marxists would believe the Great Learning is a much more contemporary book.”

“Interesting comment Karl. Now back to Chan. This is how ‘human nature’ is portrayed in the Doctrine of the Mean : ‘Human nature, endowed by heaven, is revealed through the states of equilibrium and harmony, which are themselves the “condition of the world” and the “universal path.” The Way of Heaven transcends time, space, substance, and motion, and is at the same time unceasing, eternal, and evident.’ And maybe you should not be so critical of it as Chan also points out that it ‘is a philosophical work, perhaps the most philosophical in the whole body of ancient Confucian literature.’”

“You’re right. I spoke too soon. I should give my views after the discussion, not at the start!”

“Well, some modesty at last! Note the Chinese title of this work: zhong yong. Chan says it is translated as ‘mean’ and separately zhong means ‘central’ and yong means ‘universal harmony’. “

“So, this book could just as well be called the Central Universal Harmony . In fact, it has been given other names in translation. Chenyang Li mentions some of them such as The Golden Mean, The Golden Medium, The Mean-in-action, The Central Harmony, and my favorite, used by Ezra Pound, The Unwobbling Pivot.”

“Anyway, Chan says that these terms ‘taken together [mean] that there is harmony in human nature and that this harmony underlies our moral being and prevails throughout the universe. In short, man and Nature form a unity. Here is an early expression of the theory that was to dominate Chinese thought throughout its history.’”

“A big problem. It is true that humanity is a part of Nature so we are law governed as is everything else in Nature--that is the ‘harmony’--but our moral systems do not seem to be something in Nature in quite the same way. It remains to be seen how a moral system can base itself on the laws of Nature and use this for its justification.”

“Finally, Chan says, ‘It is obvious that the Doctrine of the Mean represents an advance over Confucius. It and the Great Learning seem to embody two different ancient Confucian tendencies, just as later Mencius and Xunzi represented two different schools of thought.’”

“Or at least two different styles of Confucianism, Fred. “

“We begin the book with a comment of Zhu Xi: ‘Master Cheng Yi (1033-1107) said, “By zhong (central) is meant what is not one-sided, and by yong (ordinary) is meant what is unchangeable. Zhong is the correct path of the world and yong is the definite principle of the world.” “This work represents the central way in which the doctrines of the Confucian school have been transmitted.”’

“This is the Neo-Confucian view at least. But I will still consult the Analects for what I think is the original Confucian view!”

“This is from Chapter One of the book: ‘What Heaven (Tien, Nature {vide Spinoza}) imparts to man is called human nature. To follow our nature is called the Way (Dao). Cultivating the Way is called education. The Way cannot be separated from us for a moment. What can be separated from us is not the Way. Therefore the superior man is cautious over what he does not see and apprehensive over what he does not hear. There is nothing more visible than what is hidden and nothing more manifest than what is subtle. Therefore the superior man is watchful over himself when he is alone. Before the feelings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, and joy are aroused it is called equilibrium (zhong, centrality, mean).’ Equilibrium is called the foundation of the world, and when the emotions are aroused they must be measured and kept in balance--this is called ‘harmony.’”

“This is just like Plato in the Republic, Fred. Only Plato calls it ‘justice’ rather than ‘harmony’, but the points are very similar.”
“The book goes on to show that these are the views of Confucius. ‘Zhòngní (Confucius) said, “The superior man [exemplifies] the Mean (zhong yong).”’ And, ‘the superior man maintains harmony [in his nature and conduct] and does not waver. How unflinching is his strength!’”

“This does not sound different from the Confucius we encountered in the Analects.” “Zisi, according to Zhu Xi, compared Heaven and the ‘superior man’ thusly, ‘Great as Heaven and earth are, men still find something in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus with [the Way of] the superior man, if one speaks of its greatness, nothing in the world can contain it, and if one speaks of its smallness, nothing in the world can split it.’ This was from chapter 12, and Zhu Xi says this vein of thought (‘the Way cannot be departed from’) is the subject for the next eight chapters (through number 20).”

“So, read some of the highlights from these chapters and we will see if it is so!”

“OK, from 13: ‘If we take an axe handle to hew another axe handle and look askance from the one to the other, we may still think the pattern is far away. Therefore the superior man governs men as men, in accordance with human nature, and as soon as they change [what is wrong], he stops. Conscientiousness (Zhong) and altruism (shu) are not far from the Way. What you do not wish others to do to you, do not do to them.’”

“I guess that is ‘the Way.’ Confucius’ version of the ‘Golden Rule’ must be followed not to depart from it! The Negative Golden Rule.”

“This is said of the ‘superior man’ in chapter 14: ‘He rectifies himself and seeks nothing from others, hence he has no complaint to make. He does not complain against Heaven above or blame men below. Thus it is that the superior man lives peacefully and at ease and waits for his destiny (ming, Mandate of Heaven, fate), while the inferior man takes to dangerous courses and hopes for good luck.’”

“Actually, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Who is this speaker, anyway?”

“Zisi, the pupil of Confucius, also his grandson.”

“I thought so. He might be taking Confucius too literally. After all, Confucius did not live in Lu at peace and at ease but went off trekking all over China gathering students and teaching his doctrine!”

“A good point Karl. I would like to know what you say about this so called quote from Confucius given by Zisi.”

“Lets have it!”

“Its from chapter 17. Zisi quotes Confucius as saying, ‘he who possesses great virtue will certainly attain to corresponding position, to corresponding wealth, to corresponding fame, and to corresponding long life. For Heaven, in the production of things, is sure to be bountiful to them, according to their natural capacity.... Therefore he possesses great virtue will surely receive the appointment of Heaven.’” 

“You can be sure, Fred, that whoever wrote this was not Confucius but some boot licking functionary of the Court. After having been kicked around from feudal court to feudal court in his wanderings about China trying to find a position to put his social theories into practice, can you imagine his coming up with ‘great virtue’ leads to a ‘great position’? Or, after the premature death of his most beloved student, Yan Hui, would Confucius spout off about the rewards of ‘great virtue’ resulting in ‘long life?’ No! I am afraid that, as the Analects indicate, Confucius was all too familiar with the tragic sense of life to have come up with this fabrication attributed to him by Zisi. And it is no good reflection on Zhu Xi that he passed over this without comment!”

“If it is the case that Zisi is actually the compiler of the Doctrine of the Mean then I agree."

“That is true too. I don’t want to suggest that this passage was fabricated by the grandson of Confucius! This issue will crop up again when we get into discussions of philosophers in the Han Dynasty and the consequences of all that book burning we mentioned under the Qin Dynasty dictatorship.”

“Here is a quote from chapter 20. Confucius allegedly speaking: ‘government is comparable to a fast growing plant. Therefore the conduct of the government depends upon the men.... Humanity (ren) is [the distinguishing characteristic of] man, and the greatest application of it is in being affectionate towards relatives. Righteousness (yi) is the principle of setting things right and proper, and the greatest application of it is in honoring the worthy.’”

“I think if we refer back to Mozi we will see the problem with this concept of ren which should be a little more universal than indicated. Couldn’t this formulation be a justification for nepotism rather than merit? Again, I doubt it is really from Confucius.”

“Chan makes the following comment about this passage. ‘The sentence “Humanity is [the distinguishing characteristic of] man” is perhaps the most often quoted on the subject of humanity (ren). In Chinese it is ‘ren is ren,’ the first ren meaning humanity and the second referring to man. It is not just a pun, but an important definition of the basic Confucian concept of humanity, for to Confucianism, the virtue of humanity is meaningless unless it is involved in actual human relationships.’”

“I don’t get the difference between ‘humanity’ and ‘man’ in ‘humanity is man.’ That is like ‘a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.’ It’s the same as A = A. But Chan’s comment is still useful. It at least points out how the Chinese think about the concept of ren.”

“There is more to this chapter Karl. Confucian formulae as it were. Here is one, ‘...the ruler must not fail to cultivate his personal life, he must not fail to serve his parents. Wishing to serve his parents, he must not fail to know man. Wishing to know man, he must not fail to know heaven.’ And: ‘There are five universal ways [in human relations], and the way by which they are practiced are three. The five are those governing the relationship between ruler and minister, between father and son, between husband and wife, between elder and younger brothers, and those on the intercourse between friends. These five are universal paths in the world. Wisdom, humanity, and courage, these three are the universal virtues. The way by which they are practiced is one.’ Nothing about sisters or daughters here. O tempora, o mores.”

“These are certainly dated and show how Confucianism is embedded in the old feudal order. If we updated the ‘five’ to the modern capitalist order we would have the relationship between the rulers and the ruled, between employers and employees, between men and women, between family members, and between friends and strangers. Something like that I suppose. The three universal virtues would remain unchanged.”

“Very good. Now for something called ‘the Nine Standards’: ‘There are nine standards by which to administer the empire, its states, and the families [feudal lords]. They are: cultivating the personal life, honoring the worthy, being affectionate to relatives, being respectful toward the great ministers, identifying oneself with the welfare of the whole body of officers, treating the common people as one’s own children, attracting the various artisans, showing tenderness to strangers from far countries, and extending kindly and awesome influence on the feudal lords.’ And this position is further emphasized a few passages later: ‘There are nine standards by which to govern the empire, its states, and the families, but the way by which they are followed is one. In all matters if there is preparation they will succeed; if there is no preparation they will fail. If what is to be said is determined beforehand, there will be no stumbling. If the business to be done is determined beforehand there will be no difficulty. If action to be taken is determined beforehand, there will be no trouble. And if the way to be pursued is determined beforehand, there will be no difficulties.’ This can be summed up in the following five steps which Chan says ‘could have come from John Dewey.’ “Study it (the way to be sincere) extensively, inquire into it accurately, think it over carefully, sift it clearly, and practice it earnestly.’”

