The dawn of the twentieth century saw the rise of modern, planned national economies around the world. In many of these cases, planned economies often were coupled with state ownership of production. China, especially due to becoming a Marxist-Leninist state in 1949, is no exception to this trend. It is commonly misconceived by both leftists and rightists that the People’s Republic of China has ceased to plan its economy; that the government has relinquished its obligations of maintaining state control, the private sector and “adopted capitalism”. When it comes to analyzing how state ownership operates within the People’s Republic of China, the information that is available on the Western internet tends to be sparse and vague. Many sources do not give specific evidence of how State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) function, nor do they elaborate just how widely proliferated SOEs are, formally or otherwise. This article is designed to clarify the way SOEs and their subsidiaries function and interact with China’s domestic economy today. Formal State Ownership “State-owned enterprises are an important material and political foundation for socialism with Chinese characteristics, and an important pillar and reliance for the party to govern and rejuvenate the country.” — Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China It is a well-established fact within Chinese political discourse that state-owned enterprises are an ever-present fact of the Chinese economy that won’t simply just “vanish” overnight or “erode” over time. In fact, since Reform and Opening Up, while the overall quantity of state-owned enterprises has gone down, the overall quality has increased. Rather than going on the path of root-and-branch privatization, the government has instead sought to make the numerous state-owned enterprises that still remain as efficient and competitive as possible. As a result, the top 150 SOEs, far from being inefficient, have instead become enormously profitable, the aggregate total of their profits reaching $150 billion in 2007. Unlike in the West or Western-aligned states, where privately owned firms overwhelmingly predominate, most of China’s best-performing companies are to be found in the state sector. [1] Contrary to popular belief regarding “Communism”, profit and to make a return on one’s investment is not contradictory to the way state-controlled firms should be run. In fact, it would be damaging if these firms were run in a way where they were actively making a loss or were wasting resources. Contribution to GDP and Scale of Assets In 2011, it was found that roughly 50% of non-agricultural GDP was generated by SOEs. Similarly, in regard to economic industries/sectors in which SOEs play a dominant or majority role, those include defense, electric power, petroleum and petrochemicals, telecommunications, coal, civil aviation, and shipping; as well as equipment manufacturing, automobiles, information technology, construction, iron and steel, nonferrous metals and chemicals. [2] In 2017, that number stood at 63.6%, where China’s GDP was RMB ¥82 trillion, of which non-financial SOEs count for RMB ¥52.2 trillion [3]. In 2021, SOEs accounted for around 66% of China’s GDP [4]. So, even formally speaking, in terms of overall contribution to GDP, SOEs have played a significant amount, rising over the past 10 years from 50% to 66%, rising approximately 1.6% to their contribution to GDP per year. In 2023, that number climbed to 68% of China’s GDP: China’s GDP was RMB ¥126 trillion, of which non-financial SOEs accounted for RMB ¥85.7 trillion. [ From 2002-2011, the value of SOE assets as a percentage of GDP started at roughly 550% before declining to a rate of roughly to 430% by 2008, its lowest point, before reaching a plateau of around 450% since 2009. Note, when Western analysts measure state-owned enterprises, they tend to only factor in what is directly translated as 国有企业, which is formally classified as a non-financial state-owned enterprise. Typically, when comparisons are made from Western studies or articles, they only focus on “SOEs” but neglect the two other formal “SOE categories” which are financial SOEs (国有金融/中央金融企业) and administrative SOE assets (行政事业性国有资产). This is why estimations for “SOE value” may be lost in translations and only partially accurate results can be extrapolated. For the following two sources, one produced by the IMF and the other produced by WSJ, the operative Chinese “SOEs” will be referred to as non-financial SOEs for clarification. Non-Chinese SOEs elsewhere in the world don’t follow these three distinctions. In 2018, a study from the IMF found that Non-financial SOEs assets for China as a % of GDP amounted to 180% of GDP. While in 2015, Italy, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Norway’s SOEs did not rise above 50% [6]. According to WSJ, the value of French SOE assets in 2008 as a % of GDP amounted to 686 billion USD, which is 28% of GDP. In the same year, Chinese Non-financial SOEs were 6 trillion USD, or 133% of GDP [7]. In 2010, 94% of all assets held by the top 150 companies were controlled by the state, which represented 41.2% of all corporate assets in China, out of the total of roughly 5 million registered companies [8]. In 2012, the total assets held by the State sector in China amounted to 55.78% or 53% depending on the estimate used [9]. However, in comparison with European nations during the same year (elaborated by the figure below), the total assets of Eastern European nations (largely former Eastern Bloc) held by the state sector were around 13%. For the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Portugal, it was around 4.60%. For Ireland and the UK, even less than that number. For Austria and Germany, around 10.79%. For Scandinavia, it was 6.02%. [10] In 2022, the total value of SOE assets as a percentage of GDP amounted to 608%, of which ¥109.4 trillion or 90.4% of GDP was held by all 97 Central State Owned Enterprises (CSOEs), controlled directly by the SASAC (more on that later). And non-financial SOEs held 339.5 trillion, which accounts for 280.5% of GDP [11]. In comparison to the largest 500 private enterprises in the same year, their amassed assets held ¥41.64 trillion RMB, of which represents only 34.4% of GDP, which is dwarfed by the amount held by the 97 CSOEs [12]. In regard to share of total assets, SOEs own 60% of China's total assets as of 2021 [13]. Note, RMB (Renminbi) is more commonly known as Chinese Yuan (¥). Second note, a CSOE is an SOE directly controlled by the Central Government. In 2019 there were 3,777 listed companies on the public stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen, of which you need an operating income of ¥100 million RMB per year to even be available for listing, cumulative over the course of 3 years. Out of total assets, SOEs held 98% in the Telecommunications sector, 95% in the airline sector, 94% in the infrastructure sector and more than 93% in the utilities and energy sector. In the industry sector 74%, in the materials sector, more than 63% and in automobiles, more than 62%. [14] In 2023, out of a total of 4,763 listed companies, of which 1,300 are formally classified as SOEs. They make up 27% of the total enterprises, but capture 69% of the market revenue and 77% of the total profits. Most leading listed companies across key industries, including but not limited to banks, insurance, brokerage, oil & gas, chemicals, coal, power, telecom, construction, Chinese medicine and liquor, are all SOEs. [15] Furthermore, the amount of private involvement is exaggerated. As of the end of 2017, there are only 17 private-owned banks among 4,532 financial institutions classified as the banking industry. The number of people employed by these 17 private-owned banks only accounts for 0.1% of all banking staff. For example, in 1997, POEs (Privately Owned Enterprises) in the industrial sector accounted for only 6.5% by number, and this figure has increased to 57.7% in 2017. However in 2000, POEs in the industrial sector accounted for only 3.1% by the size of assets, and this figure peaked at around 22% in 2013, stagnating to a slight decline by 2017 of 21.6%. [16] Examples of Dominant SOEs Now that the persistence of SOEs in the modern Chinese economy has been established via statistical evidence, I want to provide some empirical evidence, some examples that could be used or shared in future for reference. Circling back to the point about “key sectors” of which SOEs must dominate, below are a few examples of the following SOEs that dominate their respective key sectors. The power-generating industry in China is dominated by five SOE power-generating company groups: China Huaneng Power Group, China Datang Corporation, China Huadian Corporation, China Guodian Corporation, and China Power Investment Corporation. And the public utilities sector is dominated by the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) and China Southern Power Grid Corporation [17]. The telecommunications industry in China is dominated by three SOE telecommunications carriers: China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile [18]. China’s Three Gorges Dam - one of the largest dams in the world - is run by the “Three Gorges Dam Corporation”, a state-owned enterprise (SOE). Its subsidiaries include utilities companies such as China Yangtze Power, further illustrating state management of the economy. [Image Courtesy: China Daily] The petrochemicals industry is dominated by five SOE company groups: China National Petroleum Corporation, Sinopec, Sinochem, China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Shandong Energy [19]. And the natural gas industry is dominated by five SOEs as well, Sinopec, CNPC, CNOOC, Beijing Enterprises Group and Shenenergy Group [20]. China Baowu Steel Group Corporation, produces 80% of the auto-sheet metal for use in automobiles, major appliances, airplane fuselages and wings, architecture, and others and 60% of the silicon steel which are used in generators, motors, and transformers. Baowu steel remains to be a global leader in both categories as of 2022 [21]. The world’s largest producer of rolling stock and locomotives is under one company, the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation — which is a CSOE — has 90% of the market share for train production [22]. The largest ship producer domestically and worldwide and sole ship producer in China, the Chinese State Shipbuilding Corporation produces 48% of all ships in the world [23].a You have China Minmetals, which has 90% of the domestic metallurgical market share [24]. They also hold 90% of the contract value for domestic metallurgical engineering and construction, which is the construction of industrial metal production engineering machines and items [25]. These are just a few of the prominent examples of the large and dominant SOEs that permeate through China’s domestic market. The more upstream an economic sector is, the more state ownership it will have. This is the general rule of thumb for the state involvement within the domestic economy. The Shareholder System The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) is an institution directly under the management of the State Council. It is an ad-hoc ministerial-level organization directly subordinated to the State Council. The Party Committee of SASAC performs the responsibilities mandated by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. [26] The way ownership is substantiated or demonstrated is through stock ownership. The SASAC owns 100% of the stock of a total of 98 CSOEs. There is a common misconception that companies must be 50% or more, or somehow totally state owned to be in function “state owned” or operate according to party directives. On paper, SOE employment rates and output rates are formally lower than the non-state sector, yet they continue to persist and play a dominant role in the economy. How is this possible? Through the shareholder system. One way the CPC maintains functional control over multiple enterprises is through a diverse shareholder system, where one CSOE directly or indirectly controls 100s or 200 enterprises via their own subsidiary system. Lenin notes in his book, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism of precisely this phenomenon, although inverted as it is now the state who is the “shareholder”, while he was analyzing the bourgeoisie who were shareholders. The head of the concern controls the principal company (literally: the “mother company”); the latter reigns over the subsidiary companies (“daughter companies”) which in their turn control still other subsidiaries (“grandchild companies”), etc. In this way, it is possible with a comparatively small capital to dominate immense spheres of production. Indeed, if holding 50 per cent of the capital is always sufficient to control a company, the head of the concern needs only one million to control eight million in the second subsidiaries. And if this ‘interlocking’ is extended, it is possible with one million to control sixteen million, thirty-two million, etc… As a matter of fact, experience shows that it is sufficient to own 40 percent of the shares of a company in order to direct its affairs, since in practice a certain number of small, scattered shareholders find it impossible to attend general meetings, etc. The “democratization” of the ownership of shares, from which the bourgeois sophists and opportunist so-called “Social-Democrats” expect (or say that they expect) the “democratization of capital,” the strengthening of the role and significance of small scale production, etc., is, in fact, one of the ways of increasing the power of the financial oligarchy.” [27] Lenin understood that it was entirely possible for the shareholding system to “increase the power” of the financial oligarchy. But what if, instead of a financial oligarchy sitting at the top of the pillar, it is the Communist Party? Or more specifically, the SASAC. Lenin notes in the above quote that owning merely 40% of the shares of a single company is sufficient to direct its affairs. And how “Mother companies” reign supreme over “Daughter companies” and indirectly control “grandchildren” companies. Therefore, it is entirely possible for “1 million to rule over 32 million”. And this is precisely how the SOEs obfuscate their formal state ownership within the Chinese economy while still maintaining de facto control and influence. This phenomenon is noted by Derrick Scissors, who is a former Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. In 2007, he found that while 100% of state ownership may be “diluted” by division of ownership into different shareholders, of which are non-state, the majority of ownership/controlling shareholder largely trended towards state ownership. This is despite the fact that they might formally be considered non-state owned or sometimes foreign media may even label them private. He says that however, this phenomenon does nothing to change state control. Despite them being listed on foreign stock exchanges, the ultimate control rights remain in the hands of the state. [28] No matter their shareholding structure, all national corporations in the sectors that make up the core of the Chinese economy are required by law to be owned or controlled by the state. These sectors include power generation and distribution; oil, coal, petrochemicals, and natural gas; telecommunications; armaments; Aviation and shipping; machinery and automobile production; information technologies; construction; and the production of iron, steel, and nonferrous metals. The railroads, grain distribution, and insurance are also dominated by the state, even if no official edict says so. [28] The same is noted by Margaret Pearson who argues that despite the issuing of stocks, these stock issuances are not used for the purpose of wholesale “denationalization” or “privatization” of enterprises, but the intended goal is to rather upgrade and enhance the value of corporate state-owned assets. Even though some firms may have been listed on the stock market, their parent firms or “Mother firms” control rights firmly remain in the hands of the state. [29] Stephen Green, a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs continues to corroborate the claim, making the statement that the way stocks are issued is not for the sake of denationalization of industries, but to support and subsidize SOE restructuring and to prevent private companies from raising capital. [30] A research study in 2009 concluded that the “privatization” campaign of China drastically differs from the ones conducted in Eastern Europe, that the sale of shares do not fundamentally alter state control. And that in fact, there has been no meaningful transfer of state control over to private hands. The majority of companies in China have around 66% of their shares being held in state hands. Even if shares can be traded/floated on the market, for the most part, shares will still indefinitely be maintained by state actors. [31] In 2014, another study found that China’s domestic market is entirely state dominated. The central government plays every role from issuer, to underwriter, to regulator, to controlling investor and manager of the exchanges. Efforts to simplify domestic arrangements have served only to conceal the fact that the state in its many guises still owns nearly two-thirds of domestically listed company shares. The combination of state monopolies with “Wall Street expertise” and international capital has led to the creation of national companies that represent little more than the incorporation of China's old Soviet-style industrial ministries. [32] A 2017 research paper finds that the state appointed nomenklatura working within these large “mother” companies are responsive primarily to the directives of the state instead of minority shareholders within their “daughter” or “granddaughter” firms. The core holding company is the one that coordinates business activity of the “daughter” and “granddaughters”, and these core holding companies are always dominated by state ownership. These business activities are committed in the interest, above all, of state industrial policy, and certainly with a preference for such national policy over what might be in the interest of shareholder wealth maximization for the nongroup, minority shareholders invested in the individual legal person subsidiaries often through the public capital markets. [33] From 1990 to 2003, it was found that only around 7% of all listed firms could truly be considered “private”. These companies are allowed to have access to private revenue, but their control rights are strongly within the hands of the state and should therefore be considered state firms. Even though many of these firms are not formally listed as SOEs, they are rather considered to be either joint-venture or shareholding firms instead. [34] LLCs/Shareholding Firms Widespread “privatizations” of small SOEs reduced the total number of SOEs from 250,000 in 1995, to 127,000 in 2005. It is naïve to view the state as simply having divested itself from ownership of the state sector. Virtually all of the figures that scholars and the popular press have picked as evidence of the declining role of the state, relates to the decline in state shares but ignores the rise of institutional shares. [35] The transformation of SOEs into share-holding firms took several forms: shareholding cooperatives, jointly owned enterprises, limited liability corporations and limited shareholding corporations. These firms held over 50% of capital assets and generated 35% of national sales. They replaced SOEs as the dominant public sector employers in the interior of the country. These hybrid forms were supposed to operate under hard budget constraints. [35] The introduction of stock markets in China appeared to be a capitulation towards “capitalism”. However, in July 2015, a crisis in the stock market revealed the inner contradictions between market pressures and state control as it exposed peculiar features of China's markets. Formally, all the institutions, organizations, administrative and legislative forms that are required to replicate Western stock markets exist. However, all aspects of the capital markets remain owned by some agency of the state. As a consequence, when share prices began to collapse in July 2015, state banks were told to lend US $209bn to the wholly state-owned China's 89 Securities Finance Corp in order to buy stocks. Market volatility was thereby contained by massive state intervention. This means that the fate of listed companies are ultimately determined by budget constraints which are set by the Central Government. [35] The widespread underestimation of the influence of state ownership in the economy is not simply a question of misidentifying concealed public ownership relations, but also of understanding the ‘dynamics of control’ exercised by organs of the party and state. [36] There is a consistent problem when attempting to identify firms as “state owned”. Many times, functionally state owned firms are listed as “foreign-held” simply because 30% of its shares are owned by a foreign entity, despite the control rights being operated by the state. [37] For example, the joint ventures of the Shanghai local government with GM and Volkswagen (Shanghai-GM and Shanghai-VW) are registered as foreign companies, despite the fact that the Shanghai local government holds 50% of each company (Of which is the largest share in the case of Shanghai-VW). [37] This can also happen when the company is owned by a holding company registered outside of mainland China. For example, Lenovo and CNOOC (a state-owned oil company) are owned by holding companies registered in Hong Kong and, thus, legally registered as foreign owned in China. Despite the control rights firmly being managed by state hands. [37] Second, many state-owned companies, particularly after 1998, are registered as limited-liability or publicly traded companies, despite the controlling stake held by a state-controlled holding company. The Baoshan steel company and Shanghais SAIC Group’s stand-alone car company (SAIC) discussed earlier are examples of publicly listed companies and, thus, registered as share-holding companies but with a controlling stake held by a holding company owned by the Chinese state. [37] 66% of all firms are directly or indirectly owned by the SASAC. In 2012, the number of “underreported” state firms ran at 50%, of which were being registered as private firms. Meaning that the formal state share of the economy is actually 50% larger. Note, state ownership being defined here as 50% or more of a firm being owned by the state. [37] We can extrapolate that number and apply it to asset ownership in 2012, of which 53% of all assets in China were held by the State Sector. Let’s again assume that the state having at least 50% ownership makes a company state-owned. 