Some more insights into the thinking behind the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance for Reason and Justice (BSW), which is polling at 14 percent.

In October 2023, 10 members of the German parliament (Bundestag) left Die Linke (the Left) and declared their intention to form their own party. With their departure, Die Linke’s parliamentary group fell to 28 out of the 736 members of the Bundestag, compared to the 78 members of the far-right Alliance for Germany (AfD). One of the reasons for the departure of these 10 MPs is that they believe that Die Linke has lost touch with its working-class base, whose decomposition over issues of war and inflation has moved many of them into the arms of the AfD. The new formation is led by Sahra Wagenknecht (born 1969), one of the most dynamic politicians of her generation in Germany and a former star in Die Linke, and Amira Mohamed Ali. It is called the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance for Reason and Justice (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, BSW) and it launched in early January 2024.
​
Wagenknecht’s former comrades in Die Linke accuse her of “conservatism” because of her views on immigration in particular. As we will see, though, Wagenknecht contests this description of her approach. The description of “left-wing conservatism” (articulated by Dutch professor Cas Mudde) is frequently deployed, although not elaborated upon by her critics. I spoke to Wagenknecht and her close ally—Sevim Dağdelen—about their new party and their hopes to move a progressive agenda in Germany.

Anti-War

The heart of our conversation rested on the deep divide in Germany between a government—led by the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz—eager to continue the war in Ukraine, and a population that wants this war to end and for their government to tackle the severe crisis of inflation. The heart of the matter, said Wagenknecht and Dağdelen, is the attitude to the war. Die Linke, they argue, simply did not come out strongly against the Western backing of the war in Ukraine and did not articulate the despair in the population. “If you argue for the self-destructive economic warfare against Russia that is pushing millions of people in Germany into penury and causing an upward redistribution of wealth, then you cannot credibly stand up for social justice and social security,” Wagenknecht told me. “If you argue for irrational energy policies like bringing in Russian energy more expensively via India or Belgium, while campaigning not to reopen the pipelines with Russia for cheap energy, then people simply will not believe that you would stand up for the millions of employees whose jobs are in jeopardy as a result of the collapse of whole industries brought about by the rise in energy prices.”

Scholz’s approval rating is now at 17 percent, and unless his government is able to solve the pressing problems engendered by the Ukraine war, it is unlikely that he will be able to reverse this image. Rather than try to push for a ceasefire and negotiations in Ukraine, Scholz’s coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Free Democrats, say Dağdelen, “is trying to commit the people of Germany to a global war alongside the United States on at least three fronts: in Ukraine, in East Asia with Taiwan, and in the Middle East at the side of Israel. It speaks volumes that Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock even prevented a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza at the Cairo summit” in October 2023.

Indeed, in 2022, Thuringia’s prime minister and a Die Linke leader, Bodo Ramelow, told Süddeutsche Zeitung that the German federal government must send tanks to Ukraine. When Wagenknecht calledGaza an “open-air prison” in October 2023, the Die Linke parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch said that he “strongly distanced” himself from her (the phrase “open-air prison” to describe Gaza is used widely, including by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967). “We have to point out what is happening here,” Dağdelen tells me, “It is our duty to organize resistance to this collapse of Die Linke’s anti-war stance. We reject Germany’s involvement in the U.S. and NATO proxy wars in Ukraine, East Asia, and the Middle East.”

Controversies

On February 25, 2023, Wagenknecht and her followers organized an anti-war protest at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin that drew 30,000 people. The protest followed the publication of a “peace manifesto,” written by Wagenknecht and the feminist writer Alice Schwarzer, which has now attracted over a million signatures. The Washington Post reported on this rally with an article headlined, “Kremlin tries to build antiwar coalition in Germany.” Dağdelen tells me that the bulk of those who attended the rally and those who signed the manifesto are from the “centrist, liberal, and left-wing camps.” A well-known extreme right-wing journalist, Jürgen Elsässer tried to take part in the demonstration, but Dağdelen—as video footage shows—argued with him and told him to leave. Everyone but the right-wing, she says, was welcome at the rally. However, both Dağdelen and Wagenknecht say their former party—Die Linke—tried to obstruct the rally and demonized them for holding it. “The defamation is intended to construct an enemy within,” Dağdelen told me. “Vilifying peace protests is intended to put people off and simultaneously mobilize support for repugnant government policies, such as arms supply to Ukraine.”

Part of the controversy around Wagenknecht is about her views on immigration. Wagenknecht says that she supports the right to political asylum and says that people fleeing war must be afforded protection. But, she argues, the problem of global poverty cannot be solved by migration, but by sound economic policies and an end to the sanctions on countries like Syria. A genuine left-wing, she says, must attend to the alarm call from communities who call for an end to immigration and move to the far-right AfD. “Unlike the leadership of Die Linke,” Wagenknecht told me, “we do not intend to write off AfD voters and simply watch as the right-wing threat in Germany continues to grow. We want to win back those AfD voters who have gone to that party out of frustration and in protest at the lack of a real opposition that speaks for communities.”

The point of her politics, Wagenknecht said, is not anti-immigration as much as it is to attack the AfD’s anti-immigrant stand at the same time as her party will work with the communities to understand why they are frustrated and how their frustration against immigrants is often a wider frustration with cuts in social welfare, cuts in education and health funding, and in a cavalier policy toward economic migration. “It is revealing,” she said, “that the harshest attacks on us come from the far-right wing.” They do not want, she points out, the new party to shift the argument away from a narrow anti-immigrant focus to pro-working-class politics.
​
Polls show that the new party could win 14 percent of the vote, which would be three times the Die Linke share and would make BSW the third-largest party in the Bundestag.

​Last month, I went to Cuba as part of a 20-person delegation to deliver USD 60,000 in critical life-saving cancer medications and medical supplies to two pediatric hospitals there. This delegation was organized by Hatuey Project, a volunteer-run organization that regularly brings medical and humanitarian aid to Cuba. As part of the 10-day trip, we met with representatives of different Cuban organizations, institutions, and even members of Parliament. Through these exchanges, we learned about how the people of Cuba are engaged in its ongoing revolutionary process, their project of building socialism, and the impacts of US policy on everyday life.
​
Here are three key lessons I drew from our delegation.

1. All of Cuban society has been impacted by the US blockade

The US blockade on Cuba, in place since the 1960s, is an act of economic warfare. The political motivations behind it have been clear since the very beginning: to make life so miserable on the island that the Cuban people will direct their frustrations against the Communist Party and overthrow it, making way for US business interests to take hold again. This has been US policy toward Cuba for over 60 years.

As representatives we spoke to emphasized, there is no sector of society that the blockade does not touch. Conditions are now worse than ever: The blockade has led to extreme shortages in food, flour, and fuel. Electrical blackouts are becoming more and more frequent.

Meanwhile, farmers cannot grow food on a mass scale, because the blockade denies them the pesticides, fertilizers, and equipment to do so. Many have relied on countries such as Mexico donating tractors, hoes, and other farm supplies.

When receiving our medical delivery, a doctor at a children’s hospital in Santa Clara relayed to us that medicine is what is most needed and yet most affected by the blockade. The blockade not only prevents crucial medications from reaching the island, but also the raw materials and science and technology needed to produce them. And as the most effective cancer treatments are often US-produced and doctors do not have access to those, they often seek alternative treatments that are not as effective. This has an obvious impact on survival rate.

The doctors also lamented that fuel scarcity makes it extremely difficult for families of patients to travel back and forth from their homes to the hospital. On top of that, food scarcity creates even more hardship for these families. As we came to understand, the blockade doesn’t just affect individual things in isolation; it creates overlapping crises with which everyday Cubans must contend.

This is the cruel price that the Cuban people continue to pay for their socialist project.

2. Cuba shows us that another world is possible

Cuba is an example that a future exists beyond capitalism, and that future is worth fighting for.

