​I.- The transformation of the MPK
 
According to a materialist vision of history, the Capitalist Mode of Production (MPK[1]) underwent a qualitative  change in the transition to the twentieth century. Although the dominance of capitalist private property continues to be in force, two phases can be distinguished in the vector of competition: 1) the classical form, an MPK based on the free competition of capitalist units (MPK-LC) and 2) the transitional form, an MPK based on the annulment of competition derived from the advent of joint-stock companieswhich constitute oligopolies organized into cartels of production and exchange on the scale of the world market (MPK-SA).
 
The difference is that the MPK-LC operates under private capital while the MPK-SA does so under shared capital. This is what Marx (2015) points out as "the abolition [Aufhebung] of capital as private property within the limits of the capitalist mode of production itself" (p.562). This leap implied the expansion of the MPK-LC on a global scale through the development of the financial system, the time vector 1914-1944-1971 reflects the long geopolitical  journey established by the United States' unilateral dominance through the monopoly of the world currency. Since it has been propped up by military force and the imposition of debt, the mode of production is converted from a simple joint-stock company into financial imperialism (MPK-IF).[2]
 
This implies not only the geopolitical arrangement between blocs and equilibrium forces, but also the geo-economic  arrangement that orients the dominant channels of profit valorization to their next level: the capitalization of interest (i.e., the advent of the domination of capital at interest[3]). At this point it is necessary to remember that there is a leap between the use of money as credit and money as capital. Therefore, capitalism is not financialized [4] but simply that it has fulfilled its historical mission and what was once an abstraction today is presented as a real abstraction, it is the consummation of the capitalist telos.
 
II.- Differentiation between the political State and the economic State
 
Marxist analysis starts from a vision of totality via the analysis of the Historical Modes of Production (MPH) that constitute their evolutionary interconnection through the dialectic between Productive Forces (FP) and Social Relations of Production (PSR) whose tensions are derived from the coincidence (or not) between the two. Thus, the FP achieved by the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century pushed, first, to a world war and then to a renewal of the form of property through the use of the financial system. It is this tension that causes the need to distinguish between the political state and the economic state.
 
In this way, the institutionality produced at Bretton Woods constituted power links between states. The monopolization of the world currency generated the possibility of modulating the three constituent functions of the MPK: Commercial Capital (KC), Productive Capital (KP) and Monetary Capital (KD), giving hegemony to the latter. That is, the valuation of profit was subsumed under the capitalization of interest. The form of property underwent mutations since under this regime the capital in functions is divided between a management or financial aristocracy and the capitalist as owner.
 
The development of the financial system on a global scale is made up of the credit system (core), the payment system and the stock market, entities that constituted an economic state that seeks the capture of the debtor republics around the hegemonic country that, given its exceptionality, functions as a monarchy issuing money-credit. The central point for the discussion is to understand the dialectical relations in which a certain form is modified depending on the domain on which it is found. The analytical gap between the nation state and the global state has produced, from my point of view, the concealment of the corresponding modulator, given the FP achieved, of the node that allows the modification of the form of property when financial capital is dominant: the monetary standard[5].
 
 III.- The form of ownership and its impact on the RSPs
 
The form of property should not be confused with its derived legal existence, but rather the economic form that generates a certain type of distribution, not only of the results of production but also of the means of production. Thus, a society based on private property will be qualitatively different from one based on social property. Different types of RSPs will be needed. The current problem has to do with the fact that capitalization allows a permanent flow of available social labor to the propertied classes, even without participating directly in the productive processes. Thus, the republics become zones of extraction of surplus value via debt.
 
In fact, the current geopolitical system in which the United States serves as the hegemonic pole, Europe and Japan as the semi-periphery and the rest of the world as subordinate countries, has its basis in the type of debt management that one has. While the United States can issue credit money, the semi-fair can benefit from this issuance, but it remains subject to the strategies imposed by the hegemonic country. The case of subordinate countries has the characteristics that their public budgets and industrial policies are intervened under the weight of creditors and their international rating systems.
 
These are the constraints that, for example, are often forgotten when making an assessment of the circumstances in which the 4T is unfolding.
 
IV.- The crisis of the dollar system and the emergence of new blocs
 
Currently the dollar system is experiencing its classic crisis, that is, the moment in which the FPs that operate in the development of money capital systematically clash with the stagnant RSPs expressed in the geopolitical equilibrium. The crisis of 2008 is the breaking point at which financial imperialism had to abandon the mythical horizon of a perpetual mechanism of profits. Like any crisis, the reality of the RSPs was shown in full light, in this case, junk or subprime loans showed something that Karl Polanyi had already witnessed since the crisis of 1929: the flimsy foundations on which capitalist rotation rests as a monetary economy.
 
Since 2008, a whole disturbance of the MPK-IF has been developing, since a new bloc called BRICS has emerged, which, having gone from being at first an aspirationist declaration, today has a real force that, like tectonic plates, the imminent clash has generated new civilizational frontiers, as is the case of the NATO versus BRICS proxy war on Ukrainian soil and the Palestinian genocide at the hands of a Zionist entity that seeks instability in a strategic place such as the Middle East. This is why de-dollarization is a central task.
 
V.- The Global Economic State and Limited Sovereignty
 
The Global Economic State (EEG) represents the global relationship that exists between nation states as real producers (domains of the KP).  What the monopoly of the world currency has meant is, thanks to the interrelations of capitals around the competition for magnitudes of global social capital (KSG), an interdependence that inhibits nation states from exercising sovereignty in their economic policies. Countries depend on their internal contradictions, no doubt, but also on global relations of domination.
 
The paradigmatic case of the sudden flight of capital and the speculative movements of vulture capital exemplifies the coercion with which the world market imposes itself on the interests of any population on the planet. The dollar-based financial system also inhibits the possibility of direct relations between countries without the intermediation of the dominant pole.
 
This EEG, derived from its global scale, is barely recognizable by populations, this explains to a large extent how protests are usually unsuccessful if they are only directed against the political state in its particularity or if they enunciate capitalism as an abstraction that only exists in the idea and not in the concrete.
 
VI.- The search for a new monetary standard
 
The central point is that, despite the violence that is generated by a type of socialization, that is, the search for a new monetary standard points to a change in its design, not to a simple substitution of one currency for another, it is a matter of using FPs that allow the RSP to be modulated through a pattern that allows direct interaction between the different republics.
 
In other words, the capacity that remains latent is that of a socialization outside the constraints of the latest capitalist version, that is, the MPK-IF is transformed into a mode of social production that points towards the possibility of establishing relations between producers, but under free association. This frames the evolutionary horizon proposed by Marx as the economic form that results from capitalist metabolism: the Associated Free Producers (PLA). And, since this happens under a principle of socialization, we can enunciate the transition period as MPS-PLA. The K for capital is replaced by the S for social.
 
That is, the period from the 20th century to the 21st century, if we look at it from the perspective of capitalist development, it is about the MPK-IF, but if this process is observed from the hypothesis of the transition theory, it is about the construction of the MPS-PLA. The removal of the paper-based monetary standard has given way to a digital-based pattern. Its objective would be, as shown by blockchain technology, to dispense with the validation of a central bank to carry out direct exchanges. This would be the basis of the MPS-PLA.
 
VII.- Production of subjectivity and transition to MPC
 
This comparative analysis of interfaces entails, in turn, the need for reflection on the production of subjectivity, derived from the fact that the capitalist ideological system has managed to dissipate the intelligibility of its internal mechanisms and has eternalized its imaginary. Hence, in current discussions, capitalism is enunciated as if it were an eternal substance without processes of change.
 
Thus, in the contemporary left, and especially that which practices the fetish of purity, as Carlos Garrido puts it, they reduce all novelty in the mode of production, especially that of China, as if it were a capitulation of the communist revolution to the market (Garrido 2023). That is to say, the unnoticed social impulse that develops the dominance of money capital is hidden and closes the doors to the internationalism necessary to exercise the new geopolitics based on free and non-subordinate relations.
 
What is at stake is to consolidate the objective of economic metabolism, moving from a vision of accumulation to one based on the reproduction of life. In addition, it brings into view the critical horizon that currently haunts us: the metabolic rupture between the social and the natural. With this I want to point out that the PLAs move from the specifically social to the social-natural, that is, to the organic composition of the social as an expression of the natural, but also the new natural that arises from the social, that is, what I call: communitarian, while the illusory community transitions towards a real organic community once it internalizes the new FP achieved after MPK.
 
Once all this content returns to the vision of analysis, let's say that the content of the use values is recovered and the global vision is recovered as the construction of architectures, not for capitalization or valorization, but for the reproduction of the enrichment capacities of the social-natural experience. In this case, the end of accumulation is abandoned and, therefore, capitalism is overcome. Hence, the enunciation of this phase in which the metabolic breakdown is overcome can be called the community mode of production (CPM) based on associated free broodstock (RLA).

Notes

[1] I will always use K to refer to capital for the purpose of using a distinctive that allows a clear notation.

[2] Maurizio Lazzarato (2023) points out: "Globalization, halfway between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, radically changes capitalism because, among other things, a new relationship between State and capital is established within it. The concept of imperialism perfectly captures this turning point: sovereign action, administrative action and military action are absolutely necessary in this new stage for the life and development of capital (as well as for the development of technology and science)" (p.68)

[3] In the theories of surplus value, Marx (1989) points out: "With capital at interest, this automatic fetish is perfected, the value that valorizes itself, the money that gives birth to money, without the scars of its origin being visible in this form. The social relation here acquires its finished manifestation, as the relation of a thing (money, commodity (to itself)." (p.404)

[4] It is worth making this distinction because in the standard discussion of the financial domain it has become common to think of speculation as a deviation from the productive when, as is known, exchange value is the absolute destination of capitalist accumulation.

[5] Karl Polanyi (2017) points out: "The breakdown of the international gold standard constituted the invisible link between the disintegration of the world economy that began during the transition to the twentieth century and the transformation of the entire civilization in the 1930s. Unless we realize the vital importance of this factor, it is not possible to see clearly either the mechanism that threw Europe into an inexorable disaster, or the circumstances that explain the astonishing fact that the forms and contents of a civilization rested on such precarious foundations" (p.82)
 
Bibliography


Garrido, C.L. (2023). The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism. Midwestern Marx Publishing Press. Dubuque.

Lazzarato, M. (2023). The imperialism of the dollar: crisis of US hegemony and revolutionary strategy. Lemon Ink. Buenos Aires.

Marx, K. (1989). Theories on Surplus Value III. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Mexico

Marx, K. (2015). Capital: the global process of capitalist production. Volume III, vol. 7. Siglo veintiuno editores. Mexico.

Polanyi, K. (2017). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Mexico.

Author 

Dr. Oscar D. Rojas Silva is a Professor of Political Economy at FES-Acatlán UNAM.

It is not news to anyone that the Communist Party USA has long resigned itself to being an appendage of the Democratic Party.
​
Gone are the glory days in which the party aspired to represent the political independence of the American working class.

Ever since the dissolution of the USSR, the CPUSA adopted a neo-Menshevik view, according to which politics must develop through more 'stages' before Communism can ever have political relevance again.

It became party orthodoxy to assert that the political relevance of the Communist Party is only possible if the Democratic Party accomplishes an absolute, permanent and final defeat of the Republican party.

At one point, this view was convincing to many old-guard members. The dissolution of the USSR & the socialist bloc demoralized them. The very purpose of the party was no longer clear to them.

All they could do is observe a continued political relevance of the conflict between the Democratic and Republican parties, which increasingly appeared as a conflict of interpretation over the legacy of the Civil Rights Act: 'Wedge issues' like Affirmative Action, Abortion, Gay Marriage, etc.

Economic questions, where they were not fully marginalized, were reduced to questions over the conservation of old institutions (Welfare, legacy unions aligned with Democrats politically, etc.). But they were never brought to the fore in a new and unique way - neoliberalism was the guiding outlook of both the Democrats and Republicans.

In any case, no drastic procedures to usurp Party democratic centralism were necessary. The view was not contentious enough to warrant that. Communism was becoming totally out of style. At best, the remaining 'true believers' thought that maybe, sometime in the future, it will be relevant again. But in the meantime, they must ensure a total defeat of the Republican party, whose agenda will certainly make this outcome less likely.

This was their reasoning in the past.

But never in the history of the party has it become as contentious as it has recently.

This is the product of three major factors, which will be ranked in order:

1) Joe Biden's culpability in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has shocked the international community and has led even major institutions of 'democratic civil society' to turn on him.

2) The launch of the CPUSA 2036 initiative in 2021, which has led to my followers flooding the party (while concealing their views to prevent expulsion) on the basis of Infrared's new interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, hoping to restore the party to its former glory by pursuing political independence.

3) The rise of a new generation of 'pan-leftists' or 'Red Liberals' (Redlibs), or adolescent ex-Democrats who reject supporting Democrats on purely emotional grounds.

So to put things into perspective, this weekend's 32nd National Convention of the Communist Party, was a referendum on the CPUSA's continued support for Democrats.

The CPUSA has 'National Conventions' every four years. These conventions establish procedures for democratically electing leadership and the future direction of the party.

The only major issue in contention for this national convention was about whether or not the CPUSA should continue to support Democrats. There were no other major issues that were in contention.

There is no point in having elections just out of procedural formalism. The point of democratic centralism is to be a mechanism for resolving disputes, disagreements and contentions within the party.

The reason why I told my followers to join the CPUSA is because having disagreements with the ideological, strategic or even programmatic line with the party is not sufficient grounds for abandoning it.

As Stalin pointed out, the Communist way is to submit to the will of the majority of the party, however erroneous it may be regarded by you individually.

The point is that through internal discussions and dialogue, you may have an opportunity to argue on behalf of the correctness of your position, in order to persuade others and ultimately change the party line.

This is the point of democratic centralism: To make the party as an institution responsive to changes and nuances concerning the will of the majority, while simultaneously enforcing submission to the outcome of that will.

So even when the party decided to undemocratically and unconstitutionally pursue a policy of trying to ban members affiliated with 'Infrared,' I continued to tell my followers to hold out, to stay in the party and follow its rules and procedures, and conceal their views.

The position taken on by the leadership was irrational - egged on by certain suspicious personalities with apparent connections to US intelligence agencies.

The best hope for restoring sanity in the party would be in the 32nd convention, where members would have an opportunity to discuss and vote on changes in the party.

For Infrared, the primary contradiction in the CPUSA was not about its stance on me personally, on 'woke' culture, or MAGA Communism. The primary contradiction was about its continued support for the Democratic Party, which was the root cause of all its other errors.

The 'redlibs,' who joined the party in large numbers purely to wreck the 2036 initiative also claimed to reject the CPUSA's subservience to the Democrats - but in practice, they did nothing to challenge it.

Those that sincerely took issue with it lacked the discipline to articulate their stance through party procedure, and were quickly expelled.

The rest took the craven position of focusing on 'purging' and rooting out my followers. They failed to identify the overwhelming majority, who still remain in the party and a huge portion of which remain present at the convention as delegates as of this writing.

Rather than form a united front with us to disentangle the party from Democrats, they decided that 'patsoc' ideology (a term they made up themselves) was the primary contradiction, and not the concrete subservience of the Communist Party to Democrats.

But everything changed after the Zionist genocide in Gaza. This genocide has made even the most ardent liberals hostile to the Biden administration and the overall tendency of the Democratic party.

It finally provoked some of the Redlibs to have the courage to finally challenge the 'party line' on support for the Democrats.

Such that by the time of this weekend's convention, delegates could be divided into three camps:
1) Pro-Democrat Joe Sims sycophants.

2) Followers of Infrared and Midwestern Marx (Anti-Democrat)

3) Redlibs (Anti-Democrat)

SO, WHAT HAPPENED?

On Friday, the convention rules and the presiding committee were presented. According to the CPUSA constitution, the rules for the convention are to be adopted democratically.

Any dissent with these rules, while being presented, requires that they be discussed openly.

According to the rules for the 32nd convention, votes would not be counted. Instead, they are to be arbitrarily decided by a vocal vote of 'Yeas' or 'Neighs.'

If the decision by vote appeared to be split audibly, it would be taken to the National Committee to decide.

Only, the National Committee is more or less hand-picked by the Sims clique themselves through the 'slate system,' meaning that whatever decision they arrive at reflects the authors of the resolution!

It's just a roundabout way to pass the resolution without having to secure a majority!

Someone made a clear objection to these rules. They were completely ignored, in total violation of the CPUSA constitution!

It was clear to everyone that day that this convention was a referendum on Democrats.

Nearly all the discussions had and speeches presented were tightly controlled by leadership to argue that the 'MAGA fascist threat' was existential, that defeating it was of paramount importance, and that this was only possible by following the Democratic Party.

It was the constant and recurring theme of the entire convention.

The leadership knew it was the only really contentious and decisive issue, and went out of their way to make sure that those who disagreed with them would not have a voice.

They went out of their way to establish undemocratic convention procedures, which ensured that they were guaranteed to prevail on the most decisive issue without any democratic legitimation.

The second day, or Saturday was also primarily devoted to pro-Democrat evangelizing. But wait until you hear about this utter tomfoolery:

For all other resolutions, panels were held comprising not less than 10 people, each of whom spoke for no more than 3 minutes - and left the remaining time for the floor.

These were nothingburger resolutions, just procedural formalisms - with the exception of the resolution on Palestine.

So, the most time and discussion was permitted for those issues for which democracy was superfluous - there was no sufficient contention to even require voting.

But for the panel on the one resolution that actually mattered the most and which was the most contentious - Resolution 5:

- The presiding committee violated all precedent and cut speaking times from 3 to 2 minutes.

So they violated the very conventional procedures that were already adopted unconstitutionally to begin with!
- Of the 51 people who chose to sign up, 4 were selected to speak. Now get a load of this:

All four of these panel members were pro-Democrat, and were deliberately chosen on that basis. It is even said that some of them DID NOT EVEN SIGN UP TO SPEAK, but were simply called by name by the presiding committee!

- The panel discussion began at 2:44pm, ended at 3:19pm.

So after panicking and shortening the length of panel speakers, the leadership ensured that the four speakers were pro-Democrat so as to not take any risks.

And allowed them to speak AT LENGTH jibbering about the need to support the Democratic Party and Joe biden to defeat the 'MAGA fascist' threat. This 'panel' was in fact longer than all others! And it was not a panel at all, but a Democrat-glazing circlejerk.

- The discussion was given to the floor at 3:20pm. The discussion was promptly put to an end at 3:25pm.

For a grand total of FIVE MINUTES, this charade of a 'panel' could be challenged. Note that voting would begin seven minutes later, at 3:32pm!

It's unbelievable: They took 30 minutes away from the floor, after the 'panelists' took up a bunch of time - under the pretext of 'allowing time for Dinner.'

The only problem? The party didn't even provide dinner! Such cynical nonsense!

Saturday was filled with nothing but stalling to totally minimize discussion on Resolution 5. Again, this was the only resolution, the one to decide the party's future relationship with Democrats, that mattered.

Voting was imminent.

A motion was called for the vote for resolution 5 to take place by secret ballot.

Everyone knew that anyone identified who voted against it would be identified as an enemy of the Sims clique, and their prospects for future leadership destroyed.

That motion was ignored.

A motion was called to actually count the Yeas and Nays on resolution 5. It was ignored.

Finally, the big vote.

Note that all the newer clubs, known to be anti-Democrat, were placed all the way in the back where they would be less audible - while pro-Democrat established clubs were placed in the front.

Predictably, the results were 'unclear.'

The room was clearly divided before between pro-leadership sycophants and anti-Democrats.

But the votes weren't counted. My own followers, plus the redlibs formed the majority of delegates. Obviously the sycophants were sizeable - most people do not have the discipline to even stay in the party.

Additionally, some redlibs themselves are sycophants, talking about game on Twitter but bowing before the 'old guard' leadership because they have too much 'social anxiety' to stand up for what they claim to believe.

To be fair, the establishment exerts a great deal of pressure to fall in line on this issue. But most redlibs do not have the integrity or courage to stand on business when push comes to shove.
​
But it is clear that there was a strong possibility that the majority voted against Resolution 5. The lack of being able to count the votes meant it was 'unclear.'

And the unconstitutionally adopted convention rules established that in the absence of clarity, the Resolution would be decided by the National Committee.

Meaning it would pass, against the will of the majority.

And the best part? The National Committee is more or less hand-picked by the leadership!

A 'nomination committee,' appointed by the existing NC nominates 88 names. Delegates have an opportunity to nominate others on the floor, but not enough time.

Delegates decide, via a checklist, which names they want to be part of the National Committee - and need to choose a minimum of around 70.

There is very little room for actually voting here. At best, delegates can challenge 10 or so people 'nominated.' The rest are guaranteed to be part of the National Committee.

In this case, only one delegate from the floor was elected.

Formally, the process of nominating the National Committee is supposed to be based on recommendations by local chapters and clubs. But in reality, all of them were hand-picked on the basis of being pro-Democrat.

On Sunday, or the final day, the National Committee, hand-picked by the Sims clique in the first place, was 'sworn into office.'

And they unanimously decided to 're-elect' Joe Sims as party chair.

The entire purport of the Sims clique craven policy to submit to Democrats is based on 'defending democracy.'

But to defend democracy, they must in fact suspend any trace of democracy in the actual party itself!

It reminds me of how Democrats themselves actively seek to destroy our civil liberties in the name of 'protecting democracy!'

Make no mistake. The events of this weekend prove without any doubt that a coup has taken place in the party.

The leadership has engaged in shady practices for a long time, but never have they been so explicit in suspending democratic centralism completely as in the 32nd convention.

The one issue for which democracy mattered, was imposed upon the entire party without any semblance of democracy.

The newer clubs - both 'patsocs' (made up term btw) and 'Redlibs' alike - simply do not have representation. The perspective of the younger generation has been completely suppressed, without any possibility of discussion.

It is one thing to insist upon the wisdom of leadership. But dissenting views were simply not given a platform, in the only convention in which they are promised to have the opportunity to.

The fascistic behavior of the Sims clique violates all the traditions of the party. It is an insult to the honor and legacy of the party, not just in terms of the content of the positions (which is nothing new) - but for the first time, in terms of the form itself.

The sacred protocols of party procedure and decision making have been defiled and effaced.

The great Foster turns in his grave in this unprecedented usurpation of party authority - all for the sake of enabling genocide Joe Biden!

Before, one could say that they oppose the CPUSA line ideologically and strategically. But now, the party itself has been usurped in a coup.

This is not about ones opinion or ideology anymore. It is about the integrity of democratic centralism and the party as a formal organ of power itself. The constitution has been burned, and the party is now formally occupied.

They have simply rigged the convention. And their actions will not go unanswered. There will be consequences.
For now, my followers remain entrenched in the party awaiting their orders.

Shame on all those who have allowed it to get to this point. History will not look upon the enablers of the Gaza genocide kindly.

I find it difficult to see how the imagined 'fascism' Joe Sims uses as a pretext to in all but name liquidate the party - could be worse than what is happening to children in Gaza.

History will not look upon those who sold out the only party of the working class to the Democratic Party at a time in which they help oversee the murder of over 30,000 civilians.

Author

Haz Al-Din, philosopher and entertainer, Infrared collective. 

​Introduction

​Nazi Germany was a military colossus and defeating the beast was a herculean task that could never have been accomplished singlehandedly by any one of its enemies. The job was done, but only after many years of struggle, and it required superhuman efforts from all the countries that were involved in the titanic conflict against Hitler, his Nazism, that is, the German variety of fascism, and other fascist dictatorships that had lined up with Germany, such as that of Mussolini.
​
The group of countries that fought and ultimately defeated Nazi Germany was called the “Grand Alliance” by Churchill, but the Soviets used a more prosaic term, the “Anti-Hitler Alliance”.

This partnership, which emerged only after the Soviet Union and the US became involved in the war in 1941, featured two wings, first, the “Western Allies”, and second, the Soviet Union. The latter battled the German forces in a titanic struggle along the so-called Eastern Front, starting in the summer of 1941. The former, meaning the Americans as well as the British, fought the Nazis in Europe starting in the summer of 1943, when they landed troops in Italy.

However, their paramount contribution came on the Western Front, that is, a “theatre of war” not in Southern but in Western Europe, and the action there started with the famous landings in Normandy of of June 6, 1944, whose code-name was Operation Overlord.

The 80th Anniversary of D-DAY

June 6, will mark the 80th anniversary of “D-Day”, the planners and participants of the landings in Normandy will be honoured in the presence of the French President and many other dignitaries.

Rightly so, because Operation Overlord epitomized the contribution of the Western Allies to the defeat of Nazi Germany.  However, about the Normandy Landings, a few important aspects should be kept in mind, aspects that will almost certainly remain unmentioned during the commemorations.

First, while the “Battle of Normandy” that started on June 6, 1944, was undeniably a major clash, it was not the biggest battle of World War II, as the statistics reveal.

In terms of length, it started on June 6, 1944, and ended at the end of August of that year, so it lasted almost three months.

The Battle of Stalingrad, on the other hand, dragged on twice as long, it lasted for more than half a year, from mid-July 1942 to early February, 1943.

The Siege of Leningrad also deserves to be mentioned here, even though it was admittedly not a conventional battle: it began on September 8, 1941, and did not come to an end until January 27, 1944, so its exact duration was 2 years, 4 months, 2 weeks and 5 days.

Second, the casualties – killed, wounded, missing in action, and/or taken prisoner — suffered by the belligerents in Normandy were high, but not as high as the opening scenes from movies like Saving Private Ryan would have us believe.

Those scenes conjured up the fighting on Omaha Beach, one of the five sectors of the landing beaches where American soldiers landed, had to attack strongly fortified German positions, and suffered heavy losses, namely, 2,500 killed and more than 5,000 wounded.

But in the other sectors the Germans were less numerous and far less strongly entrenched, and their resistance was far less ferocious, so the Allied troops coming ashore took considerably fewer casualties.