50% of 53 is 26.5, meaning that in 2012, if we include the "underreported" sector of the state, this means that the total state ownership of assets in 2012 actually amounts to 79.5%. Examples of the Shareholder/LLC system at work An example of how this works in function will be demonstrated using the example of the company known as Sinopec: a petrochemicals company owned directly by the SASAC and is one of the largest if not the largest petrochemicals company in the world. Sinopec has a monopoly on all downstream hydrocarbons businesses in China. [33] A sinopec core company which is 100% wholly owned by the SASAC is the center of the Sinopec group. A majority-controlled subsidiary, department, or affiliated entity would function as a dedicated "finance holding company" necessary for the allocation of funds and finance to and among operations and entities included in the Sinopec Group. Sinopec Group Holding Company - explicitly permitted in its business license to invest in other entities - in turn owns a vast number of only Sinopec business-related subsidiaries, each with a business scope allowing it to operate in a defined sector within the group's larger monopoly or defined geographical areas. A majority-controlled subsidiary, department, or affiliated entity would function as a dedicated "finance holding company" necessary for the allocation of funds and finance to and among operations and entities included in the Sinopec Group. Sinopec Group Holding Company, explicitly permitted in its business license to invest in other entities, in turn owns a vast number of only Sinopec business-related subsidiaries, each with a business scope allowing it to operate in a defined sector within the group's larger monopoly or defined geographical areas. Those subsidiaries will always show majority equity ownership in the hands of the Sinopec Group Holding Company or one of its controlled subsidiaries, but they can be financed directly by bank loans, minority non-public investment, or the public shareholder markets, domestic or foreign. This Sinopec Group can seek to reorganize a traditional SOE grouping of productive and social assets conducting a petrochemicals business, like in the Shanghai suburbs of Jinshan District into a Sinopec Group Holding Company-controlled company called "Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company Limited," which could complete an initial public offering on the PRC domestic or foreign shareholder markets. After the IPO, issuer Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company Limited would still be dominated absolutely by the core holding company (which is the Party-State Ran State-Owned Enterprise of Sinopec) via an 80 percent equity stake and its power to appoint all directors and officers of the listed subsidiary. This is how Sinopec controls over hundreds of its own subsidiaries even though a lot of them aren’t formally “owned” or listed as SOEs according to official Chinese statistics. An example of how a “foreign listed” company is actually state owned would be the SMIC, otherwise known as the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. The only reason it is considered “foreign listed/foreign owned” is because 58% of its shares are listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. 14.11% of its shares are held by Datang HK which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Datang Holdings, which in turn is wholly-owned by CICT which is a central state owned enterprises. [38] CICT itself directly holds an additional 0.92% of the total shares, bringing the total amount to 15.03%. 7.80% of shares are held by Xinxin HK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xunxin (Shanghai) Investment Co., Ltd., which in turn is wholly-owned by China IC Fund which is a state owned investment fund. An additional 1.61% is held directly by the IC fund. 0.46% is held by Guoxin investment which is a state owned fund. 0.50% is held by a subsidiary of the China construction bank which is a state owned bank. Finally, another 0.43% is held by a subsidiary of the Chinese merchant bank which is a state owned bank as well. The total amount of state ownership amounts to 25.83% [39]. The HKSCC share refers to just shares/stock listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, which does not accurately reflect controlling shares. These shares can be bought by anyone who has access to the Hong Kong stock market. The majority shareholder and the largest shareholders are all state owned enterprises, which are either directly or indirectly connected to the central government with varying layers of connection. Even though the SMIC is not “formally state owned” it is functionally state owned. Another even simpler example would be the Mcdonald's China franchise, even though on paper it is a foreign enterprise, bearing the company name/franchise name of “Mcdonald”. The controlling shareholder is a SOE known as CITIC, which holds 52% of the total shares. Making Mcdonalds in China functionally state owned despite being formally a foreign owned company. [40] Finally, the last example demonstrates how an LLC can still functionally be a state-owned company even though the formal designation is of a “limited liability company”. Sichuan Changhong Electric is China’s largest television producer and the sole producer of batteries for the Chengdu J-10 “Vigorous Dragon”, a multirole combat aircraft. Even their official shareholders report states the following: Sichuan Changhong Electronic Co., Limited (“Sichuan Changhong”), a company incorporated in the PRC with its shares listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, has obtained the control over the board of directors of the Company since 2012. Sichuan Changhong Electronics Holding Group Co., Ltd., (“Sichuan Changhong Holding”, a company established in the PRC and wholly-owned by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the Mianyang city government and one of the Controlling Shareholders) is the single largest shareholder of Sichuan Changhong, which held approximately 23.22% of the entire issued share capital of Sichuan Changhong and has de facto control over the composition of the majority of the board of Sichuan Changhong. [41] Below is a chart that goes over the overall ownership structure that makes it easier to visualize. Conclusion In conclusion, “formal” SOE ownership is deliberately obfuscated and downplayed by Western media despite the large impactful role it continues to play within the Chinese domestic economy. Similarly, “informal” SOE ownership via LLCs, shareholding companies and joint-ventures with foreign enterprises have caused them to be counted as “non-SOEs” despite functionally acting upon state directives. SOEs continue to persist within China’s economy and continue to actively grow in size, scale and scope of economic activities. References Formal State Ownership[1] Jacques, Martin. 2012. When China Rules the World. p. 184. Contribution to GDP and Scale of Assets[2] Szamosszegi, Andrew, and Cole Kyle. 2011. An Analysis of State-Owned Enterprises and State Capitalism in China. p. 1. https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/10_26_11_CapitalTradeSOEStudy.pdf. 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MIT Press. p. 44. [18] Telecommunications industry in China, Statista. https://www.statista.com/topics/6577/telecommunications-industry-in-china/#topicOverview. [19] The 5 Biggest Chinese Oil Companies, Investopedia. https://archive.ph/3POHm#selection-2275.1-2275.36. [20] Top 5 Chinese Natural Gas Companies, Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/090315/5-biggest-chinese-natural-gas-companies.asp. [21] China Baowu Steel Group Corporation Limited, FitchRatings. https://www.fitchratings.com/research/corporate-finance/china-baowu-steel-group-corporation-limited-09-03-2022. [22] Chinese rolling stock manufacturers merge to form CRRC Corp, Railway Gazette International. https://www.railwaygazette.com/business/chinese-rolling-stock-manufacturers-merge-to-form-crrc-corp/40956.article. [23] China becoming world’s go-to for shipbuilding after ‘boom of overseas orders’, but global de-risking threatens to rock the boat, South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3225973/china-becoming-worlds-go-shipbuilding-after-boom-overseas-orders-global-de-risking-threatens-rock. [24] Minmetals Holding Corporation, Publication of Offering Circular. p. 14. https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2021/0421/2021042100263.pdf. [25] China Minmetals Corporation, FitchRatings. https://www.fitchratings.com/research/corporate-finance/china-minmetals-corporation-16-08-2021. The Shareholder System[26] About Us, SASAC. http://en.sasac.gov.cn/aboutus.html [27] Lenin, Vladimir. 1917. “III. Finance Capital and the Financial Oligarchy.” In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Marxists.org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch03.htm. [28] Liberalization in Reverse, Heritage Foundation. https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/liberalization-reverse. [29] Pearson, Margaret. 2005. “The Business of Governing Business in China: Institutions and Norms of the Emerging Regulatory State.” p. 304. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25054295. [30] Non-performing, The Economist. https://archive.ph/B5kSb#selection-863.68-863.133. [31] Yeung, Horace. 2009. “Non-Tradable Share Reform in China: Marching towards the Berle and Means Corporation?” https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1156&context=clpe. [32] Walter, Carl. 2014. “Was Deng Xiaoping Right? An Overview of China's Equity Markets.” p. 18. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jacf.12075. [33] Hawson, Nicholas. 2017. “China’s ‘Corporatization without Privatization’ and the Late 19th Century Roots of a Stubborn Path Dependency”. p. 11. https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3021&context=articles. [34] Brandt, Loren, and Thomas G Rawski. 2011. China’s Great Economic Transformation. Cambridge University Press. p. 355. LLCs/Shareholding Firms[35] Khoo, Heiko. 2018. Is China still socialist? A Marxist critique of János Kornai’s analysis of China. p. 89-90. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/136790902/2018_Khoo_Heiko_1068757_ethesis.pdf. [36] Szamosszegi, Andrew, and Cole Kyle. 2011. An Analysis of State-Owned Enterprises and State Capitalism in China. p. 25. https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/10_26_11_CapitalTradeSOEStudy.pdf. [37] Hsieh, Chang-Tai, and Zheng Song. 2015. “Grasp the Large, Let Go of the Small: The Transformation of the State Sector in China.” p. 7-8. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_hsieh.pdf. Examples of the Shareholder/LLC system at work[38] “CICT”, China Govt Services. https://govt.chinadaily.com.cn/s/201812/05/WS5c07928c498eefb3fe46e304/china-information-and-communication-technologies-group-corporation-cict.html. [39] SMIC, “Announcement of 2022 annual results”. p. 96. https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2023/0328/2023032801249.pdf. [40] CNN, McDonald’s is investing more in China to tap ‘tremendous opportunity’. https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/21/business/mcdonalds-china-stake-prospects/index.html#:~:text=The%20deal%20to%20acquire%20investment,ownership%20with%20a%2052%25%20stake. [41] Changhong Jiahua Holdings Limited, Annual Report 2020. p. 69 https://ir.changhongit.com/pub/resource/application/2021042001499.pdf. Archives February 2024
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To say that I was awed is an understatement. Standing in front of Picasso’s 11.5 ft. x 25.5 ft. celebrated painting Guernica is one of the most sobering encounters I’ve had the displeasure of experiencing. Displeasure because the massive composition’s theme is revoltingly gruesome. Since that dastardly first-of-its-kind-waging-of-wars, nations have not learned to abide by and practice peaceful and harmonious existence. World War 2 was followed by wars in Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Near East/Palestine (8 wars), Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, and Gaza, to name but a few. And in each of these wars massive bombings and aerial bombardment have been the weapon of choice, resulting in the death of millions of human beings. Aerial bombardment is brutal, heinous, and vicious. Aerial bombardment is the cowardly weapon of arrogant, fascistic, hegemonic, and egotistical maniacs. Aerial bombardment is the screen behind which powerful thugs hide to absolve themselves of crimes against humanity. Aerial wars’ indiscriminate annihilation of mostly innocent civilians, reducing them to paupers and beggars, goes against every decent norm. For well over 35 years I’d been showing Guernica to my students, expounding on the painting’s blending of a heinously ghoulish theme executed in the cubist style on a-never-seen-before massive scale. One of the world’s most prominent museums, Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia, is finally home to this one-of-a-kind artistic expression bearing witness to ghastly human depravity. On my last visit to Spain some 12 years back, I spent well over an hour studying Picasso’s ingenious blending of form and theme in monochromatic colors. Standing in front of the composition, I viewed it from every angle, and I relived years of lecture terms, phrases, descriptions, questions, answers, student responses/opinions, and so much more. On April 27, 1937, mostly German and Italian warplanes conducted the first large-scale aerial bombardment on the town of Guernica. Nestled in northern Spain and with the complicity of Franscico Franco, Spain’s Fascist dictator, the Germans wanted to test their newly fabricated war machinery – the Nazi Luftwaffe’s planes and their newly designed bombs – produced solely for destruction on a massive scale. Because of its remoteness, Guernica was chosen as the perfect out-of-sight out-of-mind target. Like today’s Gaza, Guernica was reduced to massive rubble shrouding innocent civilians whose flesh, blood, bones, and sinews cloaked the bleak landscape of rubble, rebar, and crater-size pocked apocalyptic destruction where once high-rise structures, streets, and alleyways existed. And hospitals, ambulances, mosques, churches, and schools are being targeted – deliberately and mercilessly. In response to this nightmarish bombing, Picasso isolated himself in his studio for a lengthy time and vented his fury by working long hours and in isolation on what is perhaps the world’s foremost artistic political statement. Here is what I see today in Picassos’ composition: to the far right is a Gaza woman holding her arms to high heaven; she is screaming, pleading, imploring the gods for deliverance. At the top is a light, accompanied by a hand holding a lamp as though to shed light on the unfolding carnage. Call this the 90 plus journalists killed by Israeli snipers and drones so as to draw a curtain on what God’s chosen are doing in Gaza, today’s “graveyard of children.” In addition to its military strength, Israel is adept at conducting its carnage under the cover of dark. And its powerful choking of US media is adept at portraying it as the victim. To the top left Netanyahu and Co., along with Biden and Co., prance bullishly over the devastation as they squash the emaciated mother holding on to her dead infant. How many white shrouds have to be buried to appease the Hebraic God of revenge? And how many corpses have to be pulled out, with bare hands, from under the rubble? And how many tattered remains have to be placed in makeshift bags? Careful scrutiny of the foreground depicts newsprint, Picasso’s manner of telling the world “I am Guernica: Remember Me, Remember What Heinous Crimes You’ve committed.” And the crushed supine figure holding onto a broken weapon represents trampled, crushed justice under the weight of brute force. It is worth noting that while Peter Paul Rubens, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and scores of mostly European artists have produced a massive volume of compositions under the title Massacre of the Innocents, a theme associated with Herod (the Not so Great), King of Judea, and around the time of Christ’s birth, Picasso’s Guernica stands in a class of its own. And is it not ironic that right around the time Christendom is about to celebrate the birth of its Savior, the Prince of Peace, the Redeemer, the Israelis are raining down 2000-pound bombs, some of them the awful phosphorus kind that vaporize their victims? To date the equivalent of three Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs have been dropped on a starved, thirsty, disoriented 2.3 million displaced citizenry. And could we say that to date, timed with Christmas 2023, Israel has massacred over 8,000 thousand innocent children – and counting. And the West, today’s bastion of Christianity, is abhorrently supportive and silent? Yes, in the last few years Fascism has slowly sneaked into our halls of justice, our public spaces, our airwaves, and our digital formats. Joe “I am a Zionist to the Core,” Netanyahu’s puppet and apologist, has draped himself in the Israeli flag and has fashioned and emblazoned his tie, his shirt, his suit, and his rhetoric in the same style and rhetoric of Netanyahu, his alter ego and master. On December 10, 2023, Spain, the only Western nation with the moral fortitude to express its outrage at the Gaza carnage, held a solidarity event in the Basque city of Guernica’s market square, the same square that was bombed by the Nazis and Fascist forces way back in 1937. An aerial view depicts a massive Palestinian flag (the size of the entire square) in mosaic form the tesserae of which were held by citizens, trade unionists, artists, anti-war and anti-fascist groups, along with a large depiction of Picasso’s image depicting the mother, her child in her arms, crying to the high heavens. And for a whole minute the sirens blazed in solidarity with Gaza’s mothers and children. Viva Espana. Viva Palestina. Author (Raouf J. Halaby is a Professor Emeritus of English and Art. He is a writer, photographer, sculptor, an avid gardener, and a peace activist. Courtesy: CounterPunch.) Archives February 2024 2/28/2024 Habonim Dror: How Israeli Regime Recruits Left-Wing Americans to Fan Zionism. By: Shabbir RizviRead NowOne of the most profound awakenings for Westerners since the launch of the Palestinian resistance operation Al-Aqsa Storm has been their understanding of how influential the Zionist lobby is. This lobby, which works in line with the US State Department when it can and independently and subversively when it cannot, tends to influence major arenas of societal interest. On the surface level, one can simply follow the money and understand the phenomenon: the Israeli lobby pouring millions of dollars into buying US politicians, Zionist hate groups unleashed to stifle Pro-Palestinian students on college campuses, celebrities and artists flown out to Israel to pose with Israeli Occupation soldiers in order to paint them in a positive light. However, more devious and subversive groups exist within American society, specifically designed to “normalize” the concept of not only an Israeli regime, but the imperialist-settler ideology of Zionism. These organizations are designed with the American “left” in mind: Using left-wing, pro-worker sloganism, Zionist groups specifically target left-wing movements, students, and youths in order to indoctrinate them into aligning with the Zionist cause. One of these groups is known as “Habonim Dror.” Habonim Dror is believed to have promoted the ideas of “social justice” and “peace” while running six Zionist student camps across North America. The group actively recruits young Jewish students from across the US and Canada (though they have more minor concentrations in New Zealand, Brazil, the UK, and other countries) indoctrinating them in their camps, and even including a year-long program to send them to Occupied Palestine. At first glance at their website and mission, it is clear that they are intent on separating themselves from the ruling Benjamin Netanyahu regime in Tel Aviv. Habonim Dror emphasizes the need for “Labor Zionism” and even goes as far as suggesting “ending the occupation,” but ultimately succumbs