“It is interesting that Chan mentions Dewey the American pragmatist. Dewey was very popular in China in the early 20th Century. Let me read this passage from Reese [Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy] about Dewey’s five steps of inquiry and judge for yourself how these would apply to the study of how to be ‘sincere.’ ‘Inquiry, properly speaking, begins in situations which are indeterminate, disturbed, troubled, ambiguous, obscure, or full of conflict. It is the object of inquiry to transform the indeterminate situation into one which is determinate. Given such a situation, and such an outcome, the intervening steps outlined by Dewey are: (a) locating and defining the problem of the situation; insight is as important in stating the problem as in any subsequent step; (b) setting out the relevant possible solutions to this problem, an “either-or” stage; (c) developing the consequences of the possible solutions, an “if-then” stage; (d) relating these developed alternatives to further observation and experiment; (e) concluding with the alternative which unifies the situation.’[p.128]

“I can see how Chan might think Confucianism could follow these five steps except, perhaps, for experiment which doesn’t play much of a role in the Doctrine of the Mean.”

What’s next Fred?”

“This, from chapter 22, where we have the following sequence--being absolutely sincere = fully developing your nature = fully developing the nature of others = the same for the nature of things = if you can do those things, then you can help in the transformation and nourishing of Heaven and Earth--thus, ‘If they [they = those who became absolutely sincere et. seq.] can assist in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth, they can thus form a trinity with Heaven and Earth.’ All of this, Chan comments, is ‘another way of saying the unity of man and Heaven or Nature, a doctrine which eventually assumed the greatest importance in Neo-Confucianism.’”

“Well, Neo-Confucianism is still a way off in our discussions. But this points out the central importance of ‘sincerity’ (zheng). Again the equivalence of Heaven = Nature reminds me of Spinoza. “

“Now these next views I know you will not want to accept as genuinely Confucian, neither do I, because when we discussed the Analects we found no trace of popular superstition or unbridled mysticism.”

“What are these views?”

“In chapter 24 we find Zisi speaking of omens and divination and such which the ‘sincere’ man will be especially able to interpret. ‘When calamity or blessing is about to come [for nations and families], it can surely know beforehand if it is good, and it can surely know beforehand if it is evil. Therefore he who has absolute sincerity is like a spirit.’”

“A spirit! The very sort of thing Confucius refused to speculate about! This is further evidence that original Confucianism has been corrupted in this work. We have to be very careful in discussing a work like this so that we can discern the layers of bogus from authentic Confucianism.”

“Perhaps you will accept chapter 25 as more genuine. ‘Sincerity means the completion of the self, and the Way is self-directing. Sincerity is the beginning and the end of things. Without sincerity there would be nothing. Therefore the superior man values sincerity. Sincerity is not only the completion of one’s own self, it is that by which all things are completed. The completion of the self means humanity. The completion of all things means wisdom. These are the character of the nature, and they are the way in which the internal and the external are united. Therefore whenever it is employed, it is done right.’”

“I don’t see a problem with this. Except to note that Fung [p.176] wonders if, in the passage you read, the terms ‘humanity’ [ren] and ‘wisdom,’ ‘should not be interchanged.’”

“Here is Chan’s comment: ‘In no other Confucian work is the Way (Dao) given such a central position. This self-directing Way seems to be the same as the Dao in Daoism. But the difference is great. As Qian Mu has pointed out [in his Si-shu shi-yi (Explanation of the Meaning of the Four Books), 1953], when the Daoists talk about Dao as being natural, it means that Dao is void and empty, whereas when Confucianists talk about Dao as being natural, they describe it as sincerity. This, according to him, is a great contribution of the Doctrine of the Mean. It should be pointed out that with Confucianists, “The Way is not far from man.” Contrary to the Dao of Daoism, the Confucian Dao is strongly humanistic.’ And I will end this passage with the first sentence of chapter 26: ‘Therefore absolute sincerity is ceaseless. Being ceaseless, it is lasting.’”

“So then, let’s forge on to chapter 27.”

“That chapter goes thusly: ‘Great is the Way of the sage!... It waits for the proper man before it can be put into practice. Therefore it is said, “Unless there is perfect virtue, the perfect way cannot be materialized.” Therefore man honors the moral nature and follows the path of study and inquiry.... He is earnest and deep and highly respects all propriety. Therefore when occupying a high position, he is not proud, and when serving in a low position, he is not insubordinate.”’

“This is certainly pro-sage! But I think we can ignore the idea that ‘perfect virtue’ and the ‘perfect way’ are involved with real sages or there wouldn’t be any! Fawning second rate Confucianists may go around thinking of Confucius as a perfect sage but we know that he made errors and mistakes and would be the first to admit as much.”

“Your theory that the sayings of Confucius in this work are sometimes bogus, as you earlier mentioned, gets a big boost from Chan in a footnote to Chapter 28.”

“What do you mean Fred? Let’s hear it.”

“Well, Confucius is quoted as saying something to the effect that the world has standard measurements and standard characters for writing, etc. Chan points out that this was not true in Confucius’ time but happened as a result of the Qin Dynasty [221-206 B.C.]. This means that parts of the Doctrine of the Mean are not older than that time.”

“Yes, that backs up my view about the Confucius quote in Chapter 17 that we discussed. Once you get a ‘feel’ for the Analects you can tell when some so-called Confucian quote doesn’t sound right. Even the Analects has some problems of authenticity, but it is the oldest layer of Confucian thought and I think the ‘real’ Confucius is to be located within its pages in so far as that is possible.”

“In chapter 29 we are told that in order to get rules and regulations, ceremonies, etc. adopted, the person who puts them forth must not be of humble or common origin. ‘The position not being honored does not command credence, and not being credited, the people will not follow them. Therefore the Way of the true ruler is rooted in his own person-
al life and has its evidence [in the following] of the common people.’”

“That isn’t very clear Fred. If the Way is rooted in personal life then ‘low position’ doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“It goes on, ‘Since it [the Way] can wait for a hundred generations for a sage without a doubt, it shows that he knows [the principles of man]. Therefore every move he makes becomes the way of the world, every act of his becomes the model of the world, and every word he utters becomes the pattern of the world.’”

“That is just nonsensical ‘sage worship’ and is not in the true spirit of Confucius. This is obviously an attempt to establish Confucianism as some sort of official ideology in a post Qin world.”

“If you think that then you will love this encomium to the sage from Chapter 31:
All embracing and extensive as heaven and deep and unceasingly springing as an abyss!
He appears and all people respect him, speaks and all people believe him, acts and all people are pleased with him. Consequently his fame spreads overflowingly over the Middle Kingdom (China, the civilized world), and extends to barbarous tribes. Wherever ships and carriages reach, wherever the labor of man penetrates, wherever the heavens overshadow and the earth sustains, wherever the sun and the moon shine, and wherever frosts and dew fall, all who have blood and breath honor and love him. Therefore we say he is a counterpart of Heaven.

So there you have it Karl..”

“I see. This is the basis almost of a religion. There will be no sages like this. Maybe the Buddha would qualify but this work is too early for Buddhism to have influenced it.”

“I am going to finish up now with some quotes from Chapter 33. Get out your Book of Odes Karl, because there are some quotes from it in these passages.”

“I have it right here Fred.”

“'The Book of Odes says, "Over her brocaded robe, she wore a plain and simple dress, for she disliked the loudness of its color and patterns. Thus the way of the superior man is hidden but becomes more prominent every day, whereas the way of the inferior man is conspicuous but gradually disappears."’”

“This Ode (number 57) says just the opposite of what you read Fred, so some liberty was taken in this quote. Waley translates the passage as ‘A splendid woman and upstanding;/ Brocade she wore, over an unlined coat....’ It is reversed but this does not undermine the philosophical point.”

“’The Book of Odes says, “Although the fish dive and lie at the bottom it is still quite clearly seen.” Therefore the superior man examines his own heart and sees that there is nothing wrong there, and that he is not dissatisfied with himself.’”

“This is number 192 Fred:
The fishes are in the pond,
But they still cannot be happy,
For the deeper they dive,
The clearer they shine.
My grieved heart is deeply saddened
Thinking about the state’s vicious ways.

“Maybe there is more here than meets the eye. Is this an indication that the Confucian philosopher is not really happy serving an unjust state but still tries to do his best to live up to Confucian ideals? But it would be better to withdraw--or would it. This is the problem of giving up your post to protest injustice, but then having no influence, or staying in the hopes of being able to do a little good that otherwise would never get done.”

“’The Book of Odes says, “Though the ceiling looks down upon you, be free from shame even in the recesses of your own house.” Therefore the superior man is reverent without any movement and truthful without any words.’”

“That ode, Fred, is No. 256. In itself it is not as good as the use to which it has been put in your quote. Waley has:
When receiving gentlemen of your acquaintance
Let your countenance be peaceful and mild;
Never for an instance be disolute.
You are seen in your house;
You do not escape even in the curtained alcove.
Do not say: ‘Of the glorious ones
None is looking at me.’
A visit from the spirits
Can never be foreseen;
The better reason for not discussing them.”

“The quote you gave suggests that the philosopher should be upright both in public and private. This is just the proper attitude to have. The ode suggests that you should be so because the ‘spirits’ may be watching! This is a very primitive view and would not be consistent with what we know about Confucius’ attitude toward such supernatural balderdash. There is another part of this long ode that I like so I will share it with you. It is good advice and for the right reason this time. ‘Be always mild and good tempered./ A scratch on a scepter of white jade/ Can be polished away;/
A slip of the tongue/ Cannot ever be repaired.’”

“’The Book of Odes says, “Throughout the sacrifice not a word is spoken, and yet [the worshipers are influenced and transformed] without the slightest contention.” Therefore the superior man does not resort to rewards and the people are encouraged to virtue.’”