• On Utah Beach, for example, the Americans encountered very light resistance and suffered merely 200 casualties.
• On Sword Beach, the British likewise met limited opposition.
• And on Juno Beach, the 14,000 Canadians who came ashore suffered 1,096 casualties, including “only” 381 killed.

The total number of Allied casualties on D-Day reached approximately 10,000, a figure that included 4,414 men killed, the latter still a high number, of course, but not nearly as high as most people imagine.
The number of casualties represented just over 6 percent of the total of 160,000 troops who came ashore, the number of killed, 2.7 percent.

The relatively low number of losses was due to the fact the Germans had only limited forces available to defend against an Allied “invasion”.

According to British military historian Richard Overy,

“in the east, Germany and her allies had some two hundred and twenty-eight divisions, compared with fifty-eight divisions in the west, only fifteen of which were in the area of the Normandy battle in its initial stages” — consisting mostly of troops of inferior quality, though supported by some elite SS units –, because the bulk of the Wehrmacht was fighting for dear life on the Eastern Front. In another one of his books, Overy writes that in, Normandy, the Germans had one division for every 217 miles of coastline, divisions consisting mostly of less than the usual minimum of 12,000 men and “largely made up of older soldiers, …wounded from the eastern front and men of poorer physical condition, [with] low combat effectiveness. 

The Germans defenders were thus stretched very thinly along the French coast.

Significant numbers of them, entrenched in and around bunkers and pillboxes of the “Atlantic Wall”, were separated from each other by sometimes long expanses of lightly defended coastline. The Americans learned the difference at Omaha and Utah. In any event, the notion that thousands of German soldiers were waiting in the dunes, shoulder to shoulder, as Allied soldiers alighted from their landing craft, is a fiction concocted by Hollywood in movies such as The Longest Day.  

In the entire Battle of Normandy, the Americans, British, and Canadians suffered a total of about 220,000 casualties, while Germany accounted for 300,000, for a grand total of just over 550,000; the number of men killed was 30,000 for the US, 11,000 for the UK, 5,000 for Canada, and 30,000 for Germany, totalling 76,000. Mindboggling as these figures may be, they are dwarfed by the numbers killed, injured, missing in action and/or taken prisoner during the 1942-1943 Battle of Stalingrad.

According to the same source, the Encyclopedia Britannica, that battle resulted in approximately 800,000 casualties on the side of Germany and allied powers, and 1,100,000 on the Soviet side, for a total of 1.9 million. And that appears to be a rather conservative estimate, as Wikipedia cites higher figures, namely, a total number of over one million killed; and the Modern War Institute, a “national resource at the United States Military Academy at West Point”, puts the Stalingrad death toll at approximately 1.2 million. In any event, the Battle of Normandy may be said to have been only half as deadly as the Battle of Stalingrad.

Let us return to D-Day. On that June 6, the plans called for Allied troops to overcome the German coastal defenses without too much trouble and to push deep inland, in the case of the Canadians from Juno Beach to the outskirts of the city of Caen, a distance of nearly 20 kilometers.

(Bicycles were brought along to facilitate that trip, so no major German resistance was obviously expected.)
However, it would take weeks before the “Canucks” were to enter Caen.

The other Allies did not do better; by the end of the first day, none of them had secured their first-day objectives.

The reason was that the Germans responded to the Allied landings by sending in elite troops that had been held in the rear, including SS units, to be sent to the front whenever and wherever the need would arise. These troops were unable to throw the Allies back into the sea, but they did manage to prevent them to penetrate deep inland, as the planners had expected. 

The result was a long stalemate.

It helped the Allied cause that the Germans were prevented from transferring manpower from the Eastern Front to Normandy by actions of the Red Army, culminating on June 22 — anniversary of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 — in the kickoff of a major offensive on the Eastern Front, code-named Operation Bagration.
The Wehrmacht was mauled badly by the Red Army, which was to achieve an advance of more than 600 kilometres, all the way from deep in Russia to the suburbs of the Polish capital, Warsaw, which was reached in early August.

Bagration thus enabled the Western Allies to finally break out of their Normandy bridgehead, and General Eisenhower himself later acknowledged that Bagration had been a necessary precondition for the belatedly successful outcome of Operation Overlord.

(Incidentally, the Soviets would render a similar — and equally rarely acknowledged — service  to the Western Allies in early 1945 when they responded to an urgent American request by unleashing a major offensive in Poland on January 12, 1945, one week earlier than originally planned; that move forced the Germans to abandon a surprise attack in the Belgian Ardennes that had caused the Americans great difficulties in the so-called Battle of the Bulge.) 

Summarizing the above, it is clear that the Western Allies won the Battle of Normandy, admittedly not easily, but without major losses, because the huge sacrifices required to defeat the Nazi Moloch had been suffered for three years, and continued to be suffered, by the Soviets on the Eastern Front.

It is fair to say that Nazi Germany was defeated by the efforts and sacrifices not only of the Red Army but of Soviet women and men in general, including partisans, factory workers, farmers, and so forth, whose total losses by the end of the war would approach a mindboggling thirty million.

In fact, the string of Nazi victories that had started in 1939 came to an end — and the tide of World War II turned, to put it that way — not with the landings in Normandy in June 1944, as is claimed or implied in many history books and of course in Hollywood productions such as The Longest Day. The tide of the war turned on the Eastern Front, and it did so well before D-Day, namely, in 1941, in the vast expanses of Russia to the west of Moscow. 

When Operation Barbarossa was launched on June 22, 1941, Hitler and his generals were convinced that the Wehrmacht was going to crush the Red Army within 6 to 8 weeks.

They also badly needed a quick victory, because only quick triumph could solve a major problem. In the thirties, while preparing for war, the Hitler regime had built up huge stockpiles of imported strategic raw materials that Germany lacked, above all rubber and petroleum, the latter mostly supplied by the US. During the coming war, the Reich would likely be prevented from importing sufficient quantities of these products, without which the mighty panzers and planes would be useless,  by a British naval blockade, which is what had happened in World War I.

However, in 1939-1940, the stockpiles of crucially important petroleum had been severely depleted as Nazi Germany inflicted “lightning warfare” on countries as far apart as Poland, France, and Greece; and neither continuing imports from Romania and – via neutral Spain – the US, nor increased production of synthetic fuel and rubber could make up the shortfall. And so, when Operation Barbarossa started, and three million German soldiers crossed into the Soviet Union with no less than 600,000 motor vehicles, 3,648 tanks, and more than 2,700 planes, Nazi Germany only had sufficient fuel (and rubber tires) left to wage war for little more than two months. But this was deemed sufficient because the Soviet Union was expected to be knocked out soon enough, and then its unlimited raw materials, including Caucasian petroleum, would be available to the Reich. 

However, it became clear all too soon that despite impressive initial victories, Barbarossa was not going to be a cakewalk after all.

By the end of August, the German spearheads were still nowhere near the Caucasus, the Eldorado of Soviet petroleum.

Hitler’s “Third Reich” now faced the prospect of catastrophic fuel shortages in addition to almost equally problematic scarcity of labor needed in its armament and other industries, as millions of men could not return home and go back to work in the factories.  The conclusion drawn by many cognoscenti, such as high-ranking Wehrmacht officers, Nazi bigwigs, the Swiss secret service, and the Vatican, as early as the summer of 1941 and increasingly in the fall of that year, was that Germany could no longer hope to slay the Soviet bear and was doomed to lose the war. 

Oceanic tides turn inexorably but slowly, yet not imperceptibly.

The tide of World War started to turn similarly slowly within weeks after the start of Barbarossa, but the phenomenon was already perceived by a small though increasing number of observers and could be certified on December 5 of 1941, when the Red Army successfully launched a major counter-offensive that threw back the Germans and certified the fiasco of Barbarossa. On that same day, Hitler was informed by his generals that he could no longer hope to win the war. It is therefore legitimate to define December 5, 1941, as the “turning point” [Zäsur, literally “caesura”] of the entire world war,” as Gerd R. Ueberschär, a German expert on the war against the Soviet Union, has put it. On the other hand, it is true that those in the know were rare and that, for whatever reasons, most of them chose to remain discreet; consequently, it was only after the spectacular German defeat at Stalingrad, in early 1943, that the entire world was to realize that Nazi Germany was doomed to lose the war.

When, more than one year later, the Western Allies landed in Normandy, they were lucky to face a (part of a) German army that was severely handicapped by a paucity of petroleum.

The Nazis had hoped that victory against the Soviet Union would provide them with plenty of Caucasian fuel for their panzers and planes.

That did not happen and, to the contrary, the fighting in the vast expanses of the Soviet Union further depleted Germany’s stocks of fuel. By the summer of 1944, the Nazi war machine was not only figuratively but even literally “out of gas”, and this is why the Luftwaffe, for example, which disposed of excellent airplanes, was virtually absent from the skies over Normandy, to the great relief of the Allies on the ground, on the sea, and of course in the air. 

It should be mentioned that the US was not yet a belligerent when the turning of the war’s tide was confirmed by the Soviet counter-attack in front of Moscow on December 5, 1941.

Washington was admittedly on extremely unfriendly terms  with Berlin because of American deliveries of all sorts of weapons and other equipment to Britain, but had no intention, and therefore no plans at all, to go to war against Hitler, even though there were plenty of compelling humanitarian reasons for crusading against his truly evil regime.

America’s major US corporations were also doing wonderful business with Nazi Germany itself, for example producing trucks, planes, tanks, and other strategic equipment in their branch plants in Germany and by supplying the petroleum so badly needed by the Panzers and Stukas.

America’s political and social- economic elite was also staunchly anti-communist and did not want to undertake anything that might jeopardize the Nazi dictator’s prospects for success in his crusade against the Soviet Union. Conversely, Hitler, in dire straits in the Soviet Union, was not keen at all to take on a new enemy of the calibre of the US. 

However, Washington wanted war, not against Germany but against Japan, and did so mainly in order to prevent its much-despised rival in the Far East from pocketing Vietnam and Indonesia, resource-rich colonies of countries occupied by Germany, France and the Netherlands.

Tokyo was provoked into attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which triggered an American declaration of war on Japan but not on Germany, which had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor and whose alliance with Japan did not require Berlin to become involved in a war started by Tokyo.

However, to Washington’s great surprise, Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor.

He almost certainly speculated that this entirely gratuitous gesture of solidarity would induce his Far Eastern ally to reciprocate with a declaration of war on the enemy of Germany, the Soviet Union, thus forcing the Soviets into the extremely perilous predicament of a two-front war. But Tokyo, expecting to have its hands full with the US as enemy, did not take the bait.

In Washington the German declaration of war arrived as a most unpleasant surprise, since a war against Germany was unwanted and no plans had been made for it. The American historian Stephen E. Ambrose has rightly emphasized that the US did not “enter” the war but was “pulled in[to]” it. 

He was right in the sense that Uncle Sam was indeed “pulled into” the war against Germany against his will – and by none other than Hitler himself!

In view of this, it is worth asking whether the Americans would ever have declared war on Nazi Germany, and landed in Normandy, if Hitler had not declared war on them. And one should ask if Hitler would ever have made the desperate, even suicidal, decision to declare war on the US if he had not found himself in a hopeless situation in the Soviet Union. The entry of the US into the war against Germany, then, which for many reasons was not in the cards before December 1941, and for which Washington had not made any preparations, was not a cause, but merely a consequence, of a turn of the tide of World War II that happened in the Soviet Union in the second half of 1941.

In any event, when the Americans and other Western Allies did come ashore in Normandy in June 1944, there was less than one year left in a war whose outcome had already been decided three years earlier on the opposite side of Europe. In some way, Operation Overlord confirmed that Nazi Germany’s sun had reached its zenith in 1941 and was setting rapidly. And the troops were not sent to the Normandy beaches to liberate France en route to Berlin, but to prevent the Soviets from defeating Germany, take Berlin, and thus liberate all of Europe on their own. 

When Nazi Germany unexpectedly became an enemy of the US, the US automatically became an ally of Germany’s enemies, including Britain and the Soviet Union. Uncle Sam’s alliance with Moscow was to involve supplying the Soviets with weapons and other equipment, but those supplies, while certainly important, would never represent more than a fraction of what the Red Army needed and would become quantitatively and qualitatively meaningful only in 1943, that is, well after the decisive battles in front of Moscow and in Battle of Stalingrad. The notion that the Soviets survived Operation Barbarossa thanks to American aid is nothing more than a myth.  

With its British ally, on the other hand, Washington worked very closely together and coordinated strategy, and it was agreed that they would give priority to the fight against Germany, rather than the other common enemy, Japan.
This would logically involve sending troops into occupied Europe to confront the Nazi beast, thus opening a “Second Front”.

A Second Front would have provided much relief for the Red Army, which in 1942 faced an admittedly desperate German attempt to reach the Caucasian oilfields, an attempt that led to a titanic battle fought in and around Stalingrad from which the Soviets did not emerge victoriously until early 1943.

However, Roosevelt and Churchill preferred not to open a Second Front. The leaders of the US and Britain were happy to see their useful but unloved Soviet ally and Nazi Germany administer a major bloodletting to each other in what appeared throughout 1942 to be a stalemated conflict on the Eastern Front.

They realized that defeating Germany would require huge sacrifices, and landing troops in occupied Europe would unquestionably be a very costly affair. Was it not far wiser to stay safely on the sidelines, at least for the time being, and let the Soviets slug it out against the Nazis? With the Red Army providing the cannon fodder needed to vanquish Germany, the Americans and their British allies would be able to minimize their losses. Better still, they would be able to build up their strength in order to intervene decisively at the right moment, when the Nazi enemy and the Soviet ally would both be exhausted. With Great Britain at its side, the US would then in all likelihood be able to play the leading role in the camp of the victors and act as supreme arbiter in the sharing of the spoils of the supposedly common victory. In the spring and summer of 1942, with the Nazis and Soviets locked into a titanic battle, watched from a safe distance by the Anglo-Saxon tertius gaudens, it did indeed look as if such a scenario might come to pass.

The reason given to Stalin for not opening a second front was that the combined American and British forces were not yet strong enough for a major operation on the continent.

Presumably, the naval war against the German U-boats first had to be won in order to safeguard the required transatlantic troop transports. However, troops were successfully being ferried from North America to Great Britain, and in the fall of 1942 the Americans and British proved able to land a sizable force in North Africa. These landings, known as Operation Torch, involved the occupation of the French colonies of Morocco and Algeria, and in the summer of 1943 the “Yanks” and “Tommies”, now accompanied by “Canucks”, to use the nicknames of the Western Allied soldiers, were to cross into Sicily, followed by the Italian mainland, and knock Italy out of the war. 

Not only Stalin demanded the opening of a Second Front, so did a large segment of the British public, mostly ordinary working-class folks who, in contrast to their “betters”, sympathized with the Soviets. To silence this annoying constituency, Churchill arranged for a contingent of troops, not coincidentally consisting mostly not of Americans or British but of Canadians, to be dispatched on a raid to the French seaport of Dieppe, an operation code-named Jubilee. As expected, these men were slaughtered there, which was then conveniently cited as irrefutable proof that the Western Allies were not yet able to launch a major cross-Channel operation. The stratagem achieved its purpose, but the public was horrified by the slaughter. However, after the 1944 landings in Normandy, it became possible to concoct an ostensibly convincing rationale. Jubilee was triumphantly revealed to have been a “general rehearsal” for the successful Normandy landings, as valuable lessons had allegedly been learned during a raid that served to test the German defences. This was a laughable proposition, since any lessons about German defenses, learned in August 1941, could not have been relevant almost two years later: indeed, in the aftermath of Jubilee, in 1943, the Germans constructed new defenses, collectively known as the “Atlantic Wall”. In any event, thus was born a myth: the tragedy of Jubilee as the sine qua non for the triumph of Overlord.

After the Battle of Stalingrad, it was obvious that Nazi Germany was doomed to lose the war and opening a Second Front suddenly loomed urgent to Roosevelt and Churchill. The Soviets were now likely to start heading for Berlin, and via the Italian boot, where, after the fall of Mussolini the Germans had moved in and put up a tough resistance, the Allies could never beat them in what becoming an unspoken inter-allied race to Berlin. Preparations were now made for a landing on the French Atlantic coast, code-named Operation Overlord. The urgency of this task increased rapidly as in 1943 the Red Army advanced systematically along the entire length of the Eastern Front. But it was too late to carry out such a logistically complex operation in that year, especially since the necessary landing equipment needed to be transferred back from North Africa and Italy. Roosevelt and Churchill were far from delighted that the Red Army was grinding its way, slowly but surely, towards Berlin and possibly places farther west. And so, from the perspective of Anglo-American strategy, “it became imperative to land troops in France and drive into Germany to keep most of that country out of [Soviet] hands,” as two American historians, Peter N. Carroll and David W. Noble, have written. 

The American and British political and military leaders, representatives of their countries’ establishment, that is, upper classes, had always been intrinsically anti-communist and anti-Soviet. Conversely, they had not been against any form of fascism, including its German variant, Nazism. They were “philofascists”, that is, benevolent towards fascism and supporters of fascists, because fascism was the paramount enemy of communism and simultaneously “good for business” and therefore for capitalism, of which fascism is arguably a manifestation; it should not be forgotten that Hitler’s Germany, like Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain, were capitalist countries. It is an irony of history that the US stumbled into a war against fascism, personified by Hitler (as well as Mussolini) and thus found themselves to be allies of the Soviet Union. But that alliance was an unnatural one, destined to last only until the defeat of the common enemy. As some American generals put it on one occasion, they were fighting a war “with the wrong ally against the wrong enemy.”  

The landings in Normandy, then, were organized for the purpose of preventing a scenario that haunted the gentlemen who happened to be the leaders of the US and Britain, a scenario in which the Soviets would singlehandedly defeat Germany and liberate not only Eastern but also Western Europe, including France. If that would happen, the “Russkis” were expected to follow the precedent set by the Americans and British in 1943 when they liberated Italy except the northern part, which remained behind German lines. They had done exactly as they pleased, nota bene without permitting any input from their Soviet ally, input that had been foreseen in previous agreements. To prevent any radical social-economic changes, they had neutralized the leftist partisans who had plans for an entirely new Italy; and installed an ex-fascist and known war criminal, Marshal Badoglio, in power. In fact, the Western Allies left much of Italy’s fascist system in place, thus ingratiating the industrialists, bankers, large landowners, the monarch, Vatican, and other pillars of the nation’s establishment who had in fact enabled, and benefited from, the Mussolini regime, but angering workers and “ordinary” Italians, who castigated the new system as “fascism without Mussolini”.

If the Soviets were to act similarly in the countries they liberated, the result could be expected to be the opposite, namely, a joint effort of the liberators and the leftist resistance fighters to eradicate, at the expense of the upper class, not only of fascism but also of the capitalist system of which fascism may be said to have been the exoskeleton. From the perspective of the Americans, who were determined to maintain and revitalize capitalism wherever possible, this would have been nothing less than a catastrophe.

The far from uplifting tale of the “liberation” of Italy demonstrates clearly that the Americans and their British partners had nothing against fascism and fascist dictatorships and preferred to maintain fascism in one way or another, rather than allow a liberated people itself to determine the political and social-economic configuration of their country.

We will soon see that the landings in Normandy did not purport to liberate France in the sense of leaving the French themselves free to democratically make decisions about the postwar makeup of their country, and that the liberators actually preferred to maintain the fascist system of Vichy France, with some cosmetic changes, naturellement, rather than run the risk that the French might experiment with forms of socialism, as they had done, to the displeasure of the ruling elites in Britain and in the US, in the 1930s under the auspices of a leftist government known as the “Popular Front”. 

At that time, in 1936, the gentlemen in power in Washington and London, in contrast to most “ordinary” American and British people, sympathized with Franco, and proceeded to support him covertly if not overtly, when he waged war against a democratically elected republican government with plans for social and economic reforms. If the landings in Normandy purported to bring freedom to France, as we hear again and again, and defeat fascism in Germany and everywhere in Europe, why did the Americans and the British not follow up their triumph in the spring of 1945 by removing Franco from power in Madrid, as they could have done with the wave of a hand? 

The landings in Normandy, then, were not about freedom for France and crusading against fascist dictatorship.

Their real objective was to allow the Western Allies to compete with the Soviets in an undeclared race to Berlin, a race that, in the summer of 1944, was still very much winnable. And winning that contest would give the Americans and their British partner control over much if not all of Germany and the attendant possibility of doing in there what they had already done in Italy, namely preserving the social-economic status quo even if it meant sheltering fascists – in the case of Germany: Nazis — and philofascists. This was all the more important since US corporations and banks held huge investments in Germany, certain to be lost in case the tandem of Soviets and German antifascists took control. The tale of what happened to Germany cannot be told here, but we all know the result: the Americans got their way in the western reaches of the country, and the Soviets, in the eastern part.

As soon as the Battle of Normandy was concluded victoriously, German resistance melted away in most if not all of the rest of France.

This made it possible to undertake the primordial push into Germany, but also required dealing with the thorny issue of the situation in France. The Americans would have preferred to keep the Vichy-based collaborator government of Marshal Pétain in power, but minus the discredited Pétain, and with a more respectable personality, a French Badoglio, so to speak, at the helm; after all, the Vichy-regime had been good for business, including the business of French subsidiaries of US banks and corporations such as Ford France, which had made lots of money thanks to eager collaboration with the Germans.

Washington had maintained diplomatic relations with Vichy until the landings in North Africa, and had flirted afterwards with Pétainist politicians, high-ranking bureaucrats, and generals who, after Stalingrad, sensing where the wind was coming from, had opportunistically switched to the Allied side. Washington’s preference for Pétainists was determined by two related factors. First, the desire to find French partners who, once hoisted into the saddle of power, could be relied upon to maintain the capitalist status quo in a post-liberation France. Second, their fear that the withdrawal of the Germans and the concomitant collapse of the Vichy regime might cause the Resistance to come to power, a resistance that was mostly working class – just as collaboration had been mostly bourgeois – and very leftist, with the communists as the leading element, and introduce the kind of radical reforms that were very popular in France but abominated as a “red revolution” by American leaders, including president Roosevelt, who were determined to save capitalism in France regardless of the wishes of the French.

As for General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the so-called Free French based in Britain and acknowledged by many inside and outside of France as one of the leaders of the Resistance, he was not a leftist but a conservative personality; but Roosevelt and most other American decision-makers despised him as an obnoxious megalomaniac and shared Vichy’s view that he was a mere front for the communist real leaders of the Resistance. Washington thus refused to recognize de Gaulle and the French provisional government he headed, even though it had become clear to them that their favourite option, putting an ex-Pétainist in power, was inacceptable to the French people.

And so the Americans planned to rule “liberated” France (and other European countries) themselves, at least for the time being, via a military government they controlled but euphemistically called Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT). In Italy, this arrangement had overseen the previously mentioned transition from fascism with to fascism without Mussolini, and the idea was clearly to achieve a similar result in France, Vichyism sans Vichy. However, with respect to France the idea of turning the country a de facto American protectorate, was not yet implemented at the time of the landings. 

In the meantime, de Gaulle was slowly becoming acceptable to Washington on account of three factors. First, the Americans finally realized that the French people would not tolerate that the Vichy system would be maintained in any way, shape, or form. Conversely, they had come to understand that de Gaulle was popular, enjoyed the support of a considerable segment of the Resistance, and had the potential to eclipse the communists as its leader. Second, de Gaulle appeased FDR by committing himself to pursue a political course that would in no way threaten the economic status quo. To guarantee his commitment, countless former Vichyites who enjoyed the favours of the Americans were integrated into his Free French movement and even given leading positions. Gaullism thus became respectable and de Gaulle himself morphed into “a right-wing leader,” acceptable to French upper class, which dreaded a takeover by the “red” Resistance, and to the Americans, poised to succeed the Germans as partners and protectors of that elite.

By the end of August 1944, when the Battle of Normandy was won, an uprising of the predominantly communist Parisian Resistance clearly purported not to prevent the Germans from burning down the city, as would be suggested in a 1966 Hollywood production, Is Paris Burning?, but to establish a French government that was to be independent of the country’s “Anglo-Saxon” liberators and likely to pursue policies not to their liking.

That forced the Americans to abandon the AMGOT scheme and quickly reach for the card they had hitherto been reluctant to play: de Gaulle.

The general was rushed to the capital, to be presented to the Parisians as the saviour for whom patriotic France had been waiting for four long years. It was arranged for him to strut triumphantly down the Champs Elysees, while the local Resistance leaders were coerced to follow him at a respectful distance, looking like unimportant extras. A little later, on October 23. 1944, Washington certified its admittedly uneasy partnership with de Gaulle by recognizing him as head of the provisional government of the French Republic.

After the Battle of Normandy, then, it was thanks to the Americans that in France de Gaulle, and not the men of the Resistance, could come to power. In contrast to the latter, de Gaulle was a conservative personality, and he collaborated eagerly with Washington to prevent the radical reforms which the Resistance had planned and many if not most Frenchmen, and certainly the working class, had expected and would have welcomed. The country’s capitalist social-economic system was preserved, though its political superstructure was updated: on the ruins of the fascist Vichy regime, a new, comparatively much more democratic system, was erected, to become officially known in 1946 as the “Fourth Republic”. This arrangement provided immense relief to France’s upper class but also served the purposes of the Americans, who were determined to make liberated Europe safe for capitalism, preferably an unfettered, American-style capitalism, with “open doors” for US products and capital – and Uncle Sam very much in control.