to the same-old “Two-State Solution” rhetoric that forces Palestinians to deal with an aggressive, genocidal and brutal “neighbor.” “Labor Zionism,” which can save you a few syllables if you just call it what it is - Zionism - was a mutated appeal to the labor movement in North America. Habonin Dror was established in the 1930s as an appendage faction of the mainstream Zionist movement, and it has until now taken a backseat role in picking up Jewish youth who at first were resistant to the idea of Zionism. For decades, the Israeli occupation has enjoyed total control of its image, and so its initiatives were less aggressive. Now, Habonim Dror represents a wave of Zionism meant to capture what would be dissenting Jewish voices and reprogram them to be tools for colonialism and imperialism. Its mission is designed to “meet the moment” of a resurgent left-wing movement in the United States, particularly after the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, the Bernie Sanders presidential run in 2016, and the George Floud Uprising of 2020 - all three of which propelled left-wing movements and revived an interest in socialism in an otherwise deeply reactionary society. Habonim Dror may use veils like “socialism” and “progressivism” to define itself. However, its “principles” mention nothing of anti-imperialism or anti-colonialism. The group’s “socialism” is a “national socialism” for its own fascist occupation - it is not rooted in internationalism or global worker solidarity. It is a corrupted “socialism” that uses sloganeering and symbolism that are aesthetic to socialism while driving a deeply reactionary and imperialist political line. Habonim Dror encourages its members, who can join as early as high school, to participate in local social justice issues, including police brutality, immigration reform, climate change, and other popular left-wing issues that have gained much attention in American society. It further trains participants to be (according to their website) “leaders, change-makers and activists in their communities.” Offering attractive scholarships, opportunities to travel to Occupied Palestine, a rich network of connections that could offer promising careers and formal leadership training programs, Habonim Dror seems similar to a fraternity or an innocent summer camp. However, it is adamantly dedicated to the Zionist cause - which demands the existence of “Israel.” It is a simple equation. Habonim Dror targets what would otherwise be neutral, uninterested, or otherwise hostile Jewish youth and codifies a “left wing” Zionism in them, then encourages them to embed themselves into their communities and local movements as leaders and changemakers. They represent the face of Zionism where Zionism would otherwise be unwelcome, and thus rebrand Zionism through a false definition. These initiatives are crafted to normalize collaboration with more “hardline” Zionists. By infiltrating otherwise progressive movements, ‘Labor Zionism’ agents can influence those around them to embrace Zionism and the Israeli occupation. Zionists know that principled left-wing movements outright reject their racist ideology. In order to adapt, groups like Habonim Dror have been crafted to mutate Zionism in order to appeal to a left-wing wave that does not have strong principles of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. The Palestinian issue is purposely framed as complicated and “sensitive” in American society. “Left Wing” Zionists can then be deployed to command the conversation in progressive circles, rejecting any idea of a true liberation for Palestinians. As long as Zionism itself is not seen as the main issue, the Israeli occupation is framed in a positive light. A prime example of the type of influencer Habonim Dror seeks to create is the aggressively Zionist and Islamophobic actor Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen joined the group in his late teens in the 1980s, attending summer camps and ultimately moving to the occupied Palestinian territories for a year, working alongside other Zionist youth. Later, he would play the roles of deeply racist caricatures that fueled the fire of Islamophobia at the height of post-9/11 hysteria in the United States. Cohen now spends his time as a critic of the US right-wing lobby while simultaneously spreading Zionist propaganda and continuing his racism against Muslims. He came out in fierce defense of the Israeli response to the Palestinian resistance operation Al Aqsa Flood. Clearly, even “Labor Zionism” falls short of condemning the occupation, despite its insistence that it does. Some Habonim Dror activists have established networks with influential politicians such as staunch Zionist senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. The very existence of Habonin Dror activists threatens to normalize “Israeli” existence within progressive movements in the US, which at a critical movement like now are condemning the Tel Aviv regime. The group further prides itself on the collaboration of groups that are not Zionist in nature, citing various statistics of group participation in outside movements and leadership positions held, all while demonstrating their loyalty to the Israeli occupation, despite their alleged denunciation of “occupation.” This is a key goal for Habonin Dror: Zionists understand that isolation will only bring about their disaster. Therefore, groups like Habonim Dror must branch out in order to normalize the Israeli regime. This is their main factor of success. If local movements aren’t careful, they could be collaborating with Zionist infiltrators that could subvert Palestinian solidarity when it counts the most. Picture this scenario: a climate activist group is concerned about the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, as US weapons used themselves are a climate issue. Moving to condemn the genocide, grassroots organizers are then blocked by leadership that is Habonim Dror “activists.” A key voice within the US political realm is then silenced because of meticulously devised Zionist infiltration within an otherwise left-wing group. Habonim Dror isn’t the only Zionist youth group seeking to build a generation of Zionist influencers and “activists.” There are many different Zionist youth groups - some that are more “left-wing” in nature, and others that are “hardline.” Careful attention must be paid in order to understand how Zionists can subvert movements, organizations, and ideas - especially by weaponizing “progressivism” when a progressive movement is beginning to take shape and action. Let it be clear: there is nothing “progressive” or “left-wing” about the Israeli occupation or Zionism. At its core, it will always be a racist, colonial ideology that threatens war, expansionism, and exploitation. No rebrand can ever take away these core features of Zionism. Author Shabbir Rizvi Political analyst that specializes in US foreign and domestic policy, geopolitics, and military science; Anti-war organizer. Republished from Islam Times. Archives February 2024 On February 9, 2024, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his army would advance into Rafah, the last remaining city in Gaza not occupied by the Israelis. Most of the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in Gaza had fled to its southern border with Egypt after being told by the Israelis on October 13, 2023, that the north had to be abandoned and that the south would be a “safe zone.” As the Palestinians from the north, particularly from Gaza City, began their march south—often on foot—they were attacked by Israeli forces, who gave them no safe passage. The Israelis said that anything south of Wadi Gaza, which divides the narrow strip, would be safe, but then as the Palestinians moved into Deir-al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, they found the Israeli jets following them and the Israeli troops coming after them. Now, Netanyahu has said that his forces will enter Rafah to combat Hamas. On February 11, Netanyahu told NBC news that Israeli would provide “safe passage for the civilian population” and that there would be no “catastrophe.” Catastrophe The use of the word “catastrophe” is significant. This is the accepted English translation of the word “nakba,” used since 1948 to describe the forced removal that year of half of the Palestinian population from their homes. Netanyahu’s use of the term comes after high officials of the Israeli government have already spoken of a “Gaza Nakba” or a “Second Nakba.” These phrases formed part of South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on December 29, 2023, alleging that they are part of the “expressions of genocidal intent against the Palestinian people by Israeli state officials.” A month later, the ICJ said that there was “plausible” evidence of genocide being conducted in Gaza, highlighting the words of the Israelis officials. One official, the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “I have released all restraints” (quoted both by the South African complaint and in the ICJ’s order). Netanyahu saying that there would be no “catastrophe” after over 28,000 Palestinians have been killed and after two million of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced is puzzling. Since the ICJ’s order, the Israeli army has killed nearly 2,000 Palestinians. The Israeli army has already begun to assault Rafah, a city with a population density now at 22,000 people per square kilometer. In response to the Israeli announcement that it would enter Rafah city, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)—one of the few groups operating in the southern part of Gaza--said that such an invasion “could collapse the humanitarian response.” The NRC assessed nine of the shelters in Rafah, which are housing 27,400 civilians and found that the residents have no drinking water. Because the shelters are operating at 150 percent capacity, hundreds of the Palestinians are living on the street. In each of the areas that the NRC studied, they found the Palestinian refugees in the grip of hepatitis A, gastroenteritis, diarrhea, smallpox, lice, and influenza. Because of the collapse of this humanitarian response from the NRC, and from the United Nations—whose agency UNRWA has lost its funding and is under attack by the Israelis—the situation will deteriorate further. Safe Passage Netanyahu says that his government will provide “safe passage” to the Palestinians. These words have been heard by the Palestinians since mid-October when they were told to keep going south to prevent being killed by the Israeli bombing. Nobody believes anything that Netanyahu says. A Palestinian health worker, Saleem, told me that he cannot imagine any place of safety within Gaza. He came to Rafah’s al-Zohour neighborhood from Khan Younis, walking with his family, desperate to get out of the range of the Israeli guns. “Where do we go now?” he asks me. “We cannot enter Egypt. The border is closed. So, we cannot go south. We cannot go into Israel, because that is impossible. Are we to go north, back to Khan Younis and Gaza City?” Saleem remembers that when he arrived in al-Zohour, the Israelis targeted the home of Dr. Omar Mohammed Harb, killing 22 Palestinians (among them five children). The house was flattened. The name of Dr. Omar Mohammed Harb stayed with me because I recalled that two years ago his daughter Abeer was to be married to Ismail Abdel-Hameed Dweik. An Israeli air strike on the Shouhada refugee camp killed Ismail. Abeer was killed in the strike on her father’s house, which had been a refuge for those fleeing from the north. Saleem moved into that area of Rafah. Now he is unsettled. “Where to go?” he asks. Domicide On January 29, 2024, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Dr. Balakrishnan Rajagopal wrote a strong essay in the New York Times called “Domicide: the Mass Destruction of Homes Should be a Crime Against Humanity.” Accompanying his article was a photo essay by Yaqeen Baker, whose house was destroyed in Jabalia (northern Gaza) by Israeli bombardment. “The destruction of homes in Gaza,” Baker wrote, “has become commonplace, and so has the sentiment, ‘The important thing is that you’re safe—everything else can be replaced.’” That is an assessment shared across Gaza amongst those who are still alive. But, as Dr. Rajagopal says, the scale of the destruction of housing in Gaza should not be taken for granted. It is a form of “domicide,” a crime against humanity. The Israeli attack on Gaza, Dr. Rajagopal writes, is “far worse than what we saw in Dresden and Rotterdam during World War II, where about 25,000 homes were destroyed in each city.” In Gaza, he says, more than 70,000 housing units have been totally destroyed, and 290,000 partially damaged. In these three months of Israeli fire, he notes, “a shocking 60 to 70 percent of structures in Gaza, and up to 84 percent of structures in northern Gaza, have been damaged or destroyed.” Due to this domicide, there is no place for the Palestinians in Rafah to go if they go north. Their homes have been destroyed. “This crushing of Gaza as a place,” reflects Dr. Rajagopal, “erases the past, present, and future of many Palestinians.” This statement by Dr. Rajagopal is a recognition of the unfolding genocide in Gaza. As I speak with Saleem the sound of the Israeli advance can be heard in the distance. “I don’t know when we can speak next,” he says. “I don’t know where I will be.” Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives February 2024 2/16/2024 The International Court of Justice Censures Israel for Its Genocidal War. By: Vijay PrashadRead NowOn January 26, 2024, the judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) released their 29-page order that found “plausible” (paragraph 54) evidence that Israel was conducting a genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. The court intervened in that war due to South Africa’s application that Israel had violated its obligations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). South Africa came to the ICJ two months and three weeks into Israel’s brutal military bombardment against the Palestinians. The 84-page indictment from South Africa, presented to the ICJ on December 29, 2023, included statements made by Israel’s high officials calling for the total annihilation of the “human savages” in Gaza and included details of how Israel was acting on such statements. The ICJ agreed with South Africa’s claims and called upon Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts” that are genocidal (paragraph 78). The order is not a final verdict since there was no trial. These are “provisional measures.” It would take the ICJ several years to adjudicate whether Israel is actually committing genocide against the Palestinians. The ICJ did not directly call for a ceasefire or a “cessation of hostilities” (as it had done in March 2022, when it ordered Russia to “suspend the military operations”). However, it is hard to read paragraph 78 in any other way than that it calls on Israel to silence its guns. Twenty years ago, the ICJ studied the building of a wall around the West Bank in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In July 2004, the ICJ found that “the construction of the wall by Israel… is contrary to international law.” There has been a relentless battle over the jurisdiction of the ICJ to rule over Israel’s behavior in the OPT, including in 2022 when a legal opinion was sought by several states over the finding of a UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry chaired by the South African judge Navi Pillay. Pillay’s report found “reasonable grounds to conclude that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is now unlawful under international law due to its permanence and the Israeli government’s de-facto annexation policies.” Israel contested the ICJ’s jurisdiction in the case. Now, with this charge of genocide, the court established its jurisdiction and Israel accepted it by participating in the proceedings. Provisional Measures The ICJ was set up by the United Nations as a dispute settlement mechanism between states. South Africa took its dispute with Israel to the ICJ, accusing Israel of violating an international treaty. Having looked at the dispute, the ICJ found for South Africa and offered “provisional measures” to defend the rights of the Palestinian people. The order by the ICJ has no appeal. It is final. The ICJ gave Israel one month to show that it has taken measures to protect the Palestinians. If Israel either fails to respond or does not respond satisfactorily, then the ICJ will send its order to the UN Security Council (UNSC) for enforcement. The UNSC will be bound by the UN Charter to enforce the order. Israel has already rejected the order. That means that the order will be sent, a month from now, to the UNSC. At that point, it will be interesting to see how the three veto-power Global North countries (France, the United Kingdom, and the United States) will react to the order. On January 25, the U.S. State Department’s spokesperson Vedant Patel said that the U.S. government believes that “the allegations that Israel is committing genocide [are] unfounded.” Patel said that Israel should “take feasible steps, additional steps to prevent civilian harm,” but that there is no genocide being conducted by Israel. This will set up a showdown at the UNSC. Algeria, a member of the UNSC at this time, has asked for a meeting to be held to discuss the verdict and to have the UNSC call for an immediate ceasefire. The Reputation of the Court Alongside the ICJ order, Judge Xue Hanqin wrote a separate opinion, in which she noted that 60 years ago, the governments of Ethiopia and Liberia had brought South Africa to the ICJ for its role in South-West Africa (now Namibia). The ICJ, she wrote, rejected the case, and this “denial of justice gave rise to strong indignation” against the ICJ “severely tarnishing its reputation.” Judge Xue came to the ICJ in 2010, and—due to her seriousness of purpose—was elected to be the court’s vice president in 2018. In March 2022, Judge Xue voted against the provisional order that called upon Russia to suspend its military operation in Ukraine (by the time of that order, just over a thousand civilians had been killed in the war, whereas by the time the ICJ took up the Israeli bombing, more than 25,000 civilians had been killed). In the case of Israel’s brutal war against the Palestinians, Judge Xue raised the issue of erga omnes (“towards all”), which implies that this is a case where Israel’s actions harm the world community and Israel must be impelled to stop its war on behalf of all of humanity. “For a protected group such as the Palestinian people,” Judge Xue wrote, “it is least controversial that the international community has a common interest in its protection.” There are three Asian judges on the court, with Judge Xue joined by Judge Iwasawa Yuji of Japan and Judge Dalveer Bhandari of India. Judge Bhandari has had a distinguished career in India on the Delhi High Court (1991-2004), on the Bombay High Court (2004-2005), and on the Supreme Court (2005-2012) before he was elevated to the ICJ. Only five judges appended their opinion to the order, one of whom was Judge Bhandari. In his opinion, Judge Bhandari went over the legal merits of South Africa’s case, but made sure to put on the record his view that other international laws than the Convention on Genocide apply to this war and that all parties must adhere to these laws. While the order itself did not directly call for a cessation of hostilities, Judge Bhandari did so. “All participants in the conflict,” he wrote, “must ensure that all fighting and hostilities come to an immediate halt and that remaining hostages captured on 7 October 2023 are unconditionally released forthwith.” It is likely that Judge Bhandari affixed his own opinion to the court in order to register the necessity of asking directly for such a direct ceasefire. The Reaction of Israel and Its Allies Israel’s reaction to the order by the ICJ was characteristic. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that the ICJ was an “antisemitic court” and that it “does not seek justice, but rather the persecution of Jewish people.” Strangely, Ben Gvir said that the ICJ was “silent during the Holocaust.” The Holocaust conducted by the Nazi German regime and its allies against European Jews, the Romani, homosexuals, and Communists took place between late 1941 and May 1945 (when the Soviet Red Army liberated the prisoners from Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and Stutthof). The ICJ was established in June 1945, a month after the Holocaust ended, and it began work in April 1946. To try and delegitimize the Court by saying that it remained “silent” when it was not in existence, and then to use that false statement to call the ICJ an “antisemitic court” shows that Israel has no answer to the merits of the ICJ order. What is interesting is that the Israeli judge at the ICJ, Aharon Barak, joined the majority of the judges in a vote of 16-1 to say that Israel is not allowing in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in Gaza, and that Israel must “prevent and punish the incitement of genocide.” It is hard for Israeli high officials to consider Barak “antisemitic” or to disparage his credentials. Barak has held high positions in Israel, such as Attorney General (1975-1978), Justice on the Supreme Court of Israel (1978-1995), and President of the Supreme Court (1995-2006). Barak did vote against the claim that there was “plausible” evidence of genocide by the Israeli government. “Genocide,” he wrote in his own opinion, “is more than just a word for me; it represents calculated destruction and human behavior at its very worst. It is the gravest possible accusation and is deeply intertwined with my personal life experience.” While Barak, the Israeli nominee on the ICJ for this case, did not vote on the accusation that genocide is being conducted in Gaza, Judge Barak nonetheless agreed that there was “incitement of genocide.” The difference between the two hangs on a thread, haunted by the ghost of the dead 30,000 Palestinians (nearly half of them children). Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in trouble politically within Israel, welcomed the fact that the ICJ did not order a ceasefire and then said that his War Cabinet will continue to prosecute its war. This spin on the verdict is implausible. It will not convince anyone, least of all the judges of the ICJ who have found the accusation of genocide “plausible” and have called upon Israel to stop its genocidal war. Author Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives February 2024 2/16/2024 Eyes on the South: Low intensity conflict & escalation-risk in Lebanon. By: Sammy IsmailRead NowHezbollah fighter, on border guard duty, sitting astride a motorbike blocking the pathway of an Israeli Merkava tank that had broken through the electric fence into Lebanese territories, the photo was taken by Al-Manar correspondent Ali Sheaib, Jalet al-Mahafer, 2022 (Illustrated by: Mahdi Rtail, Al Mayadeen English) More than 100 days have passed since the Al-Aqsa Flood came crashing down on the colonial outpost of US imperialism in West Asia; the tide has been only gaining momentum since. The war quickly spilled over beyond the territories of Occupied Palestine to include south Lebanon most notably. Revisiting Johan Galtung's Conflict Theory, this paper will borrow theoretical concepts introduced by Galtung to analyze and structure the Al-Aqsa Flood. Galtung introduces a set of simplistic classifications and twin criteria that bring burgeoning conflicts into perspective and allow for a formal analysis. The two classifications that I chose to expound on are Scale and Intensity. Scale will be useful to lay out the overarching context to then zero in on Lebanon which is the primary subject of study for this paper. Intensity serves to demonstrate conflict as being dynamic fluctuating along lines of escalation and de-escalation. An interesting nuance that Galtung formalizes is that between Latent Conflict and Manifest Conflict. The former describes the underlying tensions, between two parties, that are not yet explicitly acted upon (typically, this state of affairs is understood to be "Negative Peace" where Direct Violence is absent). The latter describes the state of affairs where strife is actively occurring (Direct Violence breaks out). Development from Latent Conflict into Manifest Conflict can also be understood using the heuristic of Galtung's ABC Triangle of Violence. In the Triangle, Galtung pinpoints three focal points in conflict: Attitude, Behavior, and Contradiction. In the case of liberation struggles, as is the struggle against Zionist colonialism and US imperialism, the Contradiction is the nexus, the primary focal point from which violence spirals out: the spiral of violence originates from Contradiction and develops into Attitudes and Behaviors. In Attitude, it develops as latent conflict. In Behavior, it develops as manifest conflict. Conflict Scale: Beligrents and Fronts Gaza became ground zero for the war on October 7th, but the Al-Aqsa Flood has resonated throughout the region since. Beligrents in support of the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza have included the Palestinian resistance factions in the West Bank, the Lebanese Resistance, the Islamic Resistance factions in Iraq, the Yemeni Armed Forces (in cooperation with the Yemeni resistance), and the Islamic Revolution's Guard in Iran. Beligrents on the side of the Israelis have included the US-led occupation coalition in Syria, the US-led occupation coalition in Iraq, the US-led aggression coalition in the Red Sea, and the Takfiri terrorist network in the region (Daesh, Jaish ul-Adl, etc.). Fronts from which operations are being launched directly against the Israeli occupation, in addition to Gaza, include most notably South Lebanon (which serves as the second battlefront of this war), the West Bank (where lone-wolf stabbing/shooting/ramming operations and counter-raid concerted action by underground resistance cells have increased in frequency), in addition to Syria, Iraq, and Yemen (from where drones and missiles have been launched against the occupied territories most notably al-Jalil "Galilee Heights", Um al-Rashrash "Eilat", and even recently Haifa). Complimentary fronts, from where operations don't directly target "Israel" but rather aim to build up pressure on "Israel" and its imperialist proppers to consolidate a ceasefire in Gaza. These complimentary fronts include the Red and Arabian Seas (where the Yemeni Armed Forces and Resistance have enforced a naval blockade against Israeli and "Israel"-bound ships), northeast Syria (where the US-led coalition occupation bases are being shelled by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq), and Iraq (where, similarly, US-led coalition occupation bases are being shelled by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq). Mired "Israel" thrashes at the entire region Throughout modern history, all parties involved in materially supporting the Palestinian resistance have been punished by being subjected to imperialist and zionist terrorism. Prior to the war, it had manifested primarily as economic sanctions (with the exception of Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria which had frequently fallen subject to Israeli military aggression in addition to economic sanctions). After the war, especially after being frustrated by the little-yielding ground invasion of Gaza, this terrorism had manifested in brazenly more savage means. Over the span of the war, the Israeli occupation bombed Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, while the US occupation forces bombed both Iraq and Yemen. Jointly, the US imperialist forces and the Israeli Occupation Forces assassinated prominent resistance commanders: including IRGC commander Razi Mousavi (by "Israel"), Hamas politburo official Saleh al-Arouri (by "Israel"), Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah commander Moshtaq al-Saidi (by the US), and most recently Hezbollah high-ranking commander Wissam Tawil (by "Israel") In addition to a US-UK large-scale aerial aggression against Yemen last week, and the Daesh twin-terrorist bombings that targeted hundreds of Iranian civilians earlier this month. Digressing briefly, Iran has long been sanctioned for materially and consistently supporting the Palestinian resistance: Economic embargos, political subversion, covert sabotage operations, assassinations, terrorist attacks, etc. The Islamic Republic of Iran, even before getting involved in any proactive military action, before becoming neither a front nor a belligerent, has been subjected to imperialist warmongering and the terrorism of imperialism's takfiri footsoldiers: affirming the persistent neocon tradition of hawkishness in the White House but, now, discreetly through proxies. Conflict Intensity: escalation or de-escalation Carrying on with Galtung's theory, violence as he defines is tripartite Direct Violence (commonly militaristic), Structural Violence (commonly in law or regime), and Cultural Violence (commonly in beliefs and consequent attitudes). The latter two are latent forms of violence: characteristic of Latent Conflict. The former is the manifest form of violence: characteristic of Manifest Conflict. Manifest Conflict follows from an escalation in Latent Conflict. Similarly, escalation beyond a certain threshold would lead a Manifest Conflict to become an Escalated Conflict. Furthermore, Galtung details that a Conflict if escalated develops into Crisis or War (throughout the paper, I will not be committing to the gradation-escalation levels of conflict, crisis, and war; I will be using War and Conflict interchangeably). Conflict is not a sudden state of affairs that flutters in and out of existence at the whims of the conflict parties but rather is a long-lasting state of affairs that fluctuates along a scale of intensity, escalating and de-escalating: becoming dormant at times and resurfacing at others based on the development of events, and ceasing to exist only when the contradiction of interests is resolved (i.e. Positive Peace or Sustainable Peace is achieved). This prospect of escalation is best understood as formulated by the Fourth Law of Dialectics: Quantity into Quality. A state of affairs intensifies accumulatively till it reaches a threshold whereby quantitative increase is not possible anymore and the state of affairs changes qualitatively into a different state of affairs (Politzer, 1946). Gaza and South Lebanon: the build-up to the war Despite the macroscopic scale of Al-Aqsa Flood, Gaza, and south Lebanon remain thus far the only active battlefronts against the Israeli occupation. Throughout recent history, both Lebanon (primarily the South) and Palestine (primarily Gaza) have suffered severely under the plight of US-sponsored Israeli aggression: massacres, forced displacement, and occupation. In this struggle, the two nations grew more radicalized against their enemy (bearing arms and organizing their people into resistance movements) and steadily consolidated their binational solidarity (institutionalizing their alliance and proliferating it as the Axis of Resistance). In Gaza, in recent years, the latent structural violence of colonialism has been brazenly intensifying, especially with the extremist right-wing cabinet headed by Netanyahu (installed in late 2022) and the increasingly frequent incidents of settler violence in the West Bank and al-Quds. October 7th, 2023 was the threshold day. Violence broke out on a large scale after the Palestinian resistance had launched the long-deliberated operation that was the natural result of years of intensifying oppression. Latent Conflict developed into a Manifest Conflict and escalated at a sharp pace with the savage bombing campaigns and the ground invasion. The aggression against Gaza quickly snowballed into an all-out War (a high-intensity conflict). In Lebanon, the front erupted following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and in solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance. (Despite the intertwined stakes of Lebanese national interest and Palestinian national interest in contradiction to Israeli security) there was no buildup of a recent Latent Conflict between Lebanon and the Israeli occupation that reached a threshold on October 8th (in contrast to Gaza). The eruption of the front in south Lebanon came to echo Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, i.e. in solidarity with the people of Gaza and their valiant and honorable resistance (as the opening of the resistance's military statements commonly read). Patience and far-sightedness However, other latent frustrations in Lebanon preceded the eruption of the battlefront. In addition to solidarity with Gaza and anticipating long-term advantages to Lebanese national interest, a key factor that goes unnoticed is the latent economic frustrations. To digress again, when discussing the war build-up, a key prospect that commonly goes unnoticed is the radicalizing effect that the economic crisis has had on the Lebanese. In addition to national interest, binational solidarity, and religious fervor which are the primary drives mobilizing the Lebanese towards anti-zionist resistance, the prospect of accumulated economic frustration has radicalized a large segment of the Lebanese population against imperialism which was perceived to play a key role in enabling such a drastic crisis in Lebanon. For the past five years, the Lebanese have experienced the worst socio-economic crisis in recent history after the Ponzi scheme engineered by the US-propped central bank chief crashed. A systematically un-industrial rentier economy structured by the US and the Gulf back in the 1990s broke down: coupled with active efforts to economically pressure Lebanon to draw political concessions regarding the resistance. In addition to a sectarian consociational regime of governance that is doomed to recurrent cases of zero-sum game gridlock, making it impossible for a government to make decisions regarding the economy, public policy, or foreign relations. Recent years have exercised an extensive economic strain on the Resistance. Lebanese stability recurrently faltered as "protracted social conflict" seemed to sharpen in light of dire economic conditions (Edward Azar, 1990): with Christian right-wing parties and liberal NGO-type groups blaming the resistance for the crisis (for refusing to make the political concessions dictated by the West and the Gulf States that would restore the old insovereign rentier economic system). Thus, the extensive social and economic strain on the milieu of the Resistance or the "masses of the Resistance" (as Sayyed Nasrallah commonly refers to them), radicalized them further against the US: who pulled out the centerpiece of the make-shift kaleidoscopic Lebanese economy they had engineered sending it crashing down on Hezbollah. This new level of anti-imperialist radicalization among a segment of the Lebanese reaffirmed the aptness of the decision to organize into anti-zionist resistance factions; for "Israel" is understood to be an advanced outpost for imperialism in the region, and the security of "Israel" is understood to be one the primary objectives of imperialism in the region (in addition to accumulating super-profits for oligarchs). If this frustration has been discharged satisfactorily by any means, it was through anti-zionist military action. It's poetic justice for the Lebanese to threaten Israeli security after being economically bullied for five years to concede to "Israel" its security by disarming the resistance. Low-Intensity Conflict in South Lebanon In Gaza, a latent conflict steadily intensified until a manifest conflict broke out: quickly escalating into a high-intensity conflict. In Lebanon, however, the conflict was the result of intensifying latent frustrations, national interest, and binational solidarity. On October 8th, the front erupted in Lebanon and it has steadily escalated since, however, it has thus far remained, arguably, a low-intensity conflict. Since the commencement of the first operation, the Lebanese resistance has deliberated not to give in to the appeal of adventurism (going all in for all-out war): for a set of reasons elucidated in the speeches of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah (which include losing the advantage of a surprise attack, the weakened Lebanese economy, as well as the comparative advantage of low-intensity conflict etc). This strategy of decisively targeting Israeli military sites within the framework of a low-intensity conflict has proved effective in accumulatively inflicting small losses on the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces), and building up pressure on "Israel". The immediate and announced objective of the operations from Lebanon has been clear: building up pressure on "Israel" to concede to a ceasefire in Gaza. In the long term, the persistence of the status quo of low-intensity warfare within the frame of the laws of engagement of deterrence between the Lebanese resistance and the Israeli Occupation Forces is a lot more harmful to "Israel" than it is to Lebanon given the nature of the conflict (profit-driven colonizers vs a popular indigenous liberation movement). "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win." -Vietnamese Communist Revolutionary Ho Chi Minh to French Colonizers on the eve of the liberation war (1946) Low-intensity conflict: accumulative small gains, minimized losses On the Lebanese battlefront, as aforementioned, the war burgeons within the framework of a low-intensity conflict which allows for decisive contained hits: accumulating in advantage. In 100 days, the Lebanese resistance has executed more than 700 operations against the occupation. The resistance targetted all front-line military sites along the borders and even managed to target 17 settlements, according to figures cited by the Secretary General of Hezbollah in a speech earlier this month. While the IOF continues to underreport losses fearing demoralization in the settler society, Israeli media outlets report that hospitals have been abounding with injured soldiers and cemeteries with killed soldiers. Israeli media also report that thousands of Israeli soldiers have been incapacitated; estimates range from 4,000 (confirmed) up to 30,000 (estimated). The primary objective of the Lebanese battlefront, as is the case with other complimentary fronts, has been to build up pressure against the Israeli-War Cabinet to agree to a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange deal on the terms of the Palestinian resistance, and dissolving the blockade against Gaza. The secondary objective of the Lebanese resistance, as is the case with other complimentary fronts, is the respective national interest (in Lebanon it manifests as consolidating the equation of deterrence and tipping its balance against "Israel" so that it concedes occupied Lebanese territories, namely Shebaa farms). Both of these objectives are being steadily worked for in Lebanon. IOF losses in the north have been steadily accumulating:
The IOF spokesperson cited intense exhaustion as being a key factor behind the blunders of the IOF in Gaza and the underwhelming efficiency of the ground operation: Explaining that most soldiers have been on duty continuously without substitution because their compatriots are mobilized in the north. Phase 3 in Gaza: de-escalation or redirecting escalation? Due to the ongoing pressure against "Israel", whether through the admirable steadfastness of the Palestinian resistance, the intensifying decisive operations by the Lebanese resistance, the blockade against Israeli navigation in the Arabian and Red Seas by the Yemeni Armed Forces and the Yemeni resistance, the increasingly frequent strikes against US occupation bases in Syria and Iraq by the Iraqi Resistance, and the international efforts to condemn "Israel" spearheaded by South Africa in the ICJ, the vehemence of the US-sponsored death machine in Gaza seems to be getting slowly quelled. The US has announced that it will be pressuring the Israeli government to mitigate its genocidal war which has been detrimental to both parties' international PR. The IOF has announced that it has started shifting to a lower-intensity Phase 3 (decreasing the bulk of troop presence in Gaza, relying more on airstrikes, and employing targeted raids). Ever since the preliminary steps of Phase 3 started coming into effect under the plight of US pressure against the fascist Israeli War Cabinet, Netanyahu, along with his genocide boyband, seems to have started looking for different avenues to continue the war to perpetuate his ill-fated political career against a seemingly imminent soft-coup by the Biden administration. "Israel" is pushing Hezbollah to its limits: Amal Saad "Just as Israel revealed its plan to withdraw thousands of troops from northern Gaza for the next phase of its ongoing war, the senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a targeted assassination in Beirut," Amal Saad writes in a recent piece for The Guardian published on January 5th shortly after the assassination of Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut. Amal Saad elucidates the significance and possible implications of this grave attack against Lebanon which seemed to try to nullify the deterrence enforced by the Lebanese resistance against the IOF since 2006. "Hezbollah is in all likelihood concerned that a failure to respond decisively will invite Israel to go on an extrajudicial killing spree in Beirut – not just against Hamas but also eventually against its [Hezbollah] own officials," she explains. "This would require a carefully measured retaliation that simultaneously signifies an escalation in terms of scope and intensity, but falls short of all-out war." The Lebanese resistance's retaliation followed one day later. A combined Kornet-Grad artillery attack by the Resistance pummelled the Meron airforce base which served as an intelligence military command hub for the occupation. The operation, as Amal Saad had reasoned, was a high-intensity retaliation falling short of an all-out war. Furthermore, she explains that the objective of the Israeli attempt at undermining the deterrence equation seemingly serves as an attempt at provoking Hezbollah into an all-out war. "An even greater concern is that Israel is seeking to provoke Hezbollah into a full-scale war that would involve the US as a co-belligerent." "...whether or not Israel, which is incapable of confronting Hezbollah on its own, is seeking to drag the US into a full-blown regional war." Commenting on this, Amal Saad later emphasized that "Hezbollah is keen to avoid an all-out war – but it is ready for one." This was later emphasized in the latest speech by the Secretary General of Hezbollah on January 14th. "We have gone to war within the framework of this low-intensity warfare," he said "[However] since 99 days we have been ready for war, we do not fear it. We will not hesitate. we will venture on this war [if it's forced upon us]. We will fight with no boundaries any limits or any restrictions," Sayyed Nasrallah warned. Hypothesizing Netanyahu seems to have foresaw the imminent dead end in Gaza. Complete withdrawal will turn Gaza into "Israel’s" Cuba: stuck in a perpetual Missile Crisis. Persisting with the ground operation will turn it into "Israel’s" Vietnam: a swamp of attrition warfare that would surely end his career and possibly end his state: steadily inching away at it. The only way "Israel" could achieve the objectives of its ground operation (i.e. uprooting the resistance) is if every last Palestinian in Gaza was killed or expelled from the strip. Killing two million people in the 21st century is not beyond "Israel" but it would end the US' morally credible soft power. It would strip the latter’s imperialist foreign policy of its leading pretext. Netanyahu's plan seems to be spreading out the conflict: so that they can advertise the war as asymmetrical against "Israel" to legitimize direct US intervention. Netanyahu is desperately flailing to provoke large-scale retaliation from the Axis of Resistance to justify a US invasion of the region to rebalance power relations in favor of "Israel" and perpetuate Israeli security for a couple more decades. Netanyahu acts in line with the outdated teachings of his neocon mentors of the early 2000s, but the pragmatics of the US oligarchy have since recognized the futility of savage militarism in West Asia and have since switched course for proxy warfare and color revolutions for being more efficient. Author Sammy Ismail Lebanese communist, Philosophy and Political Science graduate from the Lebanese American University, columnist and news-editor at Al Mayadeen English, twitter: @klashinkovv First published in Al Mayadeen Archives February 2024 It’s been Democrats’ favorite refrain for years now. Don’t like something? Call it Russian. For years, Democrats labeled Donald Trump a Russian agent. Despite multiple investigations yielding no evidence to support this lofty claim, they cling to it. Or what about when Hillary Clinton accused Tulsi Gabbard of being groomed by Russia for a spoiler presidential run? Clinton’s theory was little more than a petty attack against someone who called her “the queen of warmongers.” Gabbard suspended her campaign in March 2020 and immediately endorsed Joe Biden. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also parroted her party’s go-to smear during a recent CNN interview. As Israel genocides Gaza, Pelosi accused pro-ceasefire demonstrators of Kremlin ties. “For them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message,” claimed Pelosi. “I think some of these protesters… are connected to Russia.” Pelosi’s soundbite raised eyebrows. With over 27,000 Gazans dead, calling for an end to Israeli aggression just seems morally prudent if not obligatory. But morality probably matters little to someone whose most durable commitment is to an apartheid state. That Vladimir Putin supports a ceasefire doesn’t mean demonstrators must be in cahoots with him. It’s easy to lose sight of the truth in the imperial core, but the world stands against Israel’s war crimes. At the United Nations, 153 member states — over 80% of the entire body — voted for a ceasefire. Are they all Russian operatives? A whopping 113 of those 153 states voted to condemn Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. Being pro-ceasefire and pro-Russia can and do come apart. But there is a connection between the two positions — though not the one Pelosi asserts. Each represents an opposition to fascism and ethnic supremacy. In this sense, countries that both voted for a ceasefire and condemned Russia are inconsistent. During World War II, the Soviet Union was the world’s preeminent bulwark against fascism. The Soviets were willing to sacrifice millions of their own to almost single-handedly destroy the expansionist Nazi regime. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt admitted to General Douglas MacArthur: “I find it difficult to get away from the simple fact that the Russian armies are killing more Axis personnel and… destroying more… materiel than all the other [25 Allies] put together.” Americans often like to goad Europeans by saying, “if it wasn’t for the United States, you’d all be speaking German.” Replace “United States” with “Soviet Union” and that might be true. Much has changed since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. But steadfast Russian opposition to the far Right has not. As filmmaker Oliver Stone explains, Russia hasn’t been at odds with Ukraine for long. Prior to 2014, the two countries had friendly relations. Then an American-backed coup deputized ultra-conservative Ukrainian nationalists to overthrow their government and install a right-wing puppet government. In a tasteless display of imperial hubris, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland even handed out cookies at far right Ukrainian riots. Overnight, the fascist menace came to Russia’s border. They’ve understandably struggled to cope, with the ongoing special military operation being the last tool in an exhausted arsenal. Ukraine runs the fascist gambit. It glorifies Nazis and builds statues honoring them. There’s even a sizable, openly Nazi contingent in the Ukrainian military known as the Azov Battalion. Ukraine’s economic system, defined by parasitic relations between oligarchs and state actors, is characteristic of fascism. The country also lacks a free press. For all the chat about Russia persecuting journalists, Ukraine is a far worse offender. Just last month, Ukrainian authorities tortured and murdered dissident blogger Gonzalo Lira for criticizing Volodymyr Zelenskyy and “spreading pro-Kremlin ideas.” Though a longtime resident of Ukraine, Lira was never a citizen. As his father notes, the Ukrainian government could’ve just deported him. But fascist regimes are sadistic. The cruelty is the point. Fewer than 20 degrees south of Ukraine resides another far-right supremacist state. Israel is the world’s foremost apartheid regime and a close ally of Ukraine. Zelenskyy is a proud Zionist and supporter of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Gaza. He has analogized Hamas to Russia, calling both unprovoked aggressors. Like Ukraine with its Azov Battalion, Israel’s military is a hotbed of extremism. In fact, terrorist groups like Irgun and Lehi — infamous for massacres including hotel bombings — consolidated to become the so-called Israeli Defense Forces. Zionism animates Israel’s military crimes, with perpetrators using it to excuse their worst atrocities. Similarly, in Ukraine, malfeasance finds solace in Banderaism — a Ukrainian nationalist ideology that advocates the killing of Poles and non-fascists. Ukraine and Israel thus represent similar politics. To support one and not the other therefore makes little sense. Pelosi, to her credit, is consistent. She backs both Ukraine and Israel. Her overarching commitment is to promoting fascism and ethnic supremacy abroad. Huge swaths of the global masses are on the opposite side of this ideological divide. They support Russia and Palestine. Their overarching commitment is to defeating the far Right and ensuring freedom and equality for all. Riley Miller is an American Marxist writer specializing in imperialist geopolitics. Their writing centers decolonization, the rise of multipolarity, and socialist development in the Global South. Archives February 2024 1/21/2024 Five of Lenin’s Insights That Are More Pertinent Than Ever. By: Carlos L. GarridoRead Now
Today we mourn a hundred years since the physical death of one of our dearest comrades, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to us as Lenin. It would be foolish, however, to think that his physical death meant the death of his ideas. Today, after a hundred years, Lenin’s ideas are as indispensable as ever. “They are mistaken when they think that his death is the end of his ideas”. This was told to us by Fidel Castro upon the death of Che Guevara, but it applies with equal accuracy to Lenin’s death. Lenin was never, as the West reduces him to, simply the man of practice who ‘applied’ what Marx and Engels wrote. To be sure, in terms of revolutionary practice and the development of the tactics for class struggle in the era of imperialism, there is a particle of truth to this understanding. Few have understood the class struggle, and how to advance it, better than Lenin. Few have been so in tune with the Marxist worldview, so utterly devoid of dogmas and the purity fetish, as to understanding the dialectics of socialism in its utmost profundity. Lenin, whether pre or post conquest of power, was a man who excelled in using the Marxist outlook as a guide to action, as the greatest tool and best working weapon, as Engels described it, for the masses to change (and not just interpret) the world. Whether in the creative development of the vanguard party of a new type in the era of ultimate tzarist repression, where organizing work had to take a clandestine underground form with professional revolutionaries (which has always been misinterpreted in the West as a top-down elitist party), or in his understanding of the role of the peasantry in the revolutionary struggle, or in his development of the New Economic Policy during the first period of socialist construction, Lenin’s practice indubitably applied and creatively developed upon the work of Marx and Engels. However, Lenin as a theoretician (which is dialectically embedded with the previous Lenin) is often overlooked, especially in the chauvinistic West which sees Europe as the bearers of ‘theory’ and the East as the appliers of it in ‘practice’. Lukacs is still right in telling us that “Lenin is the greatest thinker to have been produced by the revolutionary working-class movement since Marx… the only theoretician equal to Marx.” On this centenary anniversary of his passing, here are five central developments of Lenin’s upon the Marxist tradition. 1) In the sphere of philosophy, he develops Marxist materialism in the context of the critique of Machist idealism and its spread in Russian Marxist spaces. This is done in his 1908 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, a text which the postmodernized Western Marxists are nauseated by because of its outright defense of materialism and philosophical realism. Even some of those who have not fully condemned Lenin would like to create a split between the 1908 Lenin and the post-1914 one. While it is true that his 1914 philosophical studies in Switzerland, especially his study of Hegel, represents one of the greatest advancements in dialectical materialist literature, it ought to be added to the previous philosophical insights, not used to reject them. Frankly, what else can be expected from the Western Marxists, those who look everywhere and only see splits (early and mature Marx, Marx from Engels, pre and post 1914 Lenin, Lenin and post Lenin socialist construction in Russia, etc.)? Conjoined, therefore, with his philosophical developments to the Marxist worldview in 1908 are his 1914 philosophical notebooks. While Marx never got to provide us with the short ‘Dialectics’ text he promised, in his 1914 studies Lenin does give us ample work on a materialist interpretation of Hegel and the Marxist sublation of his dialectical worldview (which, as an upside-down materialism, holds the germ for the Marxist outlook), playing for future revolutionaries the role Marx’s ‘Dialectics’ presumably would have. 2) Lenin developed the Marxist understanding of capitalist political economy for the stage of imperialism and monopoly capital. Headway had already been made here by Marx in the third volume of Capital, but it is only with the carnage of the first world war that the imperialist stage of capitalism develops to a point of maturity where it could be understood as a stage of its own, a partially qualitative development within the capitalist mode of life as a whole. It is here where Lenin crystalizes this analysis, concretizing the previous work done by Hobson, Hilferding, and Bukharin. Lenin’s analysis of the dominance of finance capital in the age of imperialism has only become more indispensable as global financial institutions rose following the second world war. His prediction that imperialism will be conjoined with constant imperialist warfare (both of an inter-imperialist kind and of the kind that attempts to subjugate under imperial dominance nations outside of its sphere of influence), could not have been proven more prophetic in this last century, as US imperialism has waged hybrid warfare against virtually every country on the planet. Without the theoretical framework of Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, it is quite literally impossible to come anywhere near an accurate understanding of the world today. We have Lenin to thank for this clarity. 3) Conjoined with his insights on imperialism and the role of the peasantry in socialist revolutions, Lenin develops upon the anti-colonial works of Marx and Engels, who see national liberation struggles as forms of class struggles. Lenin sees the primacy these often take in the class struggles of imperialized nations against national oppression. All throughout the non-Western-European/Anglo world, these struggles have risen – sometimes securing their successes for decades to come (Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, etc.) and sometimes being overthrown by dirty US/European imperialist tactics after the successful conquest of power (Burkina Faso, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, etc.). The task Lenin bestowed on the proletariat of imperial nations, of connecting their class struggles to the rising anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, is as pertinent as ever. In the US, as it becomes more evident how the empire feeds off the republic (as Michael Parenti calls it), it is easier than ever to see the unity of interests between the anti-imperialist struggles of the global south and those we face at home. As the labor aristocracy (a concept Lenin develops from Engels and the American Marxist, Daniel de Leon) is further disconnecting itself from the rank-and-file, the task of showing American working people the ineptitude of their bourgeoisified leaders, and henceforth, the socialist and anti-imperialist way forward, becomes easier. In some ways, the leadership of Chris Smalls in the Amazon Labor Union, Shawn Fain in the UAW, and (to a lesser extent) Sean O’Brian in the Teamsters, signifies a militant development in the labor movement – a movement growing (to various degrees) in class, socialist, and internationalist consciousness along lines Lenin would be proud of. This would, of course, also be true of the millions of American working folks who’ve protested over the last three months against the Zionist genocide of the colonized, Palestinian people. 4) Lenin concretizes the Marxist understanding of the state and socialist construction. In The State and Revolution (as well as in other essays), Lenin compiles Marx and Engels’s insights on the state and on the dictatorship of the proletariat. No text had ever provided the Marxist view of the state so succinctly and elaborately as Lenin, using the works of Marx and Engels (and most importantly, the Marxist method), did. This remains a necessary read for all communists. With it, all the abstract usages of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘dictatorship’ that the imperialist bourgeoisie uses to legitimize itself and attack its enemies are capable of being unpacked and ridiculed for what they are – empty abstractions. For whom is the democracy and freedom the bourgeoisie talks about? Is it for the people? NO! It is democracy for the rich, the insignificant minority! It is freedom of capital to exploit and accumulate! Is this not in direct opposition to a democracy and freedom of the people? Has it not been shown that the people, if they succeed in the conquest of power, must employ the method of ‘dictatorship’ against the counter-revolutionaries and imperialists to protect their revolutions? To protect actual popular and participatory democracy and freedom? Lenin’s refinement of Marx and Engels’s insights has allowed subsequent revolutionary struggles to understand the importance of overturning a state which is designed to reproduce the bourgeois mode of life for a working class state which can, as long as capitalist-imperialism exists, defend the people’s revolution from imperialist hybrid warfare and the counter-revolutionary collaborators which might still exists at home. Lenin’s understanding of the workers state must also take into account the adjustments that had to be made in the post-revolutionary period, when it became clear that emphasis had to be put on developing the productive forces and an efficient state that could guide the process of destroying the global inequalities between imperialist and imperialized nations. This project, as Lenin’s NEP, Stalin’s collectivization, and the experience of China’s reform and opening up shows, can occur through various means. Capital can be employed, under the leadership of a strong and disciplined communist party, in the task of developing the forces of production for socialism. As long as “political capital,” as Mao called it, is sustained in the hands of the people through their communist and workers parties, the process of capital expropriation can take a variety of different speeds and time. Lenin’s insights following the revolution helps us concretize the dialectic of political and economic capital already employed by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto, where they argued that: “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.” 5) Lastly, Lenin’s development of democratic centralism continues to be, in my estimation, the most effective organizational method (whether for a party or state) that has ever been employed. Its unity (when it is properly applied) of the democratic components of open debate and consultation with the efficiency of centralized and unified action, are pillars of socialist democracy. “Centralism based on democracy with democracy under the guidance of centralism,” as Deng Xiaoping said. Unity of action amongst those which fight for the masses of humanity is amongst the scariest dictums the ruling classes’ ears have heard. The ruling classes (not just the capitalist ones) survive from divide et impera (divide and conquer). They love factions and factionalization. Just take a look at James Madison’s Federalist 10, where factionalization of the masses is seen as the key to preventing their unified revolt against the elite on the basis of the property question. But Leninist unity of action is preceded by democratic consultation, by the debating, on the part of the party cadre (the most advanced detachment of the proletariat), of the question at hand. The democratic component has often been the hardest to achieve, limiting our ability to appreciate the effectiveness of the unity of action. Nonetheless, even as the old communist parties in the West seem to have mostly fallen down the route of tailing the social democrats and liberals, the need for a strong communist party, guided by the methods of democratic centralism, could not be more urgent for satisfying the crisis in the subjective factor we are experiencing in our time – a time objectively pregnant with revolutionary potential (see my book, The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism for more here). Artwork by the comrades from the Midwestern Marx Institute's Design Team and The Fine Art Revolution Marxism-Leninism is the only worldview that contains within it these indispensable developments upon the open and ever-expanding Marxist tradition. In the US, Marxism-Leninism has been concretized to the national conditions of our country through the works of W.E.B. Dubois, Henry Winston, and others who have been able to assess the role of the color line in dividing working people, and hence, the role that the anti-racist struggle has played as the leading form of class struggle in the US (for a detailed analysis of this, see my paper ‘Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction: The Black Worker and Racist False Consciousness’). It is this Marxist-Leninist tradition, enhanced and concretized by the insights of Dubois (the father of American Marxism – see article cited above for why I say this), Winston, MLK Jr., etc., that creates the foundation for the development of American Marxism (as some of us have called it at the Institute), or American Marxism-Leninism. It is this theoretical framework which allows us to avoid the purity fetish, understand the American trajectory and the process of the last centuries’ bourgeoisfication and this centuries’ reproletarianization of the working masses. It is, in short, this Marxism-Leninism adjusted to our context that allows us to understand our class struggles and our pathway forward, guiding us as we overthrow the parasitic imperialist state and establish a working class democratic-dictatorship on its ruin. In other words, an actual government (or mode of life) of, by, and for working people. A promise our capitalist class was never able to actualize, but that we – working people – will! Leninism is not only the body of Marxist ideas that guided the Soviet-Russian proletarian revolution to victory and allowed socialist construction to begin, but is also an international Marxist theory, rooted in the thinking of Marx and Engels, that has guided the international proletariat in its struggles and construction activity. In the twenty-first century, worldwide Marxism-Leninism still has great contemporary value, and remains very much “present.” Marxism-Leninism and its application to national conditions will surely promote the development of world socialism, from a low tide to a climax and victory. - Cheng Enfu ¿Sabes tú que la mano poderosa que a un César arrancó del trono, era suave como la rosa? La mano poderosa ¿sabes tú de quién era? ¿Sabes tú que la voz de agua encendida, terrestre impulso en que se ahogó tu dueño, cantó siempre a la vida? De esa voz encendida ¿sabes tú quién fue dueño? ¿Sabes tú que aquel viento que bramaba como un toro nocturno, también era onda que acariciaba? El viento que bramaba ¿sabes tú de quién era? ¿Y sabes tú que el sol de rojo manto, de duras flechas implacable dueño, secó Nevas de llanto? Del sol de rojo llanto ¿sabes tú quién fue dueño? Te hablo de Lenin, tempestad y abrigo, Lenin siembra contigo, ¡oh campesino de arrugado ceño! Lenin canta contigo, ¡oh cuello puro sin dogal ni dueño! ¡Oh pueblo que venciste a tu enemigo, Lenin está contigo, Como un dios familiar simple y risueño, Día a día en la fábrica y el trigo, uno y diverso universal amigo, de hierro y lirio, de volcán y sueño! “Lenin” Nicolás Guillén 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. Archives January 2024 The 2023 German film Paradise went virtually unnoticed by commentators on the socialist left. Yet, it is amongst the best dystopian anti-capitalist films produced in the decade. The film follows the life of Max, an employee of Aeon, a company that buys life years from the poor to give them to the rich. Yes, you read that correctly, the life of the working poor (especially the large migrant populations – a phenomenon, as Immanuel Ness shows, integral to modern imperialism) is literally sold to the rich. Max is one of these salesmen. He is exceptional at his job, which is introduced to us as he tries to convince an 18-year-old migrant kid that he should sell him 15 years of his life for 700 thousand bucks. His family has been living in dire poverty since they arrived in the country, so this loss of life is presented as a gain. Now, Max tells them they will have enough money to live better in the years to come. Following this scene, Max is awarded employee of the month (Aeonian of the Year), showing us how capable he is at sucking the life of the poor to keep the rich alive. This award celebrates the 276 years he was able to collect.