“This is ode 302 Fred, and á la Waley the quote is ‘Because we come in silence/ Setting all quarrels aside,/ They [the ancestors] make safe for us a ripe old age....’ I can’t see anything in this ode that makes it relevant to your quote. It is all about ‘rewards’ and sacrifices to the ancestors to get them to do things for the people making the offerings. The conclusion regarding the behavior of the ‘superior man’ and the resulting ‘virtue’ of the people just doesn’t seem related to the subject matter of the ode!”

“It seems odes are quoted out of context just to make a point Karl. At any rate our last quote goes ‘The Book of Odes says, “He does not display his virtue, and yet all the princes follow him.” Therefore when the superior man is sincere and reverent, the world will be in order and peace.’”

“Again, Waley’s version is somewhat different. ‘None are strong save the men of Zhou,/ Every land obeys them./ Nothing so glorious as their power,/ All princes imitate them.’ The power or virtue is on display, else how could they be imitated? Anyway, we are not going to have world peace and order because of the imitation by others of some role model Are you done with Chan?”

“Yes.”

“OK, here is the closing quote from Chenyang Li on the work. ‘The Doctrine of the Mean presents a Confucian system of moral metaphysics and philosophy of moral practice. This work has helped shape Chinese civilization for more than two thousand years, and there is no doubt that it will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.’ But I hope people will be a little more critical of some of its views along the lines I have suggested in this discussion.”

“What should we turn to next Karl?”

“I think we should spend some time on Yi Jing or Book of Changes. I know Chan doesn’t devote a lot of space to this work but it is very popular and we should read and discuss it.”

“Fine by me. A Marxist look at the Yi Jing”

To read the Confucius Dialogue click here.
To read the Mencius Dialogue click here.
To read the Xunzi Dialogue click here. 
​To read the Mozi Dialogue click here.
To read the Laozi Dialogue click here.
To read the Zhuangzi Dialogue click here.
To read the Gongsun Dialogue click here.
To read the Great Learning Dialogue click here.

​Capital has mobilized in Northeast Ohio this summer to crush Nina Turner in the August 3rd Ohio 11th US House District special election Democratic Party primary. Nina was cruising this spring with a 35 point lead, a bottomless pit of online donations, collecting endorsements not just from “the Squad” but from many elected officials across the local Democratic Party’s Bernie Sanders leaning wing, even establishment figures like outgoing Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, who is no Bernie Bro. All summer in response, dark money in defense of capital has flooded Cleveland and Akron airwaves, mailboxes, and everything else to prop up pointless neoliberal lab specimen Shontel Brown, chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, and county councilwoman.
 
While Nina embraced BreadTube online capitalist Cenk Uyghur in a pay-walled top secret “town hall” covered here at Midwestern Marx, the chief culprit of capital became over half a million dollars (so far) from, predictably, Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), whose ads’ message to date has been that Nina is not a party loyalist, doesn’t support Joe Biden, and isn’t a real Democrat. (DMFI hasn’t called Nina an anti-semite...yet.) Nina’s 35 point lead is now heading to (or even equals) zero, according to multiple polls showing a dead heat, less than 3 weeks from election day August 3rd.
 
As I argued some time ago here on Midwestern Marx, messaging Nina as Not A Democrat would have played very much in her favor if she had run as an independent against Shontel Brown in the November general election, a ballot of non-partisan local elections, including for Cleveland mayor, where party ID is not the driver of turnout, and is even shunned. In a Democratic primary ultra low turnout special election in August, turnout will be driven, if at all, by establishment likely voters who always vote in Democratic Party primaries no matter when they occur, and by the well known machines in the party apparatus, including capitalists who want this seat in the US Congress to represent some other country, namely Israel.
 
August 3rd’s group of likely voters is largely Cleveland African American women older than 60, who increasingly vote by mail, and robotically do precisely what they are told by TV ads. This dynamic mirrors the 2020 presidential primary, specifically in South Carolina, where Rep. Jim Clyburn turned the key on the same machine for Joe Biden, as he has done in OH11 for Shontel Brown. Another, probably smaller chunk will be Jewish Democrats in suburban Cuyahoga County, who were the first to hold an online debate in OH11 in March, during which Nina left no daylight between herself and Shontel on the issue of congressional funding for Israel. One wonders why DMFI bothers, since it matters nothing whether Nina or Shontel end up the Congresslady for Israel, but that’s another article.
 
This establishment turnout August 3 will form a disproportionately large chunk of what will be very low overall turnout. In our recent Midwestern Marx podcast on the race I predicted 7% turnout, but given all the money flooding in, turnout may approach 15% or even higher, the vast majority of which will be these Democratic Party establishment voters in Cuyahoga County, who have quite a bit more reason than merely national trends to send Nina packing. These voters not only remember Nina flipping her endorsement from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders in 2015. Nina Turner has a comeuppance she’s been avoiding from precisely these establishment African American voters, dating to the deep distant past of...2009.
 
The most consequential political act of Nina’s career was her 2009 endorsement of Issue 6, a new county charter launched by Cleveland’s highest levels of capital in response to a penny ante “scandal” in county government in 2008. Cleveland’s business establishment seized the moment to wipe away layers of county government in one fell swoop. Crucially, Nina Turner was the only African American elected official to support Issue 6 in Cuyahoga County, launching Nina’s “maverick” era of unrestrained love from the media oligarchs who desperately needed at least one African American face on the sheep’s clothing covering their fox. The new charter erased every countywide elected official in county government (auditor, recorder, commissioner, etc.) except for two - county executive, and of course, county prosecutor. Ever since Issue 6 passed with Nina Turner’s help over a decade ago, no African Americans have been elected to countywide office in Cuyahoga County.
 
Before the new county charter passed in 2009 with Nina’s indispensable help, African Americans were regularly in countywide office, complete with patronage jobs to hand out in the community by the hundreds. In fact, keeping African Americans in countywide office was a decades long top priority for the two county party officials targeted by the “scandal”, former county auditor Frank Russo (who last year was released from federal prison due to covid-19), and former county commissioner and county party chair Jimmy Dimora, who is still in federal prison. Today, under the new charter Nina helped pass, there is zero chance an African American gets elected countywide in Cuyahoga County.
 
The DMFI funded Shontel Brown message that Nina Is No Democrat thus lands on the most fertile ground possible. Establishment African American voters on August 3rd well remember Nina’s Issue 6 bear hug with big business in 2009 that erased every countywide African American office holder forever. These voters likely even know (and may be themselves) people who lost their jobs because of Issue 6, candidates who had planned to run countywide, county employees smeared by the “scandal” 13 years ago, precinct committee people whose opportunities are limited because African Americans can never rise through the party to countywide office. The list is rather endless.
 
At the time, Cleveland’s historic African American newspaper The Call & Post vilified Nina in the most vicious way possible, an Aunt Jemima cartoon caricature, published after the new charter passed in November, 2009, saying, “Frank Sinatra said it best in a love ballad. ‘Girls were made to kiss, but Nina never knew.’ Obviously, State Sen. Nina Turner didn’t know the damage she did to her career when she became the only black elected official to jump headstrong and support Issue 6 – county government reform...all black elected officials, former elected officials, community leaders and institutions including this newspaper said ‘No’ to the so-called reform. Nina Turner was the only exception.”
 
Worse, the real world effects of the 2009 charter did nothing to address the “corruption” its backers like Nina claimed to solve; quite the opposite. In addition to leaving the county prosecutor the only remaining countywide elected position besides executive, corruption has stove piped itself to gargantuan heights, featuring on demand handouts to the city’s sports billionaires, as the county jail regularly wheels out bodies of prisoners abused to death by guards. County council seats like the one Shontel sits on are nothing more than musical chairs added to a politicians’ career, with far fewer of those drawn to elect an African American, with far less power than existed under the previous county government. The county government Nina created with her own hand is a comical grotesquery, thus, during this election, mention of Issue 6 in 2009 has never once passed Nina’s lips, nor Shontel’s.
 
Is Nina Turner a better candidate for a leftist than Shontel Brown? That depends on if you like what Nina says better than what Nina does. If so, then yes, Nina Turner is a far better candidate for a leftist. For DMFI, and the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, it really does not matter whether Nina or Shontel wins the seat, because there isn’t a difference in the world between them, even on Israel. The only difference that would have mattered to me (go ahead, call me an ultra), and made me care, or even volunteer, is if Nina had run as an independent in the fall, outside this maggot pit of worms and thieves, to destroy it. Nina did not, which was not only a mistake for radical leftism, but looks to be shaping up to be a big mistake for her, period. Having lost her 35 point lead in a matter of months, a strange, long brewing comeuppance whose seeds she laid herself may await Nina Turner on August 3rd.

The first casualty of war is always the truth. This also applies to the proclaimers of the truth. The Federal Election Committee of the German Bundestag, which includes representatives of the right-wing “Alternative for Germany,” ruled on Thursday that the German Communist Party will not be allowed to run in the elections for the next Bundestag on September 26.

It is significant that the leadership of the DKP learned about this decision through press reports. The Federal Election Commissioner did not even consider it necessary to inform the party, which has democratically elected representatives in several cities and towns, about this. Only an inquiry of the DKP chairman Patrik Köbele brought to light that it had been criticized that accountability reports of the DKP had been delivered with delay.
​
This is a very serious problem. For with the refusal to participate in the election, the DKP is also threatened with the deprivation of its status as a political party, and thus, as Köbele explained in an interview with the “Zeitung,” a “cold party ban.”

This is by no means new in German history. Since the beginning of their appearance as a political party, the German Communists have repeatedly had their existence threatened. Within days of the founding of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in January 1919, the leaders of the counterrevolution were already shouting “Strike their leaders dead!” at the top of their voices. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered by reaction that same month. This fate met many active Communists in the years that followed, until finally, in January 1933, one of the first decisions of Hitler’s government, hoisted into office by the masters of industry and the banks, was to ban the KPD. German communists were the first to be thrown into prisons and concentration camps of the fascists, tortured and murdered — among them the unforgotten KPD chairman Ernst Thälmann.
​
After 1945, KPD comrades were soon subjected to new persecutions. When resistance to remilitarization in the Federal Republic became too strong in the early 1950s, the Free German Youth (FDJ), in which young communists and other anti-fascists had joined forces, was initially banned. The ban of the KPD followed in 1956, and many of the communists who were then thrown into prisons faced the same judges who had already sentenced them during the Nazi era.