Cuba’s government represents a democracy virtually unknown to us in the United States. On our last day, we met with several members of Parliament, or the National Assembly of People’s Power—the country’s highest political body. Unlike in the US, these government representatives do not receive a salary nor do they represent any groups with certain political interests. Nor do they have election campaigns or receive campaign funding.

As one member of the Assembly told us, “Policy is not a business. It’s a responsibility of the revolutionary project we have built.”

Popular consultation between government officials and community members is an important democratic principle in Cuba. Every new potential law is debated and refined through this process, including the new Families Code passed in 2022. The high level of political participation among the Cuban people can likely be attributed to their faith in this democratic consultative process.

And in spite of the blockade, Cuba mobilizes what scarce resources it has in service of its people, especially its most vulnerable. We were constantly in awe with how much Cuba did with so little. At the hospitals we visited, our delegation—accustomed to navigating the byzantine for-profit US healthcare and insurance systems—was immensely impressed at the dedication of staff to provide comprehensive and quality care to patients despite the extreme hardships brought by the blockade.

We also visited the Quisicuaba Agricultural Camp in Artemisa Province, an assisted living center for the homeless, as well as the elderly who need support in their later years. Since landlordism was abolished in Cuba after the revolution, the conditions which drive homelessness there are different than in the US In Cuba, homelessness is usually caused by mental health issues, alcoholism, or loss of family support, rather than eviction.

Quisicuaba provides residents with accommodation, clinical and psychological treatment, three meals a day, along with workshops and daily programming. There is a farm on the camp where, together, residents grow bananas, sweet potatoes and cassava, along with livestock. The camp fosters a community setting among residents, and its primary goal is protection and rehabilitation in order for them to be reincorporated back into society. Assisted living centers like Quisicuaba are subsidized by their provincial governments.

Meanwhile in the US, over half a million people experience homelessness with no government support, and faced with the substandard conditions of most homeless shelters, they often choose to remain on the streets rather than seek refuge. This is an unconscionable reality of living in the US—our government spends billions of dollars on war and to bankroll Israel’s genocide in Gaza while homelessness skyrockets, people can’t afford basic necessities, and infrastructure crumbles.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Cuba shows us that another world is possible, one that centers humanity and dignity of life over profit.

3. We must firmly reject despair in fighting for this new world

Yet despite the hardships created by the blockade, we were struck by how warm the Cuban people were toward us, the pride they exuded when talking about their revolution, and their steadfast commitment not to kneel to US policy. One of my favorite parts of the delegation was a trip to the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, a research institute in Havana.

The scientist we spoke to there recalled that one of the proudest moments of his life was contributing to Cuba’s COVID-19 vaccine. They named that vaccine “Abdala,” after a poem written by Cuban national hero José Martí in which the titular character defends his homeland of Nubia against Spanish occupiers. Martí wrote that poem during Cuba’s Ten Years’ War against Spain. At the forefront of people’s minds is their struggle for sovereignty and national liberation, always.

The scientist told us, “When your idea is correct, you must fight to the end.”

This was a key takeaway for me as someone living in the US, especially given the level of cynicism and pessimism among some sectors of the Left here. The US blockade has now been in place for over 60 years. Most Cubans alive now have lived their entire lives under blockade. If the Cuban people remain so determined to defend the gains of their revolution, if they maintain their sense of revolutionary optimism even under the most severe of conditions, what excuse do we have to feel despair about what we are up against? About fighting US imperialism?

I believe that type of pessimism is a luxury afforded to us, but we must reject it. Despair is a shirking of our collective responsibility as those living in the heart of empire. Our own government has robbed the Cuban people of so much over the course of centuries, from occupation to the current blockade. It is our responsibility to combat the vicious policies of the US. Only when US imperialism is overturned will countries like Cuba be allowed to breathe and develop to their full potential. We do this first and foremost through getting organized, so that we can build capacity to weaken imperialism from within. That is a responsibility we all share as those living in the belly of the beast. We owe it to people in places like Cuba.

​In the first week of June 2024, the Palestine office of the World Health Organization (WHO) released figures about the atrocious attacks on health care facilities and workers in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Thus far, according to the WHO, the Israelis have attacked 464 health care facilities, killed 727 health care workers, injured 933 health care workers, and damaged or destroyed 113 ambulances. “Health care,” the WHO’s Palestine office argues, “is not a target.” And yet, during the past seven months, health care workers have faced relentless attacks by the Israeli military. Each of the stories about the deaths is heartbreaking, the names of the dead are too long to list in any article (although a group called Healthcare Workers for Palestine did read the names of their dead colleagues as a protest against this war). But some of the stories are worth reflecting on because they tell us about the commitment of the workers and the great loss to humanity from their murder.
​
Dr. Iyad Rantisi, who was 53 years old, ran the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, which lies in the northern part of Gaza. There are many Rantisis in Gaza, but they are not native to that part of Palestine. Like many Palestinians who live in Gaza, they have roots in other parts of Palestine from which they had been expelled in the Nakba of 1948; the Rantisis come from the village of Rantis, northwest of Ramallah. 

On November 11, 2023, during the Israeli military assault inside northern Gaza, Dr. Rantisi was taken into custody at an Israeli military checkpoint when he tried to leave northern Gaza for the south, following the orders of the Israeli military. Since then, his family had not heard anything about his whereabouts. Now, months later, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that he was taken to the Shikma Investigation Center of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), which is inside the Ashkelon Prison. Dr. Rantisi was tortured and then killed six days into his detention. His family was not informed of this until the Haaretz report. Then, Dr. Rantisi’s daughter Dima wrote of the death of her father, a social media post that she paired with photographs of him in medical scrubs performing surgery on a patient.

Dr. Adnan Al-Barsh, also 53, trained in Romania before he returned home to Gaza to head the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital. He has a reputation of being a very loved doctor, whose office was crowded with his diplomas (from Jordan, from Palestine, from the United Kingdom). When the Israeli military attacked al-Shifa, Dr. Al-Barsh was forced to leave his post, but he did not leave his work. He first went to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where Dr. Rantisi worked, and then to Al-Awda Hospital in the area east of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, which was also attacked several times by the Israelis. On December 18, 2023, the Israeli military raided Al-Awda and took Dr. Al-Barsh and other hospital personnel into custody. Included among those arrested was the manager of the hospital and another very popular doctor, Dr. Ahmed Muhanna. On October 15, 2023, Dr. Muhanna made a video—which went viral—in which he pleaded to the world for help and for an immediate ceasefire. It is now reported that on April 19, 2024, Dr. Al-Barsh was killed by the Israelis in Ofer Prison. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, said, “Dr. Adnan’s case raises serious concerns that he died following torture at the hands of Israeli authorities.”

Dr. Hammam Alloh, age 36, was killed when an Israeli missile struck his home near his ward in Al-Shifa Hospital on November 12, 2023. Trained in Yemen and Jordan, Dr. Alloh was Gaza’s only nephrologist, a kidney specialist. Concerned about his patients who were on dialysis, particularly with the lack of electricity and the constant attacks, Dr. Alloh—who was known as “The Legend” during his residency in Jordan—refused to leave the hospital. On October 31, Dr. Alloh was asked why he did not abandon his post and go to southern Gaza. “If I go,” he replied calmly, “who would treat my patients? We are not animals. We have the right to receive proper health care. You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?” This was the caliber of Dr. Alloh. Less than two weeks later, when he left his post to have a rest at home with his parents, his wife (pregnant with a child), and his two children, the Israelis struck his home. He died alongside his father.

At the International Court of Justice in January 2024, the Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh made the closing arguments for South Africa’s claim of genocide against Israel. In the course of her statement, Ní Ghrálaigh showed an image of a whiteboard with the following written on it: “Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.” These lines had been written by 38-year-old Dr. Mahmoud Abu Najaila, who worked as a physician for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. On November 21, 2023, the Israeli military bombed the third and fourth floors of the hospital, where Dr. Najaila worked with Dr. Ahmad Al-Sahar and Dr. Ziad Al-Tatari. All three of them were killed.