[1] Aeon (the company’s name) comes from the Greek ὁ αἰών, which originally meant a lifespan of 100 years. With time, it came to be understood also as vital force (a sort of Élan vital a la Bergson), life, or being. This is, after all, what the company is taking from the working poor to give to the elite. As Max’s working class father-in-law notes, the rich are living longer as the poor (who are unable to pay for the service even with a lifetime of saving) die younger. Because of the enormity of the company, they have their own private militia (which they will use towards the end of the film) and a tremendous power over the state’s judicature. Everything they are doing is perfectly legal, as the father-in-law tells Max. (Interestingly, socialist China is the leading international force behind the attempt to ban these life-year transfers.) The company pitches the selling of life as an opportunity, as a ‘winning of the lottery’. Their advertisement is filled with phrases like ‘choose your dreams,’ ‘when you give time, life recompenses you,’ ‘your time, your opportunity, your choice.’ The company’s president, Sophie, tells us of how great it would have been if some of the great poets, composers, scientists, etc. could have lived decades longer. Now with Aeon’s services they can! How can we not think here of Stephan Jay Gould’s famous quote: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” In the Paradise universe, how many geniuses are never able to actualize their potential because of the material conditions of their existence? How many of these, perhaps wealthier in their potential to serve humanity than the wealthy scientists and artists, are forced to give their life years to the rich to get by? This dystopic society terrifies us because we know that if our society ever achieved such technological development, it would be used and legitimized in exactly the same ways. It doesn’t take much imagination for us to see the homologies already present, even though we lack the technology the movie is centered around. It is already scientifically established that the wealthier live longer than the poor. Studies which have followed the lives of twins have shown how the richer sibling consistently lives significantly longer. The rich have the capacity to access healthier foods, better medical services, and to free themselves from the life-sucking stresses and traumas of not knowing how one will pay the bills at the end of the month (for the latter point, see the work of Gabriel and Daniel Mate in The Myth of Normal). An MIT study showed that “in the U.S., the richest 1 percent of men lives 14.6 years longer on average than the poorest 1 percent of men, while among women in those wealth percentiles, the difference is 10.1 years on average.” These statistics are only intensified when we take into account the inequalities of life expectancies between the rich of imperialist countries and the poor of imperialized countries. The wealth that the capitalist vampires suck from the working poor is life itself. “Capital is dead labour,” as Marx tells us, “that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks… The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.” Capitalist exploitation is already, like life-year selling in Aeon, the sucking of the Aeon (vital force) of the working class to accumulate capital for the elite. The inequality of life expectancy is merely a reflection of the relations of production and the exploitation at the root of capital accumulation. Each pole is dialectically interconnected; the rich get richer and live longer because the poor are poor and live less, destroying their bodies to accumulate capital for the wealthy. Research has shown that we have developed the productive forces to the point of only needing to work around 3 hours a day (15 hours a week). The 3-hour workday prediction of John Meynard Keynes, only an aspirational ideal decades earlier for Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue, has today become materially possible. The impediment to its realization is rooted in social, not material incapacity. It is the capitalist mode of social life, with profit as its sole goal and purpose, which prevents this freeing up of humanity’s time and potential. Its relations of production are a fetter on human life and culture, not just on the forces of production. Under a different mode of life, with a modus operandi for society other than capital accumulation, we could radically reduce the socially necessary labor time and increase what Martin Hägglund has called socially available free time. As I’ve argued before, the absence of its actualization is “not rooted in the machines and technologies themselves, but in the historically constituted social relations which mediate our relationship with these developments.” But until then (that is, until socialism can freely develop without pressures from the global imperialist system), we will continue to slavishly give more than a decade worth of work hours (90000 on average) working in alienating jobs that make our bosses richer while we stay poor and triply exploited. Is this not, like in Paradise, the giving up of decades of our life to making the rich not only richer, but capable of living significantly longer than us? The way Aeon defends its practices are also reminiscent of apologists for wage slavery. It is, after all, presented as a ‘choice,’ something we ‘consent’ to. But as with wage slavery, what is the alternative? Can I expect anything other than death if, born into a working family, I decide not to commit my life to being exploited through wage slavery? How would I obtain the necessaries of life if I object to spending labor power in enriching someone else? Under capitalism this is impossible. The choice is between a slavish life of being exploited and death. As socialist thinkers (utopian and Marxists) have criticized from the start, this is really no choice at all. Perhaps there is a slight bit of choice in deciding who exploits us (for instance, Walmart or Amazon), but what does this amount to other than the capacity to pick our slave masters? Is this really what we want to herald as pillars of ‘choice’ and ‘consent’? Likewise, for those who sell their life-years to Aeon, the ‘choice’ is one between unlivable poverty and a fractioned lifespan with a better living standard. This is hardly a ‘choice’ at all. Aeon also describes selling your life-years as akin to winning the lottery. Is this not, like we see today, a linguistic whitewashing which puts a pretty terminological veil upon a horrific practice? For instance, how we call civilian deaths ‘collateral damage,’ or US state department propped up terrorists ‘moderate rebels’. In relation to work, a similar romanticizing language is operative. Today the growing precarity of a gigifying workforce is pitched as ‘flexibility’. As I have argued before: The last four decades of neoliberal capitalism has been a continuous disempowerment of workers through the cutting of benefits, stagnating of wages, and repression of unionization efforts. The gig economy takes this even further, through an employer’s complete removal of responsibility for workers. By categorizing workers as ‘independent contractors’, the ‘flexibility’ they continuously speak of is one that is only for them. Flexibility for the capitalist entails the removal of responsibilities for his workers, and subsequently, increasing profits for him. But for the worker - regardless of how much the capitalist’s propaganda says they are now ‘flexible’ and ‘free’ – flexibility means insecurity, less pay, and less benefits. Like in sex, flexibility for the worker here only means he can get screwed more efficiently. Aeon’s immense resources also allow it to advance its practices, regardless of how unethical they might be, into the sphere of legality. Everything it is doing is perfectly legal. It is accepted under bourgeois ‘justice’, where justice is indistinguishable from the interests of the economically dominant class. Today readily available cancer drugs like Imbruvica are priced at 16 thousand dollars a month, something only the ultra-rich can afford. In the US, 45,000 people die a year because they do not have insurance. Any sane society (as opposed to a deeply irrational one centered on upholding the interests of capital accumulation) would consider the activities of the medico-pharmaceutical industrial complex criminal. However, because the American state is the state of their class (i.e., the big monopoly capitalists), their profit-rooted class interests are consistently upheld to the detriment of the majority of Americans. Aeon’s capture over their society’s judicature is simply a particular form of how the state and its institutions have always functioned. The state in general doesn’t exist. What exists is particular types of states, corresponding to various modes of life holding one or another class in an economically dominant position – a dominance the state is tasked with reproducing. “The modern state,” as Marx and Engels write in 1848, “is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” When profitable technology like Aeon’s develops, the state’s judicature adapts it to the existing framework of bourgeois legality. As Marx and Engels write in 1846, Whenever, through the development of industry and commerce, new forms of intercourse have been evolved (e.g. assurance companies, etc.), the law has always been compelled to admit them among the modes of acquiring property. Paradise, all in all, puts a mirror up to our capitalist societies. It shows us, through the medium of a new technological development, the barbarity of the logic operative in our mode of life. A barbarity, of course, which is historical, not eternal. It is something we can overcome when the class struggles for the conquest of political power by working people succeed. Notes [1] This review will focus on the more general social critiques operative in the movie. There are no ‘spoilers’ here, so feel free to read even if you intend to watch the movie afterwards. 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. Archives January 2024 Will any Western media admit that Israeli and U.S. intelligence bombed an event commemorating the 4th anniversary of the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in Tehran yesterday? How can we be sure who it was? Who has murdered all of the Iranian Nuclear Scientists to maintain a monopoly over nuclear weapons in Western Asia? Who murders children and families relentlessly in Gaza? Who thinks they are invincible and are "the chosen people," surrounded by “savage Indians?” Whose Department of Defense spends $1.52 Trillion per year? Who has 2,000 nuclear warheads? Who has over 5,000 nuclear weapons? Who kept ISI*S on a short leash?[1] Who bombed at least 3 countries in the region to sabotage their nuclear reactors? Who has waged terrorist attacks in Beirut, Baghdad, Sana'a and across the world, with absolute impunity? Who thinks they are the Gods of the Earth, Wind and Moon? Why were we punished on social media when we mentioned the terrorist attack on General Soleimani? How come IS*IS never attacked Israel? Who bombed over 5,000,000 Koreans into the craters of the earth until no building was standing, and Korea was divided? Who has waged a Hybrid War and blockaded Iran since 1979? Who bombs, sanctions and invades whenever, whoever, wherever they want? How did a ragtag, half-starved, blockaded, occupied group of Apache kids sneak out of the concentration camp and strike the colonizer? Who waged an anti-Russian coup in Kyev in 2014 and has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to wage a proxy war in Ukraine until the last dead Ukrainian? Who invents boogeymen and controls your mind? In 2020, who murdered Gen. Soleimani, the slayer of ISIS and the most popular unifying general of the region? Who is drooling to draw Iran into a regional war so they destroy this ancient civilization as they have Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Yemen and Afghanistan? Who lies to you everyday on CNN and Fox? If this is not fascism, what is it? Whose media has never said one positive word about the Palestinian nation? If this is not a Genocide, what is it? Can Nazis ever emerge from Nazism to see themselves as Nazis? Who offers a fascistic-form of magic realism and censors accounts for breakfast, cancels actors for lunch and eats Palestinian children for dinner? Who has been bombing the Global South since the 1890’s? Who promotes Islamophobia so we doubt our own common sense? Who accuses who of bombing their own hospitals? Has the world ever seen such a bully? Whose religion is money? Why do they label you anti-semetic when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Abram Leon’s courage give you goosebumps? Has Frankenstein outgrew his master? Who drives trucks around with young, oppressed, Arab women’s faces on them in order to intimidate them? Who obliterated their own language in order to invent a modern version of an ancient tongue? Who thinks they are hated by the world, but hate the world? Who starved and destroyed life in Yemen for the past decade? Who claims a superstitious relationship to unrelated ancestors? Why do they censor so many words, like “Genocide, Zionist, Extermination and Decolonize?” Who fled Europe because of European savagery, only to become agents of this precise white-man’s savagery? Who never read James Baldwin? Why are they so obsessed with Hamas when they helped support Hamas in 1987 to drive a wedge in the United Leadership, the Palestinian Liberation Organization? Have you ever seen so many Biden-voting cowards in your life? Who will vote for one of two genocidal candidates in 10 months? Why do we have to write like this: “Stop the Ge n * c Id e. Zi1o9n4i8sm is a ge7n5ocidal disease?” Whose neighbors despise their colonial arrogance? Who are the punks who hide in the sky in F-16 jets and hide behind entire TV networks which masquerade as democratic? Who dropped 6,000,000 tons of napalm and chemical agents on the Vietnamese peasantry? Who intimidates you, making you betray your own “principles?” Who sicced rabid dogs on you and your family Ramallah, Alabama? Who practiced the lynching of Black America as a sport? Who took photographs at these Georgia festivals? Who goes to tik tok to make fun of the lynched, bombed and starved Palestinians? Who lives 12 miles from the Gaza Genocide, parties at night and sleeps soundly? Why do you hate and exterminate life? Is there a word more evil than Zionism? Could anyone be more decrepit than Genocide Joe? Who destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, Libya and Syria? Who invented the United Nations and Israel in the same years to ignore and disempower one and frankenstein and nucleurize the other? How come your liberal friends never call you back when you are trying to have the G e n * c ^ d e Birds and the Bees talk? How come they are offended by the lead banner at the march which said “Palestine will be Free By any means necessary?” How come the Obama-voters disrespect Malcolm? How come the colonizer complains about the threat of a looming genocide as the bloodlines of the colonized die out? Who denies Palestinians are a people? Who slaps, humiliates and imprisons Palestinians for colonial kicks? How has overinflated by one thousand the striking capacity of Hamas? What Israeli or American would be brave enough to walk through Gaza to smell the scent of gen*c^de? Who is high off war and drunk off sadistic pornography? Who has not read Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi? Who did Martin Luther King call “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world?“ Whose bombs left little girls deaf in Panama and little boys limbless in Grenada? Whose colonialism has defuturized the Congo and Sudan? Who lied about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, “beheaded babies” in Occupied Palestine, “viagra-fueled” militias in Libya and disconnecting “babies from incubators” in Kuwait? Who fires college presidents for being tepid liberals who still have a morsel of moral resolve and critical thought left from their Ivy League training? Who is the greatest threat to Jewish safety in the world? Who laid the Zionist Death Trap? Who tells the entire Global South that their money is worth a fraction of the Almighty U.S. dollar, British pound and neocolonial Euro? What 14 capitalist countries waged the “Iran Iraq war,” selling weapons to both sides and bleeding both countries of hundreds of thousands of lives? Who feigns concern for Tibet, the Uighers,Hong Kong and Taiwan so they can Iraqize, Libyize and Syriaize the mighty Asian colossus? Who is in bed with 20,000 perverse princes of Wahhabism and medieval darkness in Saudi Arabia? Whose military blockades one third of the world’s people, relegating them to hunger and dependency? Whose liberals care more about policing language than indigenous life? Who never read WEB Du Bois nor Claudia Jones? Who are the punks who prey upon children? Who brought those white people to the Middle East? Whose are citizens “of the most powerful country in the world, a country which stands upon the wrong side of every liberation struggle on earth?”[2] Who has dumped upwards towards 1,000,000 guns in Haiti and smuggled half a million to Mexico? Who has no anti-colonial training? Who treats their doberman pinschers better than their neighbors? Who raises nickels for immigrants as they create entire nations of refugees? Whose economy ticks to the pulverization of native bones? Who is a historical model of apartheid? Who burns books, libraries and the elderly? Who coups wherever they want? Who attacks college students, college professors and college presidents? Whose favorite bleeding-hearts cry over the threat of fascism everyday, as they perfect the craft? Which empire has been more global and wicked in history? Whose entire ethos is based on greed? Who treads on our fake 1st Amendment Rights? Why does a Rabbi own pornhub? Whose Secretary of State engages in Shuttle Genocide Diplomacy? Whose politicians promise to eradicate an indigenous people and receive more U.S. weaponry? Whose hearts are full of hatred and Orientalism? What was Revolutionary Yiddishland and what was the human material made out of who transcended pogroms and resisted barbarism? Who is the biggest terrorist since Hi_t ler? How stupid do they think we are? Who will stop this gen*c^cal madness? Who has half a billion Arabs, 2 billion Muslims and 8 billion human beings trembling in sync with the children of Gaza? Who are you? What role do you play? Notes [1] Max Blumenthal’s The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump is a must-read book on this topic. Aaron Maté has written on this https://www.aaronmate.net/p/al-qaeda-is-on-our-side-how-obama. “A concise articulation came from Jake Sullivan to his then-State Department boss Hillary Clinton in a February 2012 email: "AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria." [2] Audrey Lorde Author Danny Shaw teaches Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender at the City University of New York. He holds a Masters in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He works as a Director for the Midwestern Marx Institute's International Department. Danny is fluent in Spanish, Haitian Kreyol, Portuguese, Cape Verdean Kreolu and has a fair command of French, and works as an International Affairs Analyst for TeleSUR, RT and other international news networks. He is the author of six books: 365 Days of Resistance, Shedding that which is Not Us: A Working-Class Guide to Life Foods Training and Healing, The Saints of Santo Domingo: Dominican Resistance in the Age of Neocolonialism, My Son Blazes within Me: So Many Contradictions, So Little Time, Paisajes de Amor y Combate and Los Santos de Santo Domingo. He has also authored blogs and articles on Latin American history, boxing and nutrition, among other topics. He can be contacted at DRS33@Columbia.edu. Archives January 2024 A radical is no more than this: he who goes to the roots. Let him who fails to arrive at the bottom of things call himself not a radical; nor let him who fails to help other men obtain security and happiness call himself a man.”