Since then, the DKP, newly founded in 1968, has had to contend with many difficulties thrown in its path by the state. After all, the communists are the only party that consistently opposes armaments and war, stands up for the real social rights of the people in the country, exposes the antisocial measures of the state, especially now in the health crisis. You don’t want to see people like that in the Bundestag.

It is the Cold War that continues unchecked against communists and real leftists. But history has shown that you can ban a communist party, but not its idea of creating a just society without exploitation of man by man.
​
The words of Karl Liebknecht, “Our program will continue to be alive. Despite everything!” have been confirmed a million times since January 1919.

With speed and conviction, India Walton answers “Are you a socialist?” with “Oh, absolutely!”
​
Walton just handsomely won the Democratic primary for mayor of Buffalo, N.Y., and has faith that socialism will translate for the people. “We have socialism for Tesla,” she says of one of the beneficiaries of the Buffalo Billion deal, a heavily subsidized corporate development plan sponsored by Governor Andrew Cuomo, “and rugged individualism for everyone else. I want to flip the paradigm.”

The incumbent, Mayor Byron Brown, appeared completely unprepared for the outcome. Ms. Walton is a single, African American mother, nurse, union organizer, land trust president, and avowed socialist. The mayor, and some of his allies in the largely Democratic Party–dominated cities and towns in the Buffalo region, refused to concede and plan a write-in campaign, despite the decision of the Democratic Party to support Ms. Walton as the party nominee.

Ms. Walton did not seem at all surprised and appears energized, not subdued by her adversaries. But there is widespread shock expressed in some liberal and progressive — even socialist — quarters that corporate-linked forces in the mayor’s base would resort to this level of resistance, including ugly and racist smears that were immediately broadcast as “legitimate questions” by the media.

Ms. Walton’s campaign and victory are another example of the steady increase in support for socialism among African Americans, women, and youth. Just half of younger Americans now hold a positive view of capitalism — and socialism’s appeal in the U.S. continues to grow, driven by African Americans and women, according to a new Axios/Momentive poll.
​
On the day when socialists are no longer shocked that bourgeois leaders will resort to any means necessary to crush anything socialist, that will be a sign that American socialism has left behind utopian and grasped more scientific understandings of socialist transformations.

India Walton’s campaign is stunning, but it is only the latest in a growing brigade of “democratic socialists” seeking and winning elective office. Wikipedia documents the undeniable birth and now rapid surge of an important political trend, with over 100 successful campaigns recorded. And their count only includes Democratic Socialists of America–associated candidates, most of whom ran as Democrats, Working Families Party, Green Party, or independent candidates, but avowing democratic socialism as the name of their outlook.

The growth of socialist ideas in public discourse since Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential primary campaign shows the immense impact of his very skilled re-introduction of “socialism” into the mainstream (or one of the main streams) of U.S. politics, after decades of repression, marginalization, and silencing of the slightest hint of “socialism.” One of the most important characteristics of Sanders’s initiative was his commitment to the working class as the chief agent of change. In Vermont, he proved in action and in practice to workers that he was for real, not a “bullshitter,” as most of the metal trades workers I knew in that state referred to “super-radicalism.”

However, it was 40 years ago when Bernie began his campaign. He demonstrated that a socialist could effectively govern a city and be an honest representative of his state in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate way before the last century ended, and he never gave up or apologized for his socialism. But in 2016, his campaign set the country on fire. Outstanding candidates arose, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Justice Democrats, who shaped and deepened the democratic socialist agenda and demonstrated profound political resilience against attacks, including the capacity to go on the offensive on economics, climate change, American fascism, peace and injustice, all while winning re-election.

In one respect, the most astounding achievement of the new wave of heroes under the socialist umbrella is the ending of the marginalization of the U.S. Left. That marginalization has spanned 70 years now. It began with the assault on the CIO and the Communist party, continued under the McCarthy cold-war repressions, and extended through the 1960s upheavals for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, which included numerous murders, assassinations, and trials. The impact was to effectively outlaw mass political organization under a “socialist” or “liberation” banner and turn their protests into “defense committees” against political prosecutions. The Communist Party was the most direct target of the 1950s repression, because of its potent role in the rise of the CIO and industrial organization. Corporate America was united in the conviction that a Left-led U.S. labor establishment would be incompatible with its dreams of global expansion, global resources, and cheap labor.

The arrest and trial of Angela Davis and the murder of Black Panther Party members by FBI-led racist cliques in some city police departments showed the lengths to which reactionary interests will go.

Marginalization has had serious consequences for the U.S. Left. One was that it led to the spread of anarchism in various forms in both politics and ideology.
​
Without a mass base, political debate on the Left often becomes a contest of abstract, or ideal, conceptions of socialism, and capitalism too. Endless splits and factions erupt as various “rational” but powerless conceptions and declarations on progress compete for attention. Conceptions that may inspire, but for which there is little to verify short of winning elections, and power, and the work of actually implementing new laws and relations. 

Why call it anarchism? When it comes to “ideals” we all have our own. Each of us that studies socialist, revolutionary, “true green,” radical democratic, or anti-imperialistic reforms or theories presumably does so based on our personal experiences and values. More importantly, we often view socialism as primarily “rational,” “enlightened” solutions to social conflict and the not infrequent horrors of capitalist development. But the chief backward feature of idealized socialism is an inability to unite broad forces toward a concentrated objective, collectively designed, and implemented. Frederick Engels calls it “Utopian” or bourgeois socialism. The ideals are fine, but without an agency, like a revolutionary class, defeat is certain. Bourgeois forces, like “good” billionaires, are incapable of overpowering bad billionaires, without existential losses to themselves. The only agency capable of leading such change is the working class.
​
The new socialist campaigns are demonstrating a growing understanding, and they are smashing the 70-year socialist “shut-up and shutdown” era. But why? Why now, after 40 years, does Bernie’s message on the real meaning of political independence break through?

The objective conditions have changed. The 40 years of austerity some call the “neoliberal” era has collapsed under the weight of aggravated inequalities and injustices inaugurated by Nixon and then Reagan. Despite good intentions, and very capable and smart liberal leadership, those abuses could not be reversed by either the Clinton or Obama administration. The power, wealth, and controls of the giant corps, their owners, and “political shop stewards” at federal and state and city levels grow only more pervasive and corrupt. Institutions at every level are experiencing dysfunction, including slowdowns in regulation and responsiveness. The downward trend got noticed, globally, during the 2008 financial crisis, which did serious damage to the U.S. economy. Then comes the Trump fiasco and a genuine fascist threat, accompanied by the pandemic, whose costs are yet to be calculated.

The long-running efforts of leading Democrats to keep the word “socialist” out of the conversation are running out of steam. The remedies of the ’90s and the ’aughts — high-tech expansion, financialization expansion led by a new batch of billionaires with more pro-science ideas — are not working. Which strongly argues that the miseries and contradictions of U.S. capitalism are systematic. In that case, a serious restructuring of the U.S. economy is necessary. Not just from a “rational” point of view, either. Economic forces are real forces, just as real and objective as wind and rain, drought, and flood. The means of life are obtained only through cash and commodities. Structural changes make for revolutionary upheavals because the relations of production, the social divisions of labor, are forcing changes in political and economic institutions.

Our history is marked with at least three of those upheavals: the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the industrial upheaval of the 1930s, which introduced a weakened form of social democracy under Roosevelt in response to mass production technologies, the emerging giant trusts, and the world wars. One could add a fourth: the civil rights upheaval, the struggles for equality in an increasingly multinational and multiracial country — that have not yet passed!

In each case the two-party system of U.S. bourgeois democracy see-sawed the nation away from bad, really bad, choices. Now one of those parties, the Republicans, has given up on democracy, its own implicit confession of the structural, class divides that are again wrecking the union of the 50 states.
​
The real-life challenges of leadership and governing at every level — grassroots, town, city, county — will transform all the remnants of utopian socialism into what Engels called “scientific socialism.”

I predict the rise of socialism with American characteristics may end up being the most individualistic, eccentric path of all nations, ours being the most capitalistic of countries. Nonetheless, one need look no further than Congresswoman AOC’s winning defiance, resilience, learning, and resistance to fear, to witness the steel in her posture, to know that American socialism can “come together” in new and powerful ways.

Engels termed this process of coming together, of shedding anarchism and utopianism, alongside illusions about capitalism “fixing itself” — “putting socialism on a real, not ideal, basis.” By that he meant “economics,” in particular the place of economic development in historical materialism — a chief component of Marxism — which holds that the mode of production in any real historical time and place after primitivism, is the primary force driving the division of labor, the social superstructures of property, law, and security, and social class cultural structures as well; that societies, like all “matter” are in motion, have a beginning, an end, a birth, and a death, like the rest of nature.
​
Leading society as a socialist will require mastering and furthering the development of historical materialism. The Communist Party of the U.S. is the best repository of this theoretical and practical socialist tradition, in my view. Its own struggles for survival and adaptation to very adverse circumstances, and the fact that it still stands, are themselves an act of resilience, an indispensable virtue in the coming storm.

NEW YORK—“Cuba sí, bloqueo no!” (Cuba yes, blockade no!) chanted the crowd in Spanish while holding signs that read “Long live Socialist Cuba” and “End the inhumane sanctions!”
​
The Young Communist League of New York took the initiative to organize a rally in support of ending the blockade on Cuba after a series of protests mounted in Miami and Cuba this past weekend for a variety of reasons, ranging from food and syringe shortages to possible regime change.