On her LinkedIn page, Reem Abu Lebdeh, a physiotherapist who was an associate trustee on the board of MSF’s UK branch, wrote, “Such a devastating loss for the medical community and humanity.” These doctors, whom she knew, she said, “were true embodiments of selfless service and humanitarian dedication, tirelessly saving lives in the most urgent conditions.” Then a few weeks later, sometime in December, the Israelis attacked a residential area in Khan Younis and killed Reem Abu Lebdeh, whose own messages of solidarity now sit on the web like Dr. Najaila’s whiteboard note: Remember us.

Acute Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness caused by the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. Acute Lyme is well understood by the medical community. The disease can be tested for via blood sample and most cases are resolved within less than 28 days of taking antibiotics. Chronic Lyme disease on the other hand is an illness which is sometimes diagnosed in patients who experience long term symptoms after being treated for acute Lyme disease, or who experience the symptoms without ever testing positive. The CDC found that 5-20% of Lyme patients experience long term symptoms after being treated for an acute form of the disease. They experience fatigue, joint pain, bell’s palsy, and cognitive issues for months and even years in some cases. Some doctors who claim an expertise in Lyme disease label themselves as “Lyme literate” to attract patients with these long-term symptoms. Other medical professionals have criticized these Lyme literate doctors, claiming they belong to the ‘chronic Lyme industry’ and utilize the disease to make money. (Combatting Lyme Disease Myths).
           
​Much of the research on Chronic Lyme disease has been inconclusive. Some studies say that the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria could potentially be protected in a biofilm, allowing symptoms to persist, but causing blood tests for Lyme to come up negative. (Lacout). Some doctors prescribe increased doses of anti-biotics to kill surviving bacteria. However, one thing Lyme related studies agree on is that over prescription of antibiotics is harmful to the gut and causes symptoms of its own. Research into Lyme is complicated by the fact that so many patients have previously been prescribed large doses of antibiotics, making it difficult to identify if long term symptoms are coming from bacteria, or damage caused by antibiotics. Recently scientists have focused efforts on developing an antibiotic which targets the bacteria without causing patient side effects. (Leimer 2021). This shows promise in the effort to understand and treat the thousands of people suffering from long term Lyme disease symptoms, but much more research is needed to fill in the gaps of our knowledge about the chronic form of Lyme disease, how it differs from acute Lyme, and how it can be treated without harmful side effects.
 
Quantitative Research into Chronic Lyme
           
In 2019 the Canadian Medical Association published a journal to counter myths from what they call the ‘Chronic Lyme Industry’ (CMAJ). In the journal is a survey taken among students at Alberta Medical School which found that 30% of doctors felt pressured to prescribe antibiotics for Lyme disease and 90% felt unprepared to handle patients with chronic Lyme. This highlights the lack of education and training mainstream medical professionals are given surrounding Lyme, even though a chronic form of the disease effects an estimated one million people. (Lyme Disease facts and Statistics).
           
The Canadian Medical Association has begun providing clinical toolkits for healthcare providers in areas where Lyme is highly prevalent. The toolkits provide educational information on the most up to date Lyme research, and clinical guidelines for how to treat patients experiencing symptoms, or who were diagnosed with chronic Lyme by a separate provider. The Association suggests giving only one dose of antibiotics then closely monitoring changes in the patient’s symptoms even after the dose has ended. While it is far from a solution for those who suffer from chronic symptoms, the educational efforts should decrease the prevalence of antibiotics being over prescribed and causing side effects worse than the disease itself.
           
The journal’s recommendations to doctors may be a positive step, but it also highlights the need to increase both what we know about the chronic form of Lyme, and how it can be treated in patients. A 2021 study was conducted using 127 kids with a history of Lyme, 47 of whom were suffering symptoms worthy of a Lyme diagnosis. The study found that for most patients their symptoms dissipated proportionally as time passed. Others however, remained symptomatic well after treatment. The study concluded that more diagnostic research will be needed to discern between novel cases of Lyme, and previous cases which are followed by ongoing symptoms. (Lantos, 2021).  The study shows the need for increased research to help medical professionals discern between acute and chronic Lyme disease. A stricter definition needs to be developed for Chronic Lyme and what specifically characterizes the condition.
 
Modern Methods of Treatment.

 MD Paul Lantos was involved in conducting the previous study also helped craft the CDC guidelines for Lyme treatment in 2020. The CDC guidelines are like those from the Canadian Medical Association in suggesting doctors refrain from administering a second dose of antibiotics to treat lingering symptoms. The debate surrounding Lyme Treatment has largely been over whether more than one dose of antibiotics should be administered to to treat lingering symptoms beyond the acute stage. Some doctors argue that multiple cycles of medication are needed to kill resistant bacteria. On the other hand, most medical professionals argue the antibiotics themselves will end up being more harmful than symptoms of chronic Lyme.

A study from 2001 tested two different control groups of people who had been treated for acute Lyme but were now experiencing chronic symptoms. Those conducting the study administered antibiotics to one control group, while giving the others a placebo. The study concluded that 90 days of additional antibiotic treatment did not result in any significant increase in health outcomes for the control group vs the placebo. (Klempner, 2001). A cohort study in 2010 found similar results after conducting follow up surveys with patients treated for chronic Lyme. The surveys found no difference between patients treated for less than ten days compared to patients treated for longer. (Kowalski et al., 2010). The studies are conclusive in that increased doses of antibiotics do not appear to be effective in combatting symptoms of chronic Lyme.

The studies agree that increased medication is not the solution to treating chronic Lyme, but they are also in agreement that chronic Lyme needs to be treated. Both studies report a lower baseline standard of health and wellness for patients with chronic Lyme symptoms. Alternative treatment methods need to be researched and developed to help those suffering from the disease. New research in 2021 attempted to create an antibody which targets the Lyme bacteria exclusively, while preventing gut damage that often accompanies standard medication. (Leimer,2021). Those who suffer from the symptoms of Lyme are counting on the development of new forms of treatment, or revolutionary innovations in older methods.

Criticism

A 2007 an article titled A Critical Appraisal of “Chronic Lyme Disease” was published in the New England Journal of Medicine arguing that Chronic Lyme Disease does not exist as it has no concrete scientific definition. Instead, the article divides patients into groups based on how long they have experienced lingering Lyme symptoms. Those experiencing symptoms for less than six months have post-Lyme disease symptoms. Those whose symptoms go on past 6 months have Post-Lyme Disease Syndrome. (Feder, 2007).  Similarly, those with Lyme who are being studies are divided into four categories based on their history with the disease. Dividing the chronic Lyme into separate stages, and those who suffer from it into categories, appears to be a positive step in the development of Lyme research. Many future studies built from these categories which added specificity to who and what is being researched.

Despite making advancements in how we think about Chronic Lyme, the study is outdated, and highlights the need for additional modern research into chronic Lyme. The article claims that post Lyme-disease symptoms are “mild and self-limiting subjective symptoms.” The authors go on to say that many who are diagnosed with chronic Lyme do in fact have post-Lyme disease Syndrome. However, many others have never been infected by the bacteria and were simply misdiagnosed by doctors masquerading as experts on chronic Lyme. Additionally, they add that 40% of chronic Lyme patients show improvement when given a placebo. The implications of these statements are clear when read within the context of the full article. The authors are not only arguing against chronic Lyme as a scientific concept, but they are also implying that a substantial portion of those diagnosed with the disease are essentially faking their symptoms. Near the end of the article the researchers give there “Advice to Clinicians” for Doctors handling patients with chronic Lyme. The section urges clinicians to tell their patients that scientific evidence has shown chronic Lyme disease likely does not exist, to check the patients for other issues, and then to abandon treating the disease to offer emotional support.

In many ways the 2007 article exemplifies an advancement in our understanding of chronic Lyme disease, which influenced future research and what we know today. The authors argue that there is no scientific evidence showing a connection between the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria and the complex of symptoms associated with chronic Lyme. This claim is important to our overall understanding of Lyme disease and is backed up by evidence. The implication that a substantial portion of patients are imagining their symptoms is not.