De Gaulle did not remain in power long enough – he resigned in January 1946 — to prevent France from being integrated into a US-dominated Western Europe and becoming a vassal of Uncle Sam, exemplified by membership in NATO – a development that was accompanied by the Americanization or “Cocacolonization” of the country.  But  in 1958 de Gaulle made a comeback and obtained wide powers as he arranged for the Fourth Republic to give way to to a more authoritarian, ironically enough an American-style, presidential system, to be baptized “Fifth Republic”. He subsequently proved to be a thorn in the side of Uncle Sam, for example by banning American army bases (and NATO headquarters) from France and, more in general, failing to be a pliant vassal like Konrad Adenauer in West Germany. (It is for that reason that the CIA very likely orchestrated some of the coups and assassination attempts directed against the regime and/or person of the recalcitrant French president.) 

De Gaulle also never forgave the Americans (and the British) for treating France like a “doormat” (paillasson), as he once put, at the time of the landings in Normandy. In 1964, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Overlord, he described the operation as “the prelude to a second occupation of the country”, and he never attended its annual commemoration. Also absent from the annual commemorations, at least during the last decade have been the Russian heirs to the Soviets, whose efforts and sacrifices had made possible not only the landings, but even the final victory against Nazi Germany.

This year, the official reason for Russian representatives being non grata is their country’s “war of aggression” against Ukraine, a kind of excuse that was never invoked to disqualify an American president for similar (and even worse) wars, for example, George W. Bush, who made an appearance in 2014. And what to think of the invitation extended to Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenski?

His government teems with admirers of Stepan Bandera and other Ukrainians who collaborated eagerly with the Nazis, and with neo-Nazis, and Zelenski himself happily and proudly participated when, in September, 2023, the members of Canada’s House of Commons unanimously honoured a former Ukrainian SS-man, Yaroslav Hunka, with a standing ovation in Canada’s Parliament.

The parliamentarians later sheepishly claimed ignorance, but Zelenski certainly knew very well who that man was, and what he stood for, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, should have known or at least have been informed. It is indeed no secret that, at the Nuremberg Trials, the SS in its entirety was declared to have been a criminal organization.

And it also known, especially in Canada, that a SS unit similar to the one of which Hunka was a member, fought against Allied troops in Normandy and committed war crimes there, including the massacre of dozens of Canadian prisoners of war in Ardenne Abbey near Caen.
Justin Trudeau presumably knows Canadian history and is aware of what happened at Ardenne Abbey; he should go there and lay a wreath – and invite Zelensky to come along.


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Overy, Richard. Russia’s War, London, 1997

Pauwels, Jacques R. “The Allies’ Second Front in World War II: Why Were Canadian Troops Sacrificed at Dieppe?”, Global Research, June 03, 2014, https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-allies-second-front-in-world-war-ii-why-were-canadian-troops-sacrificed-at-dieppe/32403.

Pauwels, Jacques R. The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, second edition, Toronto, 2015.

Pauwels, Jacques R. Myths of Modern History: From the French Revolution to the 20th century world wars and the Cold War — new perspectives on key events, Toronto, 2022.

Pauwels, Jacques R. “Americanizing France”, CounterPunch, March 4, 2024, 

“Remembering D-Day: Key facts and figures about epochal World War II invasion”, AP, 
https://apnews.com/article/d-day-invasion-normandy-france-nazis-07094640dd7bb938a23e144cc23f348c#:~:text=A%20total%20of%204%2C414%20Allied,killed%20around%2020%2C000%20French%20civilians.

Rudmin, Floyd. “Secret War Plans and the Malady of American Militarism,” Counterpunch, February 17–19, 2006, https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/02/17/secret-war-plans-and-the-malady-of-american-militarism. 

Stoler, Mark A. Allies in War: Britain and America against the Axis Powers 1940-1945, London, 2005.

“The D-Day Landings Northern France 6 June 1944, Second World War Sixtieth Anniversary, p. 11, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a78d775ed915d07d35b2d91/ww2_dday.pdf..

Ueberschär, Gerd R. “Das Scheitern des ‘Unternehmens Barbarossa’”, in: Gerd R. Ueberschär and Wolfram Wette (eds.), Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion. “Unternehmen Barbarossa” 1941, Frankfurt, 2011, pp.85-122.

​Dear participants and guests of the Plenum!
​
It has long been noted that during periods of events of world-historical importance, time seems to speed up. What in another period lasted for years, in critical, revolutionary conditions fits into weeks and days. Previously familiar foundations are shaking and collapsing. Gilding is falling off the “sacred” statues. The world is changing quickly.

For the average person, this is a time of anarchy and chaos. He always wants to quickly return to his usual routine and often does not understand: the past will not repeat itself. It has sunk into oblivion.

Communists have their own view of the course of events. Armed with historical materialism and dialectics, they see the true causes and “hidden mechanisms” of the historical process. There are no inexplicable zigzags for them. Followers of Marxism-Leninism do not float “at the will of the waves”; they do not wander blindly in the darkness of the unknown. They accurately understand the background of the phenomena.

In the confusion of 1917, when the three-hundred-year-old Romanov monarchy collapsed, only the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, fully “felt the nerve” of the moment. The course of events then gave rise to a variety of parties and movements. And everyone, it would seem, had a historic chance. But it was the Bolsheviks, deeply understanding the needs and aspirations of the popular majority, who came to victory .

Knowing the laws of history, Lenin’s party did not get lost in the extremely compressed events. It is no coincidence that he himself called for treating the revolution as an art and reminded his comrades that “ history will not forgive delays for revolutionaries who could win today (and will certainly win today), risking losing a lot tomorrow, risking losing everything .”

It is no coincidence that, coming from life, the most talented authors felt the passage of time akin to the genius of Lenin . No wonder Gogol compared Russia with a rushing bird or three, and Tyutchev wrote:

Blessed is he who has visited this world
In his fatal moments,
The all-good ones called him,
As a companion to a feast,
He is a spectator of their high spectacles…

A premonition of great changes visited Russian writers and poets at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. And the prophetic lines of Mayakovsky sounded :

Where people’s eyes break short,
the head of the hungry hordes,
in the crown of thorns revolutions
The sixteenth year is coming.

And here are the words of Alexander Blok from the article “ Intellectuals and Revolution ”: “ We, Russians, are living through an era that has few equals in greatness. The artist’s job, the artist’s duty, is to see what is intended, to listen to the music that thunders in the “wind-torn air.” What is the plan? Redo everything. Arrange so that everything becomes new; so that our deceitful, dirty, boring, ugly life becomes a fair, clean, cheerful and beautiful life… This is called revolution .”

Humanity today is on the verge of dramatic changes. Without understanding their causes, dynamics and consequences, it is easy to become a victim of circumstances, or even of the darkest and most evil forces. The task of our party is to give clear guidelines to the working people, answer the most difficult questions and propose solutions, and on this basis – to unite forces in the fight against reaction, fascism and the military threat. To the fight for socialism!

Imperialist crisis and threats to humanity

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , exposing the greedy interior of capitalism, discovered that the contradictions underlying this formation inevitably lead to crises. The Communist Manifesto emphasized: “ Bourgeois relations have become too narrow to accommodate the wealth they have created. – How does the bourgeoisie overcome crises? On the one hand, through the forced destruction of an entire mass of productive forces, on the other hand, through the conquest of new markets and more thorough exploitation of old ones. What, therefore? Because it prepares for more comprehensive and more devastating crises and reduces the means to counter them .”

IN AND. Lenin established that imperialism is the highest and final stage of the bourgeois era . He noted that the internal contradictions of capitalism are intensifying, the process of its “internal decomposition” is reaching its utmost severity and the end is inevitable. But the founder of Bolshevism warned against illusions and pointed out that the general crisis of capitalism would last an entire era.

Lenin warned that capital would cling to power, even at the cost of millions of victims and bloody wars. In March 1918, at the VII emergency congress of the RCP (b), he uttered stern and visionary words. Let’s listen to them: “ Marxists have never forgotten that violence will inevitably accompany the collapse of capitalism on all its scale and the birth of a socialist society. And this violence will be a world-historical period, an entire era of the most diverse wars – imperialist wars, civil wars within the country, the interweaving of both, national wars, the liberation of nationalities crushed by the imperialists, various combinations of imperialist powers… This era is the era of gigantic collapses , massive military violent decisions, crises – it has begun, we see it clearly .”

At this stage, the temporary stabilization of capitalism is already a thing of the past . The destruction of the Soviet Union and the system of socialist countries gave respite to the global oligarchy. At the end of the twentieth century, the bourgeoisie lost a powerful rival, whose successes were recognized even by the enemies of the communists.

“ Can capitalism survive? No, I don’t think so ,” admitted economist and sociologist Joseph Schumpeter . According to him, the development of the capitalist system will inevitably ” create conditions in which it cannot survive and will give way to socialism .” “ You can hate socialism… , ” concluded Schumpeter, “ but still foresee its coming .”

And here is what US President John Kennedy said in 1961 in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper: “ I was in the Soviet Union in 1939, as a student, and I understand that many changes have taken place there and that the standard of living of the people is increasing… The Soviet Union is a powerful military power. It has great nuclear power. It has missiles, planes, a large number of divisions, and other countries are connected with it. No one will ever invade the Soviet Union again. There is no military force that could do this .”

While still a senator, Kennedy admitted in 1958: “ Many of us still find it difficult to believe that the Russians have a better university than ours. We believed that our superior wealth would give our children a better education. But we failed to allocate more than an insignificant share for these purposes – at most 3 percent of our national income, in contrast to the Soviet 10 percent… We were greatly mistaken about Russian intellectual delusions. We were wrong about their supposed ignorance… Our lag in educational achievement comes at a cost .”

It is difficult to imagine that in that situation Western politicians seriously counted on sanctions in the fight against the USSR. It is also clear why NATO members hope for success today. They believe that the economy of our country, which they, their agents and vassals in Russia “ torn to shreds ,” will one day not survive.

Kennedy’s words only confirm the scale of the 1991 disaster. Due to unprecedented betrayal, the development of the USSR was interrupted. Western capital acquired a huge market and sources of raw materials. This gift injected fresh strength into the muscles of capitalism and helped soften the growing contradictions.

The destruction of the Soviet Union was regarded in the West as a triumph . On December 25, 1991, US President George H. W. Bush congratulated the nation on its victory in the Cold War in a Christmas address. A month later, in Congress, he declared: “ Communism is dead… With the help of God, America won the Cold War… The greatest victory over the USSR was won, and at the hands of its internal opposition .” These words resonate with pain in our hearts. But US politicians should have studied Lenin carefully. Then they would understand that it is too early to celebrate.

Firstly, the “death of communism” did not happen. Our ideas and our movement are alive . The Communist Party of the Russian Federation celebrated 30 years of its revival . Our comrades include both opposition and ruling communist parties. And together we look confidently into the future.

The secret of the vitality of our ideas is not difficult to reveal. The point is that capitalism has not gone away. With it, exploitation, inequality, poverty, and lack of rights for billions of working people remained. The desire of the masses to correct this injustice is also alive.

Secondly, the destruction of the USSR increased parasitism within the capitalist system . “ Imperialism is a huge accumulation of money capital in a few countries , ” wrote Lenin . He called the consequence the growth of the “rentier layer, i.e. people who live by cutting coupons.” These are persons whose profession is idleness . The export of capital strengthens the isolation of rentiers from production and “ leaves the imprint of parasitism on the entire country, which lives on the exploitation of the labor of several overseas countries and colonies .”

Currently, financial fraud has become global. Entire regions began to suffer from them. Consider, for example, the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998. In 2008, the “bubble” burst on a global scale. Capitalism began to sink faster and faster into the abyss of crisis. Along with economics, it inevitably also covers politics .

In the last century, inter-imperialist contradictions led to two world wars and gave birth to the monster of fascism . Is humanity safe from a repetition of this scenario? Of course no! To be sure, just look around.

Capitalism of the 20s of the 21st century is just as “pregnant” with fascism as in the 20s of the 20th century . The sprouts of inhuman ideology are visible everywhere. This is clearly visible both in the international politics of the leading powers and in their internal life. Far-right movements are gaining strength. The ideology of neo-Nazism is once again receiving patronage at the highest levels of government.

Supporters of extreme right-wing ideas also operate in our country. This is especially dangerous for multinational Russia. Everyone needs to understand well: if anti-Soviet people, Russophobes and outright Vlasovites are nominated for the role of the main fighters against Bandera, nothing good will come of it.

Just like a hundred years ago, only the masses of working people led by communists can block the path to fascism. Today , an effective strategy for defeating the unconditional evil of neo-Nazism is extremely important for us . First of all, it is necessary to clearly indicate what fascism is, where its origins are, what its breeding ground is and how it should be ended .

Makeup for a monster

Dear comrades! On April 22, 2023, at the International Anti-Fascist Forum in Minsk, in the Manifesto for the unification of the peoples of the world, we emphasized: “ Nazism became a direct product of the crisis of capitalism. It grew out of the thirst of big capital to maintain power over the working people at any cost. For their own selfish purposes, the imperialists took the path of supporting the darkest forces. They brought Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and their ideological accomplices to power. From political fringes, the Nazis turned into arbiters of the destinies of many millions of people.

The peoples of the world have no right to forget the experience of fighting fascism… Then fascism turned out to be stronger. This paved the way for the worst war in human history. The final, decisive steps were taken towards the ovens and gas chambers of Buchenwald and Mauthausen, Dachau and Sobibor, Majdanek and Auschwitz .”

For a century now, bourgeois ideologists of various shades have been trying to confuse the issue of fascism and divert attention from the essence of the problem . In the information and educational space of many countries, especially the West, fascism is assessed only as an anomaly and a “tragic dislocation.” Allegedly, the only issue is the defeat of Germany in the First World War and the humiliating conditions of the Versailles Peace. Ideological jugglers explain the persistence of fascism by the machinations of “totalitarian regimes.” According to their mentality, all illiberal systems are related and alien to democracy. Speculation on analogies between fascism and communism is an important part of the West’s propaganda baggage.

We remember well how, in a matter of years, Nazi ideas took hold of millions of minds. The fascists came to power in such dissimilar countries as Germany, Italy, Hungary, Finland, and Spain. How do bourgeois ideologists explain this fact? Back in 1939, the American Philosophical Society held a symposium where it assessed fascism as a totalitarian ideology and “ a revolt against the entire historical civilization of the West .”

Political scientist R. Murstin insisted on the kinship of socialism and fascism. His “argument” is the one-party system in the USSR and the countries of the “brown” bloc. This crafty approach was actively exploited during the Cold War. In 1952, a conference in the United States characterized totalitarian systems as “ closed societies in which everything – from the upbringing of children to the production of products – is controlled from a single center .”

In accordance with the order – to denigrate the Soviet Union – the most unprincipled authors were involved in the case. In 1956,  Zbigniew Brzezinski and Karl Friedrich, in their work “ Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy ,” identified the characteristics of totalitarianism, combining fascism and Soviet socialism.

Karl Popper’s book “ The Open Society and Its Enemies ” also became a reference book for anti-communists . Hiding the premises of fascism, he scholastically deduced the existence of a “closed society.” He indiscriminately included all Nazi and socialist regimes and any societies based on collectivism. Popper called their features the lack of freedom of choice, blind obedience to laws, customs and prohibitions.

Popper called the founders of totalitarianism… Plato, Hegel and Marx . Plato did not please him because he was supposedly “ the first political ideologist who thought in terms of classes .” And Hegel and Marx, in his opinion, substantiated the totalitarianism of the 20th century. Popper proclaimed liberal-bourgeois democracies as “ open societies ”, where reason and freedom reign, and people are aware of their individuality.

Another “guru” of liberalism, Friedrich von Hayek , declared that collectivism and central planning are the “road to slavery.” He declared the differences between collectivism, fascism and communism to be insignificant.

Today this line is being continued. People like US political scientist Tom Nichols call fascism an ideology that elevates the state over the individual, “ worships military power, hates liberal democracy, and wallows in nostalgia and historical grievances .”

All these constructions are propaganda cliches . They do not stand up to any serious scientific criticism.

So, what is attributed to fascism? Tight police control? But the leader in the number of prisoners is the United States.

One party system? There are many countries with such a system. But even where a multi-party system is enshrined in law, one or two parties have dominated for decades. For example, in Japan it is the Liberal Democratic Party, in the USA it is the Republican and Democratic parties.

Suppressing opponents and justifying war? So this is an integral feature of all class-divided societies since ancient times.

After the anti-Soviet coup, Yeltsin’s entourage imposed Western approaches in Russia . They tried to label communists and patriots as red-browns. To substantiate this line, Presidential Decree No. 310 was signed in 1995, ostensibly for the sake of combating “ manifestations of fascism and other forms of political extremism .” Soon a “cut-off” description of the concept of “fascism” appeared, where the emphasis was on asserting the superiority of a certain nation or race, on the denial of democracy, and the suppression of political opponents and dissent.

Pro-Western liberal doctrine has become part of educational programs and many publications. This is exactly how the Encyclopedia of Sociology for 2009 interprets fascism. The unified textbook on the history of Russia for 10th grades in 2023 bypasses the definition of fascism. And in the textbook on general history it is assessed as “ an ideological movement and political movement based on the desire for maximum consolidation of the nation through the complete subordination of society to a dictatorial state .”

The authors of such assessments highlight the political, cultural and other external signs of fascism. But they “lose sight” of the social and economic factors of its emergence. Such manipulations are intended to “put makeup” on the Nazi monster.

The social roots of fascism are not only an “academic” issue. Henry E. Turner, in his book Fascism and Capitalism in Germany , emphasized: “If the widely held belief that fascism is a product of capitalism is true, then such a system cannot be defended . ”

We communists will never agree with those who ignore the key fact: fascism is a creation of big capital and a spokesman for its interests. We are obliged to resolutely expose any attempts to disguise the causes that give rise to Nazi evil. According to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, solidarity on this issue is one of the fundamental conditions for the creation of any alliances and coalitions with the participation of communists.

Fascism is a form of capitalist rule

Nationalism, totalitarian control over society, leaderism and other features of fascist dictatorships are only derivative products, a kind of superstructure over the base. In fact, fascism is a natural result of the development of Western, capitalist society .

This was most succinctly expressed by the report of Georgiy Dimitrov at the VII Congress of the Comintern . It emphasized that in conditions of a sharp aggravation of the general crisis of capitalism and the revolutionary activity of the working masses, fascism launched a broad offensive. Bourgeois circles are increasingly seeking salvation in fascism in order to rob the working people, incite war, attack the Soviet Union, enslave China and prevent revolution.

“Imperialist circles ,” noted G. Dimitrov, “ are trying to shift the entire burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of the working people. For this they need fascism. They are trying to solve the market problem by enslaving weak peoples, increasing colonial oppression and redividing the world through war. For this they need fascism. They strive to get ahead of the growth of the forces of revolution by crushing the revolutionary movement of workers and peasants and a military attack on the Soviet Union – the stronghold of the world proletariat. For this they need fascism .”

The conclusion was drawn: “ Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic and the most imperialist elements of finance capital .”

Thus, fascism became the reaction of the big bourgeoisie to the deepening crisis of capitalism . Saving its system from destruction, capital rejects democracy and turns to terror, reinforcing it with demagoguery. To deceive the working people, fascism uses pseudo-socialist slogans. With the help of nationalism and social demagogy, he mobilizes part of the population in the interests of the exploitative system. Its main mass base is the middle strata of capitalist society.

The populist disguise of fascism was exposed by the French communist writer Henri Barbusse: “ Fascisms differ from each other only in appearance; essentially they are all the same. Their doctrine, which recruits adherents among the youth, the petty bourgeoisie and the church flock, is just the old capitalism, only embellished and re-tinted. Fascism remains and will forever remain just a varnish on disgusting rubbish .”

Fascism became a natural form of development of capitalism at the stage of imperialism . Lenin also emphasized: “ Politically, imperialism is generally a desire for violence and reaction… Democracy corresponds to free competition. Monopoly corresponds to political reaction .”

The higher the concentration of capital, the narrower the ruling class . Power is concentrated in the hands of a handful of representatives of financial capital. The conditions for establishing control over the state and society by aggressive oligarchic groups are being formed.

The transition to imperialism was accompanied by increasing unevenness of economic development . The bourgeoisie of the “belated” countries sought to rely on the support of the state in order to confront the countries of “old capitalism” that created their own colonial empires. The struggle for a “place in the sun” and fear of the labor movement led to the growth of militarism and authoritarian aspirations of the ruling classes. An atmosphere of chauvinistic frenzy was building up. Personnel were recruited for fascist organizations.

The cultural and ideological roots of fascism also grew from the early stages of capitalism. The idea of ​​white supremacy justified colonial conquest, genocide of the indigenous population, and the slave trade. Residents of the colonies were viewed as inferior beings. Human rights did not apply to them.

Thus, the basis for the mass herding of Indian tribes into reservations was the “Doctrine of Discovery” adopted in 1825 by the US Supreme Court. Ownership of land was assigned to those who “discovered” it. For centuries, the Indians who lived there were deprived of this right.

They tried to justify racism. Thomas Carlyle in the essay “ Question of the Black Sea ” complained that “Nigers” are the only “boobs” of colored races that do not die out, faced with a white man. In his opinion, God assigned the fate of blacks to be slaves of those “who were born their masters.” Carlyle angrily called the fighters for the abolition of slavery “unions for the defense of scoundrels.”

The ideologist of British imperialism, S. Rhodes , also used monstrous myths . According to him, “ God wants the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon race ” and he needs to be helped. “ The British are the best race, worthy of world domination ,” he argued.

The British Empire of the 19th century was set as an example for the Germans by Hitler in his book Mein Kampf. The racial doctrine of Nazi Germany was largely based on the works of the Englishman Huston Chamberlain. Goebbels called him “the father of our spirit.”

Capital didn’t just use fascist organizations. He literally nurtured them, taking care of them “from the cradle . ” Since its creation, the German Nazi Party has received generous donations – many times greater than other political forces.

The focus on the reaction was not accidental. Despite the terror, despite the murder of the leaders of the German proletariat Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg , the labor movement in Germany grew. The country experienced the proclamation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, a series of general strikes, and the Hamburg Uprising. Capital responded to the prospect of a proletarian revolution by supporting Nazism .

In 1922, a group of industrialists formed in Bavaria who bet on Hitler. Among them are H. Aust , A. Pietsch , H. Bruckman , von Maffey . Then the funding of the Nazis from abroad begins. The NSDAP received large funds from the United States from Henry Ford . The Nazi leader called Ford his inspiration. His portrait was in Hitler’s Munich residence. In 1938, Ford was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest foreign decoration of the Third Reich.

The list of fascist sponsors grew quickly. It was replenished by magnates von Borsig and F. Thyssen . The Rhine-Westphalian Coal Syndicate began making payments to the Nazis from the sale of every ton of coal. One of the leaders of the concern “I.G. Farbenindustry” W. Kepler in 1928 organized a meeting between Hitler and 650 industrialists in Heidelberg.

Hitler had no prospects without the support of the German magnates F. Thyssen , G. Krupp , J. Schacht. Hundreds of other representatives of the ruling class financed the fascist party and provided it with the support of the monopolies, the generals and the Reichswehr. From the first years of the NSDAP, von Staus, a member of the board of the Deutsche Bank, was among its supporters . The Nazis were supported by major bankers Schacht, von Stein, Fischer, von Schroeder , Reinhart and others.

The British-Dutch oil king G. Deterding also played a sinister role . This rabid anti-communist supported the ultra-right in various countries, including emigrant organizations of Russian White Guards. From 1921, Deterding generously sponsored the Nazis. In 1930, the Fuhrer received a significant amount from the English Lord Rothemere . At the end of 1934, a British bank provided a loan of 750 thousand pounds sterling to the German Reichsbank.

The establishment of Hitler’s power was preceded by his meeting with major tycoons on February 20, 1933. Prominent bankers, heads of the Krupp, Siemens, AEG, I.G. concerns were present. Farbenindustry”. Hitler’s plans to liquidate the remnants of democracy found full support. The Nazis received an additional 3 million marks. Exactly a week later, the Reichstag was set on fire, and political reprisals began.

The fascist dictatorship was established with the favor of the Western powers. Hitler violated the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. He stopped paying reparations and began to expand the war industry. In 1935, the German armed forces were created. Universal conscription is introduced. The ground army reaches 500 thousand people. Hitler begins to expand his “living space.” Germany’s main suppliers during this period were the USA and Britain. They freed Berlin from debt payments, provided loans, and supplied copper ore and other strategic raw materials.

Western firms helped Hitler establish military production . The British concern Vickers was involved in the construction of the German submarine fleet. The creation of the Third Reich Air Force was not without Anglo-American participation. Armor-piercing British shells for naval artillery and other weapons were sold to Berlin. It is no coincidence that the similarity of this situation with modern Western arms supplies to the Nazi-Bandera regime in Ukraine suggests itself .

With the beginning of the global carnage, the gold looted by the Nazis entered the vaults of the Swiss National Bank and was converted there into the currency needed by the Third Reich. Behind the façade of “democratic societies,” the financial oligarchy manipulated the transmission belts of the universal tragedy. The ruins of Warsaw and Kyiv, Minsk and Coventry, Stalingrad and Rotterdam, the death and destruction wreaked by the fascist VAU, the barbaric atrocities of the Nazis, their gas chambers in Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka – the monopolies of the USA and other “democracies” are directly involved in this. In pursuit of profit, trust owners and financial tycoons secretly collaborated with the Reich through shell companies and neutral countries until the end of World War II.

In Italy, the period 1919-1920. called the “red biennium”. An unprecedented strike movement swept the country. Metallurgists, miners, machine builders, railway workers, and textile workers launched a struggle for an 8-hour working day, for improved working conditions and pay. The creation of factory councils and the occupation of enterprise workers began. Farm laborers, sharecroppers, and tenants actively participated in the struggle for land. Under their pressure, in September 1919, the Visokka law transferred part of the lands of large latifundists to peasants and agricultural cooperatives.