The organizations endorsing the protest included NY-NJ Cuba Sí Coalition, the Venceremos Brigade, IFCO/Pastors for Peace, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, United Against War and Militarism, The People’s Forum, and Kristin Richardson Jordan for Harlem New York City Council District 9, among others.

Speakers from these organizations stepped forward to lead chants of solidarity with the Cuban people and reiterate that it is not Americans’ role to demand regime change on the island. Instead, speakers said, the most important thing people here can do to help the Cuban people is to push the U.S. government to end the ongoing blockade that has prevented the island country from obtaining easier access to food and medical supplies for over 60 years now.
​
Members of the YCL-NY also asked the crowd to contact elected representatives to hold the Biden administration accountable, since on the campaign trail he had promised a return to Obama-era policy regarding Cuba. Since taking over from Trump, however, there has so far been no substantive change in the U.S. approach toward Cuba.

Justine Medina, the Cuban-American co-chairwoman of the YCL-NY, spoke about how the U.S.’ undeclared war against Cuba has divided her family here from relatives still living on the island and others residing in Florida. “The blockade is bad for all Cubans,” she said. “You don’t need to be a Communist to care about Cuba, only human.”

Maicol Lynch, another YCL-NY representative, took the mic saying, “It doesn’t stop at Cuba or even socialism. The U.S. implements illegal blockades on capitalist nations, too, such as Russia, Syria, Zimbabwe, and Iran—and in the middle of a global pandemic no less!”

When CNN en Español interviewed representatives of the YCL-NY about what exactly the protest demanded, they answered, “We as American Communists are concerned with pushing the Biden administration to end this blockade which continues to plague Cuba during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The current demonstrations in Cuba cannot be grouped together and generalized as one large “anti-government” protest, as several mainstream corporate media outlets have tried to do. Nor can all of the protesters be labeled “CIA plants” or “counter-revolutionaries,” as some on the sectarian left have rushed to claim.

Many protesters are simply apolitical citizens of the island nation who are frustrated with the pandemic and food shortages brought on by the blockade and do not know exactly where to direct their frustration. In Miami, anti-communist (and mostly Trumpite Republican) “gusanos,” such as Mayor Francis Suarez, call for U.S. military intervention in Cuba. But how bombing the Cuban people, as Suarez has advocated, would supposedly save them from the pandemic and food shortages goes unexplained. The demands for military attacks and airstrikes came on the heels of GOP Rep. Anthony Sabatini calling for Cuban government officials to be executed.

So far, it only right-wing anti-communists such as these promoting violence, not the Cuban government. And given the size of counterdemonstrations, it does not appear that the overthrow of the government is a prospect that excites many Cubans. The protests are also notably taking place only two years after a constitutional vote in Cuba where over 80% of the population voted in favor of preserving socialism.
​
In any case, one thing is clear: Only the Cuban people can decide the future of Cuba, and it seems that the majority of Cubans have no plan on abandoning their revolution.

Anti-communist protests recently sprung up in Cuba. Factions of protesters condemned the government for repression and violence. A large part of the manifestations also called for an end to scarcity of food, electricity, and medical supplies, including syringes for COVID-19 vaccines.
​
Western imperialists immediately pounced on the opportunity to blame Castro and the Communist Party of Cuba for these shortcomings. They charge the government with seizing the nation’s riches to distribute amongst themselves. According to them, scarcity in Cuba has been manufactured by a totalitarian regime that suppresses its people.

These mighty accusations stem from American politicians and Cuban exiles in Miami. First, one must examine the interests of these groups. American politicians, such as Republican representative Anthony Sabatini, have called for immediate intervention and the execution of communist officials. Like many other Southern white conservative politicians, Sabatini subscribes to the notion that anything left of fascism is communism. He donned blackface and brownface, labeled Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization, and called for the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of protestors in the United States. Hence, one might not think much of his statements. After all, fear mongering about communism is the Republican Party’s bread and butter.

But similar echoes can be heard from Democrat politicians. US President Joe Biden tweeted, “We stand with the Cuban people as they bravely assert their fundamental and universal rights, and as they all call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering.” He even warned the Cuban government to refrain from violence or attempts to silence the protests; this statement comes from a man that called on the National Guard to suppress protesters of racism multiple times (in Minneapolis following the murder of Daunte Wright and in the capitol prior to Derek Chauvin’s trial verdict).

Evidently, his issues lie less with police violence than regime change. For over 100 years, the United States has had an imperial strangle on Cuba. Prior to Cuban nominal independence, five US presidents (Polk, Pierce, Buchanan, Grant, and McKinley) attempted to purchase the island from Spain. Under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, American soldiers entered the battle for independence in the Caribbean. The military victory resulted in the American acquisition of Puerto Rico and protectorate status of Cuba. A protectorate state is controlled by another sovereign state. In this case, the US controlled elections, owned the sugar and tobacco industries, overtook Guantanamo Bay, and launched military occupations for 22 years.

American politicians have always prioritized control of Cuba in their imperial dreams. Settler colonialism birthed manifest destiny. As mainland colonization neared its course, the empire looked overseas to continue expansion. Cuba and Puerto Rico were two principal targets. The islands’ people rebelled in numerous occasions, but only Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in Cuba succeeded in exiling the Yankees. Obviously, the revolt caused dire consequences. The US launched an invasion at the Bay of Pigs and a hostile embargo.

Eisenhower’s and Kennedy’s administrations designed the embargo to suffocate the Cuban people into overthrowing Castro. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory wrote in 1960 memorandum, “The majority of Cubans support Castro (the lowest estimate I have seen is 50 percent). There is no effective political opposition […] The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” The blockade bars other countries from trading with, investing in, or giving aid to Cuba. Companies face the option of either working with the United States (the global power with the largest trading network and concentration of capital) or Cuba (an impoverished island).

The blockade uses the hegemonic global alliance to trap Cubans into surrendering to imperialism. In Mallory’s words, the blockade attempts “to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” The claim that Cubans are being starved is not false, yet the blame is misplaced. Monocropping of sugar and tobacco has made Cuban soil largely infertile; hence, Cubans rely on imports of food and other necessities. When a country cannot import food, its citizens face the consequences. Still, the government implemented rations to evenly distribute the food it did have access to, and consequently managed to prevent widespread famine. All economic sectors are impacted by the embargo. Seed patents prevent farmers from mass production. Vaccine patents deny Cubans the opportunity to receive the Pfzier, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. And, though the Cuban medical field developed its own vaccine, trade restrictions prevent access to syringes necessary to carry them out. The blockade similarly prevents new construction, leading to decaying infrastructure. The repercussions are endless. And it all comes at the courtesy of the United States.

 Hence, Biden’s cries for the end to economic suffering in Cuba come off as rather insincere. If he truly wanted to end the economic plight of Cubans, he would immediately lift the embargo. Instead, he and other Westerners have placed all responsibility on communism, not the systems actually responsible for this depravity – capitalism and imperialism. Cuban American exiles clamor for the United States to save Cuba. But what does this saving look like? How does the captor save its captive? History has proven this simply does not happen. Humanitarian concerns veil a heinous call for intervention. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez even called for immediate airstrikes in Cuba, citing previous administrations bombings of Panama and Yugoslavia. 

Not all calls are quite as unabashedly violent, but, with or without hawkish language, intervention remains the main objective. White House spokesman Andrew Bates assured: “[Biden]’s committed to forming his policies toward Cuba based on two principles: That standing up for democracy and human rights is paramount, and that Americans — especially Cuban Americans — are the best ambassadors for freedom and prosperity in Cuba.” The United States attempts to instill its brand of disingenuous democracy in all parts of the world, with the desire of securing capital for the ruling class. American “democracy” brought Afghanistan an endless war and innumerable civilian casualties. American “democracy” brought Puerto Rico an endless cycle of poverty and debt. American “democracy” brought Libya an open slave market. American “democracy” brought Americans mass incarceration, along with manufactured starvation and homelessness amidst food and housing surpluses.

What do the Cuban people stand to gain from intervention? The same unequal conditions that created the Cuban revolution? An anti-imperialist lens should inform our answers to these questions. Americans often fail to recognize the state’s imperial apparatus in their analysis. They feed into the trap of advocating for interventionist foreign policy that extrapolates resources and decimates native populations. Do not fall for the deception. The end of imperialism is the one true solution.

" This article was originally published on Liberation School on March 9, 2019"

The name Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) is commonplace in the field of education. Ask any teacher or professor of education about Vygotsky and chances are they will at least recall the name from their child development or educational psychology classes. His theories are still foundational to even mainstream education but, as is the case with so many revolutionaries, they have been stripped of their Marxist foundations. One result is that the revolutionary potential of Vygotsky’s theories have remained largely unknown not only inside schools and teacher education programs, but also inside social movements.
​
This article introduces Vygotsky’s theories on educational psychology and human development, contextualizes them within the transition from Czarist Russia to the Soviet Union, draws out the main elements of his work that have utility for revolutionary organizers, and provides concrete illustrations of their utility.

Lev Semionovich Vygotsky was born in 1896 to a Jewish family in the town of Orsha, Belarus, which, at the time, was part of the Russian Empire. Coming from a Jewish family in Czarist Russia meant being subjected to a lifetime of discrimination. Jewish people lived in restricted territories, were subject to strict quotas for university entrance, and were excluded from certain occupations.

These restrictions nearly blocked Vygotsky’s admittance to university despite his youthful brilliance. His experiences with anti-Jewish bigotry would undoubtedly influence his later work reorienting psychology. Most clearly, these experiences would push Vygotsky to critique conceptions of the mind that treated the development of cognitive processes as purely internal, unaffected by the surrounding world. As we will see, Vygotsky demonstrated that as the child develops cognitive processes are increasingly mediated—both constrained and enabled—by cultural, social, and economic factors.