It’s encouraging to see that since 2007 there has been a mountain of new research done on chronic Lyme disease. Identifying that an increased dose of antibiotics is not helpful in treating long term Lyme symptoms, does not mean giving up on treatment for those suffering from these symptoms. Perhaps alternative care methods to medication would be helpful, or changes in nutrition and diet. Any method of treatment will likely be an improvement over telling patients their disease doesn’t exist and providing vague emotional support. The healthcare system should adapt to the needs of patients, and not turn away those whose illnesses don’t fit into the framework of existing medical theory.

Conclusion

The existing research on chronic Lyme shows that there have already been years of debate surrounding chronic Lyme. The disease’s prevalence, its diagnosis, how it should be treated, whether it should exist at all? These are all debates that have been waged by medical professionals when discussing chronic Lyme disease. Even though many professionals don’t recognize the label ‘chronic Lyme disease’ itself, all studies on the subject recognize many people who suffer from symptoms associated with it.

The debate to determine whether long term suffering from symptoms should labeled as ‘post-Lyme symptoms’ or ‘chronic Lyme disease’ is mostly an argument among academics practicing medicine. While good information has come from these debates, from the outside looking in it often appears that some medical professionals are more concerned with arguing their own preferred stance on Lyme, rather than collaborating with other professionals to find innovative solutions. Going forward medical professionals should do their best to rid themselves of preconceived biases about chronic Lyme. Collaboration and innovative thinking is needed to investigate the root causes of these long term symptoms, and develop new and effective methods of treatment for the thousands who suffer symptoms.
 
 Works Cited

Association Journal (CMAJ), 191(50), E1389–E1389. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.191616

Lacout, A., El Hajjam, M., Marcy, P.-Y., & Perronne, C. (2018). The Persistent Lyme Disease: “True Chronic Lyme Disease” rather than “Post-treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome.” Journal of Global Infectious Diseases, 10(3), 170–171. https://doi.org/10.4103/jgid.jgid_152_17

Leimer, N., & Xiaoqian, W. (2021). A selective antibiotic for Lyme disease. Science Direct. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421010588

Chronic symptoms. Lyme Disease. (2018, April 16). Retrieved October 10, 2021, from    https://www.columbia-lyme.org/chronic-symptoms.  

Lyme disease facts and Statistics. Bay Area Lyme Combatting Lyme disease myths and the “chronic Lyme industry.” (2019). Canadian Medical Foundation. (2021, January 20). Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.bayarealyme.org/about-lyme/lyme-disease-facts-statistics/.  

Lantos, P. M., Balamuth, F., Neville, D., Garro, A. C., Levas, M. N., Bennett, J., Thompson, A. D., Kharbanda, A. B., Branda, J. A., & Nigrovic, L. E. (2021). Two-tier lyme disease serology in children with previous lyme disease. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. https://doi.org/10.1089/vbz.2021.0030

Klempner, M. S., Hu, L. T., Evans, J., Schmid, C. H., Johnson, G. M., Trevino, R. P., Norton, D. L., Levy, L., Wall, D., McCall, J., Kosinski, M., & Weinstein, A. (2001). Two controlled trials of antibiotic treatment in patients with persistent symptoms and a history of lyme disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 345(2), 85–92. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejm200107123450202

Kowalski, T. J., Tata, S., Berth, W., Mathiason, M. A., & Agger, W. A. (2010). Antibiotic treatment duration and long‐term outcomes of patients with early lyme disease from a lyme disease–hyperendemic area. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 50(4), 512–520. https://doi.org/10.1086/649920

Feder, H. M., Johnson, B. J. ., O’Connell, S., Shapiro, E. D., Steere, A. C., & Wormser, G. P. (2007). A Critical Appraisal of “Chronic Lyme Disease.” The New England Journal of Medicine, 357(14), 1422–1430. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra072023
​
Rumbaugh, J., & Lantos, P. (2020). Lyme disease. IDSA Home. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.idsociety.org/practice-guideline/lyme-disease/.  

​The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once called Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara the “most complete human being of our age.” Today, 96 years after his birth, it is still difficult to find a better example of the socialist human being than the one who proclaimed courageously with his unforgettable last words, “Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!” Che was for Fidel Castro “the most extraordinary of [the] revolutionary comrades;” a man with an infectious character who organically lifted those around him to emulate his revolutionary virtues of “altruism,” “selflessness,” and the “immediate [and] instantaneous willingness” he had towards “carrying out the most difficult missions” for the socialist struggle. Although carried by a Herculean courage and a spartan attitude in the face of difficulties, in the speech Fidel gives in memory of Che he says that it is
​
In the field of ideas, in the field of feelings, in the field of revolutionary virtues, in the field of intelligence, apart from its military virtues, where we feel the tremendous loss his death has meant for the Revolutionary movement.

The bourgeois Ideologues who serve as the theoretical and rhetorical mouthpieces of the capitalist ruling class will pile garbage on the reputation of any historical figure who successfully advances the struggle for socialism, Che Guevara is no exception. As he had already eloquently noted in a 1961 speech in Santa Clara, “it is the nature of imperialism which bestializes men, turning them into wild blood thirsty beasts willing to behead, to kill, to destroy the last image of a revolutionary, of a partisan, of a regime that has either fallen under its boot, or still fights for freedom.” However, Che lived his life in a way that made him exceedingly difficult for the bourgeois imperialist media to criticize. How can you, after all, criticize someone who fell defending “the cause of the poor and the humble of this Earth,” and that, as Fidel noted, did so in such “an exemplary and selfless way” that “not even his most bitter enemies dare to dispute?”

Che believed that a necessary component in the construction of a socialist society is the creation of a ‘new socialist man,’ free of the selfish and individualistic traits that are common among individuals existing within capitalist relations of production. For Che, every revolutionary should strive to exemplify the new socialist man in their actions, through being honest, hardworking, incredibly studious, and willing to labor for the good of the collective society. This marks a radical transition away from the capitalist notion of growth centered on an individual’s accumulation of capital and commodities, and towards a socialist notion of growth centered on human flourishing – towards a notion of the human being as the unique expression of the ensemble of relations they are embedded in as individuals dialectically interconnected to the social. As Che told the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in a 1962 speech, “the young communist must strive to be the first in everything…to be the living example and mirror through which our companions who do not belong to the young communist see themselves.” This meant that young communists must

be essentially human. To be so human you become closer and closer to perfecting the best attributes of being human. To purify the best attributes of man through work, studies, and the exercise of continual solidarity with our people and all people around the world. To develop to the maximum his sensibilities, to the point of feeling anguished when a man is assassinated in another corner of the world, and enthusiastic when in some corner of the world, a new flag of freedom is raised.

Che himself became increasingly disciplined as he got older and serves as a shining example of the socialist virtue-ethic he hoped would shape the next generations of Cuban communists. Since his death, generations of young Cubans have exerted themselves in the process of constructing the new socialist human being through the maxim: “pioneers for communism; we will be like Che.”

For Che, the transition to socialism could not just be reduced to changes in political economy, a fundamental transformation of the human being through the development of socialist culture was necessary. As Michael Löwy notes, Che held “the conviction that socialism is meaningless and consequently cannot triumph unless it holds out the offer of a civilization, a social ethic, a model of society that is totally antagonistic to the values of petty individualism, unfettered egoism, [bourgeois] competition, [and] the war of all against all that is characteristic of capitalist civilization [and] this world in which ‘man eats man.’” Not only was it necessary to raise the intellectual and cultural life of the mass of working people by developing “a consciousness in which there is a new scale of values,” but this transformation should not be limited to the ideological-political superstructure; it must also embed itself in the economic foundation of society through what he prescribed as the need for “a complete spiritual rebirth in one's attitude toward one's own work.” As Vijay Prashad notes, “it was this new moral framework that motivated Guevara’s agenda to build socialism… if a new society had to be created, it had to be created through a new moral fiber.”