- Jose Marti The self-proclaimed ‘radical American magazine’ Compact Mag just published an article from Alan Dershowitz making the argument that Israel has not committed war crimes and that Hamas, on the other hand, has. What world are these people living in? Do you not see the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, women, children, and elderly indiscriminately killed by US taxpayer funded bombs? Do you not see the unprecedently dangerous situation for journalists, 77 of whom have been killed (as of Dec 31st, 2023), for United Nations workers, 100+ killed by Zionist crimes against humanity? Has collective punishment suddenly been removed from the list of war crimes under international law? Has using white phosphorus been removed from that list too? Are apartheid states no longer in violation of international law? Is keeping people in an ‘open air prison,’ as even conservative UK prime minister David Cameron called it (including Amnesty international and other global human rights organizations), suddenly acceptable by international law? Does international law now accept concentration camps as legal, the largest of which is the one Gazans are enclosed in according to Hebrew University sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling? Is international law now acceptant of genocidal rhetoric (a rhetoric backed up by actions) on the part of prominent state leaders? Is it acceptable, under international law, to keep a population of 2.3 (densely packed) million blockaded without sufficient water, food, and fuel? Is it acceptable to have leaders of a state refer to the people they’re ethnically cleansing from the land (since 1948) as ‘animals’ and ‘not humans?’ Does international law accept the indiscriminate bombing of schools, hospitals, ambulances, places of worship, ‘escape routes,’ and other civilian packed locations? Whole volumes would have to be written to comprehensively document the crimes of the Zionist state, and the last few months would have a volume of its own. How much of the Israeli atrocity propaganda from October 7th, propaganda essential in stirring emotions, dehumanizing the Palestinian anti-colonial liberation forces, and manufacturing consent, has been shown to be utterly baseless? 40 beheaded babies? Worse than ISIS? Hamas using Palestinians as human shields? Mass rapes (claims rooted in the comments of an admittingly ‘proud racist’)? Hamas blew up al-Ahli hospital? These and many more stomach-turning atrocity propaganda stories have been spun by Zionist media without a shred of verifiable or credible evidence. In fact, in most instances it is purely based on imperialist projection. It is Israel, not Hamas, who is using Palestinians as human shields. It is Israel who is indiscriminately killing babies and haunting the algorithms with their dismembered bodies (these images, which disgust most regular human beings, are celebrated by blood-thirsty genocidal Zionists in carnivalesque digital forums resembling the lynching spectacles of the apartheid US south). It is leading Israeli military rabbis, not ‘Hamas,’ who defend the rape of enemy women and the killing of babies on the basis of their religious fundamentalism. “To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter,” as a young Marx once wrote. Compact Mag, by publishing pro-genocide garbage, is as far as it possibly could be from being ‘radical.’[1] An actual ‘radical’ understanding of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people is forced to see it within the context of the capitalist-imperialist system which birthed that wretched supremacist state and which continues to use it as a colonial outpost to wage its wars upon the Middle East – a region the imperialists have always thirsted over because of its wealth of resources and global strategic location as a midpoint in the Eurasian world. An actual ‘radical’ position (which is to say, a Marxist position rooted in a comprehensive understanding of imperialism and geopolitical economy) is forced to see Israel’s actions since October 7th as those of not only a fascist, but a Nazi, genocidal state – as Dr. Anthony Monteiro notes. Those states in the West which have supported this genocide, or have turned a blind eye to it, are in violation of the Geneva Convention which holds that “the duty of prevention clearly obliges states parties to do everything they can whenever genocide is committed by whomever, i.e., regardless of whether the person acts as a private individual or qua state official.” Far from being radical, publications such as this one and others show that Compact Mag (like many other so called ‘radical’ publications in the US and West) is simply an institution of the compatible left. Its job (whether cognizant of it or not) is to provide a ‘leftist’ or ‘radical’ veneer to the defense of the imperialist’s agenda. Any struggle against imperialism, whether socialist in character or not, is subject to radical sounding condemnations from the pro-imperialist ‘radicals.’ The Dershowitz publication is simply one the most blatant one of these. This is a practice that is essential for the ruling elite, who have been systematically propping up compatible ‘lefts’ since at least the mid-20th century anti-communist Congress for Cultural Freedom. It finances, creates, and promotes institutions which can crank out various flavors of radical recuperators, as Gabriel Rockhill calls them. When these are given a superficial “Marxist” veneer, condemning people’s struggles as ‘not real socialism,’ or ‘not really anti-colonial,’ because of said struggle’s ‘impurities,’ they operate within the lifeless outlook I have termed the purity fetish. Since October 7th, as I have previously written, many on the US left have shown (on the basis of their purity fetish) their affinity with the ruling elite they claim to oppose (see my critique of Jacobin editor Meagan Day’s ridiculous condemnation of Palestinian resistance). But the tides are well into turning. The world has come out to condemn the US funded Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. The Israeli Occupational Forces, although successful killing babies, women, and the elderly, have been unable to beat Hamas in actual conflict. Yemen’s Ansarallah is intensifying the pressure against the Nazi-Zionist state, as Pepe Escobar notes, with its “stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea.” In two key fronts – actual fighting and the information war – the forces of humanity are winning. Advanced imperialist weaponry and technology is no match for a people determined to be free – as the US’s defeat in Vietnam, Cuba, etc. showed. As I have argued before: [Palestinian’s] struggle for freedom is not limited to Palestinians. A defeat of Israel, the US empire’s outpost in the so-called Middle East - the “baby child of imperialism in the Middle East” as Kwame Ture said - would be a victory for all of humanity. A defeat of empire in any corner of the earth, as Che Guevara noted, must be celebrated cheerfully by every communist, every person driven by a deep love of humanity. The imperialists hate humanity; their capitalist system undermines, as Marx had noted, the “original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.” The Palestinian struggle against the racist Israeli colonial US-outpost is a struggle for humanity - for the exploited and oppressed across the earth. It is a struggle for life, a struggle against the Israeli imperialist death machine. As is evident by the role Jewish Voices for Peace, If Not Now, and orthodox Jews have played in calling for a ceasefire and condemning the Zionist entity, more and more Jewish people around the world are rejecting the crimes the Zionist state is committing in their name. Many are even coming to reject the supremacist ideology of Zionism itself, fervently combatting the anti-Jewish equating of Zionism with Judaism (something both the Zionists and actual Anti-Semites agree on). Jewish people, especially in the US, are saying NO to the Zionist lies the elites have attempted to indoctrinate them with. Now more than ever Jewish people (especially younger ones) are coming to Katie Halper’s correct position: “As a Jew, I want to say that Israel does not make me safe. Israel makes me sick, and Israel makes me less safe, because they are committing crimes against humanity in the name of Jews.” As US imperial power shows its moribund state globally, the forces it once held captive are jumping ship. A new world is coming into being, whether we want to call it ‘multipolarity’ (most common usage), ‘pluripolarity’ (Hugo Chavez’s term), ‘the Afro-Asiatic reconstitution of the world’ (Dr. Monteiro’s term), ‘post-hegemonic world’ (Mexican Economist Oscar Rojas’s term), or the Post-Colombian, Post-1492 world (the term I use in The Purity Fetish). As material conditions decline at unprecedented rates in the imperial core, the base of the last centuries bourgeoisified proletariat (and labor aristocracy) is dying. They are being, as Noah Khrachvik notes, reproletarianized. There is no longer an incentive for working people to look away from their imperialist government’s crimes when it is using OUR tax dollars to fund genocide while we lack healthcare, are in crippling debt, and are struggling to pay the bills at the end of the month. The United Automobile Workers, one of the nation’s largest unions, has been outspoken in its calls for a ceasefire and has connected this internationalism to the struggle of the union against the US’s imperialist war in Vietnam. A crisis of legitimacy, consent, authority (whatever you want to call it) is in the works – both globally and within the US itself. As we say in the US, something has got to give! The weeks where decades happen, as Lenin’s dictum goes, are approaching us in the months and years to come. The pro-imperialist compatible left is no challenge for the real movement of working and oppressed peoples. Along with the imperialists themselves, they will be left in the dustbins of history. Because this great humanity has said: Enough! and has started walking. And their march of giants will no longer stop until they achieve true independence, for which they have already died more than once in vain. Now, in any case, those who will die, will die like those of Cuba, those of Playa Girón, will die for their only, true, inalienable independence! – Che Guevara If I am unable to return and live in freedom in Palestine, my children will return. – Leila Khaled Notes [1] In a sane society, stooges of imperialism and US power like Alan Dershowitz would find it hard to place their garbage anywhere. But it is too much to ask for sanity from a deeply irrational mode of life. 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. Archives January 2024 Whether invented in northern India, eastern China or Central Asia – from Persia to Turkestan – chess is an Asian game. In chess, there always comes a time when a simple pawn is able to upset the whole chessboard, usually via a move in the back rank whose effect simply cannot be calculated. Yes, a pawn can impose a seismic checkmate. That’s where we are, geopolitically, right now. The cascading effects of a single move on the chessboard – Yemen’s Ansarallah stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea – reach way beyond global shipping, supply chains, and The War of Economic Corridors. Not to mention the reduction of the much lauded US Navy force projection to irrelevancy. Yemen's resistance movement, Ansarallah, has made it very clear that any Israel-affiliated or Israel-destined vessel will be intercepted. While the west bristles at this, and imagines itself a target, the rest of the world fully understands that all other shipping is free to pass. Russian tankers – as well as Chinese, Iranian, and Global South ships – continue to move undisturbed across the Bab al-Mandeb (narrowest point: 33 km) and the Red Sea. Only the Hegemon is disturbed by this challenge to its 'rules-based order.' It is outraged that western vessels delivering energy or goods to law-breaking Israel can be impeded, and that the supply chain has been severed and plunged into deep crisis. The pinpointed target is the Israeli economy, which is already bleeding heavily. A single Yemeni move proves to be more efficient than a torrent of imperial sanctions. It is the tantalizing possibility of this single move turning into a paradigm shift – with no return – that is adding to the Hegemon’s apoplexy. Especially because imperial humiliation is deeply embedded in the paradigm shift. Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the record, is now sending an unmistakeable message: Forget the Suez Canal. The way to go is the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese, in the framework of the Russia-China strategic partnership, call the Arctic Silk Road. For the dumbfounded Europeans, the Russians have detailed three options: First, sail 15,000 miles around the Cap of Good Hope. Second, use Russia's cheaper and faster Northern Sea Route. Third, send the cargo via Russian Railways. Rosatom, which oversees the Northern Sea Route, has emphasized that non-ice-class ships are now able to sail throughout summer and autumn, and year-round navigation will soon be possible with the help of a fleet of nuclear icebreakers. All that as direct consequences of the single Yemeni move. What next? Yemen entering BRICS+ at the summit in Kazan in late 2024, under the Russian presidency? The new architecture will be framed in West Asia The US-led Armada put together for Operation Genocide Protection, which collapsed even before birth, may have been set up to “warn Iran,” apart from giving Ansarallah a scare. Just as the Houthis, Tehran is hardly intimidated because, as West Asia analyst ace Alastair Crooke succinctly put it: “Sykes-Picot is dead.” This is a quantum shift on the chessboard. It means West Asian powers will frame the new regional architecture from now on, not US Navy “projection.” That carries an ineffable corollary: those eleven US aircraft carrier task forces, for all practical purposes, are essentially worthless. Everyone across West Asia is well aware that Ansarallah’s missiles are capable of hitting Saudi and Emirati oil fields, and knocking them out of commission. So it is little wonder that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would never accept becoming part of a US-led maritime force to challenge the Yemeni resistance. Add to it the role of underwater drones now in the possession of Russia and Iran. Think of fifty of these aimed at a US aircraft carrier: it has no defense. While the Americans still have very advanced submarines, they cannot keep the Bab al-Mandeb and Red Sea open to western operators. On the energy front, Moscow and Tehran don’t even need to think – at least not yet – about using the “nuclear” option or cutting off potentially at least 25 percent, and up, of the world oil supply. As one Persian Gulf analyst succinctly describes it, “that would irretrievably implode the international financial system.” For those still determined to support the genocide in Gaza there have been warnings. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has mentioned it explicitly. Tehran has already called for a total oil and gas embargo against nations that support Israel. A total naval blockade of Israel, meticulously engineered, remains a distinct possibility. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami said Israel may “soon face the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, and other waterways.” Keep in mind we’re not yet even talking about a possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz; we’re still on Red Sea/Bab al-Mandeb. Because if the Straussian neo-cons in the Beltway get really unhinged by the paradigm shift and act in desperation to “teach a lesson” to Iran, a chokepoint Hormuz-Bab al-Mandeb combo blockade might skyrocket the price of oil to at least $500 a barrel, triggering the implosion of the $618 trillion derivatives market and crashing the entire international banking system. The paper tiger is in a jam Mao Zedong was right after all: the US may be in fact a paper tiger. Putin, though, is way more careful, cold, and calculating. With this Russian president, it’s all about an asymmetric response, exactly when no one is expecting it. That brings us to the prime working hypothesis perhaps capable of explaining the shadow play masking the single Ansarallah move on the chessboard. When Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Sy (Seymour) Hersh proved how Team Biden blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, there was no Russian response to what was, in effect, an act of terrorism against Gazprom, against Germany, against the EU, and against a bunch of European companies. Yet Yemen, now, with a simple blockade, turns global shipping upside down. So what is more vulnerable? The physical networks of global energy supply (Pipelineistan) or the Thalassocracy, states that derive their power from naval supremacy? Russia privileges Pipelineistan: see, for instance, the Nord Streams and Power of Siberia 1 and 2. But the US, the Hegemon, always relied on its thalassocratic power, heir to “Britannia rules the waves.” Well, not anymore. And, surprisingly, getting there did not even entail the “nuclear” option, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington games and scaremongers like crazy. Of course we won’t have a smoking gun. But it’s a fascinating proposition that the single Yemeni move may have been coordinated at the highest level between three BRICS members – Russia, China, and Iran, the neocon new “axis of evil” – plus other two BRICS+, energy powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As in, “if you do it, we’ve got your back”. None of that, of course, detracts from Yemeni purity: their defense of Palestine is a sacred duty. Western imperialism and then turbo-capitalism have always been obsessed with gobbling up Yemen, a process that Isa Blumi, in his splendid book Destroying Yemen, described as “necessarily stripping Yemenis of their historic role as the economic, cultural, spiritual, and political engine for much of the Indian Ocean world.” Yemen, though, is unconquerable and, true to a local proverb, “deadly” (Yemen Fataakah). As part of the Axis of Resistance, Yemen's Ansarallah is now a key actor in a complex Eurasia-wide drama that redefines Heartland connectivity; and alongside China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Iran-Russia-led International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), and Russia's new Northern Sea Route, also includes control over strategic chokepoints around the Mediterranean Seas and the Arabian peninsula. This is another trade connectivity paradigm entirely, smashing to bits western colonial and neocolonial control of Afro-Eurasia. So yes, BRICS+ supports Yemen, who with a single move has presented Pax Americana with The Mother of All Geopolitical Jams. Author Pepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia Times and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia. Since the mid-1980s he has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore and Bangkok. He is the author of countless books; his latest one is Raging Twenties. Republished from The Cradle Archives January 2024 A comrade recently pointed my attention to a comedy skit by Foil Arms and Hog called “Santa is Captured by the Russians,” where for two minutes Mr. Clauss is interrogated by the Soviet police. Below are some excerpts from the conversation: Santa: I think there has been some sort of a mistake. You see I have a very busy night tonight. Soviet Police 1: He was found attempting to hide in a chimney. Soviet Police 2: Chimney? What were you doing in Russian airspace? Santa: I've already told you… (Santa gets slapped): Ho, ho, ho... That was naughty. Soviet Police: We found a list of names. Santa: Ah my list. Soviet Police: These are American spies? Santa: No, no… Soviet Police: There was also a second list. Santa: Oh you don't want to be on that list. Soviet Police: You plan to kill these people. Santa: No, no, they just get a bad present… It used to be a bag of coal… but the whole climate change thing... Soviet Police: We intercepted a communication from one of his assets. “Dear Santa, I have been a good girl. I would like a Silvanian Family Cosy Cottage Starter Home.” Soviet Police: This is clearly code. Santa: No it's not code. Soviet Police: Then who is Santa? Santa: That's me. Soviet Police: You said your name was Father Christmas. Santa: Yes, I'm known by very many names. Soviet Police: So you are spy?... How do you know my children's names?... What are you doing in Russia? Santa: Presents, I deliver presents. Soviet Police: Presents? For who? Santa: Well, to all the children in the world. Soviet Police: All the children in the world? In return for what? Santa: Well, nothing. Soviet Police: Nothing? So...You are communist? Santa: Da (Yes)… Why do you think I wear red comrade? Soviet Police: Signals to officer outside “Comrade, two vodka, one cookies and milk.” This captures wonderfully the gap between reality and the values and narratives enunciated by the liberal capitalist world. Father Christmas is said to be this selfless gift-bringer, someone who enjoys seeing the smile on kids’ faces as they receive – assuming they weren’t naughty – their new toys. Santa Claus gives, in the traditional narrative, to all kids, irrespective of class (but especially the poor), race, nationality, and sex. He gives these gifts, most importantly, for free. He does not give in exchange for money. His purpose, telos, is not profit. He gives gifts to meet the playful needs of children. His goal is social good, not capital accumulation. He gives so that kids can play, so that they may fulfill what it means to be a kid. He does not give so that parents’ pockets are hollowed, and his North Pole bank account inflated. Santa Claus’s logic is completely antithetical to the capitalist system. A system premised on producing for the sake of capital accumulation and not social and common good is in contradiction with Father Christmas’s telos. Both the real St. Nicholas (270 – 342 AD) and the Santa Claus we consume in popular culture gift-give without any attempt at obtaining recognition. Unlike the charities in the capitalist West, Santa’s giving does not afford him major tax deductions, and neither does it boost his ‘humanitarian philanthropist profile’ through large, broadcasted events. Saint Nicholas’s giving was not some big spectacle, quite the opposite. He climbs in through the chimney when everyone is sleeping to leave gifts and go. He stands on the side of the poor and does his part in attempting to bring about social justice. While this is the dominant narrative we operate with, the reality of our commodified Christmas, and of Santa Claus as the personified agent of such commodification, is directly opposed to the narrative itself. As Valerie Panne notes, modern capitalist Christmas has turned Santa Claus into a “decorative marketing tool…for hysterical shopping.” Santa’s commodified image – first used by Coca-Cola in the 1930s – has become instrumental in helping the capitalists realize profit. He has become an instrument used to, as Marx notes in volumes two and three of Capital, “cut the turn over time of capital… The shorter the period of turnover, the smaller this idle portion of capital as compared with the whole, and the larger, therefore, the appropriated surplus-value, provided other conditions remain the same.” Here we see a clear gap in the enunciated values and the reality of capitalist society. At the ideological level, that is, at the level of how we collectively think about the story and figure of Santa Claus, we find heartwarming values of empathy, selfless giving, and community. However, this ideological level is rooted in the reality of a Santa Claus used to promote conspicuous consumption (as Thorstein Veblen notes), the commodification of family time, traditions, and relations, and the accumulation of capital in the hands of the few. The ideological reflection of the real world provides an upside-down, topsy-turvy image of itself. This is the essence of bourgeois ideology qua false consciousness. It is a social order that necessitates the general acceptance of an inverted understanding of itself. We come to erroneously understand the “capitalist” Santa through the narratives of the “communist” Santa. Reality is turned on its head. But this is not, as Vanessa Wills notes, a problem of “epistemic hygiene”. The root of the ‘error’ is not in our minds, that is, in our reflection of the objective phenomena at hand. As I’ve argued previously, “it is much deeper than this; the inversion or ‘mistake’ is in the world itself… This world reflects itself through an upside-down appearance, and it must necessarily do so to continuously reproduce itself.” As Marx and Engels noted long ago, If in all ideology men and their relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process. To understand the gap between how Santa Claus (or Christmas) is understood and how it actually functions in modern capitalist society it is insufficient to see the problem simply as one of subjective ‘misunderstandings’ held by individuals, classes, or whole peoples. One must investigate the political economy which grounds, that is, which reflects that erroneous image of itself. The gap between the actual “capitalist” Santa and the ideological “communist” Santa is objective, it is required by the existing material relations of social production and reproduction. Capitalist ideology must disguise the cut-throat values of bourgeois individualism with the universalist values of Santa’s socialistic humanism. But this is nothing new. Santa Claus is just another particular instant of a universal bourgeois phenomenon. The capitalist class has never been able to fully realize, to make actual, the values it enunciates with its appearance in the arena of universal history as a dominant force. Its universal appeals to liberty, equality, fraternity, etc. have always been limited within the confines of their class. As Marx had already noted in 1843, “the practical application of the right of liberty is the right of private property;” “the necessary condition for whose existence,” he and Engels write in 1848, “is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.” The phrasing of ‘all men’ used to formulate rights under capitalism is always with the understanding, as Marx notes, of “man as a bourgeois,” it is “the rights of the egotistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community.” Its values, and their reflection in their judicature, always present their narrow class interests embellished by abstract language used to appeal to the masses and obtain their consenting approval for a form of social life which they’re in an objectively antagonistic relation with. The ideologues of the bourgeoisie always provide the masses with a “bad check,” as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say. But eventually, as King notes, the masses will come in to cash that check somehow. They’ll notice that within the confines of the existing order, the prosperity that checked promised is unrealizable. Capitalism has never, and will never, fulfill the universal values it pronounces as it breaks out of the bonds of feudal absolutism. Only socialism can. The values embedded in the narrative surrounding Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, or whatever else you want to call him, will never be actual within capitalist society. Only socialism can universalize the form of selfless relationality we have come to associate with Santa. 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). Archives December 2023 Inexhaustible presence, image of the dream fulfilled and truth of a country, Fidel continues to inhabit us from the survival, and emerging undefeated in the endearing memory of those who lived his time Seven Novembers have passed since his physical departure and, however, Fidel continues to inhabit us since his survival, with that inexhaustible presence that emanates from his eternal and inescapable legacy, and from the endearing memory of those who lived his time. And it could not be any other way, because as Army General Raúl Castro Ruz pointed out in 2016, in those days of collective mourning, in which a people mourned the loss of their greatest leader: «Fidel dedicated his entire life to solidarity and led a socialist Revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble", thus becoming a symbol of the anti-colonial, anti-apartheid and anti-imperialist struggle, and a bastion of the emancipation and dignity of oppressed peoples. Precisely about that image of Fidel, who does not fit into any mold of politician, statesman, thinker or revolutionary, because his true legend crossed all possible labels, there are hundreds of anecdotes that portray him in the immensity of his unparalleled greatness, and as the extraordinary man – of flesh and blood – who remains a true paradigm. BE AN EXAMPLE AS A FIRST CONDITION Fidel liked to lead by example. That attitude earned him, inside and outside Cuba, the admiration of those who had the good fortune to know him personally or to be under his orders, as happened to Commander Juan Almeida Bosque, fellow fighter and close friend of the historical leader. «With him I learned to be fair, modest, respectful, humane and responsible. He led by example, and being with him complemented the attitudes and qualities that I brought from my family, from my father. "He is greatness personified, a humane and simple man," he would say in an interview. Also the journalist Lázaro Barredo Medina would witness, on more than one occasion, that shocking ability of the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, to overcome any sacrifice, and continue to be an example to his people. An unfortunate event, which occurred on June 23, 2001, confirmed this. That day, after almost three days of intense work, in which the Commander in Chief had barely rested or fed properly, he fainted in Cotorro; but, when he recovered, he told the people that he would finish his speech at the Round Table, and so he did. Barredo, who that day had heard the claim of senior leaders of the Party and the National Assembly of People's Power that Fidel should rest for at least seven hours, and abide by that agreement in his capacity as a militant, recounted his meeting hours later with Raúl and Fidel himself. According to what he said then, when the Army General learned of the concern that existed regarding the Chief's rest, he smiled, turned to where the Commander was and said: "Fidel, you must listen to this story about Lazarus... «(…) The Head of the Revolution asked him what story Raúl said I was going to tell him, and with some timidity I answered: it is nothing important, Commander, but he insisted that I tell him. I told him what happened in the National Assembly that morning. Fidel looked at me smilingly and blurted out: You know what, Lázaro... (he uttered an expletive and then) nothing of that, how am I going to let them at this point in my life come to govern me and tell me what I should do, when I still have so many things to do, nothing of that... «I started laughing. But I had that feeling that the Commander would never renounce his style of work, and that idea of dedicating his life to the Revolution and his people. THE FIRST IN THE FACE OF DANGER Another anecdote, published by the Girón newspaper, recounts episodes of the heroic days in which a mercenary invasion tried to curtail Cuba's emancipatory dream, without taking into account that Fidel would once again be at the head of its defense. There the Leader assigned a commander to each tank, and he went to get into the third. Then the people jumped like a spring: «–Not you, Fidel, you are not going! –I am going, I am in charge here! –Not you, Fidel, not you! According to one of those present at that time, the end of the discussion between the Commander in Chief and the troops ended like this: «And Fidel's response was an answer that shocked everyone. The way Fidel told us forcefully that he was the head of the Revolution, and that he, as head of the Revolution, had the right to fight and enter Playa Girón just as the rest of the comrades were going to do ( …) people were silent, everyone there was silent. And Fidel left in the tank. For his part, José Alberto León Lima (nicknamed Leoncito), who was the driver and escort of the Historical Leader, also highlighted, in a testimonial book in which he collects several of his experiences with Fidel, the respect they professed for him, even within the United States, where he went with no other protective vest than his morals. About one of those trips that occurred in the first years of the revolutionary triumph, he said that in New York "...when we reached the street, there was a sea of people cheering for Fidel and the Revolution. Cuban and July 26 flags were seen everywhere, and those present spontaneously began to sing the National Anthem. The security cordon of FBI agents and police on horseback could not prevent Fidel from approaching them..." INSPIRATIONAL SYMBOL For this amazing way of overcoming obstacles, and making even the impossible possible, Fidel also became a symbol inspiring for artists, doctors, teachers, scientists and even athletes. Boxer Ángel Herrera attested to this, who, upon returning triumphant from the Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada (1976), in which he was crowned Olympic titleholder for the first time in the 57 kilogram division, had the honor of being received at the airport, along with other of his colleagues, by the Commander in Chief. «I remember that he greeted us all and we shook his hand one by one. I had won the position at the last minute, since I went to complete the team. When my turn arrived, Fidel happily told me: "You went from youth to Olympic champion." That spurred me to get fully into training, and I did it so hard that I became a two-time world and Olympic champion. Never has praise stimulated me so much,” he said. Likewise, the beloved athlete Ana Fidelia Quirot, when in 1993 she suffered a domestic accident that caused 2nd degree burns. and 3rd. degree of her, in 38% of her body, she said that the support of the Historical Leader was also key in her subsequent recovery. «I was on the 22nd floor of the Quemados room, and it was more or less 9:30 p.m., I felt that someone was walking with very firm steps to the room... It was our beloved and invincible Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz. "When I saw it, it was like experiencing a hymn to life," she stressed. No less emotional was the anecdote told by the Bolivian leader Evo Morales, during his stay in Cuba in 2005, when he was recovering from knee surgery. «I was at an event with Chávez and, at the end, Fidel called me for a “photo of the axis of evil.” When I hear it, I forget to pick up the crutches and walked like that; The doctors were surprised. It seemed like a kind of biblical order: “Evo, get up and walk,” he said. And that is the image that remains alive of the Olive Green Giant, who never dies in the memory of the grateful. His friend Hugo Chávez defined it well, when he stated: «Fidel is a dreamer soldier, an example without a doubt for all of us, for all generations of fighters in the world. Fidel has an infinite and gigantic face before history, and no one will take Fidel out of there. History has absolved him. Sources: *I knew Fidel. Compilation of anecdotes and evaluations about the leader of the Cuban Revolution, by Wilmer Rodríguez Fernández, 2021/*This is Fidel, by Luis Báez, 2009/*A page for Fidel. Tribute to the Undefeated Commander of the Cuban Revolution, by Collective of Authors, 2017. Archives November 2023 On the eve of Economist's Day, it is important to review some aspects of Che's core ideas on the Political Economy of Socialism and especially when for some the solution to current problems is to completely free the market and reduce the role of the State in the economy. In the Constituent Congress of the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba (ANEC), in 1979, November 26 was established as Economist's Day, in tribute to the appointment of Ernesto Che Guevara on that date in 1959 as First President of the Bank. National of Cuba and with the commitment to follow their example. Many times when talking about El Guerrillero Heroico the significance of his action and example is limited to his liberation struggles in Cuba, the Congo and Bolivia, without remembering that one of Che's essential contributions to the Cuban Revolution was his economic thinking. his work and conceptions on the construction of socialism, coinciding with the essential concepts of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro in that field. On the eve of Economist's Day, it is important to review some aspects of Che's core ideas on the Political Economy of Socialism and especially when for some the solution to current problems is to completely free the market and reduce the role of the State in the economy. . Che Guevara defended that socialist construction cannot rest on the spontaneous functioning of economic mechanisms, but requires control, supervision and a counterpart in the ideological and political order, capable of guiding and directing human action at all levels. including ethical and moral aspects. The writer of these lines was an eyewitness of an informal meeting, in 1964, between Che and the economics students of the Universidad de Oriente, for which he asked them to wait until one in the morning because he was involved in other activities in Santiago de Cuba. There he proposed the necessary rescue of the role of accounting, of control, and anticipated the serious risks that he saw for the then Soviet Union and the Socialist Camp for neglecting the ideological work and the mechanisms that must guarantee the efficiency of socialism for the benefit of the large majorities of the population. Since the triumph of the Revolution in January 1959, Che assumed a set of responsibilities in the sphere of the economy, in the direction of the Industrialization Department of INRA, the Presidency of the National Bank of Cuba and finally as Minister of Industries. starting in 1961. In all these positions he carried out intense work, and demonstrated by his example the importance of studying even in the midst of the most complex responsibilities, just as Fidel would also do throughout his entire existence. Thus, he immersed himself in the study of Capital with Anastasio Mansilla, a Spanish-Soviet professor considered an authority on Marx's work; He studied mathematics applied to economics with Salvador Vilaseca, a prominent Cuban university professor, and dedicated himself to researching what were then still almost unknown sciences in Cuba, such as linear programming and the incipient development of computing. This entire process of gestation of Che's ideas is formed alongside multiple controversies in the socialist field. Che assumes in his theoretical analyzes the challenges of a country like Cuba that begins the transition to socialism from underdevelopment, something not foreseen by Marx and Engels in their works, together with the continuous aggressions of the United States against the Revolution since 1959 itself. Thus presenting a theoretical-practical contradiction between the aspiration to achieve the necessary leaps in material productive growth and the also necessary changes in social consciousness for the formation of a new society based on new values, substituting those generalized by capitalist society, capable of assuming socialism in its double economic and ethical dimension. For Commander Che Guevara, socialism is not only a phenomenon of production, but a fact of consciousness, the formation of a new man constituted within his ideas an essential objective that would have to be assumed from the very moment we began socialist construction. And he specified: «The new society has to compete very hard with the past. This is felt not only in the individual conscience in which the residue of an education systematically oriented towards the isolation of the individual weighs heavily, but also in the very nature of this period of transition with the persistence of commercial relations. The commodity is the fundamental economic cell of capitalist society; As long as its effects exist, they will be felt in the organization of production and therefore in consciousness. Che warned that "socialism cannot be built using the damaged weapons that capitalism bequeathed us" and that their use could lead society to a dead end. His assertions from the 60s became bitter realities, when those models of socialism collapsed upon reaching the dead end he warned of. He pointed out that "voluntary work is fundamentally the factor that develops the consciousness of workers more than any other" and described it as "antidote to the selfish and individualistic attitude that the capitalist system enhances in man, through the mechanism of his insatiable consumer society. Che was the creator of the so-called Budgetary Financing System, to contribute to centralized planning, programming and strict control techniques, the introduction of computing for management, and the use of the budget as a planning instrument. Fidel pointed out on the 20th anniversary of Che's fall «(...) if we knew Che's economic thinking, we would be a hundred times more alert, even, to lead the horse, and when the horse wants to turn to the right or left (... ) give the horse a good pull on the bit and place it on its path, and when the horse does not want to walk, give it a good spur. "I believe that a rider, that is, an economist, that is, a Party cadre, that is, an administrative cadre armed with Che's ideas, would be more capable of leading the horse along the right path." And he added: "I have the deepest conviction that if this thought is ignored it will be difficult to get very far, it will be difficult to reach true socialism, truly revolutionary socialism." 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