Vygotsky’s groundbreaking work was frequently and painfully interrupted—and eventually ended when he was 37-years-old—by tuberculosis. To his peers he was a child genius. By the time he was 15-years-old he was known as the “little professor.”

Vygotsky’s contributions to educational psychology stemmed not just from his own insights, but from the influences of such monumental figures as Lenin and the inspiration of his environment: Revolutionary Russia.

Replacing a stagist view of cognitive development with a dialectical orientation is part of Vygotsky’s indispensable legacy. That is, Vygotsky discredited the belief that child thought evolves through fixed, natural, separate, and unrelated stages.
​
Cognitive development is not simply a matter of biological predeterminations, but is mediated by social factors. Consequently, as society changes—quantitatively within a system or qualitatively between systems through revolution—cognitive development also changes. This is what it means to say that Vygotsky’s theory of development is historical. Because references to Marx and Lenin were purged from English translations of Vygotsky’s work, the fact that his approach is both dialectical and historical in its core is largely unknown, especially in the U.S.

Cognitive development is not necessarily about an individual’s inherent potential. Rather, cognitive development is about the general potential of specific classes, which is an expression of historical processes. To get more specific: it is an expression of a society’s particular technologies, discourses, signs, tools, and modes of production. Uncovering these processes points toward the historically determined and changing nature of cognitive processes.

These insights were deeply influenced and inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution, which coincided with Vygotsky’s graduation from Moscow University in 1917. The Revolution transformed many disciplines and opened up new realms of inquiry and opportunities for young, formerly oppressed and marginalized scholars such as Vygotsky.

The Bolshevik leadership heavily emphasized education after the revolution, since the predominantly peasant feudalistic social formation promoted a conservative, reactionary ideology. Lenin (1919/2019) sums this up in his address to the First All-Russian Congress on Adult Education. He emphasizes the working class and peasantry’s thirst for knowledge, noting “how heavy the task of re-educating the masses was, the task of organization and instruction, spreading knowledge, combating that heritage of ignorance, primitiveness, barbarism and savagery that we took over” (p. 24).

As renowned Vygotskian scholar James Wertsch (1985) puts it, “Vygotsky and his followers devoted every hour of their lives to making certain that the new socialist state, the first grand experiment based on Marxist-Leninist principles, would succeed” (p. 10).

Vygotsky’s work is therefore an embodiment of one of the most intellectually and culturally stimulating settings of the 20th century. His project was dedicated to remaking psychology in Marxist terms in order to overcome the practical problems inherited from Czarist Russia, including illiteracy and the oppression of national and gender minorities.

Working in this exciting time of revolutionary transformation, which unleashed a radical desire for new knowledge, Vygotsky was taken by socialism’s elevation of the general potential of cognitive development.

Some of Vygotsky’s (1986) most central conceptions of mind were based on Lenin’s philosophical notebooks. For example, Vygotsky draws on Lenin’s distinction between “primitive idealism” and Hegelian idealism. This distinction allowed Vygotsky to demonstrate that a particular society’s general level of development is not biologically determined or fixed, but rather historically determined and therefore capable of transformation. It brought revolutionary optimism, in other words, to the field of psychology. Whereas primitive idealism attempts to universalize a particular being, which Lenin calls “stupid” and “childish,” Hegelian idealism distinguishes an object from the idea of the object. Such insights were fundamental in challenging decontextualized, racialized conceptions of mind used to justify the oppression of national minorities.
​
Vygotsky developed a complex conception of the “mind in society” that explores the dialectical relationship between thought and imagination as unity and contradiction. For Vygotsky, thought emerges from an engagement with the concrete world. Imagination is a sort of sublated thought that begins to appear in young children when they cannot fulfill their immediate desires. When this occurs:

While the development of imagination seems to be a consistent aspect of human cognitive development, as sublated thought, it is the negation of the thought of “the very young child,” and is therefore contradictory.

However, like development more generally, the sublation of early childhood thought and the emergence of imagination is not immediate but develops quantitatively by degree, bit by bit. Vygotsky (1978) argues this is because “there is such intimate fusion between meaning and what is seen” (p. 97). For example, young children have difficulty repeating the phrase, “’Tanya is standing up’ when Tanya is sitting in front of” them (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 97).

The presence of imagination as a human quality is the basis of our ability to engage the world reflectively rather than instinctively. This powerful quality accounts for the wide variance in cultures and is the basis for history. It makes possible misinformation, bigotry, domination, as well as creativity and resistance.

This discussion on thought and imagination reflects how Vygotsky was taken by Lenin’s observation that the distinction between objects and the idea of them is vulnerable to being consumed by an always latent element of fantasy, as ideas can never mirror, with complete exactness, the objects they intend to represent. There is always a gap between reality and representation. For Vygotsky, attending to the gap between objects and the ideas they intend to represent is fundamentally connected to the process of navigating the gap between what is and what can be.

This is particularly significant for challenging decontextualized and racialized conceptions of mind because there is a tendency in capitalist schooling to attribute students’ actual level of development with innate or biological factors, thereby ignoring the ways unequal and highly segregated educational systems produce unequal outcomes. Challenging racist biological determinism, Vygotsky shows that what students can do on their own, their independent activity, does not necessarily correlate to what they can achieve with a teacher, peer, or other leader. This is where the zone of proximal development comes into play.

Vygotsky referred to potential developmental levels as “buds or flowers” rather than “fruits” because they are in the process of coming into being and therefore not yet fully ripe. Further, their process of coming into being isn’t predetermined. No one can know in advance what form the developed function will take.
​
The ZPD represents the gap between an existing level of development and what can be achieved with the help of more capable or differently situated peers. For example, two children may test at the same math level, so their actual level of development is identical. However, when they are pushed with examples, questions, and demonstrations, one may achieve a potential developmental level significantly different than the other. That is, even if their actual levels of development are the same, their zones of proximal development are not. The prompting by a teacher or peer will push them but from different places and in different directions. For Vygotsky, such scenarios point to the complex, non-linear nature of the relationship between instruction, development, and history.

Vygotskian researchers have long pointed out that things like arithmetic systems and their uses are not natural or universal but are specific to socio-historical contexts. The ZPD, consequently, can only be understood if the historically-specific context is accounted for. As contexts change, ZPDs also transform.

Taken together, these are key examples of how Vygotsky’s theories guard against ableist theories of development, in that it is all about unleashing the unique potential of all students during a particular historical moment.

It is important to stress that the content of this gap between ability and potential isn’t predetermined, which is what makes it a gap and not a lack or deficiency. This is particularly important as a challenge to capitalist schooling that tends to define that which deviates from some normative standard as a lack or deficiency. Rather than Spanish-speaking, for example, we are confronted with the discourse of the non-English-speaking or English as a second language. The emphasis, in capitalist normative discourse, is on what is not rather than on what is.

Lenin’s (1920/2016) pamphlet, “Left Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, is an indispensable illustration of Vygotsky’s ZPD, one that brings home the theory’s importance for communists.
​
By 1905, the suffering Russian masses had developed a revolutionary mood that coincided with a revolutionary crisis within Czarist Russia. The spontaneous movement of the masses pushed for the overthrow of the government. The crisis-ridden state was not only practically obsolete; it was politically obsolete because the masses held a revolutionary consciousness. The actual level of development was therefore revolutionary, rendering an actual revolution within the proximal zone of development. Since the masses actual level of development was revolutionary, a communist orientation or consciousness was within their proximal level of development. Lenin held a deep awareness of this situation and therefore understood the indispensable nature of education.

The defeat of the 1905 revolution and the government’s subsequent wave of repression worked together to temper the radical mood of the masses. The people increasingly looked to the provisional, bourgeois government to meet their needs. Yet the Bolsheviks continued calling for a boycott of the parliamentary elections for the next few years. Lenin writes that this was a mistake, one that became more serious each year. Parliamentarism might have been practically obsolete in that it couldn’t meet the needs of the masses, but it was no longer politically obsolete because the people had faith in it. The Bolsheviks thus incorrectly judged the ZPD.

Communists therefore had to learn from their mistakes and focus on doing political education work and mass outreach meeting the masses where they were at in terms of their consciousness. This entails promoting the vision, program, and desire for revolution while maintaining close contact with the working class. It is imperative that revolutionaries are in tune with the mood of the masses and their ZPD. Calling for revolution before the people are ready is equivalent to abandoning and alienating the people.

Even if the mood of the masses is revolutionary, without an irreconcilable crisis within the capitalist class, launching an insurrection will likely end in failure and unimaginable persecution. Closely following the development of the capitalist system and its ruling class, consequently, is extremely important for assessing the ZPD of capitalism itself. In other words, the ZPD has to take the totality into account.

While the ZPD of the masses can be transformed through intervention, the ZPD of capitalism itself is less open to direct intervention, and therefore must be monitored through daily assessment of concrete situations.

While Lenin was conscious of the changing roles of revolutionaries at different stages in the dialectical process toward communism, Vygotsky too was attuned to the changing significance of multiple interacting factors in human cognitive processes. In laying the theoretical groundwork for his revolutionary approach to educational psychology Vygotsky took up the task of challenging the world’s leading educational psychologist of the day, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) of Switzerland.


Significantly, Vygotsky draws heavily on Lenin in his challenge to Piaget. For example, in Thought and Language, Vygotsky (1986) reproduces a long quote from Lenin where he argues that Hegel’s insistence that people’s thought produces their activity must be “inverted.” That is, Lenin argues that it is the endless repetition of people’s activity (i.e. the labor act) that produces consciousness.


Similarly, Vygotsky notes that, “it was Piaget himself who clearly demonstrated that the logic of action precedes the logic of thought, and yet he insists that thinking is separated from reality” (p. 53). Piaget demonstrated that action precedes thought by observing that children playing together understand each other despite how unclear their language is because it is accompanied by gesture and mimicry, the beginning of action. Consequently, Piaget questions weather children truly understand each other through speaking/language without acting, yet in theory he puts thought before action.