Like any successful historical revolutionary, Che stressed the importance of reading and intensive study. Guevara himself was known to read incessantly throughout the entire course of his life. As a young boy playing soccer in Argentina, he would read Marxist theory while waiting to play on the bench, especially when horrific asthma attacks would pull him from the games. As the Cuban guerrillas waged their revolutionary struggle in the Sierra Maestra, Che would teach classes on Marxist economics and philosophy to the revolutionaries who would be tasked with managing Cuban society after the gangster dictator Batista was toppled. When he was in Africa at the forefront of anti-colonial struggles, he was reading none other than G.W. F. Hegel. In this manner, in the germs of the Cuban revolutionary process Che had already planted the seeds for the creation of the new socialist man, and the elevation of the people’s intellectual and moral life. The embryo of the proclamation Che made in Socialism and Man in Cuba, to have ”society as a whole…converted into a gigantic school,” was already being realized even under the extraordinarily difficult circumstances guerilla warfare entailed.

Che understood that the education of the Cuban masses had very practical implications for the long-term success of the Cuban revolution. When he was young, he had thought the US empire was controlled by evil wizards and dark princes who wanted to rule the world and cared not who they slaughtered in order to do so. It was after reading books like Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism that Che came to understand that it was capital who perpetrated the violent imperialism he saw all around him in Latin America, rather than a diabolical cabal of evil wizards. It was the will of capital which dictated the murderous actions of the American Government in Guatemala, from which Che barely escaped with his life. If the people of Latin America could be made to understand this, it would be far more difficult for the US imperialists to convince them that it’s in their benefit to reinstate capitalist relations of production – which the US often tries to do via propaganda and other techniques to foment color revolutions.

After six decades of internationally denounced sanctions and hybrid warfare on Cuba, the blood soaked hands of the American empire have been unable to overthrow the construction of socialism in the country. Even in the periods where the U.S.’s warfare on Cuba has produced the most formidable of challenges in attaining the necessary materials to ensure the subsistence of the Cuban people, the mass of Cubans have brazenly continued the revolutionary process, with the slogan of their Bronze Titan Antonio Maceo engraved on their chest – “Whoever tries to take over Cuba will only collect the dust of their blood-soaked soil, if they do not perish in the fight.”

The Cuban people, in the face of a battle against Goliath, have understood the proclamation the revolution’s Apostle José Martí had made in Nuestra America – that “Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stone,” that the revolutionary ideals Cuban socialism strives for are infinitely preferrable than the hardships Goliath’s war might provide. It is in part these revolutionary ideals and ethics embedded in Cuban culture and consciousness which have allowed a socialist nation with limited resources to survive right under the nose of the U.S. empire; while other projects with far more resources and material potential went down the road of capitalist restoration, plunging millions of people into poverty and conditions unseen since before the October revolution. It is in great part thanks to the emphasis Che laid in the construction of a new man, of a new culture and set of ideals and practices, that the Cuban revolution continues to be a beacon of hope for revolutionaries around the world, and a thorn in the nose of imperialists who would want nothing more than to pillage Cuban resources, superexploit Cuban workers, and use Havana as the sin-city vacation spot they once did.

By studying the emphasis Che laid on developing the new socialist human being and the new socialist culture, we give ourselves the ability to understand the success of Cuban socialism more concretely. Additionally, for those of us in countries currently fighting for the seizure of power by the working masses, studying Che’s life and work reminds us of the necessary role the intellectual and moral leadership of the revolutionary vanguard plays in disarticulating working people away from bourgeois hegemony, and towards the new set of socialist ideals, passions, desires, and ethical life necessary for the attainment of a society free of alienation, oppression, exploitation, and war.  

​The Classical Marxist View of the State
​
Today* we hear libertarians speak at length about the problems of ‘big government,’ which they often equate with socialism. The question of the state is, in their minds, reduced to a quantitative discussion. What matters is how much state? Big state or small state? Small state good, big state bad. Silly as it may sound, assumptions such as these are pervasive in the American political horizon. It is a theoretical childishness that, while taken to the extreme by libertarians, is far from being limited to them.

The idea of the state as an abstraction, as an entity that is ideally and substantially the same, with differences reducible to degrees (quantity) and accidental properties, has pervaded the vast majority of bourgeois political philosophy. The theorists of the “universal class” in civil society, i.e., the bourgeoisie, have considered the state they have fought for (in, for instance, feudal Europe) and the states they have created, as the state. They have always projected the particularities of their state into a universalized abstraction of the state in general, categorically bemusing the particular for the abstract universal. The bourgeois state is, in their hands, treated as the state qua state. While some of their best theorists, like Rousseau and Hegel, entertained a serious level of historical self-awareness with regard to this question, they still formulate a theory of the state that is abstract, i.e., disconnected from an awareness of the state’s interconnection with historically evolving modes of production (even though, in comparison with the others, it is much more concrete).

The concrete understanding of the state would first be formulated by Marx and Engels in the middle of the 1840s, from texts like “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” to The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy, and the Manifesto. In these works the modern state is understood as “the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests”…“the real basis of the state” is the “material life of individuals… their mode of production and forms of intercourse, which mutually determine each other.” The question of the state qua state, or of an absolute idea of the state in general, is meaningless. The state is “a product of society at a particular stage of development.” The state does not exist as a transhistorical entity over and above human history. The state becomes a historical necessity, as Engels would write after Marx’s death, because “at a definite stage of economic development,” owing to and influencing the development of the monogamous family, private property, and the “cleavage of society into classes,” the state presents itself as the means of the economically dominant class keeping “class antagonisms in check.” The state is, Engels writes,

The admission that society has involved itself in insoluble self-contradiction and is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to exorcise. But in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, shall not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, a power, apparently standing above society, has become necessary to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of “order”; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state. (229).
As was further concretized with the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871, Marx and Engels in their writings came to understand that all state institutions (both the ideological and coercive ones) have to be made anew in each new form of life. The state exists as a concrete universal, that is, its universal existence is premised on its ability to take a variety of different particular forms in accordance with different historical contexts. It is not sufficient, for instance, for the working class to take up the ready-made state of the bourgeoisie and rule. The institutions themselves are crafted to reproduce the order of the ruling capitalist class. It is not enough to change what class is now to ‘rule’. For the working class to rule, for the dictatorship of the proletariat to function, the whole bourgeois state and its institutions have to be destroyed and replaced by a new working-class state and socialist institutions. The bourgeois state has to be dialectically sublated. This means that the state as an instrument of dictatorship and hegemony for the dominant class is sustained, but that the dominant class will now be (for the first time in the history of the state) the majority – workers, peasants, professionals, etc. In other words, the state (universal), has to be given a new particular form (dictatorship of the proletariat). As V. I. Lenin would later write in State and Revolution, where he masterfully and comprehensively outlines the views of Marx and Engels, “the supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of “withering away".”

The next major advancement in the Marxist theory of the state would arise from the imprisoned Italian Communist Party leader, Antonio Gramsci, who would develop the understanding of the emergence of the integral state. Far from being a break from the relationship of state and civil society expressed in the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin (as some “Gramscians” in the bourgeois academy hold), what Gramsci observed was a development in Europe (and eventually spreading elsewhere) where civil society would itself be integrated under the leadership of the state. This meant that the direct frontal attack that allowed the Bolshevik revolution to succeed in a peripheral country with no integral state could not be replicated in Europe. Instead of the war of maneuver taking primacy, the war of positions, that is, the battle for hegemony, the war for the hearts and minds of the people (the subaltern) would be primary. Consent, not coercion, was the dominant form through which the European states sustained the dominant order. Coercion, i.e., the armed bodies of men of the state which Lenin tells us about, or the repressive state apparatuses Althusser would later on, was, of course, always in the background ready to show itself wherever consent dwindled, and people started rocking the boat. But in general, the fabric which sustains the dominant order was consent – i.e., the hegemony of the ruling class, exerted and sustained through their ideological institutions.