The entrepreneurs were angry and found a “strong hand.” Mussolini’s connections with monopolies date back to the First World War . In 1914, he was financed by French and English capital, and the future Duce campaigned for Italy to enter the war on the side of the Entente. It was financed by the Edison, Ansaldo, FIAT groups, the Paroli arms factories, the largest banks and the union of sugar producers.

The fascists’ coming to power in Italy was greeted approvingly in the ruling and business circles of the United States . Italy was allocated more and more loans, turning a blind eye to territorial seizures. In 1925-1928, the United States provided Italy with 22 loans worth $317 million, and even more in 1929. In terms of the volume of direct American investment, Italy has reached fourth place in Europe after Great Britain, Germany and France.

The symbiosis of “liberal democracy” and fascism continued after the end of World War II. The Americans and British saved many Nazi criminals . Many Nazis went into the service of the United States and participated in the creation of NATO. The head of the 12th (intelligence) department of the Wehrmacht General Staff, General R. Gehlen, not only escaped punishment, but also became the creator of the German intelligence service – BND.

The former head of the German Army Group B, Lieutenant General H. Speidel, served as head of the armed forces department of the German Ministry of Defense. He then became commander of NATO’s Allied Land Forces in Central Europe.

General A. Heusinger , responsible for atrocities on the territory of the USSR, rose to the rank of chairman of the NATO military committee.

The Nazis and collaborators were recruited for the information war against the USSR. Radio Liberty announcer Igor Glazenap was the head of the Nazi police in the village of Gremyache, and then rose to the rank of SS officer. Another employee of the Sultan Tarif radio station participated in the execution of the anti-fascist poet Musa Jalil . The editor of Radio Liberty’s European service, Imrich Kruzljak, was a Gestapo employee and head of the propaganda department of the fascist government of Slovakia.

Without recognizing the generic connection with capitalism, it is impossible to give an objective analysis of fascism . The current situation is increasingly favorable to the revival of Nazism. The path is being paved for the strengthening of ultra-right organizations and their conquest of power. The reason is that capitalism has entered its most acute crisis in 100 years. This is caused by two main factors.

First, it is the undermining of Euro-Atlantic hegemony . The West is rapidly losing its position as the only capitalist “center” capable of dictating its will to everyone else. “ The unevenness of economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism ,” Lenin wrote. The economies of a number of non-Western countries are growing confidently. The share of the BRICS states in global GDP at purchasing power parity increased to 35% and exceeded the share of the G7. The contribution of the BRICS countries to global production is even higher – 37%.

China’s economy has overtaken the United States in terms of purchasing power parity . In the next 10 years, it could become the largest in the world in terms of “regular” GDP. In terms of growth rates, China is ahead of the United States. The yuan continues to strengthen.

The situation is changing. More and more countries are not ready to submit to the dictates of Western capital . In their quest for true independence, the peoples of Latin America and Asia are “catching up” with the countries of Africa. The United States and the European Union, especially France, received a slap in the face from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Pro-Western regimes were expelled from these countries and “showed the door” to foreign military contingents.

Millions of people reject imperialism and its bloody crimes . Protests against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people are growing. Countries demand the lifting of the blockade on Cuba and reaffirm the “one China” principle. The West has failed to put together a global front against Russia. The peoples of the world do not want to be pawns in other people’s games and sacrifice their interests.

Secondly, discontent is growing in Western countries themselves . There is also an increase in sympathy for socialism . According to polls, in the US presidential elections, a record number of voters want to vote for “third” candidates unaffiliated with Republicans and Democrats. In the US, the stronghold of capitalism, only 49% of people aged 18 to 34 support the capitalist system. 51% admit to having a positive view of socialism. Almost a third are critical of the institution of private property.

The scale of the strike movement was record-breaking. Last year, there were 470 strikes in the United States with 539 thousand participants. This is 141% more than a year earlier. This is the maximum since the beginning of the century. Recent protests include strikes by teachers in Michigan and Minnesota, bus drivers in Missouri, breweries in Texas, and lumber mills in West Virginia. People demand higher salaries, stable insurance contributions, and a reduction in workload. 

There have not been such numbers of strikes in the UK since the 1980s. In February – April last year, the protests were the largest since they were recorded, that is, since 1931. 

There is nothing surprising about this. Workers respond to capital by taking away their rights and guarantees. In the United States, after the cancellation of “pandemic” benefits, the poverty rate jumped from 7.8 to 12.4%. Every fifth resident of the European Union faces the threat of poverty. The number of poor Britons has increased from 1.5 to 3.8 million in five years. Measures of real inequality in Europe have rolled back eight decades.
Capitalism brings poverty and decay to the whole world . More than 800 million people experience chronic hunger. 282 million of them are teetering on the brink of starvation. The most difficult situation is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Yemen. The connection with capitalism is direct here.

According to Oxfam, half of the global wealth created over the past 10 years has been appropriated by the top 1%. Over the last 3 years, this share has increased to 63%. Almost another third of wealth goes to the next 9% of “lucky” people. As a result, nine-tenths of the Earth’s inhabitants are content with a modest 10% increase in global assets. It is not the pandemic or the “grain crisis”, but capitalism, which breeds inequality, that is the main reason for the steady mass impoverishment.

According to Chinese analysts, over the past year the number of dollar billionaires in the world increased by 167 people. Their total wealth increased by 9%. Billionaires in the financial sector (+10%), consumer goods (+8%), food and beverage (+7%) and real estate (+7%) grew their wealth the most actively.

There is no need to talk about the incredible talents of these people. Unless they are distinguished by their “talent” of immorality. Thus, the richest businessmen – Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk – pay 1% and 3.3% of their income as taxes, respectively. This is the result of the merging of capital and power . 11% of billionaires hold or have competed for political office in the recent past. Donald Trump became the first dollar billionaire as US President. Emmanuel Macron worked as an investment banker for the Rothschild empire. Rishi Sunak is the richest prime minister in British history.

The transformation of big business into a closed caste is becoming more and more obvious. Over the past year, more than half of the increase in the fortunes of billionaires was due to inheritances received.

It is estimated that even a small increase in taxes on the wealth of the super-rich would lift billions of people out of poverty. However, the neoliberal guidelines of the authorities do not allow this to be done . According to the Lancet magazine (USA), at least 100 million people annually join the ranks of the poor due to the insufficient development of public medicine. Less than half of the funds requested for 2023 for the UN World Food Program have been received. Capital and its governments have completely different priorities .

The Brown Wave and the Need to Mobilize the Left

Comrades! The global demand for change is obvious. Humanity is not ready to put up with a system that dooms it to vegetation and degradation and threatens it with nuclear war . Global capital is taking steps to strengthen its power and prevent its destruction.

At the XV Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation we assessed how the bourgeoisie reacts to the crisis. The imperialists are increasing the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the largest financial and economic groups . The power of large monopolies and their influence on the IMF, World Bank, WTO, NATO and other supranational structures is growing. The interests of globalists are promoted by the Davos Forum, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Club and other similar centers. The power of capital is increasingly merging with the institutions of power. The largest companies have at their disposal the growing repressive apparatus of the strongest states. Imperialism intensifies the policy of neocolonialism.

Time has confirmed the analysis of our party congress. Capital combats the falling rate of profit with increased exploitation, increased speculation, and military adventures . The world’s predators are also capable of global military conflict.   The West organized a coup in Ukraine and provoked a bloody conflict in Donbass. The situation in the Asia-Pacific region has become more complicated. The situation in the Middle East has worsened. Hot spots on the African continent are multiplying. Capital is increasingly encouraging neo-fascist methods in both the foreign and domestic policies of bourgeois states.

Contradictions in the world are growing against the background of the split of the Western bourgeoisie into two “factions”: “globalist” and “nationalist”. But in the reanimation of fascism, both of them are dirty. “Globalists” continue to parasitize the ideas of democracy and human rights. But this does not prevent them from supporting neo-Nazis on the “periphery.” Ukraine is clear proof of this.

The second camp of the bourgeoisie speculates on the topic of “trampling traditional values” and actively uses the “image of the enemy.” Immigrants and other “outsiders” are listed as enemies. Characteristic are the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Trump, the Spanish party Vox, Alternative for Germany, the Portuguese Chegi and many others.

Both movements express the interests of financial empires. They are trying to restrain the growth of the labor movement and rely on caveman, rabid anti-communism. In the fight against China, Western elites emphasize that their enemy is the Communist Party. In 2019, US think tanks close to the White House created the Committee on the Present Danger: China . Its participants emphasize: “ There is no hope for coexistence with China as long as the Communist Party is in power .”

Despite the change of administrations, Washington is strengthening its anti-Chinese policy. It is enshrined in the US National Security Strategy. The Western oligarchy considers successes in the development of the PRC to be the main threat to its hegemony . Beijing is accused of almost genocide of the Muslim population, of violating the rights of residents of Hong Kong and Tibet. The AUKUS bloc is being created to encircle China. The situation around Taiwan is escalating. Hostility towards China is being fueled in every possible way in Japan, the Philippines, and other countries. Through economic war they are trying to deprive China of modern technologies.

Trump attacked China directly, imposing sanctions, punitive tariffs and other measures on behalf of the United States. The Biden team has relied on building coalitions. In addition to the AUKUS bloc, a trilateral alliance of the USA – Japan – South Korea is being created. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) received a second wind.

Global capital thinks in terms of domination . Therefore, the US political elite is united in promoting American interests, regardless of party differences. Her interest is visible everywhere, be it the wars in Syria or Yemen, the tragedy of Donbass, the “umbrella revolution” in Hong Kong, conflicts in the Middle East.

Over the past 10 years, Washington has dramatically increased its debt. By the end of 2013, the White House spent $5 billion just to launch Bandera’s project in Ukraine. By starting wars, US strategists hope to resolve accumulated internal problems. Fascism remains a tool in the hands of the American imperialists.

There are more and more signs that the leading capitalist powers are on the verge of establishing right-wing dictatorships . One of the signs is hate speech . The same Trump says in all seriousness that the influx of migrants to the United States is the result of a conspiracy by the Chinese Communist Party and Latin American governments. “ They bring crime and disease. They are rapists. They are poisoning the blood of our country ,” Trump incites and promises the largest deportation in history.

Adherents of left-wing views should also be targeted. The Trump team’s think tank , the Heritage Foundation, has prepared a plan to cleanse government agencies and the education system of “unreliable” individuals. The ex-president himself promises to dissolve the Ministry of Education, which has been “ infiltrated by radical fanatics and Marxists .” He regularly threatens to crack down on communists and socialists.

Trump just vented his heartburn over the Vladimir Putin-Xi Jinping talks in China . In his opinion, this meeting threatens the very existence of the United States.

In Florida, a Republican stronghold, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed three education bills into law in 2021. A course on the “evil” of communism has been introduced into the curriculum. In state schools, it is now impossible to obtain a certificate without course work on the topic “ Victims of Communism Day .” Already this year, Desantis ordered teaching children about the “evil of communism” starting in kindergarten. Recently this gentleman advocated repression against participants in pro-Palestinian protests. He threatened students with expulsion, and teachers with dismissal.

Anticommunism usually goes hand in hand with the whitewashing of fascist dictatorships . The Spanish party Vox advocates the rehabilitation of Franco and organizes rallies in memory of the Blue Division, which fought on the side of Hitler against our country.

The Portuguese Chega increased its representation in the country’s parliament from 12 to 50 seats. It unites fans of the Salazar regime and demands that references to socialism be removed from the country’s Constitution.

The Hungarian authorities are promoting the erection of monuments to the Nazi henchman M. Horthy. Prime Minister V. Orban called him “an exceptional statesman.”

The influence of the right-wing Alternative for Germany is increasing . The neo-fascist National Democratic Party also operates in the country. From time to time there are calls to end the policy of repentance for the crimes of fascism, and not to portray Hitler as an absolute evil.

In Italy, a coalition led by the Brothers of Italy came to power in 2022 . This party grew out of the neo-fascist organization “Italian Social Movement”, created by former figures of the Mussolini regime. The current Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni , also began her career there . Three years ago, the granddaughter of fascist dictator Raquele Mussolini won elections to the Rome city council. And this year, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the fascist salute is not a crime and can be freely used at rallies.

Top officials are becoming more and more bold in declaring their beliefs. Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa proudly admits that he keeps a bust of Mussolini at home and calls “ the ideological racism of the left against Italians ” the worst racism. If earlier, the speaker adds, the left forced people to believe Stalin, today they criticize opponents of immigration and the “Islamic threat.”

Just like a hundred years ago, ultra-right forces act as a “combat unit” of big capital . Most often, as supporters of extreme neoliberal policies, they advocate cutting corporate taxes, eliminating labor rights, and limiting the powers of trade unions.

In the same Italy, the Meloni government, having come to power, began attacks on workers. Thus, according to the pension reform plan, benefits will be available to citizens who have made contributions for at least 41 years.

The solidarity position of the ultra-right in support of Israel’s atrocities is also characteristic . His actions were endorsed by the Hungarian government, Vox, Cega and other forces. Anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic rhetoric is designed to shift attention from the class causes of the crisis to ethnic ones, to divide workers, and to “bring capital and its orders out of harm’s way.”

A kind of review of the forces of the “brown international” was held in Hungary under the guise of the “ International Conference of Conservative Political Actions ”. Almost 500 delegates took part in it. Among them are the leaders of the Dutch Freedom Party, the Spanish Vox, the Belgian Flemish Interest party, the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia, the Polish Law and Justice party and others.

It would be a mistake to assume that the revival of fascism is an exclusively Western phenomenon. Such trends are also typical for other countries. The influence of the far right is growing in Latin America. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro admired the military dictatorship, called blacks and Indians subhuman, and called for the destruction of communists. The head of Argentina, Javier Miley , is following the same path . Rodolfo Barra was appointed as the country’s Attorney General . In his tumultuous youth, he was an activist in a neo-fascist group responsible for attacks and murders. The vice president, Victoria Villarruel , bows to the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, which saved the country from “communist terrorists.” The far-right Republican Party is gaining popularity in Chile. Its founder, Jose Antonio Cast , the son of a Wehrmacht officer who fled to Chile and the brother of a prominent figure in the Pinochet dictatorship, states that now, like half a century ago, there is a struggle “between freedom and communism.”

In India, Hindutva , the movement of Hindu exclusivity , claims to be the state ideology . Its adherents call Islam and Christianity “alien” religions, “brought by invaders,” demanding their eradication. Active anti-Muslim policies are manifested in the demolition of mosques and even physical violence.

One of the ideologists of Hindu nationalism, Vinayak Savarkar, admired Hitler. Similar figures in today’s India are put in the place of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru , who are accused of making concessions to China and “godless communists”. The recent opening of the new Parliament building was timed to coincide with the 140th anniversary of Savarkar’s birth.

Indian nationalists are calling for the restoration of the “great motherland.” This includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chinese Tibet, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nepal and a number of other countries. Anti-Chinese sentiment is fueled. “Ram Navami” – Hindu processions in areas inhabited by adherents of other religions – are accompanied by attacks on temples and clashes.

The 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) noted that by inciting religious contradictions, the ruling class is trying to distract people from the crisis and undermine the solidarity of workers. The congress emphasized: “ The ruling party is consolidating power through nationalist, jingoistic demagoguery and communal polarization. Under this cover, the looting of national wealth, the legalization of crony capitalism, corruption and authoritarianism are taking place .”

A distinctive feature of many growing “poles” is the strengthening of nationalist movements. Often they are clothed in religious form. Often there is a play on patriotic feelings through calls for “restoration of former greatness” and “protection of traditional values.” An image of an enemy is being created within the country and outside its borders.

Behind the screen of the “struggle for the idea of ​​a nation,” the pragmatic motives of the “national” bourgeoisie are often hidden . With the help of nationalism, a number of problems are solved. Firstly, the achievement of greater independence from the “old” capitalist centers is justified. Secondly, a blow is dealt to the comprador part of its own bourgeois elite, which looks to the West. Thirdly, the protest movement is suppressed. Working people are distracted from the fight for their interests by ideological surrogates about the “great future of the nation.” Those who nevertheless dared to stand up for the rights of workers are branded as “traitors to national interests.” “National capital” strives for unlimited influence within the country .

The left is called upon to draw important conclusions. The concept of a multipolar world has given rise to the belief that the weakening of the West will automatically lead to a just world order. Yes, the weakening of US imperial claims gives new opportunities to progressive forces. But a just world will not arise on its own. There is a serious fight ahead for him. Moreover, a multipolar world of warring nationalisms would be fraught with new threats. To build a safe and just world, communist and workers’ parties must strengthen their strength, solidarity and loyalty to principles .

As for globalist capital, its appeal to reaction and neo-fascism has another fundamental reason. This was a consequence of the war he lost on the intellectual front. Today you will not hear from US leaders assessments equal in honesty and depth to Kennedy’s conclusions. The more they concede in the struggle of ideas, the higher their temptation to resolve the issue by force.

All bourgeois concepts of recent times have turned out to be unpromising . Today it is quite obvious that the destruction of the USSR did not mean the “end of history” proclaimed by F. Fukuyama. The “clash of civilizations” that S. Huntington prophesied did not happen . Both bourgeois philosophers disgraced themselves. Russia, which developed for centuries in a common cultural context with Europe, has refused to keep pace with the current West. Together with China, it opposes contenders for world domination.

The BRICS symbolism is especially characteristic here . The countries that formed the basis of the association: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – represent completely different national, cultural and civilizational traditions. But they do not fight in mortal combat, but become increasingly closer in the pursuit of a just world.

Thus, the latest bourgeois concepts that claimed to “explain everything” did not stand the test of time.

The main fault lines of our time lie not along civilizational lines, but along issues of justice . Consequently, in the analysis of the processes and phenomena of the modern world, Marxist-Leninist methodology reaffirms its accuracy and fruitfulness . Other approaches, methods, and methods for assessing the situation have either discredited themselves or can only be used as auxiliary ones.

Some bourgeois concepts even predict outright degradation for humanity. Thus, the idea of ​​the evolution of humanity with the transition to the “New Middle Ages” was put forward. These ideas gained currency with the publication of Roberto Vacchi’s essay ” The Near Medieval Future ” in 1973 . The debate was supported by Umberto Eco with his essay “ The Middle Ages have already begun” and John Nicholas Gray in his work “ Wake of the Enlightenment ”.

For the world oligarchy, it is obvious that the transition to the “New Middle Ages” involves a sharp reduction in the number of humanity. Specific options and tools for such a transition are discussed. The characteristic features of this doctrine are cave nationalism, anti-communism and anti-Sovietism.

In the late 1980s, Jacques Attali’s book ” The New Nomads ” was published. In it, “ordinary citizens of the world” were asked to turn into biomass, roaming the Earth in search of somewhere more satisfying. At the same time, words about the “golden billion” were heard. The United States was actually given the right to “punish and pardon” the inhabitants of the planet, to impose its values ​​and way of life on them.

From such ideas there remains half a step to a new separation of people with the identification of a mass of “subhumans” . And this has always served as a justification for terror, torture, massacres and monstrous experiments. And today we already see the genocide of the Palestinians, US biological laboratories around the world, and the unwillingness of Western governments to support the poorest countries during periods of mass epidemics.

We also see how Bandera’s trash declares the residents of Donbass subhuman. How do Western politicians respond to this? Firstly, they actively support this Nazi regime. Secondly, they say that the genocide of Russians in Donbass “is funny.” And, thirdly, they themselves are ready to participate in the “cancellation” of Russian culture.
Strengthen the front of anti-fascist forces in Russia

After the events in New York on September 11, 2001, a lot of speculation arose on topics about global racial, ethnic, religious confrontation, about the beginning of the “battle of civilizations.” However, even then, based on the principles of analysis of our party, in the book “ Globalization and the Fate of Humanity ” it was possible to identify and show that all this is just a smoke screen. It is used by the creators of the “new world order” to achieve the following goals :

– To achieve the alignment of the world into a “pyramid of subordination.” At the top will be the United States, next to it will be its allies, and at the bottom will be the states of the “third world.” Russia, Ukraine, the republics of Transcaucasia, Central Asia and other post-Soviet countries will also vegetate there.

– Create a supranational power structure subordinate to the United States . A government that is essentially dictatorial and hostile to billions of people on the planet.

– Establish control over the world’s sources of energy and raw materials. Subjugate the financial system and thereby take control of the entire economy of the planet.

– Carry out military defeat of countries trying to defend their national-state interests . Deal with leaders who oppose American hegemony.

– Tightly control information flows . Impose your system of values ​​on the world. Suppress all dissidents under the pretext of classifying them as terrorists.

– Completely and completely block Russia as a force capable of resisting such plans . To do this, including through the military presence of NATO on the territory of the former republics of the USSR. 

At the same time, the conclusion was made: “ Imperialist globalization is a struggle for enslavement, division and redistribution of the world and its resources. This is the struggle of united imperialism against the world “periphery”, the struggle of various imperialist groups among themselves.”

More than 20 years have passed. The correctness of those assessments has been confirmed. Capitalism is degrading and bringing rot in everything: in the economy, in social life, in culture and ideology. Any mimicry of imperialism is not capable of changing its essence . The division of the world along the axis “rich North – poor South” for some time weakened the conflict between proletarians and exploiters within Western countries. But, having learned to partially extinguish contradictions at the national level, capitalism only gives them a global character.

The delay in the transition to socialism in individual countries brings socialist changes on a global scale closer. What is happening is not a smoothing out of the contradictions of monopoly capitalism, but their globalization and aggravation at the planetary level.

Global trends are also manifesting themselves in Russia. We are obliged to take the strengthening of right-wing tendencies in our country very seriously . These are not random incidents or the machinations of individuals, but a deep pattern in the development of capitalism. The interests of the bourgeois class make themselves felt.
Firstly, part of Russian capital strives for autonomy from the West and wants to occupy a global “niche” in the form of its own zone of influence.

Secondly, the fear of leftist, pro-Soviet sentiments in Russian society is taking its toll. They prevent home-grown capital from establishing a “classical” system of exploitation in our country and completely removing all the social gains of the Soviet era.

Thirdly, the weakness of the raw materials model of Russian capitalism forces the ruling class to actively maneuver, pursuing a policy of Bonapartism. However, he would like to “simplify” the situation. He would be happy to replace the methods of political manipulation with harsh administrative and police control. 

The opportunities for bourgeois circles to parasitize the Soviet era are limited . Yes, they have learned well to separate form from content and speculate on the Great Victory, the conquest of space and other victories. But, emasculating their essence, they persistently “forget” that these victories were guaranteed by socialism and Soviet power. However, even the emasculated truth hits oligarchic circles. On the one hand, people compare the past era with the current one – and the result is not in favor of the latter. On the other hand, deliberate attempts to “forget” or denigrate the role of socialism, communists, Lenin and Stalin displease true patriots.

The reasons for the ambivalence towards the Soviet era lie in the class nature of power . Hence the drapery of the Lenin Mausoleum, the Yeltsin Center, and the monuments to the Reds and Kolchaks. The roots must be sought in the vitality of the legacy of the “dashing nineties,” with which our party waged and is waging a firm and consistent struggle. 

In August 2006, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation issued a Memorandum “On the tasks of the struggle against imperialism and the need for international condemnation of its crimes.” This was our response to the reactionaries in PACE and the Council of Europe, who fiercely promoted the idea of ​​condemning “totalitarian regimes.” Thus, they are trying to equalize the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Frankly speaking, not all Russian parties acted from principled positions at that time.

Moreover, even after the bombing of Yugoslavia by the United States and its satellites, our country was compulsively drawn into the Russia-NATO partnership . This resulted in attempts to conduct joint exercises in the Nizhny Novgorod region and create a NATO air base near Ulyanovsk. The active protest of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and our allies put an end to these dangerous plans.

Attempts to harness Russia to the chariot of the American military were coupled with strange initiatives of the “party in power.” We had to launch a fight against the attempts of United Russia member Sigutkin to reshape the Victory Banner, to “sully” the hammer and sickle. It took several years to return Victory Day over militaristic Japan to the number of holidays and memorial dates . Only now is the situation with teaching aids beginning to improve. But at the round table in the State Duma, we proved that the unified history textbook needs to be further improved.

There are enough people in ruling circles who want to free themselves from the need to flirt with the Soviet past . They are looking for other sources for their legitimation. For these purposes they are trying to adapt the tsarist era, the White Guard and the ideas of such authors as Ilyin.

We communists insist: this is the path to capitulation, the path to a dead end, to the destruction of the country from within . Ultimately, tsarist Russia collapsed due to social contradictions and under the weight of a war for the interests of foreign capital. Taking it as a model means ignoring the consequences of subordinating the country to foreign capital, justifying the split between the government and the people, and agreeing with the prospect of total decay and ultimate destruction.

In this regard, we confirm the importance of the program position of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation: the patriotic tasks of strengthening Russia and the socialist prospects of the country coincide.

We insist: praising the White Army means approving the collusion of its generals with foreign interventionists. To proclaim Ilyin, Shmelev and Solzhenitsyn as “teachers of the nation” means to justify the forces of national betrayal. All this together means a betrayal of the centuries-old path of our people. The search for the advanced part of Russian society has always been accompanied by a thirst for truth and justice. It is enough to remember these people: Radishchev and Novikov, Pushkin and Pushchin, Herzen and Ogarev, Belinsky and Chernyshevsky, Petrashevsky and Tyutchev, Turgenev and Nekrasov, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Gorky and Mayakovsky, Blok and Yesenin . We consider any attempts to replace the indigenous people’s democratic tradition with concepts alien to it as vicious.

It is an unworthy occupation to turn into gurus people who, in their hatred of the working people, who threw off the yoke of the tsar, landowners and capitalists, turned to fascism. This connection was not at all accidental.

In 1931, in Harbin, white emigrants formed the All-Russian Fascist Party. Its branches were created in Europe, Latin America, the USA, and Canada. The party was distinguished by ardent anti-communism, admiration for the fascists and cooperation with their dictatorships to overthrow Soviet power. Party leader K. Rodzaevsky praised Mussolini and Hitler and proclaimed that Russia should become the next stronghold of fascism.