Sounding remarkably like Marx in his use of metaphor, Vygotsky summarizes the inadequacy of Piaget’s formulation: “…if the function of thinking is to reflect upon reality, this actionless thinking appears as a parade of phantoms and a chorus of shadows rather than the real thinking of a child” (p. 53). Having established the dynamic relationship between mind and society, Vygotsky took social formation as the ultimate determining factor influencing the dynamic development of human personalities and consciousness.


Producing his major works during the transition from an underdeveloped peasant-based economy to socialism, Vygotsky was deeply interested in the socialist alteration of humanity. It was the intellectually exciting and creative context of the Soviet Union that Vygotsky found himself in, combined with the work and example of Lenin, that offered the concrete context from which Piaget’s formulation unveiled itself to Vygotsky as incorrect.


Throughout Vygotsky’s body of work he insists that at “moments of revolutionary dislocation the nature of development changes” (Wertsch, 1985, p. 19). This is key because it once more emphasizes that the gap between what is and what can be isn’t predetermined and is historically situated.
​

Vygotsky defined transition points in development in terms of changes in mediation. A fundamental feature of Vygotsky’s genetic analysis is that he did not assume one can account for all phases of development by using a “single set of explanatory principles” (Wertsch, 1985, p. 19).
Rather, Vygotsky emphasized that

Vygotsky’s revolutionary theory of development is therefore one that recognizes the many forms of capacity, intelligence, and potential in all beings.
​
From the perspective of Vygotsky’s ZPD we might argue that as proletarian consciousness moves back to the left, and as the political crisis continues to deepen within the capitalist class political establishment, more revolutionary-oriented approaches to education are once again coming closer to our contemporary ZPD.

References
​– Lenin, V. I. (1919/2019). First All-Russia Congress on Adult Education: Speech of Greeting. In D.R. Ford and C. Malott (Eds.). Learning with Lenin: Selected Works on Education and Revolution (pp. 23-25). Charlotte, NC: IAP.
– Lenin, V.I. (1920/2016). “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder: A Popular Essay in Marxist Strategy and Tactics. New York: International Publishers.
– Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
– Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Edited by Alex Kozulin. London: MIT Press.
– Wertsch, J. (1985). Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Iraq's health ministry recently warned that hospitals may “lose control” in the coming days. The country has recorded its highest single-day rise in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic that severely hit Iraq’s already fragile health system.
​
In the past, the Iraqi healthcare system used to be the most advanced in the Middle East. Worldwide, Iraq was celebrated as a success story for being one of the few countries that achieved universal health care during the ‘60s to ‘80s. Students from the region traveled to Iraq to study medicine in the highly respected medical universities, and patients visited Iraq to receive medical care. Today, Iraqi citizens are the ones that are forced to seek medical care outside of their country if their financial circumstances allow them. This is the result of decades of war, military interventions and economic sanctions that caused a fragmented and weakened healthcare system that’s hardly able to handle the current health crisis.

The presence of a strong healthcare system positively impacts the vitality and competency of a nation. In this light, rebuilding health services and public health policies that respond to the demands of the population is a serious prerequisite for the sustainable development of Iraq and its independence. Such tenable and healthy (re)construction of the Iraqi health system should include a deep understanding of the context in which the system was built and dismembered. Disregarding such context leads to reducing and attributing problems and shortcomings of the health system to mere corruption. The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies corruption as a significant predictor of negligence of the health system and a cause of negative health outcomes such as child mortality. Additionally, Iraq's health ministry's director that was in place during the 2003 US occupation stated that “corruption is so endemic that the sector’s infrastructure would have to be rebuilt with the help of the international community”.
​
Paradoxically, it has been this same structural interference of the international community that caused a breeding ground for corruption. This article attempts to shed light on the circumstances that made this possible. Likewise, we aim to provide insights into the way Iraqi healthcare reforms are constructed and instrumentalized to steer Iraqi social order over the past decades.

During the first World War and the ensuing occupation of Mesopotamia by Great Britain, British military doctors took strict medical and hygiene regulations to protect their troops. They analyzed the region through the framework of Tropical Medicine, which dealt with diseases that occur in (sub)tropical continents, to allow their troops to survive better in the region. However, the unfamiliarity with Iraq still led British troops to suffer from a range of medical complaints. Expanding Iraq’s healthcare network was therefore specifically in British interests, as it would increase their chances to survive the local Mesopotamian ecology. A comprehensive healthcare system would contribute to the success of future western colonial endeavors in Iraq. At the same time, it was believed that anti-British sentiments in Iraq would decrease by constructing a stronger health infrastructure.
​
The overall aim of the British Mandate was to create a self-governing state operated by Iraqis and supervised by the British, but attempts to establish a central health government failed several times. In the meantime the British administration’s steering was facilitated by tropical medicine researchers that collected health data in Iraq. To enable the flow of goods and people throughout the country and beyond, the British administration invested in the transportation infrastructure. However, the enhanced mobility that resulted from the modernization of the Iraqi transportation network made it possible for disease to spread more quickly. In 1923 Iraq faced a cholera epidemic, demanding quick responses and the upscaling of health services. This event was used by the British administration to underline the importance of a central, quick-responding body that was able to manage the country’s healthcare system.

In 1927, the British Mandate established the first modern medical school of Iraq. Future Iraqi doctors studied under a British medical curriculum and were supervised by British authorities. Throughout the years, thousands of Iraqi medical graduates received grants to continue their specialization in the United Kingdom (UK), expanding Iraq’s healthcare infrastructure internationally and shaping the foundations of Iraqi doctors. The access of medical students to receive training in the United Kingdom granted them an elite status in comparison with other professions and was strongly entangled with the British interests to produce a modern nation-state with an Iraqi elite, friendly to British interests in Iraq, at the top. The interaction between Iraq and the UK became embedded in the medical school system and would subsist even after Iraq’s independence. During the more recent years of war, thousands of physicians fled Iraq, resulting in the British National Health Services (NHS) currently hosting the largest population of Iraqi doctors outside Iraq.

Improvements lasted until the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) during which budget cuts in the Iraqi healthcare system reached 90%. The budget cuts and the high number of injuries from the war in combination with the reallocation of medical professions to the military, placed immense pressure on healthcare facilities. By the end of the war, Iraq was struggling with high debts, barely able to deal with the aftermath of the 8 year conflict. During this period, the MOH incorporated a primary care model. This model aims to raise the standard of living by making healthcare more accessible. It enabled care provision to shift away from expensive hospital care towards primary healthcare clinics (PHCCs), run by general practitioners and nurses. Additionally, healthcare governance was partly decentralized towards the provinces, each with its own Directorate of Health that monitored the performance of the PHCCs. Although this policy-change contained some promising implications, effective implementation and a clear strategy were largely absent due to the focus on the Iraq-Iran war, the upcoming US-led Operation Desert storm and the subsequent UN and US-imposed sanctions.
​
The next twelve years, economic sanctions, being one of the greatest tragedies of the Iraqi healthcare system, would prevent the state from restoring its infrastructure. The sanctions included the halting of food and other humanitarian goods in an effort to force the Iraqi population into submission. As soon as the sanctions were implemented, Iraq started suffering from food, medication and equipment shortages. Such sanctions hit Iraq’s health system extra hard as it was, as previously discussed, designed to be highly dependent on the import of high-tech equipment and curative medication. The UN-sanctions on Iraq resulted in a humanitarian disaster and extremely deteriorating health rates. A 2006 survey showed that about 25% of Iraqi children were chronically malnourished and many more were underweight. Another Harvard survey reports a massive increase of child mortality from 40 per 1,000 between 1985-1990 to 198 per 1,000 between 1990-1995. Additionally, shortages of key medical products led to increased chronic disease mortality. Laboratory exams provided in the years of the sanctions dropped down with 70% and surgical interventions declined by 50%. In Baghdad alone, since spare tires were not permitted during sanctions due to their supposed potential military use, only 5 of the 100 public ambulances were working. The NSBD became progressively weaker, removing adequate focus on quality in drug procurement and distribution. The almost uninhabitable conditions led to a mass exodus of physicians which led to even greater shortages.

At the time of the US-led invasion, the strong base on which the health system was constructed between the 50’s and 80’s was already weakened. Iraq was dealing with non-functioning and outdated equipment, inadequate drug supplies and a fragile infrastructure barely able to respond to the needs of the people.
​
The US-led invasion destroyed health facilities and looted them of their supplies, which resulted in further loss of equipment and pharmaceutical stocks. Hospitals, medical centers, Community Child Care units and the two major health laboratories were all looted and destroyed. Two of the three rehabilitation hospitals in Baghdad were looted to the extent that they had to close. Additionally, the unpredictability of electricity and water supply, and the general insecurity created almost impossible working environments for health personnel.

Not only health facilities were targeted; the health of the people deteriorated as well. According to a study conducted by the University of Basrah, cancer is emerging as the major cause of death in the country’s southern provinces. This might indicate that low survival rates are related to the underdeveloped state of oncological care, but also raises many questions about the toxic legacies of the war on the Iraqi people. International scientific studies demonstrate causality between the US military use of depleted uranium and the rise in congenital deformities and many other diseases. According to one research, “the Iraqi population shows the highest genetic damage in any population ever studied”. Currently, the Global South is dealing with the double burden of disease, and Iraq is no exemption. Both non-communicable diseases (eg. heart & vascular disease and diabetes) and communicable diseases (eg. hepatitis and tuberculosis) are growing as a result of a toxic war-environment, the lower accessibility of care and an unhealthy lifestyle. The latter is often referred to as ‘cocacolonization’ by medical experts, representing the spread of unhealthy American foods overseas.