The crisis of capitalism would not only be understood in the traditional terms of Marxist political economy, as the crisis of overproduction where we see, on the basis of the contradictory value production at the foundation of the cell-form of the form of life, the “manifestation of all the contradictions of bourgeois economy.” A sign of the system in crisis is also seen in the collapse of the hegemony so central to reproducing the existing state of affairs. It is when a crisis of legitimacy ensues (usually, of course, a product of the objective economic developments of the general crisis-prone system), when people’s trust in the ruling institutions and ideas dwindle, that the ruling order is shaken to its core. It is these moments, when the people are no longer willing to continue on in the old way, where objectively revolutionary conditions can be said to be present. It is this crisis of legitimacy, this dwindling of hegemony in the American integral state, that I wish to explore here. How can the American state be said to be in crisis? What does this mean for the U.S. socialist left? Why have we failed? How can we succeed? All of these are central questions in my work, and I will try to address them briefly below.

The Crisis of Legitimacy in the U.S.

The principal question for any socialist movement today, be it in the U.S. or outside, is where it stands on issues of war and peace – what will be its position regarding American imperialism? As the great W. E. B. Dubois had long ago noted, “the government of the United States and the forces in control of government regard peace as dangerous.” The foundation of American society, as it exists under the tyranny of capital, is war. They have built up a grand machinery of lies, pumping out through all mediums the twisted facts and invented realities needed to support their topsy-turvy narrative of world events – and thereby, obtain consent for their crimes. The famous phrase of Nazi ideologue Joseph Goebbels applies aptly to the U.S. state, “truth is the mortal enemy of lies, and by extension, the greatest enemy of the state.” They have slaughtered people and allowed whole populations to face the meat grinder of war to defend the right of accumulation for the owners of big capital – the monopoly-finance capitalist class. To defend the ‘rights’ of those who have pillaged the world for centuries. Those who make a killing out of killing. Who trade in the annihilation of life for profit.

As everyone knows, wherever there is oppression and immiseration there will be, sooner or later, resistance. This is a universal law of all human societies fractured by class antagonisms. It is this dialectic of class struggles which pushes humanity forward, often producing the births of whole new social systems from the ashes of a previous one. But these moments of societal renewal, where a new class comes into a position of power and creates a world in its own image, are not guaranteed – even if the conditions for producing it are. There is always the possibility, as Marx and Engels had long ago noted, of a general societal dissolution. To put it in terms fitting with the contradictions of the capitalist mode of life, it isn’t only socialism which stands as a possibility within the embryo of capitalism, equally capable of actualizing itself is, as Rosa Luxemburg long ago noted, barbarism.

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

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

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

But the American people are waking up. All around the country militant union struggles are being waged like we haven’t seen in many decades. Workers are coming to see themselves more and more as a class, one that produces the fruits society enjoys, but which is impoverished and indebted by parasitic capitalist overlords and the politician class that represents them. Across the country concepts like the ‘deep state,’ the ‘swamp,’ ‘the globalists,’ and others have been popularized to describe the oligarchic forces that control the state and all institutions without the slightest semblance of democratic accountability. While these terms are somewhat foreign to the Marxist lexicon, the concepts they represent are not. What is the globalism dissenting workers speak off of not imperialism? What is it if not the need of the capitalist class to export capital abroad to have cheap resources handy and cheap labor to superexploit? How are these conditions created today if not through dollar hegemony and international financial organizations such as the IMF and World Bank, who debt trap countries of the global south and impose structural adjustment programs on them that guarantee privatization of public property, austerity for the people, deregulations for the Western multinationals coming in to loot, and liberalization, all under the auspices of ‘free markets.’ We must recall Lenin’s question – free for whom? To do what?

What is the deep state, for instance, if not the dictatorship of the capitalist class, in whose development any semblance of democratic accountability fades away? While not using the term deep state, key Marxist thinkers in the 20th century, such as Georg Lukács, would describe the development of the deep state in the following manner:

Whoever pursues the historical development of capitalist society knows that the power of elected public bodies continuously declines in comparison to its military and civilian bureaucrats working under "official secrecy.''

Working people, therefore, are expressing various forms of dissent in the only language and conceptual framework available to them. What communists should do is help give these varied forms of dissent the systematic coherence and direction only the Marxist worldview can provide – not, as most of the institutional left does, shame workers for not using the right terms and being ‘backwards’ with regard to fringe social issues.

But the crisis of the American state is not limited to the conditions it has put its people into, and the dissent, on the basis of this, that the public expresses. It is also seen in the fact that the U.S. state, which is fundamentally the heart of capitalist imperialism, is seeing its global hegemony crumble right before its very eyes. China has become the epicenter of the world economy – a non-imperialist great power, as Hugo Chavez once called them. Russia is developing into one of the most impressive productive economies in the world, and has been able to successfully fight off the Western encroachment and proxy war while strengthening its economy and military and weakening NATO (for instance, look at the spiral of deindustrialization Germany, the economic powerhouse in Europe, has been subjected to after their going along with the U.S.’s sanctioning of Russia and after Mr. Biden’s blowing up of the Nordstream Pipelines – the main energy source of their industries). The genocide carried out against the Palestinians couldn’t be a clearer indication that the almost global approval the West received for its crimes in previous eras is now gone. The world is watching as the U.S. funds and equips the Zio-nazi state’s genocide. All across the globe the device on people’s pockets have allowed them to follow the chronicling of Israel’s colonial savagery. While the fact that it has continued for more than seven months shows that in some important ways U.S. imperialism still reigns, the mass discontent it is created in the global majority is objectively intensifying the process of its decline – and this decline, conjoined with the rise of BRICS+ and the emerging multipolar world order, is visible right before our very eyes.

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

Repeating the Failure: The Crisis of the Activist Left in the U.S.

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

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

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

The Need for Self-Criticism

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

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

Professional-Managerial Composition of the Left

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

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

The Purity Fetish and the Three Central Forms it Takes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Notes

* This was a presentation given at the National Autonomous University of Mexico City for the International Seminar on Law and the State in Marxist Thought. 

​Roman land tenure was based increasingly on the appropriation of conquered territory, which was declared public land, the ager publicus populi. The normal practice was to settle war veterans on it, but the wealthiest and most aggressive families grabbed such land for themselves in violation of early law.
​
Cassius’ Indecent Proposal

The die was cast in 486 BC. After Rome defeated the neighboring Hernici, a Latin tribe, and took two-thirds of their land, the consul Spurius Cassius proposed Rome’s first agrarian law. It called for giving half the conquered territory back to the Latins and half to needy Romans, who were also to receive public land that patricians had occupied1. But the patricians accused Cassius of “building up a power dangerous to liberty” by seeking popular support and “endangering the security” of their land appropriation. After his annual term was over he was charged with treason and killed. His house was burned to the ground to eradicate memory of his land proposal (Livy, History of Rome 2.41).

Patricians Versus Plebs

The fight over whether patricians or the needy poor plebians would be the main recipients of public land dragged on for 12 years. In 474 the commoners’ tribune, Gnaeus Genucius, sought to bring the previous year’s consuls to trial for delaying the redistribution proposed by Cassius (Livy 2.54 and Dionysius 9.37-38). He was blocked by that year’s two consuls, Lucius Furius and Gaius Manlius, who said that decrees of the Senate were not permanent law, “but measures designed to meet temporary needs and having validity for one year only.” The Senate could renege on any decree that had been passed.

A century later, in 384, M. Manlius Capitolinus, a former consul (in 392) was murdered for defending debtors by trying to use tribute from the Gauls and to sell public land to redeem plebian debts, and for accusing senators of embezzlement and urging them to use their takings to redeem debtors. It took a generation of turmoil and poverty for Rome to resolve matters. In 367 the Licinio-Sextian law limited personal landholdings to 500 iugera (125 hectares, under half a square mile; see Livy 6.35-36). Indebted landholders were permitted to deduct interest payments from the principal and pay off the balance over three years instead of all at once.