It was the largest organization of the “Russian diaspora”. Since 1936, she tried to organize subversive actions in the USSR. The head of the German branch of the party, S. Ivanov, established close contacts with the Abwehr. At the beginning of the war, he was sent to Soviet territory, where, with other emigrants, he formed the “Russian National People’s Army” from prisoners of war, the predecessor of the Vlasov ROA.

The most famous ideologist of Russian fascism was Ivan Ilyin . He was delighted with the coming to power of the fascists in Italy, and then in Germany. In May 1933, in the article “ National Socialism. New spirit ,” he wrote: “ What is happening in Germany is a huge political and social revolution… What did Hitler do? He stopped the process of Bolshevisation in Germany and thereby rendered the greatest service to all of Europe… While Mussolini leads Italy, and Hitler leads Germany, European culture is given a reprieve… ” Even after the defeat of the Nazis, Ilyin declared that fascism was right, and suffered a temporary defeat due to “mistakes.”

The popularization of this figure in Russia follows the same patterns as the rehabilitation of Bandera and his accomplices in Ukraine. They were also declared “fighters for Ukrainian independence” and “Ukrainian spirit.” It was also said that they fought both Hitler and the Soviets.

To whitewash Ilyin, they use the fact that in 1938 he left Germany for Switzerland. Yes, he left, but did not change his views. He continued his pro-Nazi and anti-communist journalistic activities. Despite this, a monument to Ilyin was unveiled in Yekaterinburg, and a memorial plaque was unveiled on the building of Moscow State University. Since 2013, international “Ilyinsky Readings” have been held. The Ilyin Higher Political School was created at the Russian State University for the Humanities. There are, it seems, those who are ready to push the idea of ​​national capitalism into Russian society .

The policies of the Russian authorities often duplicate approaches already worked out by the right-wing forces of the West. To protect the interests of capital, it is customary to use the image of an enemy. Today, the “collective West” acts as an external threat, and, of course, there is every reason for this. Following this, other, more controversial topics appear. Circles around the government are promoting the theme of “bad migrants,” focusing on their reluctance to assimilate. At the same time, they are silent about the fact that Russian capital and criminal circles benefit from uncontrolled migration. The lack of rights of such a workforce makes it possible to reduce wages for both foreign and Russian workers. The lack of stable employment creates a breeding ground for the activities of criminal groups. An effective system for integrating migrants into the Russian cultural space has not been created.

The next contender for the image of the internal enemy is the left forces. Considering the strong pro-Soviet sentiments of citizens, the authorities do not dare to act “impudently”. But step by step they are trying to form a negative image of communists. This is the answer to the question of why the authorities need the “Yeltsin Center”, the glorification of Ilyin, monuments to Krasnov and Kolchak and other “oddities”.

The best response to attempts to distort our ideas and our political line is to actively work to achieve the program objectives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The most important direction of our activity is the unification of anti-fascist forces in the fight against imperialism, reaction and the military threat.

Party experience: know, be proud, spread

Dear comrades! An important condition for the formation of a firm anti-fascist position is properly structured educational, educational, civil and patriotic work . Many branches of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation are actively involved in this great cause.

Our party has always and at all levels strongly condemned attempts to remove educational tasks from educational programs. We resolutely opposed attempts to replace the education of citizenship and patriotism, morality and high aesthetic feelings with the education of a qualified consumer.

The open battle with neo-fascism did not cancel, but in a new way launched the battle for the minds and souls of people . Despite the patriotic oaths that have become fashionable at all levels of government, truly patriotic politics are still far away. This requires us to continue the struggle, promoting in every possible way the growth of civic consciousness. Our comrades on the ground are multiplying the ideological and moral values ​​that are so necessary for the people to win the battle against neo-Nazism.

The key condition for the formation of strong anti-fascist views is the fight against anti-Sovietism. A special part of this patriotic work is preserving the memory of the Great Patriotic War, exposing distortions of history, and memorial activities.

Countering the historical falsifications of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, our youth and women’s movements held many seminars, exhibitions, round tables, scientific and practical conferences. They were dedicated to the socialist revolution, V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin, the fighters for Soviet power, people’s heroism during the years of the battle with fascism, the cosmic triumph of the USSR, our glorious Komsomol members and pioneers.

It became a matter of honor for us to revive the symbols of the Soviet era, destroyed by the Bandera regime in the Donbass , Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. With the active participation of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation committees, more than 20 monuments to V.I. were restored . Lenin. Such work was carried out in Genichesk, Melitopol, Lisichansk, Melov and other settlements liberated from the armed forces of the Kiev junta. These efforts became an important part of the long-term struggle of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for recognition of the outstanding role of V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin in the history of our Fatherland .

Communists and Komsomol members of Moscow and the Moscow region cooperate with the Gorki Leninskie Museum-Reserve, holding clean-up days, conferences and meetings. Cooperation with Lenin museums is carried out in Ulyanovsk, Kazan, Samara . Students of the Center for Political Studies get acquainted with the exhibition of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War on Poklonnaya Hill.

Together with us, more and more people are in favor of returning the name Stalingrad to the legendary citadel on the Volga. The leading role in the public committee of the Volgograd region is played by members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and allies of our party. The Lenin Komsomol faction in the youth parliament at the Legislative Assembly of the Kirov Region took the initiative to name one of the streets of Kirov Stalingradskaya. The idea received widespread support. The City Duma is working on it. It is extremely important to support this work everywhere.

In the Nizhny Novgorod region, on the territory of the urban district of Bor, a monument to I.V. Stalin, work is underway to create a cultural and educational “Stalin Center”. A foundation has been established in Vladimir whose task is to protect the memory of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and raise funds for the creation of a memorial to him. A bust of the Generalissimo was unveiled to Stalin in the courtyard of the museum in Rovny, Saratov region. Communist deputies initiated the restoration of the monument to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in Saratov .

The subject of constant concern for our comrades is memorial sites associated with the history of the Great Patriotic War. In North Ossetia-Alania, in honor of the 80th anniversary of the end of the battle for the Caucasus near the village of Elkhotovo, the republican committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation opened the “Walk of Fame” of 12 busts of Heroes of the Soviet Union.

As part of the patriotic project “Bow to the soldiers of the Great Victory!” Party members of Kalmykia, in places of fierce battles, installed granite slabs with the names of more than 2.5 thousand Soviet soldiers. 

In just the last two years, the forces of communists and supporters of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation have created, restored and reconstructed more than 200 monuments, memorials and mass graves .  

We continue to pay special attention to exposing the falsifications of the Soviet past, revealing the inadmissibility of attempts to glorify traitors and renegades. In the Penza and Samara regions there is a struggle to eliminate monuments and memorial signs to the White Czechs. One of the results of our struggle was that the Czech authorities stopped funding the program to install monuments in Russia. A memorial plaque to those killed during the White Czech rebellion has been restored in Penza.

At the initiative of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the public of Irkutsk demands that the monument to the “hangman” Kolchak be removed from the city. Communists and Komsomol members of the Rostov region are seeking the demolition of the statue of the Nazi henchman Krasnov in the village of Elanskaya. Efforts to dismantle the bust of General Wrangel, unveiled on the territory of the cadet school of the Don Technical University, were crowned with success.

As part of the “Save the Soviet” campaign, Leningrad Komsomol members defended the names of Soviet streets in the city center. Our young comrades held pickets at the embassies of the Baltic countries against the distortion of the role of the Soviet Union in World War II. Komsomol members do a lot of work to preserve memorable places. Today we thank everyone who cares for the graves of fighters for Soviet power and defenders of the socialist Fatherland. It should be noted here the work of Komsomol members of Moscow, Khakassia, Leningrad region, Belgorod, Bryansk, Ivanovo, Tula, Naberezhnye Chelny.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a party of patriots, a party of irreconcilable struggle against neo-Nazism and Banderaism. In order to form public opinion, round tables, conferences, meetings, and joint events with veterans, defense sports, local history, and search public organizations are held. Among them: “Books for rural libraries” ( Udmurt Republic), “Grandchildren of the Winners” ( Belgorod region), “Feat of the people” and “First thing – airplanes” ( Voronezh region ) , “Timur and his team: XXI century” ( Kursk region), “Living Voice of Victory” ( St. Petersburg ), “The City Speaks of Heroes” ( Sevastopol ) and others. This work is of particular importance for the education of the younger generation.

The projects “ Banner of Our Victory ” and “ Young Heroes of the Fatherland ” allow Komsomol members to work in schools. The branches of the Leningrad, Sevastopol, Omsk and Mordovia Komsomol of the Russian Federation pay great attention to the search movement . In Sevastopol, Komsomol members created a primary branch under DOSAAF, military-historical games “ Legacy of the Winners ” are held, and work is underway to preserve the DOSAAF airfield. In Samara on November 7, Komsomol members take part in a reconstruction parade. In Kursk, on the occasion of the anniversary of Arkady Gaidar, the re-creation of the Timur movement was launched.

New threats facing the people of Russia increase the role and responsibility of the people’s teacher. For more than 30 years, the search association “Shield” in the Kostroma region has been led by a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Valery Nikolaevich Chigorev . His pedagogical talent and extensive experience allowed him to form a squad of cabin boys from the students of the Peter and Paul School, closely interacting with the crew of the Northern Fleet submarine “Kostroma” .

In the Dyullyukinsky secondary school of the Verkhnevilyuysky ulus, under the leadership of a party veteran, honored teacher of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), reserve lieutenant colonel Vladimir Nikolaevich Nikolaev, a parachute club has been operating for students in grades 10-11 for more than a quarter of a century . The guys take prizes at competitions in military applied sports.

Honorary citizen of the Chusovsky municipal district of the Perm Territory, first secretary of the district committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Mikhail Venediktovich Anisimov led the development of the target Program “Patriotic education of the population for 2021 – 2025” . Its military-patriotic events involved more than 4 thousand people.

Communists are fighters on the political front. Each of us is called to live and work in such a way that we have the moral right to say to others: “Do as I do.” In the context of the aggression of the NATO military against Russia, mass patriotic work with citizens requires a systematic, comprehensive approach. A good example here is set by communist governors A.E. Klychkov, V.O. Konovalov, A.Yu. Russians. Every family of mobilized soldiers and volunteers, wounded and dead soldiers in the Oryol region was taken under state patronage. In the Ulyanovsk region there is a charitable foundation “For Victory” , which has donated more than three million rubles worth of equipment to the front line. The head of Xakasia participated in the delivery of tens of thousands of New Year’s gifts to Donetsk and Lugansk children.

Taking care of the needs of the front is the duty of any party leader. We thank everyone who is involved today in the great work of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Headquarters of the protest movement to collect assistance and send convoys of humanitarian aid to Donbass and Novorossiya. With the support of the party, the “ Young Patriot ” center operates in Snegiri, near Moscow. Participants in his health sessions are boys and girls from the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

Communists of the Novosibirsk region held the “Magic Thread” event , during which residents knitted warm socks for soldiers of the Russian Army. The Kaliningrad regional committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation organized a school of tactical medicine, where anyone can learn how to provide first aid. In the building of the Belgorod regional party committee there is a collection point and distribution of humanitarian aid to internally displaced persons.

Wartime mobilizes and unites like no other. More than fifty of our comrades became part of the territorial defense units in the Belgorod region. Their forces formed the fourth defensive line.

Thanks to targeted work, SVO members joined the ranks of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the republics: Karachay-Cherkessia , Komi , Crimea , Mordovia , Tatarstan , Chuvashia and Sakha – Yakutia , in the Kamchatka Territory, in the Voronezh , Kostroma , Novgorod and Ulyanovsk regions. The Omsk communists had an interesting experience . In the ranks of the company of the volunteer battalion, they created the primary department “Sturm 217” .

The moral duty of our party is to perpetuate the memory of communists and Komsomol members who fell in battles with Bandera’s evil spirits. In Sevastopol, a street was named and a memorial plaque was installed to our Komsomol leader Alexander Cheremenov , who was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage. In February – March of this year, an exhibition was held in the Tyumen Regional Duma in memory of a member of our party, war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev .

The formation of strong anti-fascist beliefs, the education of patriotism and citizenship is the constant concern of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and our allies. It is extremely important to consider the development of the Red Tie Pioneer movement as part of this multifaceted work. This year, Pioneer Day on Red Square was again bright and convincing. Our predecessors accumulated rich traditions of the children’s movement. Today they must find their continuation in our affairs and plans.

In harsh times, the importance of civic-patriotic education increases decisively . Enormous problems have been building up here for more than thirty years. They were a direct consequence of the collaborator course of those who seized power in Russia in the early 1990s. Such wounds take a long time to heal. You need to act responsibly and competently and without delay.

On the other hand, you need to understand that wounded national pride can be used by the darkest forces of a revanchist nature. Part of large capital willingly uses them in their own interests. The bourgeoisie can move quickly from jingoistic rhetoric to demagogic calls in the spirit of “destroy the red-browns.” Here we must be extremely vigilant and decisive.

The repainted Western liberals will never forgive us for the fact that it was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation that took a consistently patriotic position . Our very existence serves as a reproach for them, a reminder of how some of them received grants from Soros, others promoted Creder’s textbooks, others destroyed Gogol’s theater, others encouraged the obscenity of gallery owners in the spirit of Gelman, others filled bookstore shelves with the writings of Rezun-Suvorov, Solzhenitsyn and Bykov.

The fight for our country’s right to live and develop, for its great socialist future, is becoming fiercer every day. This situation is not for a few days. We must be fully prepared for this long-term confrontation with the enemy.   

The workers’ weapon is  solidarity

The only consistent and effective force that can resist reaction and stop the monster of fascism are the communists and the masses of working people rallied around them. The 20th century proved this . The 21st century continues to prove this .

More and more examples of success in the fight against reaction are appearing before our eyes. In Brazil, the right-wing government of Bolsonaro was removed from power by the will of the masses. The fight against Miley’s anti-popular reforms in Argentina is unfolding under the leadership of leftist forces. Indian communists are at the forefront of resistance to Hindutva. The Communist Party of Turkey exposes the neo-Ottoman aspirations of Erdogan and his connections with the pro-fascist Gray Wolves. Left forces are actively opposing the “brown wave” in Europe . The communists of China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, and Laos remain an example of loyalty to the cause of socialism.

Meanwhile, in the world of capital, the deepening crisis is spurring the growth of reactionary tendencies, the rollback of democratic norms, and an attack on the rights of the working class. Global capital, led by the ruling circles of the United States, resorts to the support of neo-fascists and radical nationalists in the struggle for the redivision of the world. In a number of countries, the glorification of Nazism reaches the level of state policy. In the struggle against the working people, the bourgeoisie is increasingly using the extreme right. The history of World War II is being rewritten. The crimes of the fascists are hushed up. Their rehabilitation is taking place. Monuments to anti-fascists are being dismantled. The results of the Nuremberg trial of Nazi criminals are ignored.

It is necessary to understand that the importance of the fight against imperialism, neo-fascism and the threat of world war will only increase. And this work goes on every day. The International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties make an important contribution to the unity of left-wing forces .

In October 2023, at the Meeting of Parties in Turkish Izmir, a resolution was adopted “ Stop the spread of fascism, prevent a new tragedy of humanity .” It emphasizes: “ In the twentieth century, the Soviet Union, led by the Communist Party, defeated fascism… In the 21st century, the sworn enemy of the working class, fascism again raised its head and gained access to the levers of power… Fascism becomes one of the main weapons in the hands of the world bourgeoisie in her struggle against the working class .”

The participants of the International Meeting called for united efforts in the fight against reaction, neo-Nazism and militarism. The conclusion is drawn: “ A new era of testing once again requires coordinated action within the framework of a broad anti-fascist front of progressive forces .”

Thus, the conclusions of the International Anti-Fascist Forum , convened on the initiative of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the UPC-CPSU on April 22, 2023 in Minsk, receive support. Representatives from 50 countries took part in it. The Manifesto for the unification of the peoples of the world was adopted . This document deeply argues for the urgent need to unite anti-fascist forces.

The Manifesto states: “ The red flag over the Reichstag in May 1945 is not only a special fact of the past. The meaning and significance of the Great Victory over fascism is directed to the future. They sound an alarm bell, calling to the hearts of new generations. As in the thirties of the last century, the black smoke of military fires is spreading across our planet. It increasingly obscures the horizon. People of good will need unity and courage in their principled struggle.

The situation is extremely alarming. Neocolonialism makes its presence known in Africa and America. The imperialists are heating up the situation in Asia. Blood is being shed amid the roar of cannonade in Europe and other parts of the planet. The grief and suffering of people is increasing… The beast of Nazism has licked its old wounds and is quickly gaining strength. He grew bolder and crawled out of his wolf’s den in search of new victims.

World evil has returned in neoliberal guise. It created a global system of robbery of entire countries and peoples. It has stained itself with aggression against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. Attempts have been made to overthrow legitimate governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Belarus. Sanctions pressure has been deployed against the peoples of Russia and China, Cuba and the DPRK. Military threats and political blackmail are used. On the eve of World War II, Hitler’s stormtroopers were controlled by financial capital. In the 21st century, he also controls the newly-minted Nazis.”

The anti-fascist forum in Minsk recorded: “ The direct support of the United States and its NATO allies elevated the ideology of Nazism to the rank of state ideology in Ukraine. For many years now, Bandera’s ghouls have been ruling the bloody ball in Kyiv, mocking the masses. They turned Ukraine into a concentration camp for dissidents, closed objectionable media, banned opposition activities, and launched reprisals against communists. All those who preserved the ideals of the brotherhood of peoples and loyalty to the Great Victory over fascism were subjected to repression. The Nazis burned people alive in Odessa, blew them up and killed them from around the corner. From year to year, Azov militants with a wolf hook on their chevrons terrorized Donbass . ”

Today we confirm full solidarity with the conclusion of the Minsk forum: “In the fiery years of the Second World War, a great fighting alliance of opponents of fascist barbarity was formed – an alliance of communists and patriots, tyrant fighters and democrats. It was created despite social and ideological differences, and differences in political and religious views. This was the call of the times. The new era of challenges persistently demands the unity of action of all people of good will. Let us unite in the fight against neo-Nazism, reaction and militarism! Long live the united front of progressive forces! Long live the solidarity of workers and peoples in the fight against fascism!

Together with our comrades in the UPC-CPSU, we are ready to initiate the Second International Anti-Fascist Forum . I am sure that the Plenum participants will unanimously support this idea!

We have to use our international connections to ensure that the theme of the fight against neo-fascism is heard everywhere and firmly. We will use our multilateral and bilateral ties for this purpose. The Communist Party faction in the State Duma is called upon to continue its active participation in the preparation and holding of international parliamentary forums, the Russia – Africa and Russia – Latin America forums, and in the work of parliamentary friendship groups. It is important to actively use the possibilities of public diplomacy.

We have reminded more than once: history has proven that the communists were the most consistent and therefore the most successful in the fight against fascism.

In the days of the battle with the Nazi invasion, Mikhail Sholokhov wrote: “ I hate the Nazis hard for everything that they did to my homeland and to me personally… And if love for the homeland is kept in our hearts and will be kept as long as these hearts beat , then we always carry hatred on the tips of our bayonets . ”

Dear comrades! You and I were united by love for the Motherland, pride in the Soviet era, hatred of fascism and war, which capitalism inevitably gives rise to. The willingness to devote his life to the cause of the socialist reconstruction of society is what distinguishes a true communist.

In the name of the right of peoples to follow the path of socialism, our party will continue the work of uniting all people of good will – supporters of a fair life, honest work and social progress!

With deep faith in our rightness, in the cause of Marx-Lenin-Stalin, we move forward and know: socialism will win!

Let us always be firm in our choice!

Good luck to all of us!

New big victories in the struggle for the interests of the working people!

​Author​

Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov has been the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and served as Member of the State Duma since 1993. He is also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe since 1996.

Republished from the Marx Engels Lenin Institute 

​After 76 years of occupation, students from across the Globe have shown their support towards the Palestinian cause during recent months. The agreements, cooperation and public relations with Universities and academic institutions from Israel has been a common factor in the causes towards it, considering the context of imperialism and aggression with direct complicity from the US’ government and the UK after the AlAqsa Flood Operation by Hamas and then continued by other parts of the Armed Resistance in Gaza.
 
Movements from civil society and grassroots organizations have been key in denouncing complicit relations with the genocide itself, considering the decisions made by governments from the Global North have been considerable weak, comparing with the case of Ukraine.
 
On its last report Francesca Albanese, the  “Anatomy of a Genocide” (February 26th, 2024) shown that Israel had killed more than 35.000 people, with a 70% of them being children and women.
 
In response, students from Universities such as California Berkeley, Chicago, Spain Universities and more recently Oxford in an effort made by academics, students and professionals have joined together in order to break relations with Israeli institutions.
 
In the case of Chile, a country with 19 million inhabitants, 1.341.439 students from higher education system, and the largest population of arab-palestine descendants, this situation has gone critical since May 15th, when a group of students camped in the Central Campus of the University of Chile.
 
University of Chile is the most prestigious and oldest institution for higher education. Along with this, students from other institutions such as University of Santiago, Chile have demanded the immediate ceasing of the agreements with Israeli universities.
 
The response from the authorities have consisted of advocating for “academic freedom” and defending possible “options for growing on knowledge” not considering that PACBI, movements from scholars such as SWAP (Scholars Against the War on Palestine) and more recently the work of Maya Wind (2024) has stated that Israeli academic institutions have contributed directly to the apartheid itself.
 
In that sense, Eduardo Asfura, Academic at the University of Santiago states that ‘it is contradictory that, in the first public University from Chile, the response of the authorities (in this case, from the University of Chile), to the mobilization for  Palestine, shows a dissuasive tone rather than a will for dialogue.’
 
In may 24th, the University Council from the University of Chile rejected to suspend agreements with Israeli academic institutions, pointing out that ‘the purpose of the international agreements established between universities and their units is to promote academic exchange, whether through training or research, in order to enhance the quality or impact of their work and contribute to the generation of knowledge networks at a global level’ (https://cooperativa.cl/noticias/mundo/medio-oriente/conflicto-israel-palestina/universidad-de-chile-descarta-eliminar-convenios-con-planteles-israelies/2024-05-24/200232.html).
 
Asfura continues to point out that ‘this will  has been expressed, fundamentally, in two strategies: 1) initial delegitimization of the strategies of the movement itself, through the stigma of ‘violence’ and "intolerance’ and 2) delegitimization of its demands, by questioning the usefulness and meaning of them. In this second case, the argument has been basically the following: ‘To break with Israeli universities is to silence dissident voices and critical voices. If the world did not do it with us during the dictatorship, it would be a mistake for us to do it now with the universities of Israel’. ‘Unlike what happened in Chile during the dictatorship, Israeli academic institutions have not been the of crimes against humanity”. Also in the 9 months of genocide, these university institutions (Israelis) have shown very little initiative for peace, showing that their main virtue is not dissent, but rather complicity’. In that sense, as Israeli academic Maya Wind put it, ‘Israeli universities are a central pillar of Israel’s regime of oppression against the Palestinians’. Something that is ratified not only in scientific, technological and logistical support’.
 
In more general terms, Luna Jadue, member of the Committee in Solidarity for Palestine of the University of Chile says that “I think that the contribution we can make is important, considering that if the Universities show that we are committed with the social problems for nowadays, it will be easier for the people to understand deeply our struggle for the Palestinian liberation and its foundations”.
 
To the opinion of Mauricio Rosales, Coordinator of the Solidarity with Palestine Committee at the University of Santiago de Chile, this movement “is something that is taking a very wide and massive character. This has strengthened the student movement and has been an opportunity to agitate an anti imperialist view, in order to make Universities Free from Apartheid, considering we are not only fighting for breaking the academic agreements but for demanding our national government to suspend all the relations with Israel’.
 
This refers to the government of Gabriel Boric, which, unlike Gustavo Petro or Luis Arce in South America, hasn't cut diplomatic ties with Israel but has preferred to stick to  other formulas such as calling the ambassador and joining the South African demand at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as it been announced on Saturday, on his Public Account  Annual Speech in 1st of June, 2024.
 
In relation to the student movement, lately it has started gaining momentum, with a statement from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Chile announcing the immediate suspension of one local and one global frame agreement. This, derived from protests and activities open to the citizens.
 
As well as in other contexts, this has shown that the higher superior education system is still divided between a conservative élite reluctant to any political change, even if that means complicit relations with institutions with empirical relations with a genocide ongoing, based on military cooperation and legal international defense from the arguments of the Likud. Alongside this, even considering that the Palestinian movement still has an elite-base in Chile, this has been a challenge for being more massive and gaining an anti-imperialist approach, which has started exploring debates between the relation from indigenous peoples and the working class from the Global South and palestinian liberation, proving that solidarity with Palestine is not about ethnicity, nor esthetic, but about struggle of the oppressed around the world.
 
Meanwhile the massive movement from civil society recalls the resistance led all across the globe to the Vietnam war and the mid 20th century’ American imperialism. As in the case of the opposition to imperialism during that time, it didn’t come from State actors, but from the civil society (grassroots and student movements) across the globe.
 
Even with all the war crimes and transgressions of Humanitarian Law and Human Rights by Netanyahu's administration and the support from Biden, Rishi Sunak and the German government, Non State actors still have a power to question the international crimes and impunity from colonialist and imperialist countries and their academic allies.
 
Currently, the student movement has been discussing to project Universities as Apartheid Free Zones (AFZ), going beyond only cutting academic agreements, establishing restorative and reparative processes -also on past practices-, preventing new agreements with institutions linked to genocide.
 
This, understanding that liberal academia only acknowledges knowledge as a means to an end and obscures all the relations of power and impunity subjacent.
 