During the US occupation of Iraq, rebuilding healthcare infrastructure was again, as was the case under the British mandate, instrumentalized as a tool for political reconstruction and counterinsurgency. Military operations were used alongside soft power health interventions practiced by government-tied NGOs as part of wider imperialist objectives. The US occupation forces redesigned healthcare policies by implementing the neoliberal doctrine of New Public Management (NPM) into the Iraqi health system. NPM was first introduced in the UK's academia and became worldwide known as the golden standard for healthcare reforms. The ultimate aim of NPM is to deregulate state governance in favor of market forces by moving the locus of governing outside the state. Relations between the government and the third sector are commercialized by introducing market-competition, and the citizen’s own participation is centralized. This ultimately created a system that’s vulnerable to market based economies and foreign interference. A weak public sector is the result, as most of the care is currently delivered through private sector providers which are largely located outside the national health supervision system. Currently, Iraqi healthcare is unevenly provided by approximately 12.000 private clinics vs. 2.500 public PHCCs. As a result, out-of-pocket health expenditures increased to an alarming extent of 70% in 2015, according to the WHO the percentage should not exceed 30%. Hence, households are forced to borrow money in order to meet health expenditure, which pushes them into debt and financial difficulties.

The era of US occupation reinforced the legacy of the British-Iraqi healthcare system as an instrument of colonial rule. It has never been solely an Iraqi project but is rather shaped by decades of imposed British rule and Western influence. Such arrangements made in the domain of health policy are rarely accompanied by the elimination of the old structures. An understanding of the historical construction of Iraq’s health system is of high importance as policy designs made decades ago may be eliminated on paper but still have their effect in the present day’s practice. However, healthcare systems are constantly examined to adjust to the changing demographics and demand of a population, and this also applies to Iraq. Even though Iraq had to deal with a large history of extremely difficult circumstances, a more positive future is certainly possible. Today’s health policy should be designed in the context of gaining independence from the power relations that were created over the years. Sovereignty to determine what’s best for Iraq's health system should therefore be returned to the resilient Iraqi people.

The Western powers, chief amongst them the United States government, tout themselves as defenders of freedom and democracy, and spend millions of dollars trying to convince us of this. They spend billions more on wars, covert operations, and propaganda, which, they would have us believe, will bring these freedoms to other nations.

Liberal democracy, whose defining political characteristic is ‘free and fair’ elections between rival parties, is, they tell us, the pinnacle of human socio-political organisation.

It follows, therefore, that Cuba, with its single party, is a pariah, their elections a sham, and their leaders incompetent dictators. Its people are to be pitied, mocked, insulted, attacked, and, most especially, targeted by millions of dollars of ‘aid’ to help them make a transition to the one true democratic form.

Little wonder then, that in the global north, there is precious little written about Cuba’s political system, the way it is structured, its processes and its institutions, because it is seen as the last stubborn vestige of the Soviet system, an anachronism, and, therefore, simply not worthy of study. Cuba’s political system is, however, complex and vibrant. In this article I will sketch out its most salient features.
​
Cuba’s political system has three main pillars; the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), the Organs of Popular Power (OPP), and the mass organisations. These institutions work closely together, and to understand the character of participatory democracy in Cuba, it is necessary to understand each and the way they interrelate.

The Cuban Communist Party (PCC) traces its ideological roots to the Cuban Revolutionary Party founded by Cuba’s national hero, José Martí, in exile in New York in 1882. Its purpose was to free Cuba from Spanish rule by uniting into a single party all those who wanted Cuban self-determination. Following the 1959 Revolution which swept out the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, Cuba’s progressive forces began a process of uniting into a single party, which finally came to fruition six years later when the PCC was formed in 1965.
​
Today one in six of Cuba’s eleven million people are Party members. To become a member of Cuba’s Communist Party, a person must be first nominated by fellow workers or neighbours and then voted in by their local branch.

A year has to be served as a ‘candidate member’ before becoming a full member as this brings with it responsibilities and duties, especially within the local community. To be a member of the PCC is seen as an honour in Cuba, and members are generally respected as honest and committed revolutionaries.

Cuba’s principal mass organisations are the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR), the Cuban Women’s Federation (FMC), the trade unions - Cuba Workers Federation (CTC), and the Association of Small Farmers (ANAP). All are involved in organising meetings for mass policy debate, implementing new legislation and evaluating policy outcomes. Almost everyone in Cuba belongs to one or more of these organisations, and all have grassroots, local branches and higher structures at the Municipal, Provincial and National levels. They are the means by which Cubans can engage, and participate, in the political life of the country. All mass organisations have the right to initiate and be consulted on new legislation.

Since the early years of Revolution there have been several experiments and pilot schemes in local government in order to gain experience and develop the capacity of local people. Cuba’s system of local, provincial and national government was enshrined in its first Constitution of 1976. This created 169 Municipal Assemblies, 14 Provincial Assemblies, and a National Assembly.
​
At the heart of this system is the locally elected Delegate. Each Municipal area is divided into ‘wards’ which nominate and elect their Delegate. This is done by dividing each ward into smaller nomination areas - between 2 and 8 per ward depending on the population density - where neighbours meet to nominate, from amongst themselves, who they want as their Delegate. Any person who is nominated is free to accept or decline nomination. If several people are nominated, the meeting decides who will be their nominee by a show of hands. In this way, the ward ends up with between 2 and 8 candidates. These people will then be on the ballot paper on election day, and all the people in the ward vote by secret ballot to choose the ward’s Delegate to the Municipal Assembly. To be elected, the candidate must receive at least 50 per cent plus 1 of the votes cast. If this doesn’t happen, run-off elections are held. Turn-out in the 2013 elections was 94 per cent, with 4.63 per cent of papers blank and 1.2 per cent spoiled ballots.

The thing to note about this method is that the Communist Party is not an electoral party. It is not permitted to nominate or stand candidates, and it is barred from involvement in the entire electoral process. Candidates are chosen by the people, from amongst the people. The CDR has the responsibility of keeping the electoral role, verifying and correcting errors, arranging nomination meetings, setting up the polling stations, getting the vote out, and counting the votes and reporting the results.

Once elected, office is held for a period of two and a half years, but if they do not perform to the satisfaction of their electors, they can be recalled, removed from office, and another Delegate nominated and elected in their place before the next election. Delegates are also required to meet with their electors at least once every six months for ‘accountability sessions’, where they are required to take up issues and problems raised by electors and seek solutions.
​
Delegates receive no remuneration for their work (and no expenses!) and remain in their normal jobs, carrying out the civic duties in their own time. The duties of a Delegate are many and varied and the role is demanding, requiring an understanding of public policy and finance, business and administration, and the ability to negotiate, explain, motivate and lead. And because Delegates are known to almost every one of his or her electors, and lives amongst them, people call on him, or her, at all hours of the day and night with all manner of problems, ranging from broken water pipes to broken hearts. Delegates carry out the inspection and monitoring of services provided by the Municipal administration, and of the factories, shops and businesses in their area.

All assemblies, National, Provincial and Municipal, have Work Commissions. Their role is to research and scrutinise policy areas and feed directly into policy content, and at the National level into drafting legislation. There are around 20,000 people involved in the Work Commissions at any one time including delegates and specialists pertinent to the commission’s field of work in areas such as health, education and production etc.
​
Work commissions offer an explanation of the unanimity of voting in the National Assembly. Legislation is not placed before the Assembly until wide consultation has been carried out and agreement has been reached. If agreement cannot be reached, legislation is not presented.

The 1992 Constitution saw the incorporation of Popular Councils into the Organs of Popular Power, which, while adding to an already heavy workload, helped the Municipal Delegate work as a part of a team, and so be more supported and effective. Popular Councils are formed from around ten or fifteen wards working together. In addition to the Municipal Delegates from those wards, the Councils include representatives from the mass organisations, and professionals working in the locality (for example health workers, architects, enterprise mangers), although only elected Delegates can vote on Popular Council business. A President and two Vice-Presidents are chosen by vote from amongst the Delegates. These are released from their day jobs to work full-time on their Delegate duties. They receive the same pay as they would for their day jobs and their jobs are held open for them.
​
The Popular Councils are charged with reaching out and involving local people in identifying problems in the locality and helping to find solutions to them. Since their formation the Popular Councils have been given increasing areas of responsibility, including maintenance of schools, public health, monitoring the economic and social services, housing repairs, urban horticulture, and more recently, engage in participatory planning and the formulation of Strategic Community Plans.

Building on the experiences they had gained from early experiments and pilot schemes in the early years and after having studied and visited governments in other countries, including the United States, Cuba chose to create its own governance system around the election of local delegates and linked it closely to the mass organisations. In this way, the Cuban citizen has multiple opportunities for participating in the governance of their country. It would be a mistake to think that because the opportunities for participation are on people’s doorsteps, that the issues they become involved in are only of local significance. For example, the large scale consultations on major pieces of legislation, such as the latest Labour Code, the enormous changes to the status of women since the Revolution and the giant strides made in attitudes to sexual diversity, are testament to this. These successes were made possible precisely because of the importance attached to popular participation.

A characteristic of the Organs of Popular Power is that locally nominated and elected Delegates are present at the local, Provincial and National levels of government. This links the local with the national structures, and ensures, along with the non-professionalisation of those elected, that the National Assembly is not a body remote from its electors. The fact that elections to the Provincial and National Assemblies are not competitive because the delegates are chosen from those elected to the Municipal bodies does not mean that people do not have an input. Cuban citizens participating in the Electoral Commissions decide who the candidates will be.

The Communist Party is there to support and guide the other institutions, to ensure that they implement legislation, to guard against corruption, and to ascertain people’s needs and concerns. It has a political leadership role, and is charged with keeping the country united.
​
The competitive nature of liberal democratic election campaigns, where big bucks call the shots, are an anathema to Cubans. Cuba has opted for a system which seeks to keep people as involved as possible with the tasks of finding solutions, balancing need, allocating scarce resources and accommodating difference. Cuba is a country in constant negotiation with itself and its systems of participation facilitate those negotiations.