Gifts of Land

Most wealth throughout history has been obtained from the public domain, and that is how Rome’s latifundia were created. The most fateful early land grab occurred after Carthage was defeated in 204. Two years earlier, when Rome’s life-and-death struggle with Hannibal had depleted its treasury, the Senate had asked families to voluntarily contribute their jewelry or other precious belongings to help the war effort. Their gold and silver were melted down in the temple of Juno Moneta to strike the coins used to hire mercenaries.

Upon the return to peace, the aristocrats depicted these contributions as having been loans, and convinced the Senate to pay their claims in three installments. The first was paid in 204, and a second in 202. As the third and final installment was coming due in 200, the former contributors pointed out that Rome needed to keep its money to continue fighting abroad, but had much public land available. In lieu of cash payment they asked the Senate to offer them land located within fifty miles of Rome, and to tax it at only a nominal rate. A precedent for such privatization had been set in 205 when Rome sold valuable land in the Campania to provide Scipio with money to invade Africa.

The recipients were promised that “when the people should become able to pay, if anyone chose to have his money rather than the land, he might restore the land to the state.” Nobody did, of course. “The private creditors accepted the terms with joy; and that land was called Trientabulum because it was given in lieu of the third part of their money” (Livy 28.46).

Latifundia Changed Rome’s Economy Forever

Arnold Toynbee2 describes this giveaway of Rome’s ager publicus as the turning point polarizing its economy by deciding, “at one stroke, the economic and social future of the Central Italian lowlands.” Most of this land ended up as latifundia cultivated by slaves captured in the wars against Carthage and Macedonia and imported en masse after 198. This turned the region into “predominantly a country of underpopulated slave-plantations” as the formerly free population was driven off the land into overpopulated industrial towns. In 194 and again in 177 the Senate organized a program of colonization that sent about 100,000 peasants, women, and children from central Italy to more than twenty colonies, mainly in the far south and north of Italy. Some settlers lost their Roman citizenship, and they must have remained quite poor as the average land allotment was small.

The Gracchi and Civil War

In 133, Tiberius Gracchus advocated distributing ager publicus to the poor, pointing out that this would “increase the number of property holders liable to serve in the army.” He was killed by angry senators who wanted the public land for themselves. Nonetheless, a land commission was established in Italy in 128, “and apparently succeeded in distributing land to several thousand citizens” in a few colonies, but not any land taken from Rome’s own wealthy elite. The commission was abolished around 119 after Tiberius’s brother Gaius Gracchus was killed.3

Appian (Civil Wars 1.1.7) describes the ensuing century of civil war as being fought over the land and debt crisis.

“For the rich, getting possession of the greater part of the undistributed lands, and being emboldened by the lapse of time to believe that they would never be dispossessed, absorbing any adjacent strips and their poor neighbors’ allotments, partly by purchase under persuasion and partly by force, came to cultivate vast tracts instead of single estates, using slaves as laborers and herdsmen, lest free laborers should be drawn from agriculture into the army. At the same time the ownership of slaves brought them great gain from the multitude of their progeny, who increased because they were exempt from military service. Thus certain powerful men became extremely rich and the race of slaves multiplied throughout the country, while the Italian people dwindled in number and strength, being oppressed by penury, taxes and military service.”

How Land Changed Rome’s Army

Dispossession of free labor from the land transformed the character of Rome’s army. Starting with Marius, landless soldiers became soldati, living on their pay and seeking the highest booty, loyal to the generals in charge of paying them. Command of an army brought economic and political power. When Sulla brought his troops back to Italy from Asia Minor in 82 and proclaimed himself Dictator, he tore down the walls of towns that had opposed him, and kept them in check by resettling 23 legions (some 80,000 to 100,000 men) in colonies on land confiscated from local populations in Italy.

Sulla Steals Estates and Sells Them for Support

Sulla drew up proscription lists of enemies who could be killed with impunity, with their estates seized as booty. Their names were publicly posted throughout Italy in June 81 BC, headed by the consuls for the years 83 and 82, and about 1,600 equites (wealthy publican investors). Thousands of names followed. Anyone on these lists could be killed at will, with the executioner receiving a portion of the dead man’s estate. The remainder was sold at public auctions, the proceeds being used to rebuild the depleted treasury. Most land was sold cheaply, giving opportunists a motive to kill not only those named by Sulla, but also their personal enemies, to acquire their estates. A major buyer of confiscated real estate was Crassus, who became one of the richest Romans through Sulla’s proscriptions.

By giving his war veterans homesteads and funds from the proscriptions, Sulla won their support as a virtual army in reserve, along with their backing for his new oligarchic constitution. But they were not farmers, and ran into debt, in danger of losing their land. For his more aristocratic supporters, Sulla distributed the estates of his opponents from the Italian upper classes, especially in Campania, Etruria, and Umbria.

Battle of Generals

Caesar likewise promised to settle his army on land of their own. They followed him to Rome and enabled him to become Dictator in 49. After he was killed in 44, Brutus and Cassius vied with Octavian (later Augustus), each promising their armies land and booty. As Appian (Civil Wars 5.2.12-13) summarized: “The chiefs depended on the soldiers for the continuance of their government, while, for the possession of what they had received, the soldiers depend on the permanence of the government of those who had given it. Believing that they could not keep a firm hold unless the givers had a strong government, they fought for them, from necessity, with good-will.” After defeating the armies of Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony, Octavian gave his indigent soldiers “land, the cities, the money, and the houses, and as the object of denunciation on the part of the despoiled, and as one who bore this contumely for the army’s sake.”

 Imperial Estates

The concentration of land ownership intensified under the Empire. Brown4 notes that by the time Christianity became the Roman state religion, North Africa had become the main source of Roman wealth, based on “the massive landholdings of the emperor and of the nobility of Rome.” Its overseers kept the region’s inhabitants “underdeveloped by Roman standards. Their villages were denied any form of corporate existence and were frequently named after the estates on which the villagers worked, held to the land by various forms of bonded labor.”

A Christian from Gaul named Salvian5 described the poverty and insecurity confronting most of the population ca. 440:

“Faced by the weight of taxes, poor farmers found that they did not have the means to emigrate to the barbarians. Instead, they did what little they could do: they handed themselves over to the rich as clients in return for protection. The rich took over title to their lands under the pretext of saving the farmers from the land tax. The patron registered the farmer’s land on the tax rolls under his (the patron’s) own name. Within a few years, the poor farmers found themselves without land, although they were still hounded for personal taxes. Such patronage by the great, so Salvian claimed, turned free men into slaves as surely as the magic of Circe had turned humans into pigs.”

Church Estates

Church estates became islands in this sea of poverty. As deathbed confessions and donations of property to the Church became increasingly popular among wealthy Christians, the Church came to accept existing creditor and debtor relationships, land ownership, hereditary wealth, and the political status quo. What mattered to the Church was how the ruling elites used their wealth, regardless of how they obtained it as long as it was destined for the Church, whose priests were the paradigmatic “poor” deserving of aid and charity.

The Church sought to absorb local oligarchies into its leadership, along with their wealth. Testamentary disposition undercut local fiscal balance. Land given to the Church was tax-exempt, obliging communities to raise taxes on their secular property in order to maintain their flow of public revenue (many heirs found themselves disinherited by such bequests, leading to a flourishing legal practice of contesting deathbed wills). The Church became the major corporate body, a sector alongside the state. Its critique of personal wealth focused on personal egotism and self-indulgence, nothing like the socialist idea of public ownership of land, monopolies, and banking. In fact, the Crusades led the Church to sponsor Christendom’s major secular bankers to finance its wars against the Holy Roman Emperors, Moslems, and Byzantine Sicily.

References  

1. Roman Antiquities by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 8.77.2.
2. Hannibal’s Legacy by Arnold Toynbee, 1965, II: pp. 250-51 and pp. 341-373.
3. Conquerors and Slaves by Keith Hopkins, 1978, pp. 61-63.
4. Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD by Peter Brown, 2012, pp. 330, 366, and 327.
5. De gubernatione Dei (“The Government of God”) 5.9.45, paraphrased and discussed in Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD by Peter Brown, 2012, pp. 433-450.