Authors

Camilo Godoy Pichon is a Chilean sociologist from the University of Chile and MA candidate in International Studies in University of Santiago, Chile. He has worked on topics such as environmental struggles and conflicts in the Global South, in regards to companies or corporations who promote extractivism and ecocide. He has worked with indigenous people, elders, and children from poor towns and areas from his country, along with developing academic work and research on the environmental justice' topic. He is very interested in analyzing how class influences environmental conflicts and other inequalities in South America and specially in neoliberal countries such as Chile. He has published 2 social/political poetry books both in Chile (2019) and Argentina (2022) and another poetry book on political repression during Pinochet's dictatorship, for the case of poor youngsters killed by the police in Southern Santiago in 1973, which will be published in Spain in early 2023.

Catalina Calderón​

​Last week, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown told the NYT that US/NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine is 'inevitable'.
​
This is despite the fact that Biden has said doing so is ruled out because it would lead to WWIII, which would almost definitively lead to nuclear war and the deaths of millions.

The ruling capitalist class is willing to put the world on the precipice of nuclear devastation before admitting that their status as global hegemon is dwindling and that multipolarity is on the rise.

It is willing to loot $95 billion from American taxpayers under the auspices of furthering the war against Russia and China and the genocide against the Palestinians – when in reality most of that money goes back into the pockets of the military industrial complex who our politicians serve.

The world is changing, and those which benefited from the old order are digging their claws onto humanity trying to prevent it from advancing into a higher, more free, equitable, and democratic, mode of life.

The lives of the American people continue to deteriorate as generations of youth are the first in the country's history to have a worst living standard and prospect of life than their parents. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are drowning in debts accumulated for attempting to do something so ludicrous as survive or access basic education.

Today, we are not only wage slaves to the owners of big capital… but indebted to them for our own enslavement.

The country is collapsing. The infrastructure, like popular trust in the media and politicians, is dwindling. We are in the midst of a crisis of legitimacy and empire like we have never experienced before.

José Martí used to say that a lie can last a hundred years, but the truth catches up to it in a second. Well, those seconds have arrived for millions of Americans, for whom the truth has caught up to the lies they’ve been generationally fed. The power of the lies transmitted by the elite and their media has faded. It has wasted itself in repetition and given way to its opposite: the truth, the mortal enemy of our state’s hegemony.

Americans: things DO NOT have to be this way. They are not divinely ordained to be this way. This is a product of a social system – capitalism – that has developed historically and is currently collapsing before our very eyes.

The frail status of our octogenarian leaders encapsulates perfectly the status of the system.

American workers, the American people, DO NOT have sovereignty. We are an occupied people. Our state and the politicians that uphold it are beholden to only one interest – those of the capitalist elite.

Big corporations, banks, and investment firms are in command. Our rulers are servants of the accumulation of their capital. It is a dictatorship of capital that we live under. And it is high time that the yoke of big capital which oppresses us is thrown off.

The supposed representatives of the people are in reality the representatives of the oppressors and exploiters of the people. They represent those who send our brothers and sisters abroad to lose limbs, scar their souls, and sometimes return in caskets, all to murder people whom they had more in common with than the filthy parasites who sent them there, and who profited from their misfortune.

In 1776 we had a revolution because we recognized that our interests and those of the British empires could not co-exist under the same entity. This contradiction burst into a revolution - the first of many more anti-colonial revolutions in the hemisphere.

Then in 1865, through the general strike of the Black proletariat, we overthrew the Southern planter class and its cotton kingdom, whose very existence undermined the democratic ideals of 1776 and placed the nation in a contradictory predicament.

With the overthrow of Reconstruction in 1876, the advancements of our second revolution (1865) are rolled back, and a state of fascism and apartheid is installed in the U.S. South, with state sanctioned lynching being the order of the day.

But this counterrevolution did not break the democratic spirit of American workers, and specifically the superexploited and oppressed black proletariat. For decades the civil rights revolution fought to overthrow the apartheid system imposed in the aftermath of 1876.

Finally in 1964, with the guidance of the brilliant and revolutionary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., legally sanctioned apartheid would be done away with. A new moment in the struggle would present itself, as the de jure lines which segregated our people and working class were lifted.

Now our people are more integrated than ever. They are ready to fight – together – as a united working class.

Dissent amongst their ranks is taking many forms, but they all are in motion against the system that keeps them poor, indebted, and desperate.

The task of communists today is to give this spontaneous and varied dissent some coherence and direction.

This is not imposed on workers from outside. It is much more immanent. It simply clarifies that which they already know implicitly. It makes explicit what is implicit in their consciousness.

This is why, whenever we talk about the Marxist worldview with our coworkers and community members, a frequent response is "wow, this simply puts words onto what I have been feeling for a long time."

The Marxist worldview is a yeast that allows the spontaneous consciousness that is already present in a dissenting working class to rise to the level of socialist class consciousness – to the understanding that they, working people, can change the world, and, that the movement of history tends towards that direction!

It is only this popular unity of working people, led by an American Communist Party, a genuine peoples party, that can Free America, and through this, Free Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, and all other victims of U.S. imperialism!

​Author

Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2024). He has written for dozens of scholarly and popular publications around the world and runs various live-broadcast shows for the Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube. You can subscribe to his Philosophy in Crisis Substack HERE.

As a wrestling coach and athlete living in the Midwest I have plenty of interaction with MAGA supporters. My current wrestling coach, one of the greatest American Wrestlers of all-time, is a Trump supporting MAGA guy who regularly tells me that every single politician on both sides is corrupt, he doesn’t trust the Israeli and Ukrainian Governments, and that it's bullshit that people have to pay money to the banks for housing when banks don’t actually provide anything of substance. My coach wants a political and economic revolution, and because he feels that Donald Trump is the politician who best represents his anti-establishment political leanings, he supports Donald Trump.
      
One might think that as a Communist I would have nothing to talk about with a MAGA supporter, but me and my MAGA coaches and teammates discuss politics frequently, and I openly tell them about my views, oftentimes while rocking my Ivan Drago t-shirt that displays a large hammer and sickle, which one of these teammates told me I NEEDED to buy. When these types of friends ask me for political sources I send them to Jackson Hinkle and Haz Al-Din of the Institute for a Free America, because I know that they will always preach pro-working class and anti imperialist politics without any of the leftist jargon that might be off putting to someone who hasn’t been through four years of liberal arts university courses about intersectionality and become accustomed to the near obsession with liberal identity politics that many leftists have.
      
When I first heard of the MAGA Communism strategy I thought it was a fantastic idea. But after hearing various people I respect say that the strategy was a distraction because tailing a bourgeois politician would get us nowhere, my views changed and I made a video speaking out against the strategy. And this brought me much validation from the liberal online left who was ecstatic to see that I was moving away from the basket of deplorables known as MAGA.

However, now I have watched the strategy in action and I believe in its usefulness, at least for a certain period of time. Two nights ago I spoke at an event coordinated by Jackson Hinkle and Haz Al-Din and I don’t remember them mentioning Trump a single time. Al-Din gave a brilliant speech about the history of European and American political economy and how it has evolved to its current stage today where our entire political and economic system is dominated by a small number of shareholders and banks, and how this differs to Eastern nations like China where socialism and central economic planning has been used to control finance and divert resources towards social ends. Hinkle also gave what I felt was a fantastic and hilarious speech, establishing the connection between US imperialism and the Israeli genocide, calling the US’s undying support for Israel “a costly suicide mission” and saying “we are sending billions to diaper forces.” Hinkle also openly called himself a Communist, advocating for the US to open trade relations with the developing world instead of constantly interfering in their governments, and used a quote from Lenin to make his points, which received a positive reaction from the crowd.

It is clear to me that the purpose of MAGA communism was never to tail Donald Trump around uncritically as recent hit pieces about Hinkle have alleged.(1)The purpose was to reach the working class members of Trump’s base who are discontented with the current political establishment and are desperate for something new. And in doing that they’ve been quite successful. Hinkle has amassed 2.6 million followers on X after being banned from every other major social media platform for repeatedly and unapologetically going against mainstream media narratives. At the event this weekend I met an older lifelong Communist who told me how he brought 15 MAGA people into his Communist organization by focusing on class politics in his conversations with them. Additionally I met dozens of blue collar workers who told me how they’ve used the work of Haz and Hinkle, as well as my organization Midwestern Marx, to push their co-workers towards socialism.

The allegations against Hinkle are endless, he’s a grifter, he’s a fed, he’s a reactionary, he’s a Russian plant. And while I see how people could be suspicious of his meteoric growth, for those who have followed it closely it makes more sense. Hinkle acquired large audiences on multiple social media platforms by posting frequently and going on any large show that would have him. Upon getting banned from all of these social media platforms his fan base would migrate towards X and more attention would be drawn to his account because of the bannings.
      
And while I haven’t agreed with 100% of what Jackson Hinkle has said in the past three years, I do deeply agree with the core of his politics which is anti-imperialist and pro-worker. I can’t help but be excited by someone who accumulates over 2 million followers while openly wearing the title of Marxist Leninist and defending Stalin to the likes of Alex Jones. When I disagree with Hinkle I tell him openly and respectfully, and in the past it has always been a fruitful discussion that allows both of our audiences to learn and refine our rhetoric. And to be honest with you the Jackson Hinkle of today is not the Jackson Hinkle of three years ago, he’s become so much more confident in his positions and refined in his rhetoric when speaking sometimes it's hard to remember that he’s only 24. I would encourage people to avoid the tendency to quickly write others off without giving them the time to grow in their understanding of the world, or without giving them the courtesy of discussing whatever positions you might disagree with.
      
I do not think Communists should be afraid of Jackson Hinkle and Haz Al-Din and I definitely do not think Communists should be afraid of working class MAGA people. It is our duty to advance the struggle of the proletariat regardless of its consciousness at the current moment. If we can speak to the anti-establishment leanings of MAGA workers in order to push them towards supporting socialism then that is an avenue which should be pursued!
      
It was Vladimir Lenin who would send party members to the meetings of the fascist and anti-semetic Black Hundreds peasant groups in order to disrupt them and win people away from their reactionary worldview by teaching them Marxism. If it was worth it for Lenin to reach out to fascistic peasants, surely it is worth it for us to reach out to proletarians who voted for Trump over the butcher of Libya Hillary Clinton and genocide Joe Biden.
      
In my view Hinkle and Al-Din have thoroughly overcome what my colleague Carlos Garrido calls the Purity Fetish (2), which has plagued the American left for decades. The Purity Fetish can be observed by western leftists who see people as static and unchanging entities who can’t change or be reached, which is a belief that is antithetical to Marxist Dialectical Materialism which teaches that the one constant thing in this world is that everything is constantly in flux and subject to change. Much of the Western Left is openly opposed to reaching the Trump’s MAGA base with socialist politics because they see them as too ideologically impure, while viewing themselves as the enlightened leftist who stands above the proletarian Trump supporter because they hold the correct political beliefs. The purity fetish left also falls into the trap of national historical nihilism, viewing America as a settler colonial nation which can never achieve socialism because it is uniquely evil as a country. These leftists fail to see the formation of the American nation which was advanced by the positive aspect of our history which should be celebrated and studied. The revolutionary war, civil war, and civil rights movement, were fought to advance our country forward and place black and white workers on an equal playing field, so that now they might struggle as one against the capitalist ruling class and their corrupt politicians.
      
Hinkle and Al-Din overcome all of these elements that exist within the purity fetish left. They reject national historical nihilism and reach out to working class Americans who are considered impure by much of the Western Left. In the past I have encouraged them to remember that it’s just as important to reach out to workers who vote for Biden (many of whom do so because they believe him to be more supportive of union organizing) as it is to recruit those who vote for Donald Trump. But this is actually one of the reasons why Midwestern Marx has decided to begin working with these two and their Institute for a Free America because their approach is slightly different to ours, but our goals are the same, to advance the class struggle in America and bring an end to US imperialism.

For those who have derided, smeared, and attacked those who want to reach out to working class MAGA folks, or who to those who have been deceived into thinking that Hinkle and Al-Din are reactionary fascists by out of context clips on X, or by straight up fake and doctored posts (which leftists have used to attack Hinkle many times including by the Communist Party USA itself in a now deleted piece) (3) the door will always be open. We will not cancel you like you have canceled so many of us. We will be here building when you decide to overcome the purity fetish and join us in this struggle to create a new and better social system that actually serves the working masses!

​References

1. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/24/2242596/--MAGA-Communism-A-new-flavor-of-crazy-for-the-anti-establishment-nihilist-incel-fringe 
2. Carlos L. Garrido, The Purity Fetish and the crisis of Western Marxism (Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2023).
3. Noah Khrachvik, "A Sad State of Affairs: The Decline of the Communist Party USA." Midwestern Marx Institute (May 10, 2024).

​If a colloquium on early entrepreneurs had been convened in the early 20th century, most participants would have viewed traders as operating on their own, bartering at prices that settled at a market equilibrium established spontaneously in response to fluctuating supply and demand. According to the Austrian economist Carl Menger, money emerged as individuals and merchants involved in barter came to prefer silver and copper as convenient means of payment, stores of value, and standards by which to measure other prices. History does not support this individualistic scenario for how commercial practices developed in the spheres of trade, money and credit, interest, and pricing. Rather than emerging spontaneously among individuals “trucking and bartering,” money, credit, pricing, and investment for the purpose of creating profits, charging interest, creating a property market and even a proto-bond market (for temple prebends) first emerged in the temples and palaces of Sumer and Babylonia.
​
The First Mints Were Temples

From third-millennium Mesopotamia through classical antiquity the minting of precious metal of specified purity was carried out by temples, not private suppliers. The word money derives from Rome’s temple of Juno Moneta, where the city’s coinage was minted in early times. Monetized silver was part of the Near Eastern pricing system developed by large institutions to establish stable ratios for their fiscal account-keeping and forward planning. Major price ratios (including the rate of interest) were administered in round numbers for ease of calculation1.

The Palace Forgave Excessive Debt

Instead of deterring enterprise, these administered prices provided a stable context for it to flourish. The palace estimated a normal return for the fields and other properties it leased out, and left managers to make a profit—or to suffer a loss when the weather was bad or other risks materialized. In such cases shortfalls became debts. However, when the losses became so great as to threaten this system, the palace let the agrarian arrears go, enabling entrepreneurial contractors with the palatial economy (including ale women) to start again with a clean slate. The aim was to keep them in business, not to destroy them.

Flexible Pricing Beyond the Palace

Rather than a conflict existing between the large public institutions administering prices and mercantile enterprise, there was a symbiotic relationship. Mario Liverani2 points out that administered pricing by the temples and palaces vis-à-vis tamkarum merchants engaged in foreign trade “was limited to the starting move and the closing move: trade agents got silver and/or processed materials (that is, mainly metals and textiles) from the central agency and had to bring back after six months or a year the equivalent in exotic products or raw materials. The economic balance between central agency and trade agents could not but be regulated by fixed exchange values. But the merchants’ activity once they left the palace was completely different: They could freely trade, playing on the different prices of the various items in various countries, even using their money in financial activities (such as loans) in the time at their disposal, and making the maximum possible personal profit.”

Mesopotamian Institutions Boosted the Commercial Takeoff

A century ago it was assumed that the state’s economic role could only have taken the form of oppressive taxation and overregulation of markets, and hence would have thwarted commercial enterprise. That is how Michael Rostovtzeff3 depicted the imperial Roman economy stifling the middle class. But A.H.M. Jones4 pointed out that this was how antiquity ended, not how it began. Merchants and entrepreneurs first emerged in conjunction with the temples and palaces of Mesopotamia. Rather than being despotic and economically oppressive, Mesopotamian institutions and religious values sanctioned the commercial takeoff that ended up being thwarted in Greece and Rome. Archaeology has confirmed that “modern” elements of enterprise were present and even dominant already in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC, and that the institutional context was conducive to long-term growth. Commerce expanded and fortunes were made as populations grew and the material conditions of life rose. But what has surprised many observers is how much more successful, fluid, and more stable economic organization was as we move back in time.

Ex Oriente Lux

Growing awareness that the character of gain-seeking became economically predatory has prompted a more sociological view of exchange and property in Greece and Rome (e.g., the French structuralists, Leslie Kurke5 and Sitta von Reden6, and also a more “economic” post-Polanyian view of earlier Mesopotamia and its Near Eastern neighbors. Morris and Manning7 survey how the approach that long segregated Near Eastern from Mediterranean development has been replaced by a more integrated view8,9 in tandem with a pan-regional approach to myth,  religion,10,11 and art works.12 The motto ex oriente lux now is seen to apply to commercial practices as well as to art, culture, and religion.

Individualism Was a Symptom of Westward Decline

For a century, Near Eastern development was deemed to lie outside the Western continuum, which was defined as starting with classical Greece circa 750 BC. But the origins of commercial practices are now seen to date from Mesopotamia’s takeoff two thousand years before classical antiquity. However, what was indeed novel and “fresh” in the Mediterranean lands arose mainly from the fact that the Bronze Age world fell apart in the devastation that occurred circa 1200 BC. The commercial and debt practices that Syrian and Phoenician traders brought to the Aegean and southern Italy around the eighth century BC were adopted in smaller local contexts that lacked the public institutions found throughout the Near East. Trade and usury enriched chieftains much more than occurred in the Near East where temples or other public authority were set corporately apart to mediate the economic surplus, and especially to provide credit. Because the societies of classical antiquity emerged in this non-public and indeed oligarchic context, the idea of Western became synonymous with the private sector and individualism.

References

1. “Das Palastgeschäft in der altbabylonischen Zeit.” In Interdependency of Institutions and Private Entrepreneurs: Proceedings of the Second MOS Symposium (Leiden 1998), ed. A.C.V.M. Bongenaar, 1998, pp.153–83; “Royal Edicts of the Babylonian Period—Structural Background.” In Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael Hudson and Marc Van De Mieroop, 2002, pp. 139–62.
2. “The Near East: The Bronze Age,” The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models, ed. J. G. Manning and Ian Morris, 2005, pp. 53-54.
3. The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 1926.
4. The Later Roman Empire, 284–610: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey, 1964.
5. Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece, 1999.
6. Exchange in Ancient Greece, 1995.
7. The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models, ed. J. G. Manning and Ian Morris, 2005.
8. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II by Fernand Braudel (author) Sian Reynolds (translator), 1972.
9. “Did the Phoenicians Introduce the Idea of Interest to Greece and Italy—and If So, When?”, Greece between East and West, ed. Gunter Kopcke and I. Tokumaru, pp. 128–143.
10. Die orientalisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Literatur by Walter Burkert, 1984.
11. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth by M.L. West, 1997.
12. Greece between East and West: 10th-8th centuries BC by (G.) Kopcke and (I.) Tokumaru, ed., 1992.

​In the apartment of my friends in Baghdad (Iraq), they tell me about how each of them had been impacted by the ugliness of the 2003 U.S.-imposed illegal war on their country. Yusuf and Anisa are both members of the Federation of Journalists of Iraq and both have experience as “stringers” for Western media companies that came to Baghdad amid the war. When I first went to their apartment for dinner in the well-positioned Waziriyah neighborhood, I was struck by the fact that Anisa—whom I had known as a secular person—wore a veil on her face. “I wear this scarf,” Anisa said to me later in the evening, “to hide the scar on my jaw and neck, the scar made by a bullet wound from a U.S. soldier who panicked after an IED [improvised explosive device] went off beside his patrol.”
​
Earlier in the day, Yusuf had taken me around New Baghdad City, where in 2007 an Apache helicopter had killed almost twenty civilians and injured two children. Among the dead were two journalists who worked for Reuters, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. “This is where they were killed,” Yusuf tells me as he points to the square. “And this is where Saleh [Matasher Tomal] parked his minivan to rescue Saeed, who had not yet died. And this is where the Apache shot at the minivan, grievously injuring Saleh’s children, Sajad and Duah.” I was interested in this place because the entire incident was captured on film by the U.S. military and released by Wikileaks as “Collateral Murder.” Julian Assange is in prison largely because he led the team that released this video (he has now received the right to challenge in a UK court his extradition to the United States). The video presented direct evidence of a horrific war crime.

“No one in our neighborhood has been untouched by the violence. We are a society that has been traumatized,” Anisa said to me in the evening. “Take my neighbor for instance. She lost her mother in a bombing and her husband is blind because of another bombing.” The stories fill my notebook. They are endless. Every society that has experienced the kind of warfare faced by the Iraqis, and now by the Palestinians, is deeply scarred. It is hard to recover from such violence.

My Poisoned Land

I am walking near the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam. My friends who are showing me the area point to the fields that surround it and say that this land has been so poisoned by the United States dropping Agent Orange that they do not think food can be produced here for generations. The U.S. dropped at least 74 million liters of chemicals, mostly Agent Orange, on Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, with the focus for many years being this supply line that ran from the north to the south. The spray of these chemicals struck the bodies of at least five million Vietnamese and mutilated the land.

A Vietnamese journalist Trân Tô Nga published Ma terre empoisonnée (My poisoned land) in 2016 as a way to call attention to the atrocity that has continued to impact Vietnam over four decades after the U.S. lost the war. In her book, Trân Tô Nga describes how as a journalist in 1966 she was sprayed by a U.S. Air Force Fairchild C-123 with a strange chemical. She wiped it off and went ahead through the jungle, inhaling the poisons dropped from the sky. When her daughter was born two years later, she died in infancy from the impact of Agent Orange on Trân Tô Nga. “The people from that village over there,” my guides tell me, naming the village, “birth children with severe defects generation after generation.”

Gaza

These memories come back in the context of Gaza. The focus is often on the dead and of the destruction of the landscape. But there are other enduring parts of modern warfare that are hard to calculate. There is the immense sound of war, the noise of bombardment and of cries, the noises that go deep into the consciousness of young children and mark them for their entire lives. There are children in Gaza, for example, who were born in 2006 and are now eighteen, who have seen wars at their birth in 2006, then in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2021, and now, 2023-24. The gaps between these major bombardments have been punctuated by smaller bombardments, as noisy and as deadly.

Then there is the dust. Modern construction uses a range of toxic materials. Indeed, in 1982, the World Health Organization recognized a phenomenon called “sick building syndrome,” which is when a person falls ill due to the toxic material used to construct modern buildings. Imagine that a 2,000-pound MK84 bomb lands on a building and imagine the toxic dust that flies about and lingers both in the air and on the ground. This is precisely what the children of Gaza are now breathing as the Israelis drop hundreds of these deadly bombs on residential neighborhoods. There is now over 37 million tons of debris in Gaza, large sections of it filled with toxic substances.

Every war zone remains dangerous years after ceasefires. In the case of this war on Gaza, even a cessation of hostilities will not end the violence. In early November 2023, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimated that the Israelis had dropped 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, which is the equivalent of two nuclear bombs (although, as they pointed out, Hiroshima sits on 900 square meters of land, whereas Gaza’s total square meters are 360). By the end of April 2024, Israel had dropped over 75,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, which would be the equivalent of six nuclear bombs. The United Nations estimates that it would take 14 years to clear the unexploded ordnance in Gaza. That means until 2038 people will be dying due to this Israeli bombardment.

On the mantle of the modest living room in the apartment of Anisa and Yusuf, there is a small Palestinian flag. Next to it is a small piece of shrapnel that struck and destroyed Yusuf’s left eye. There is nothing else on the mantle.

THE media has been full of claims by the World Bank and by governments that millions of people in the global South have been lifted out of poverty during the last three decades that saw neo-liberal economic policies. The Niti Aayog in a press release earlier this year claimed near zero poverty for India by 2022-23, affecting only 5 per cent of the population. The hard data on nutritional intake show however that hunger has risen greatly over the last three decades, with more than two-thirds of its rural and urban population unable to spend enough to satisfy minimum needs of calorific and protein intake; India’s very low ranking (111 out of 125 countries in 2023) on the global hunger index continues, and while some health indicators have improved, others have worsened.
​
Those who believe the official claims say, ‘how can hunger have increased when poverty has declined?’ The question should be the opposite, namely ‘how can poverty have declined when hunger has increased?’ The information on rise in hunger is direct, based on readily available and verifiable statistics, compared to official poverty estimates that are based on illogical and non-transparent calculation methods, rendering quite spurious the claim of massive poverty decline. The illogical method has the blessings of the World Bank which repeats the spurious claim of poverty decline.

Why is the official method illogical, and the conclusion of poverty decline spurious? Because its method has meant repeatedly under-estimating poverty lines over time, leading to a lowering of the nutritional intake that can be accessed at these poverty lines.The poor have been counted below a standard that itself has been allowed to decline; but for any valid comparison over time, the standard must be held constant. If a school claims great success in lowering over a period of 30 years the proportion of failures among students taking examinations, from say initially 55 per cent of all students failing to only 5 per cent failing, we are hardly likely to believe the claim when we find out that over the same period the pass mark has been quietly lowered from 50 out of 100 in the initial year, to 15 out of 100 by the terminal year. Applying a constant 50 out of 100 pass mark, we find the failure percentage has risen.

Similarly official claims of poverty decline carry no conviction when we see that compared to the official nutrition norms of 2,200 calories rural and 2,100 calories urban actually used to obtain poverty lines in the initial year 1973-4, in a large number of states over the next four decades the energy intake accessible at official poverty lines had declined to 1700 calories or less and protein intake which is highly associated with energy intake has also declined. According to the Tendulkar committee poverty lines (being followed at present by the Niti Aayog) in rural Gujarat in 2011-12 the poverty ratio was 21.9 per cent at its per head monthly poverty line of Rs 932. But we find that energy intake at this level was only 1,670 calories, while obtaining 2,200 calories required spending Rs 2,000 or over double the official poverty line, and 87 per cent of persons fell below this level. Official poverty at 21.9 per cent and real poverty at 87 per cent is no mean order of difference. In rural Punjab, the low 7.71 per cent official poverty ratio was at a sum that gave 1,800 calories daily while the true poverty line at which 2,200 calories could be reached was much higher with 38 per cent of persons falling below it. In 2009 in rural Puducherry the official poverty ratio was near-zero at 0.2 per cent solely because the very low poverty line allowed only 1,040 calories per day—a starvation level, whereas the actually poor unable to reach the 2200 calorie norm, comprised 58 per cent. Here the official poverty line was pitched so low that below it there were no observations, since people were dead. Urban poverty similarly shows high and rising poverty compared to decline in official estimates.

The Niti Aayog’s claim of only 5 per cent in poverty in 2023-24, relies on the 2011 Tendulkar poverty lines price-indexed to 2023-24. Taking the highest consumption spending under the Modified Mixed Recall Period, and using the price index data in the official Fact Sheet, the poverty lines when brought forward to 2023-24, are Rs 57/69 daily per head for rural/urban areas. The food part accounts for Rs 26.6/27 and the non-food part for Rs 30.4/42 rural/urban respectively taking the average shares spent on food and non-food. The food part would have bought 1.3 litres of the cheapest bottled water, with nothing left over for food (the poor do not actually buy bottled water, the example is to illustrate how paltry the food sum is).

To think that minimum non-food daily needs of a person however poor on account of rent, transport, utilities, healthcare, and manufactured goods (leave alone education and recreation) could be met by Rs 30.4 rural to Rs.42 urban per day, requires a degree of disconnect from objective reality that no rational individual can display, only the official estimators seem to be capable of it. Their so-called poverty lines are destitution-cum-starvation lines, with 6.6 per cent of rural and 1.6 per cent of the urban population still somehow surviving at sub-human existence levels, producing the 5 per cent overall average claimed to be in poverty. The true poverty lines at which minimum nutrition could be obtained were at least 2.5 to 3 times higher. In another three years at most, officially ‘zero poverty’ is likely to be claimed, because the official poverty lines would have been further lowered to a level where there will be no survivors. If an examination pass mark reaches zero, there are zero failures.

Far from declining, the share of the actually poor in both rural and urban population has risen noticeably over the last three decades. In 1993-4, the poor comprised 58.5/57 per cent in rural/urban areas since they could not reach nutrition norms of 2200/2100 calories per day, while by 2004-5 the respective rural/urban poverty ratios had risen to 69.5/65 per cent. After a large spike in the drought year 2009-10, there was a decline by 2011-12 to 67/62 per cent.
The 2017-18 nutrition intake data were not released but the intakes can be conservatively approximated (by deflating food spending in the later year to 2011-12 and applying the food cost per unit of nutrients) and this shows a sharp rise in rural poverty to over 80 per cent of the population, while urban poverty remained at about the same level as in 2011-12. The full data for 2023-24 are still to be released but in view of the pandemic-induced economic slowdown and rising unemployment, the true poverty levels are likely to have remained high.

The conceptual muddle that governments and the World Bank have created for themselves, and their resulting false claims of declining poverty, is the outcome of a simple logical mistake. They first correctly defined the poverty lines on the basis of nutrition norms in the initial year, and then for every succeeding year improperly changed the definition, de-linking it from nutrition norms; and they have done this for every country. In 1973-4 in India, the monthly spending per head required to access daily 2200 calories in rural and 2100 calories in urban areas, were Rs 49 and Rs 56.6, giving the respective official poverty ratios of 56.4 per cent rural and 49.2 per cent urban. This definition of the poverty line directly using nutrition norms was never again applied even though the needed current data on nutritional intake, has been available every five years.

Instead these particular 1973 poverty lines were simply updated to later years using price indices as has been explained, without ever asking whether nutrition norms continued to be reached or not. To start thus with one definition of poverty line and quietly switch to another completely different definition means committing a logical fallacy, the fallacy of equivocation. This fallacious method meant that the particular basket of goods and services available and consumed in 1973-4 was held fixed—by now it is 50 years in the past—with only its cost being price-indexed to the present.

In reality however the actually available basket of goods and services has been changing especially rapidly over the last three decades of neo-liberal market-oriented reforms (much more rapidly than the weights assigned to different items in price indices can be changed) because of increased privatisation and market pricing of goods and services. A basket being fixed for 50 years assumes away real trends in poverty, for whether people remain at the same level of poverty, get worse off or get better off, depends crucially on whether and in what ways the initial basket of goods and services is changed. Historically, poverty was reduced greatly or eliminated entirely by State policies in those countries where healthcare, education, and to a large extent housing and utilities were removed from the sphere of market pricing and were instead treated as public goods, using the budget to provide entirely free health care and compulsory free education for children, or only nominal charges were imposed. State-financed construction of affordable low-cost housing with low rents, and nominal charges for public transport and for utilities (water, energy for lighting and cooking), freed up a larger share of the family budget for buying food, manufactured necessities and spending on recreation. Such provision of public goods was not only typical in the socialist countries in Asia and Europe; it was also undertaken in the post-WWII period in almost all the West European capitalist countries.

The converse happened, the available basket of goods and services changed drastically to the detriment of consumers, with the introduction of market-oriented economic reforms in the countries of the global South  because these measures substantially or entirely removed healthcare, education and utilities from the category of public goods and into that of market pricing.  The resulting spike in these charges impacted adversely the income available to the majority of the population for spending on food and manufactured necessities, pushing more people into nutritional stress. Unwise specific policy measures like the 2016 currency de-monetisation, or the impact of the 2021-22 pandemic-induced recession, have aggravated the poverty problem no doubt but are not the basic causes of rising poverty, which long predates these events.

It is not a difficult proposition to substantially reduce poverty through redistributive measures. About one tenth of India’s GDP would need to be devoted to providing adequate food for the population, basic and comprehensive healthcare, compulsory free education, employment guarantee and old age pension; for which additional taxation of 7 per cent of GDP that the rich and super-rich can easily bear, would be needed. Combined with vigorous implementation of the existing National Food Security Act 2013 and the MG National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, genuine large-scale reduction of poverty would result. But an essential precondition for this lies in the realm of concepts that guide empirical work and the inferences based on them: the incorrect measurement of poverty that has been prevalent not only nationally but internationally has to be abjured, and the false claims of poverty reduction replaced by factually and logically correct estimates.

Note: The author’s book ‘Exploring the Poverty Question’ is in press. ​

​Author

Utsa Patnaik 

Originally published: Peoples Democracy

Victory Day In Chicago

On May 12th, a special Victory Day concert was organized in Chicago to celebrate 79 years of victory of fascism in the Second World War. The opening ceremony gave recognition to the historic contributions made by every single constituent republic of the Soviet Union, which stood shoulder-to-shoulder in common struggle; Russian SFSR, Belarusian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Armenian SSR, Georgian SSR, Uzbek SSR, Turkmen SSR, Tajik SSR, Kazakh SSR, Kirghiz SSR, Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Moldavian SSR, & Ukrainian SSR. ​

​The concert’s musical program featured a myriad of classic Soviet songs, both from the WWII period and later productions intended on immortalizing the memory of Soviet victory. These include A Hilltop With No Name (На безымянной высоте), From the Heroes of Yore (От героев былых времен), and, of course, Day of Victory (День победы) among others. 

You can watch the full concert here:

​Therefore, it comes as little surprise that the local Ukrainian nationalist community showed up to protest an event memorializing the Soviet victory over fascism, once they had discovered it on social media. Neither the fact that these Ukrainians were free to participate in what was supposed to be a non-politicized event, nor the historical truth that Ukraine had overwhelmingly fought alongside Russians in WWII, were enough to keep these pawns of US imperialism from making fools of themselves on that day. 

At any rate, the majority of people around the world remember the Soviet Union’s sacrifice in The Great Patriotic War. Every year since 1945, people have paid their respects to victory, they have done so this year, and they will continue to do for as long as the history books stay true to the actual events that make up the Second World War.

Author 

Donald Courter

Republished from the Revolution Report

​The principal question for any socialist movement today, be it in the U.S. or outside, is where it stands on issues of war and peace – what will be its position regarding American imperialism. As the great W. E. B. Dubois had long ago noted, “the government of the United States and the forces in control of government regard peace as dangerous.” The foundation of American society, as it exists under the tyranny of capital, is war. They have built up a grand machinery of lies, pumping out through all mediums the twisted facts and invented realities needed to support their topsy-turvy narrative of world events – and thereby, obtain consent for their crimes. They have slaughtered people and allowed whole populations to face the meat grinder of war to defend the right of accumulation for the owners of big capital – the monopoly-finance capitalist class. To defend the ‘rights’ of those who have pillaged the world for centuries. Those who make a killing out of killing. Who trade in the annihilation of life for profit.
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As everyone knows, wherever there is oppression and immiseration there will be, sooner or later, resistance. This is a universal law of all human societies fractured by class antagonisms. It is this dialectic of class struggles which pushes humanity forward, often producing the births of whole new social systems from the ashes of a previous one. But these moments of societal renewal, where a new class comes into a position of power and creates a world in its own image, are not guaranteed – even if the conditions for producing it are. There is always the possibility, as Marx and Engels had long ago noted, of a general societal dissolution. To put it in terms fitting with the contradictions of the capitalist mode of life, it isn’t only socialism which stands as a possibility within the embryo of capitalism, equally capable of actualizing itself is, as Rosa Luxemburg long ago noted, barbarism.

The human element, what in traditional communist literature is called the subjective factor or the subjective conditions, are indispensable. It does not matter how bad things get, how clearly revolutionary the objective conditions are, without the subjective factor all is nil. It is the organized masses, led by the most conscious within their ranks, that make, out of the objectively revolutionary conditions, the revolutions.

For Lenin and the communist tradition, objectively revolutionary conditions require the presence of a few key factors: 1- the worsening of the masses’ living conditions, 2- their inability to go on in the old way, 3- their willingness to act (and not just passively accept dissatisfaction), and 4- a crisis in the ruling class itself, where even they cannot continue on in the old way. These objective conditions are present, and intensifying daily, in American society. I chronicle them in detail in my book, The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism.

We are faced with the first generations in American history to live lives worst than their parents. Precarity has become a general reality for working people, the majority of whom are a lost paycheck away from joining the 600 thousand homeless wandering around in a country with 33 times more empty homes than homeless people. Debt slavery has also become, in our highly financialized capitalism, a generalized reality drowning most working-class Americans. Hundreds of thousands die yearly for lacking the financial means to access medical services or overdosing on opioid drugs pushed by the medico-pharmaceutical industrial complex in cahoots with the government, the universities, and NGOs. Social decay is evident as former industrial powerhouse cities are plagued by zombified humans and rusted remains of the industries that once were the basis of decent working-class communities. The American dream has become a joke for working-class people who have more and more come to realize what the comedic-critic George Carlin once said: it’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

But these conditions, although functioning as the prime matter for building a revolutionary movement, are not enough. Why is that? I turn to Lenin, who says that “it is not every revolutionary situation that gives rise to a revolution; revolution arises only out of a situation in which the above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, ‘falls’, if it is not toppled over.”

Like Sisyphus, the left of the last two decades seems condemned to roll the rock up simply to see it fall… rinsing and repeating continuously every few years. Since the protest movement against the invasion of Iraq, to Occupy Wall Street, to the Bernie Movement, to the Black Lives Matter Protests, to the current protests against the Zionist Genocide, the left has seen itself condemned to pull hundreds of thousands, and sometimes even millions, into the streets to express anger with whatever injustice is latched onto, only to then, after a few weeks or months, have everything return to square one.

I genuinely hope that the protest for a permanent ceasefire breaks this trend.

But if we are honest with ourselves, what fruit has borne out of the last two decades of protests? Did the Iraq protests stop the invasion and further destruction of the middle east? Did the occupy wall street protests stop financial speculation and overthrow the 1 percent? Did the Bernie movement win political power and bring with it the much-promised political revolution? Did the BLM protests actually challenge policing, the prison industrial complex, and the system which has made them necessary? The answer is not only No. The answer is, besides not achieving their desired ends, they have often accomplished quite the contrary. Movements such as Bernie’s and BLM, whatever still remains of it, were clearly just absorbed into the liberal, frankly most dominant, wing of the ruling class. They became what I’ve called a controlled form of counter hegemony, presenting a veneer of radicality on what is essentially a bourgeois politics that serves to reinforce the status quo with radical sounding language.
Giving up is, of course, not an option. The necessity for struggle is in the air. What do we do then?

I think we must start with being open to self-critique. Far too often even the attempt at doing so will receive backlash from those who are more comfortable with continuing the failures. Marxism is to dogma as water is to oil. If one is present the other cannot be, or at least not for long. If the tactics of the past have not worked, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board and ask: why have the working masses not been won over to our side? Why have all the movements we’ve led this century ended in disappointment? It is okay to fail, but what is insane is to continue to fail in the same way while expecting a different outcome.

When questions such as these are tackled by the dominant left, the blame is almost always placed upon working people. Working people are not enlightened enough, too brute to realize how bourgeois ideology manipulates them, etc. While components of the narrative are true, the question is, so what? What is the point of communists if not precisely to piers through that, to win the struggle for the hearts and minds of the people – to rearticulate the rational kernels of the spontaneous common sense they’ve developed within the bourgeois order towards socialism, either producing active militants in the process or the sympathetic mass which it leads. In my view, the chunk of the blame for our failures lies on the left itself. On its middle-class composition and the purity fetish outlook it operates with.

Therefore, while we find objectively revolutionary conditions in the U.S., we have a deep crisis in the subjective factor, that is, a poverty of revolutionary organizations and their worldviews. Most of the organizations of the socialist left are governed by the professional managerial class, what in the time of Marx and Engels was simply called the intelligentsia. What were supposed to be working-class organizations, vehicles for the conquest of political power by this class, have become centers of petty-bourgeois radicalism, as Gus Hall used to say. This analysis is not new, many theorists have pointed out how, since the late 1970s, along with the State Department's attack on communists and socialists in the labor unions, and its promotion, through programs such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, of a compatible anti-communist left, the working-class left has been destroyed and replaced by middle-class "radical recuperators," as Gabriel Rockhill calls them. The U.S. State Department, as I show in my work, has been effective in creating a "controlled counter-hegemonic left," a left that speaks radically but in substance always allies itself with imperialism.

This is far from a condemnation of intellectuals in general, but the reality is that, as it currently exists in the U.S., the dominance of the professional managerial class within socialist organizations is deeply alienating to workers, who are less concerned with their middle-class moralism than with surviving in a declining society.

On an ideological level, I have shown that this middle-class left suffers from purity fetish, a worldview that makes them relate to the world on the basis of purity as a condition for support. If something doesn't live up to the pure ideas that exist in their heads, it's rejected and condemned. In essence, it is the absence of a dialectical materialist worldview, a flight from a reality governed by movement, contradictions, and interconnectedness, and toward a pure and lofty ideal safe from desecration by the meanness of reality. This purity fetish, I argue in my work, takes three central forms in the United States:

1) Because a bloc of conservative workers are too imperfect or "backward" for the American left, they are considered baskets of deplorables or agents of a "fascist threat." Instead of raising the consciousness of the so-called backward section of the working population, the purity fetish left condemns them, effectively removing about 30-40% of American workers from the possibility of being organized. This is a ridiculous position which divorces socialists from those working in the pressure points of capital. The purity fetish left, therefore, eschews the task of winning over workers irrespective of the ideas they hold. In doing so, they simply sing to the choir, i.e., the most liberal sections of the middle classes that already agree with them on all the social issues they consider themselves to be enlightened on.

2) The second form that the purity fetish takes is a continuation of the way it is generally present in the tradition of Western Marxism, which has always rejected actually existing socialism because it does not live up to the ideal of socialism in their heads. In doing so, they have often become the leftist parrots of empire, failing to recognize how socialism is to be built, that is, how the process of socialist development occurs under the extreme pressures of imperialist hybrid warfare in a world still dominated by global capital. In its acceptance of capitalist myths about socialism, this left acquiesces to the lie that socialism has always failed, and arrogantly posits itself as the first who will make it work. Instead of debunking the McCarthyite lies with which the ruling class has fed the people, this left accepts them.

3) The third form of the purity fetish is the prevalence of what Georgi Dimitrov called national nihilism: the total rejection of our national past because of its impurities. A large part of the American left sees socialism as synonymous with the destruction of America. Bombastic ultra-left slogans dominate the discourse of many of the left-wing organizers, who treat the history of the United States in a metaphysical way, blind to how the country is a totality in motion, pregnant with contradictions, with histories of slavery, genocide, imperialism, but also with histories of abolitionist struggles, workers' struggles, anti-imperialist and socialist struggles. It is a history that produces imperialists and looters, but also produced Dubois, King, Henry Winston, and other champions of the people’s struggle against capital, empire, and racism.

This purity fetish left forgets that socialism does not exist in the abstract, that it must be concretized in the conditions and history of the peoples who have won the struggle for political power. As Dimitrov put it, it must socialist in content and national in form. Socialism, especially in its early stages, must always have the specific characteristics of the history of the people: in China it is called socialism with Chinese characteristics, in Venezuela Bolivarian socialism, in Bolivia it means embedding socialism within the indigenous traditions of communalism.  etc.  Kim Il Sung once wrote “What assets do we have for carrying on the revolution if the history of our people’s struggle is denied.” This is effectively what the national nihilists, rooted in the purity fetish outlook, do.

Their national nihilism, contrary to their intentions, leads them into a liberal tinted American exceptionalism, which holds that while all countries have had to give their socialist content a national form, the U.S., in its supposedly uniquely evil history, is the exception. Like German guilt pride, it is a way of expressing supremacism through guilt.

To put it in philosophical terms, there cannot be – contrary to the tradition of Western philosophy – abstract universals devoid of the specific forms they take in various contexts. On the contrary, as the Hegelian and Marxist traditions (both rooted in dialectical worldviews) maintain, the universal can only be actual when it is concretized through the particular. In other words, if we don't take the rational progressive kernels of our national past and use them to fight for socialism, we will not only be doomed to misinterpret U.S. history, but we will fail, as we have, to connect with our people and successfully develop a socialist struggle in our context.

In every instance, the purity fetish of the middle-class left forbids them not only from properly understanding the world, but from changing it. It is no coincidence that the part of the world in which Marxist theoreticians find everything too impure to support is also the one that has failed, even under the most objectively fertile conditions, to produce a successful and meaningful revolutionary movement.

In short, conditions in the U.S. are objectively revolutionary. But the subjective factor is in deep crisis. Processes of social change cannot succeed if these two conditions are not united. For the U.S. left to succeed, it must re-centralize itself in the working masses and dispel its purity fetish outlook, replacing it with the dialectical materialist worldview – the best working tool and sharpest weapon, as Engels pointed out, that Marxism offers the proletariat. It needs a party of the people guided by this outlook, what has been traditionally called a communist party. Although some might bear that name today and tarnish it with decades of fighting for the liberal wing of the ruling class, the substance of what a communist party stands for, what it provides the class struggle, is indispensable for our advancement. It is the only force that can unite the people against the endless wars of empire that not only lead to the deaths of millions around the world, but also to the immiseration of our people and cities, who live under a state that always has money for war, but never any to invest in the people. Only when the people actually come into a position of power and create a society of, by, and for working people, can this fate change. For this we need a communist party, a people’s party. 

​In early April 2024, the navies of four countries—Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States—held a maritime exercise in the South China Sea. Australia’s Warramunga, Japan’s Akebono, the Philippines’ Antonio Luna, and the United States’ Mobile worked together in these waters to strengthen their joint abilities and—as they said in a joint statement—to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight and respect for maritime rights under international law.” A few weeks later, between April 22 and May 8, ships from the Philippines and the United States operated alongside Australian and French naval troops for Exercise Balikatan 2024.
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For this Balikatan (“shoulder-to-shoulder”), over 16,000 troops participated in an area of the South China Sea that is outside the territorial waters of the Philippines. Alongside the navies of these nations, the Coast Guard of the Philippines took part in Exercise Balikatan. This is significant because it is the boats of the Coast Guard that most often encounter Chinese ships in these international waters, part of which are disputed between China and the Philippines. Although the official documents of these exercises do not mention China by name, they are certainly designed as part of the increasing military activity driven by the United States along China’s maritime border. 

During the Balikatan exercise, the navy vessels from the Philippines and the United States jointly attacked and sank the decommissioned Philippine Navy BRP Lake Caliraya. The ship—which was made in China—had been donated to the navy by the Philippine National Oil Company in 2014. The fact that it was the only ship in the Philippines’ navy that was made in China did not go unnoticed within China. Colonel Francel Margareth Padilla-Taborlupa, a spokesperson of the armed forces of the Philippines, said that this was “purely coincidental.”

During Balikatan, the defense ministers of the four main nations met in Honolulu, Hawaii to discuss the political implications of these military exercises off the coast of China. Australia’s Richard Marles, Japan’s Kihara Minoru, the Philippines’ Gilberto Teodoro, and the United States’ Lloyd Austin met for their second meeting to discuss their collaboration in the region that they call the Indo-Pacific. It was at the edges of this meeting that the public relations teams of these ministers began to float the term “Squad” to refer to these four countries. While they did not formally announce the creation of a new bloc in East Asia, this new nickname intends to provide a de facto announcement of its existence.

From the Quad to the Squad

In 2007, the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States met in Manila (Philippines) to establish the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad) while their militaries conducted Exercise Malabar in the Philippines Sea. The Quad did not initially include the Philippines, whose President at the time—Gloria Arroyo—was trying to improve relations between her country and China. The Quad did not develop because Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was unhappy with Washington’s growing belligerence towards Beijing. The Quad revived in 2017, once more in Manila, with a more forthright agenda to work against China’s Belt and Road ambitions in the region (which U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called “predatory economics”).

Over the course of the past two years, the United States has been frustrated with India’s discomfort with the kind of pressure campaign that the U.S. has been mounting against China and Russia. India refused to stop buying discounted Russian energy, which was a pragmatic decision during an election period (although India’s purchase of Russian energy has declined over time). When asked if India will consider being a NATO+ member, India’s foreign minister S. Jaishankar said that India does not share the “NATO mentality.” India’s reluctance to join in the full-throated New Cold War against China annoyed the U.S. government, which therefore decided to set aside the Quad and assemble the Squad with the more pliant and eager government of Philippines president Bongbong Marcos. It is important to note, however, that in April India delivered a batch of supersonic BrahMos cruise missiles to the Philippines (sold for $375 million and produced by a joint venture between arms manufacturers in India and Russia). That these missiles might be part of the new pressure campaign against China is not something buried in the fine print of the deal.

Provocations

Since its “pivot to Asia,” the United States has sought to provoke China. The U.S. trade war that began in 2018 largely fizzled out due to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its attempt to build the advanced production lines to circumvent U.S. trade restrictions (for instance, when the U.S. tried to prevent China from importing semiconductor chips, the Chinese developed their own manufacturing capacity). The U.S. attempt to make Taiwan into the frontline of its pressure campaign has not borne fruit either. The inauguration of Taiwan’s new president Lai Ching-te on May 20 brings to the helm a man who is not interested in pushing for Taiwan’s independence; only 6 percent of Taiwan’s population favors unification with China or independence, with the rest of the population satisfied with the status quo. Unable to create the necessary provocation over Taiwan, the United States has moved its gunsights to the Philippines.

While the Philippines and China dispute the status of several islands in the waters between them, these disagreements are not sufficient to drive either country to war. In April 2024, former president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte recalled that when he was president (2016-2022), “there was no quarrel. We can return to normalcy. I hope that we can stop the ruckus over there because the Americans are the ones pushing the Philippine government to go out there and find a quarrel and eventually maybe start a war.” In March, President Marcos said that he is “not poking the bear” and does not want to “provoke” China. However, the formation of the Squad two months later does indicate that the Philippines has now replaced Taiwan as the frontline state for U.S. provocations against China.

China’s vice chair of its Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, warned against “gunboat muscles.” “Reality has shown,” he said, “that those who make deliberate provocations, stoke tensions, or support one side against another for selfish gains will ultimately only hurt themselves.”

​In Cairo, representatives from Hamas held indirect negotiations with Israel for a ceasefire. The sticking point for several of the rounds was the order of events. Israel wanted the hostages to be released before it would stop the bombing, while Hamas said that the bombing must stop first. Israel has called for the disarming and dismantling of Hamas, which is a maximalist demand unlikely to be met. Hamas meanwhile would like not only a ceasefire but an end to the war. Both sides blamed each other, which made the task of the Egyptian and Qatari negotiators more difficult.
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The best outcome possible from the Cairo talks is an end to the current genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza. The negotiations to end the war took on an extra urgency as Israel bombed the edge of Rafah, the only city in Gaza not yet decimated by Israel. With no place to flee, the Palestinian civilians in Rafah cannot be sheltered from any attack, even if it is not as violent as conducted by the Israeli army against Gaza City and Khan Younis. Those attacks have created 37 million tons of rubble, which are filled with contaminants and an immense number of unexploded bombs (which will take 14 years to disarm). Israel believes that the last organized remnants of Hamas exist in Rafah, and that it will either bomb the millions who live there to destroy it, or it will have to agree to destroy itself through negotiations. Both are unacceptable to the Palestinians, who neither want more civilian casualties nor the break-up of one of the fiercest defenders of the right of Palestinians to self-determination.

Despite Hamas’s agreement with the ceasefire proposal, Israel launched violent attacks on Rafah and seized control of the Rafah crossing into Egypt (thereby cutting off the main access route for aid into Gaza). The talks continue but Israel is simply unwilling to take them seriously.

Palestinian Unity

Israel’s disregard for the negotiations and the level of its violence can be measured based on two political realities. It does not take negotiations with the Palestinians seriously and it feels that it can bomb with impunity. This is so because, firstly, Israel is backed fully by the Global North states (mainly the United States and Europe) and secondly, it does not regard Palestinian political views as vital because it has succeeded in breaking the political unity amongst Palestinians and it has succeeded in politically disorienting the various factions by the arrest of their main leadership. This does not entirely apply to Hamas, whose leadership was able to set up operations in Damascus and then later in Doha, Qatar. While it is impossible to imagine a rapid about-face from the Global North countries, it has become entirely clear to the Palestinian factions that absent their unity there will be no way to compel Israel to end its genocidal war, and then of course its occupation of Palestinian lands combined with its apartheid policies inside Israel.

In late April 2023, Hamas met with Fatah, the other major Palestinian political force, in China as part of a long process to create common ground between them. Relations between these two major political parties broke down in 2006-07, when Hamas won the parliamentary elections in Gaza and when Fatah—in charge of the Palestine Authority—contested these results; indeed, the two factions fought each other militarily in Gaza before Fatah retreated to the West Bank. During Israel’s genocidal war, both Fatah and Hamas sought to bridge the gap and not to permit their differences to allow both the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the defeat of Palestinian political aims in general. High representatives of these two parties met in Moscow earlier this year, and again in China in May.

For this meeting in China, Fatah sent its senior leaders, including Azzam al-Ahmad (who is on the central committee and leads its Palestinian reconciliation team), while Hamas sent equally senior leaders, including Mousa Abu Marzouk (a member of the party’s Political Bureau and its de facto Foreign Minister). The negotiations did not result in a final agreement, but—as part of a long process—it has deepened the dialogue and the political will between the two parties to work together against the Israeli genocidal war and the occupation. Further meetings at this high level are being planned, with a joint statement to follow later regarding a call--encouraged by China’s President Xi Jinping—for an international peace conference to end the war and a joint Palestinian platform regarding the way forward.

Gaps

Fatah, the anchor of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), was founded in 1959 by three men, two of whom came from the Muslim Brotherhood (Khalil al-Wazir and Salah Khalaf) and one of whom who came from the General Union of Palestinian students and would eventually become the main leader (Yasser Arafat). The PLO established itself as the core of the Palestinian struggle against the catastrophe of 1948 that lost them their lands, made them second-class citizens inside Israel, and sent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into decades of exile. The Muslim Brotherhood imprint did not form within the PLO, which took on a national liberation tone that was sharpened by the various left factions such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP, formed in 1967) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP, formed in1968).

The PLO became hegemonic in the Palestinian struggle, coordinating the political work in the camps of the exiles and the armed struggle of the fedayeen (fighters). The factions of the PLO faced concerted attack from Israel, which invaded Lebanon to exile the leadership and its core to Tunisia. With the fall of the USSR, the PLO began to negotiate earnestly with the Israelis and the United States, both of which imposed a form of surrender on the Palestinians called the 1993 Oslo Accords. Fatah took charge of the Palestinian Authority, which operated partially to maintain the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank.

Angered by what appeared to be a Palestinian surrender at Oslo, eight factions formed the Alliance of Palestinian Factions in 1993. Within this Alliance, the largest groups belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood tradition. They included Palestinian Islamic Jihad (formed in 1981) and Hamas (formed in 1987). The PFLP and DFLP initially joined this alliance but left in 1998 over differences with the Islamic parties. The Islamist parties won the parliamentary elections in Gaza with a slim margin (Hamas’s 44 percent against Fatah’s 41 percent), a result that angered Israel and the Global North states who then tried to undermine them.

The path to political power through the ballot box having been denied them, and then facing sustained Israeli suffocation and bombardment of Gaza, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad strengthened their armed wings and defended themselves against humiliation and attack. Every attempt at peaceful protest--including the Long March of Return in 2018 and 2019—was met with Israeli violence. There has never been a moment when the people of Gaza have experienced a year of peace since 2007. The current bombardment, however, is at a different scale than even the worst of the previous attacks by Israel in 2008 and 2014.

The main political disagreements between the factions include their different interpretation of the Oslo Accords, their respective ambition for political control, and their separate aspirations for Palestinian society. That their political leaders have been imprisoned for decades and that they have been prevented from normal, democratic political activity (such as maintaining their political structures and as canvassing the people) has prevented them from bridging their distances. However, in prison the leadership have had sustained dialogues on these issues. Right after the parliamentary elections in Gaza, the leaders of the five major factions imprisoned in Israel’s Hadarim prison wrote a National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners. Marwan Barghouti of Fatah, Abdel Raheem Malluh of the PFLP, Mustafa Badarneh of the DFLP, Abdel Khaleq al-Natsh of Hamas, and Bassam al-Saadi of Islamic Jihad.

The Document of the Prisoners, which was widely circulated and discussed, called for Palestinian unity and an end to “all forms of division that could lead to internal strife.” The text did not lay out a new Palestinian political agenda, but it called for the various factions “to formulate a Palestinian plan aimed at comprehensive political action.” The development of this plan, now almost 20 years later, is a major objective of the talks between the various Palestinian political organizations.

There is agreement that the first task is to prevent the attack on Rafah and to end the genocidal war against the Palestinians. However, soon thereafter, the sense is that the political malaise that has befallen the Palestinian people must be overcome and a new political project must be used to motivate a new political atmosphere amongst the Palestinians within Israel’s borders, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and in the 6 million strong Palestinian diaspora.

​The Communist Party USA was once a serious and powerful political force in this country. This is the Party of W.E.B. Dubois we’re talking about, the father of American Marxism himself. The Party of William Z Foster, whose health was waning and still came out of retirement to fight against the revisionism and liquidationism of Earl Browder and his wild theories about imperialism being progressive. The first integrated political organization in the entire country; the Party that fought for the death penalty for lynching during Jim Crow and organized the defense of the Scottsboro Boys; who fought for the 8-hour workday, the end of child labor, and the weekend. The Party that built the CIO from nothing into the most powerful body of organized labor in the United States. The Party that struck such fear into the hearts of the ruling class that they arrested its leaders without a single crime being committed.
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And so it is with tremendous sadness that we see what it’s turned into now in 2024. At a time when it is needed more than ever, as revolutionary conditions come upon us with a rapidity that could make your head spin, the once mighty Communist Party USA seems to have degenerated into a chaotic and contradictory clique of social chauvinism, revisionism, anarchistic ultra-leftism, and right opportunism. The theoretical rigor of Herbert Aptheker, Henry Winston, and W.E.B. Dubois has lapsed into hollow sloganeering and obligatory mouthing of Marxist language, devoid of anything approaching the dialectical logic of Marxism.
           
And this is an utter tragedy, in our opinion. It seems, however, that such things happen from time to time. J.V. Stalin himself explains a previous example of this same sort of degeneration in his seminal text, Foundations of Leninism (a book that is nowhere to be found within the educational curriculum of the modern “party”, which seems strange for an organization claiming to be guided by Marxist Leninism, to not have the text that introduces people to it), where he says:
           
… The Second International was headed by "faithful" Marxists, by the "orthodox" Kautsky and others. Actually, however, the main work of the Second International followed the line of opportunism. The opportunists adapted themselves to the bourgeois because of their adaptive, petty-bourgeois nature; the "orthodox," in their turn, adapted themselves to the opportunists in order to "preserve unity" with them, in the interests of "peace within the party." Thus the link between the policy of the bourgeois and the policy of the "orthodox" was closed, and, as a result, opportunism reigned supreme.

This was the period of the relatively peaceful development of capitalism, the pre-war period, so to speak, when the catastrophic contradictions of imperialism had not yet became so glaringly evident, when workers' economic strikes and trade unions were developing more or less "normally," when election campaigns and parliamentary groups yielded "dizzying" successes, when legal forms of struggle were lauded to the skies, and when it was thought that capitalism would be "killed" by legal means - in short, when the parties of the Second International were living in clover and had no inclination to think seriously about revolution, about the dictatorship of the proletariat, about the revolutionary education of the masses.

Instead of an integral revolutionary theory, there were contradictory theoretical postulates and fragments of theory, which were divorced from the actual revolutionary struggle of the masses and had been turned into threadbare dogmas. For the sake of appearances, Marx's theory was mentioned, of course, but only to rob it of its living, revolutionary spirit.

Instead of a revolutionary policy, there was flabby philistinism and sordid political bargaining, parliamentary diplomacy and parliamentary scheming. For the sake of appearances, of course, "revolutionary" resolutions and slogans were adopted, but only to be pigeonholed.

Instead of the party being trained and taught correct revolutionary tactics on the basis of its own mistakes, there was a studied evasion of vexed questions, which were glossed over and veiled. For the sake of appearances, of course, there was no objection to talking about vexed questions, but only in order to wind up with some sort of "elastic" resolution.

We have been silently watching this organization we have held in such high esteem become the thrift store version of Kautsky and the Second International over the last few years. Where they arose out of the period of the relatively peaceful development of capitalism, ours arises during the period of the middle classes. Where they were dizzy with success, we are dizzy with forgetting what success even looks like. Whereas Kautsky and his ilk believed they would need no revolution, our Kautskys have given up on the idea of revolution altogether. The effects are the same. The organization is completely divorced from the struggles of the working class, pathetically scraping and bowing to be included with institutions of the financial capitalists like the Democratic Party, repeating threadbare dogmas but using them in service of the precise roles the ruling class wants us to play. Liberals vs conservatives. For the sake of appearances, of course, they mention Marx and Lenin, mouth words they believe sound revolutionary, but only to rob Marxism of its dialectical and materialist, revolutionary spirit. Instead of the party being trained and taught correct revolutionary tactics on the basis of its own mistakes, its speeches and slogans are the same as those of thirty years before now, the same scraping and bowing before the Democratic Party, and those who would return to Marxist analysis and attempt to rectify such errors are black-balled, smeared, and campaigned against harder than the people responsible for currently funding a genocide in Palestine.
           
In fact, they have even gone so far as to attack with the most heinous and disgusting of lies the most prominent Communist in the country, who is one of the leading voices in the Palestinian solidarity movement, Jackson Hinkle, along with us and the rest of the new Communist movement that is quickly forming in our new era of revolutionary potential. And in doing this, they are materially aligning themselves with the forces of that genocide and Zionism.
           
And this is where we get to the meat and potatoes, my friends.
           
Recently, the Party posted a rather telling article on its official website called “Against Patriotic Socialism”. Yes, you read that correctly. The article, part of the pre-convention discussions (or, really, we should put “convention” in scare quotes, and the National Board knows why - maybe they can explain to the various clubs why that is, before we have to do so), which can be found on the Party’s main website, maliciously, falsely, and childishly attacks the most prominent Communists in the entire country, who have done more for the cause of class struggle in a single year than the Party has managed in 20. Hinkle alone has exposed millions of people not only to a more positive view of Communism and fought Zionism and imperialism at every turn, but even gone so far as to do what these so-called “old heads” thought impossible, and gotten people to reconsider their views on J.V. Stalin, the most lied about Communist in history. The Infrared Collective has created new slogans that have gotten parts of the working class the Party gave up on long ago to begin getting interested in Communism, and its slogans are featured in mainstream media frequently.

When was the last time anyone outside of the tiny little niche of professional activists in America spoke of the Communist Party? Unfortunately, one of the reasons for that may be that they seem to have allowed any old liberal who can’t tell a dialectic from a diuretic to pollute their organization and website with hollow sloganeering and buzzwords, advertise for bourgeois NGOs, and directly attack the Midwestern Marx Institute, the only educational institution for Marxism Leninism currently teaching the Marxist worldview in the entire country with the kind of childish and silly lies and rumor-mongering one comes to expect only of the worst type of Trotskyists and anarchists. Not a single word of it had been verified or fact checked. We’re not even sure the Party has cadre assigned to this. (To be fair, the Party got rid of the notion of cadre years and years ago, as it now believes a “mass party” to filter people into voting Democrat is somehow a better move than Lenin’s theories.) We’re not even sure its leadership is aware of the content it put up on its official website, and the libelous accusations it’s put out there, as it seems oblivious to the childish antics of its more ultra-left and petty rank and file most of the time. But we are here to do that, and we are done silently taking abuse. We would like to invite the members of the Communist Party USA, who we know are mostly good and dedicated people, to simply keep an open mind, and maybe think about why and how things always seem to end up in support of the forces funding a genocide in one country, and allied to doctrinaire Nazis in another. We do not mean to criticize all of the rank and file membership, but instead the fact that anti-communists are allowed to run wild, disgracing not only the organization that demands so much more respect than that, but the word “Communist” itself with their public antics.
           
In doing this, we will be going point by point through the ridiculous sloganeering of the article linked in the footnote, explaining why it is not only against the historical position of the Communist Party when it was guided by Marxism Leninism, but self-contradictory, arriving from bourgeois theory and not Marxism, and amounts to nothing more than anti-Communist whining that brings everyone down to a level of such childishness that no one in their right mind would take the people involved in it seriously (which could be what its author intended; but who knows? The Communist Party doesn’t even bother vetting its members anymore. There is no probation period for recruits, people are kicked out on a whim, and their “education” program coming out of the so-called “Claudia Jones School”, which is not an actual school like the Party’s old “Jefferson School”[1] was, but instead simple branding for mostly liberal classes on some okay empirical facts, and specifically does not provide anything close to teaching new people the Marxist Leninist worldview).
           
The article begins by immediately invoking one of the radlib buzzwords that came around last year. Strange how these things are nowhere, then suddenly everywhere overnight, isn’t it? It speaks of a phenomenon of so-called “PatSocs” or “patriotic socialists”. First and foremost, its author, a Mr. Elijah Jones, should look into the history of the Party he has joined, as he will find that patriotism has always been a very big part of Communists in the USA. Or he could look elsewhere in the world, maybe to Mao for advice, who said, “Can a Communist who is also an internationalist at the same time be a patriot? We hold not only that he can, but that he must.” Mao goes on to explain that the formal expression of patriotism is determined by particular conditions, as any Marxist with a basic grasp of the dialectic of form and content would. Or perhaps back home to Paul Robeson, who stood up at the HUAC and said that Communists were the most patriotic Americans he knew, and that it was the HUAC that were the anti-Americans, and the HUAC who were the anti-patriots, that they should be ashamed. Or possibly Lenin’s 1914 essay On the National Pride of the Great Russians, where he speaks of the essential content of patriotism. Or Georgi Dimitrov, who emphasizes the importance of giving socialist content a national form, especially in a period of emerging fascism, where the people’s heroes of the past have to be wrested away from the fascists. Or literally any Communist in history, who understands the importance of rejecting historical and national nihilism and embracing the best of their people’s traditions. Mr. Jones and the CPUSA website seem to be blinded by what Carlos L. Garrido calls a “liberal tinted American exceptionalism,” which holds that America is somehow an exception to the laws of development governing society, especially the form the class struggle must take in the bourgeois epoch. This is very childish ultra-leftism mixed with hollow sloganeering, devoid of Marxist analysis altogether. More similar to the falsifications and rants of “J Sakai” than anything else.

Mr. Jones then absurdly claims that patriotism is “Browderism” and mentions that William Z. Foster fought against it. This is the extremely low level of theoretical understanding and historical knowledge that is all too common in the CP these days. “Browderism” was not patriotism at all. It refers instead to Earl Browder’s turn towards liquidationism (similar to that of Sam Webb) and his book that claimed imperialism still maintained some progressive aspects of industrial capitalism. Foster, of course, did argue against Browder, and saved the Party from liquidation. You can read about this in the book he wrote dedicated to it called Marxism Leninism Vs Revisionism, along with Jacques Duclos, Eugene Dennis and John Williamson. The book’s table of contents should tell anyone curious that patriotism is not so suspiciously absent from the text. Its foreword gives a general overview. Unfortunately, this is not common knowledge in the Party anymore, as the “PatSoc” and “Browderism” labels are filtered through the radlib rumor mill and the truth falls out somewhere along the way.

To be clear, Mr. Jones and the CPUSA website want to use William Z. Foster to critique American patriotism, calling it Browderism. What does Foster himself say of patriotism, though? In a 1939 issue of The Communist, Foster writes:

“On their own part, the progressive forces in the mass organizations have made considerable appeal to American patriotism and traditions for constructive ends. But this appeal has usually been weak, spasmodic, and ineffective. The workers, farmers, professionals, have not understood how to bring forth in their agitation the basically constructive role they have played historically in building American democracy.
​
In this respect the revolutionary movement has been especially weak. From the foundation of the Socialist Labor Party in the 1870’s, down through the life of the Socialist Party and the IWW, and during the early years of the Communist Party, there was a dominant tendency to ignore and to scorn American tradition and love of country. This arose out of a narrow, sectarian conception of internationalism, and it did much to weaken the position of the revolutionaries in the organizations of the patriotically minded toiling masses. Here again, a better study of Marx and Lenin would have prevented this grievous error. Only during the past few years, notably since the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International and through the writings of Comrade Browder, is real progress being made by our Party in correcting this costly mistake and in basing itself upon a correct Leninist line.

The cultivation of the democratic, revolutionary American traditions among the mass organizations is one of the most important tasks in the building of the democratic front. We must not permit the reactionaries to steal and distort the national traditions and aspirations of the people. The great democratic masses must be taught by constant reference to American history that it was their struggles in the past that built our republic, that the democratic front movement of today is the continuation of all the fights for liberty in the history of our own country; that in the achievement of the current demands of the masses lies the fruition of all that is progressive and glorious in American history; that socialism is the climax toward which the entire historic struggle of the democratic American people inevitably tends.

So not only does Foster congratulate Browder when he was correct on the question of patriotism, but ruthlessly criticizes him when he was incorrect on the position of liquidationism. (Though, to be fair to Browder, he claimed until he died that Moscow had ordered him to act in such a way.) This is precisely the line of the prominent Communists of the USA, that it is the American toiling masses who are the revolutionary agent, and the material that makes up our country, that we have a deep and rich revolutionary tradition that these hollow sloganeers tarnish, along with the name Communism, with their ignorant bleating.

It’s incredibly sad that such lies and silliness is published directly on the CP’s website. And we’re only getting started.

The next group of lies is even more fun, calling this made up “movement” of “PatSocs”, quote, “transphobic, ableist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Indigenous.” It gives no actual proof of any of these lies, which is suspiciously similar to the tactics used by agent provocateurs all through the history of the Party - accuse, accuse, accuse. Whenever explanations or proof is demanded, they either make something up or throw disjointed things together (tin foil hat style) that won’t survive even slight prodding, or toss out another baseless accusation to distract from the previously questioned one. In the very same breath, its silliest of accusations is made, saying all of these dreaded “PatSocs” are inspired by Lyndon Larouche, an irrelevant name in 2024 if ever there was one. It supposedly connects this through the journalist Caleb Maupin, who has no connections to any of the other organizations or people it names as its supposed “PatSocs”. It does provide a nice link to the Midwestern Marx Institute featured in In These Times afterwards, which is fine, as we were featured there, and it talks about the following we’ve acquired, which is also fine, but linking us or the others with such things is downright silly and shows how out of touch with prominent Communists the Party has become.

The next one, however, absolutely takes the cake. It is possibly the silliest and most absurdly childish and uninformed thing I’ve read in 42 years on this Earth. And that’s saying something, as I spend time on social media in order to help build up the Midwestern Marx Institute, so I see childish and uninformed things all day long. Let’s quote it verbatim, so there’s no mistaking what the Party has actually allowed on its website (almost certainly without knowing, as no one is this dumb other than terminally online college kids). “We have yet to call out ‘Patriotic Socialism’ for what it is, which is so-called ‘National Socialism’ in new garb.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Your brain didn’t just melt, and your eyes still work. Mr. Jones has not only conflated standard Communist principles like patriotism based on the Marxist understanding of what constitutes a people and the form class struggle takes during the bourgeois epoch, but he then conflates THAT with nationalism, and then conflates THAT with Nazism. All in two paragraphs. It would be amazing if it weren’t so tragic and sad.

So let’s explain why this is silly. In case you are living under a rock or something.

Nationalism, or organization along a national basis, as Lenin and Stalin teach us, can be either progressive or reactionary, based on the conditions that give rise to it. A colonized country fighting against a foreign occupier, for example, can give rise to progressive nationalism, as it did the early KMT in China (though Lenin and Stalin both qualify this, saying not all of these struggles are necessarily progressive - they are only progressive when they bring society forwards, in whatever way, towards socialism). Organized within, say, an imperialist country, it is, instead, a call to work against class struggle in favor of preservation of national structures and unity between the classes. Which is not only impossible, but base reaction. It has very literally nothing to do with patriotism. The Nazis used the term “National socialism” because they used the word “socialism” the way everyone did back then, as a general category meaning a society serving a social end, rather than the way I’m assuming our friend Mr. Jones tries to use it after simply assuming things about language, as a form of new utopianism, ideas for future society pulled from his head and tried to force on society from without. The Nazis loathed Marxism and claimed we were all evil and tyrannical, and that our basic observation that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, is wrong. They said instead that the only way to arrive at this society serving a social end was for the classes to collaborate (nationalism in the bourgeois epoch), meaning that if you were a land-owning parasite, you owned your land, collected your rent, and served society. If you were an exploited proletarian, you went to work, sent your kids to work, and served society. This could only be done, they said, on a national basis (with an emphasis on antagonisms between nations - something Marxism proves is not essential to nations and peoples, but instead based on class relations). This is obviously a very silly idea, and it was clearly not socialism. But not for the childish reasons Mr. Jones and the CPUSA website tell us.

After the absurd Nazi lie, Mr. Jones goes on with other various vague liberal sloganeering without mentioning the proletariat a single time, even shouting out the NDN Collective’s slogans, which makes sense once you begin looking into who participates in this bourgeois NGO that received over 12,000,000 dollars from none other than Jeff Bezos’s foundation, and pretends this is some mass movement of Native Americans. He then claims “PatSoc forces” stole documents from somewhere in New York City, and vaguely claims Jackson Hinkle is some kind of federal intelligence agent, saying, “And the possible federal connections, such as those with Jackson Hinkle, are also noteworthy,” while providing no actual evidence for such an absurd accusation. (Catching a pattern yet?)
He suggests editing the Party’s program, which is supposed to be a concrete statement of plans and goals, to “call out” (a favorite buzz word of liberals) the scary MAGA Communists and “PatSocs”, and engages in the most ironic sentence in the entire thing, saying that “sloganeering” should be a grounds for expulsion from the Party, along with “explicit PatSoc talking points”, which he gives only one example of, a very obviously fake image that was made to look like Jackson Hinkle, who has met with the grandson of Nelson Mandela and all sorts of Pan-Africanists at the conference on Multipolarity, was quoting Hitler. (I don’t know if Mr. Jones is oblivious to the obvious fake, or not, but I can’t decide if knowing or not knowing it’s fake is worse. They’re both completely disgusting. Either he knew it was fake and did not care, or did not know, in which case he should be given much more training and education before being allowed to speak publicly as a representative of any organization). Which is, by the way, legally libel and we would recommend the Party immediately remove the libel from its website and issue an apology to everyone involved, especially Mr. Hinkle, before they are taken to court for it.

Mr. Jones ends his piece by deciding it is his place to say what is the “okay” patriotism and what is not, telling Native Americans they are allowed to love their homes, but no one else is (and I’m sure they were dying to get his permission), and again conflates the word with nationalism. He says that waving the American flag, the flag waved by W.E.B. Dubois, William Z. Foster, Martin Luther King, and all great American revolutionaries, is actually “not okay”. He says that invoking “American symbology” is “not okay”. He begrudgingly says that saying Communist Party USA is “one thing”, meaning it’s mostly fine, but ONLY if it’s taken in the geographical sense (whatever that means), and then ends by invoking the names W.E.B. Dubois and Claudia Jones while completely ignoring everything they ever said and getting in one last weird lie about Jackson Hinkle. An utter tragedy.

I want to make it clear that we did not want this fight. We’ve gone out of our way to reach out a hand to every single person who will aid the class struggle. Every time we’ve extended that hand to the Party, it’s been shoved aside and we’ve been told we think crazy things we’ve never remotely thought, and then scolded with dozens of liberal buzzwords that made it seem like we’d gotten in trouble on the jobsite and were in some kind of meeting with HR. Regardless, we still don’t want this fight. If this nonsense persists, however, the forces who are trying to wreck the new Communist movement will quickly find out that we will finish it. We are peaceful people, like all Communists, willing to live and let live. But we will not hesitate to finish a fight if you bring it to our doorstep.

For those rank-and-file members of the party who are actually committed to Communism and not just to reiterating ultra left narratives stemming from the bourgeois academy, or right opportunist ones which come from the Webbite liquidationist period, we urge you to think long and hard about the tragic state of our once mighty party. Ask yourself: at a time when this country needs nothing more than a real Communist Party, when peoples’ living conditions are bad and getting worse, what are real Communists to do in the face of the pitiful condition our Party has fallen into? How can real Communists just stand by as the only force that can free our people from the strangling hold of capital is sequestered by servants of hegemony and the liberal wing of the ruling class? All things in this world are subject to change, this is a basic principle of dialectical materialism. Ask yourself: are you courageous enough to side with the rising forces of a new Communist movement, one that is driven by necessity and reaching the hearts and minds of millions of working class people? Or will you throw your lot in with the dogmatist distorters of Marxism, who always find a way to give support of hegemony a radical veneer, making excuses why this time we need to support capitalism, rather than fight it? It is this question which today separates the forces tying themselves to a fossilized past and those which seek to move our revolutionary tradition forward, helping the dissenting attitudes of our masses gain coherence and direction, showing our working people how we can make history together, and fulfill the promise of a society actually of, by, and for the people. This form of society has a name - Communism.

“In the end communism will triumph. I want to help bring that day.” - W. E. B. Dubois (1961)

Notes

[1] We wonder why the ultra-left “Sakaiists” think of the fact that the Communist Party’s old school was named after Thomas Jefferson, as American revolutionary history is now to be ignored by members at the best of times and cancelled at the worst via bourgeois lifestyle politics and sloganeering. This is called “Browderism” which is an absurdity and a joke, but the letter itself gets to that. No need to put it in the footnote.