​The enormous scale and horrific nature of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the persistence and determination with which Israel has carried out these crimes with "ironclad" U.S. backing is mindboggling. As of May 28, 2024, the U.S. backed Israeli genocide has thus far taken the lives of at least 36,096 people. Not included in that tally are thousands more likely dead under the rubble. A further 81,136 people have been injured during this vicious assault on Gaza (Stepansky and D’Amours 2024; Batrawy 2024). The unbridled brutality continues in complete disdain for every humanitarian principle, international law, and the highest courts. It is necessary to review some basic facts:
           
Roughly, half of Gaza’s population is under the age of eighteen (Mohammed 2023). Israel imposed a brutal economic siege on Gaza in 2006 that has been in place ever since. In 2018, around 1.4 million Gazans were classified as refugees (Muhasen n.d.). Prior to the current genocide, 81% of Gaza’s population was classified as living in poverty, unemployment stood at around 46%, 95% of the population did not have stable access to clean water, 63% of the population was food insecure, and the unemployment rate was 46% (UNRWA 2023).

Israel flagrantly violates the laws of war with frightening regularity. From October 2023 to March 2024, Israel conducted over 1,000 attacks on healthcare workers and facilities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, in complete violation of the Geneva Conventions (ReliefWeb 2024). Israel has fired missiles at ambulance convoys (Al Jazeera 2023), and bombed multiple hospitals in Gaza. Satellite images show that Israeli bombings have destroyed six hospitals in Northern Gaza, ten in Gaza City, one in Deir el-Balah, and seven in Khan Yunis (AJLabs and Sanad Verification Agency 2024). Between the Al-Aqsa Flood attacks on October 7, 2023 to April 25, 2024, Israel killed 220 humanitarian workers (Knickmeyer and Santana 2024). This does not include any killed in the ongoing attacks on Rafah that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people once again. It is almost impossible to keep a tally of Israel’s daily atrocities; every report of the number of people killed is surely an undercount, while every day adds many new victims to the toll.

The US-supported IDF has displaced the entirety of Gaza repeatedly. The IDF has bombed Gaza’s sanitation systems, regularly engages in torture, bombed refugee camps, bombed hospitals and ambulances, used starvation and thirst as a weapon against the entire population, committed multiple massacres, used internationally proscribed weaponry, bombed residential homes, and produced widespread psychological trauma to all Gazans- and to all of us who love humanity and stand with Palestine.

Further, Israel “has obstructed ambulance crews from assisting injured civilians, leading to some patients bleeding to death” (ReliefWeb 2024). Israel has destroyed bakeries, and greenhouses while simultaneously preventing the delivery of food, water, medicines, and fuel (ibid). Israel has bombed the areas where they send refugees killing those that they have displaced, and have attacked and massacred civilians as they wait for humanitarian assistance (Cordall et al 2024; Al Salchi and Baba 2024). While on a completely new scale, these atrocities are not new but part of a long and disturbing pattern of Israeli violence. Israel has a long history of attacking Gaza’s healthcare and sanitation systems. During the Cast Lead invasion of Gaza in 2008-09, Israel damaged or destroyed 34 healthcare facilities, and bombed sewage treatment plants, housing, and water treatment plants (United Nations General Assembly’s Human Rights Council 2009; Canadian Medical Association 2009).
           
The United States and Israel are doing this to a trapped population in a five by twenty-five mile strip of land for decades. It is impossible to imagine what Gazans have lived through for the past decades, and terrifying to even glimpse what they are currently experiencing. Gazans have been subjected to regular bombardments, and been shot at for the most minimal protest. The people of Gaza have suffered multiple murderous Israeli invasions: in 2008-9, 2014, 2021, 2022, in addition to having suffered the extremely violent repression of the Great March of Return in 2018-2019. During the Great March of Return, the IDF killed an estimated 214 Palestinians and Israeli snipers shot approximately 7000 Palestinians, including many in their knees imposing life-long crippling injuries. Due to these atrocities, 154 Palestinians suffered amputations. In addition, the IDF fired tear gas canisters and other forms of gas at protestors. In total, the IDF injured approximately 36,100 Gazans, around 8000 of which were children (Medical Aid for Palestinians 2024; Martin 2019).

It is abundantly clear that Israel is committing genocide. It is clear that Israel is engaged in trying “to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” in this case the Palestinians, fitting the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Just days after October 7, 2023, more than 800 scholars signed a public letter warning of a potential genocide (TWAILR 2023). After Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s announcement that Israel would cut off all food, fuel and water to Gaza and as Israel had begun bombing Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, Holocaust and genocide scholar Raz Seagal (2023) described Israel’s actions as a “textbook case of genocide”. Israeli leaders have been open about their intentions to starve the population, to create a catastrophe for Gazans that would lead to “zero population in Gaza” (TWAILR 2023). In January, Law for Palestine (2024) compiled a database of over 500 statements from Israeli decision makers, army personnel, journalists, and former governmental officials clearly demonstrating genocidal intent, dehumanization, and intent to harm civilians. These declarations further demonstrate the intention to impose collective punishment and forcibly displace the people of Gaza.

This ongoing genocide is happening as the whole world is watching in spite of the millions protesting, International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings, and United Nations statements demanding that this must stop. Even though the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the genocide continues unabated. The US and Israel continue to shred international law, while seeking to advance the aims of settler colonialists and military industrial firms, at the expense of the most basic and universal ethical principles. 
           
During the Nakba of 1947-1948, Israel carried out multiple massacres, erased entire villages and expelled approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their land. In Deir Yassin, Al Tantura and Al Dawaymeh (along with many others) Israel wiped out the villages inhabitants (Pappe 2006). Since then, Israel has brutally oppressed the people of Palestine with the goal of maintaining a Jewish majority in an ethno-nationalist state (Abuminah 2014). This intensified in 1967, through and beyond the Oslo accords as Israel utilized a “matrix of control” to grab more land, and repress Palestinians (Halper 2014). The litany of crimes against humanity is too long to review here.

In a more just world, racism, imperialism and colonialism would not be tolerated. In such a world the Israeli and US genocidal war criminals would have long ago been arrested, tired, convicted, and sentenced for these horrific atrocities. What we are watching in Gaza is unfiltered brutality, caught on camera, often by bystanders, although sometimes posted and shared by the perpetrators themselves.

It is difficult to comprehend those who do not empathize with the people of Gaza. In the first three months of the genocide alone, between October 7, 2023 and January 7, 2024, over 1000 children in Gaza had their limbs amputated, many without anesthetic due to Israel’s bombings (Save the Children 2024)! A common characteristic of genocides is that the victims are systematic dehumanized. In this case, in addition to dehumanization, Israel’s US sponsored genocide of Palestinians has been facilitated by the erasure of Palestinian history, the whitewashing of the history of Zionism in particular and imperialism in general, and the covering of Israel’s crimes with false accusations of anti-Semitism. The latter set of accusations have risen to an extreme level of absurdity as they are commonly directed at Jews who stand in solidarity with Palestine.
 
What must be done?

Settler colonialism creates an insoluble antagonism between the settlers, and the colonized population that is forcibly displaced to make room for the settlers. The religious cover and the insidious manipulation of historic Jewish suffering in Europe exacerbate the Israel-Palestinian case. Zionism exploits the Jewish suffering produced by the anti-Semitic pogroms of the late 19th and early twentieth centuries and the Holocaust to advance its goals. Zionism insidiously tries to transfer the weight of European anti-Semitism onto the heads of Palestinians to rationalize Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing. The extreme ethno-nationalism that has flourished in the Zionist project, the continued growth of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, and the further sharpening of the settler-colonized antagonism has led us to the present moment. These processes must be stopped.

Although a two state solution along the pre-1967 borders has the support of much of the world, and if given full sovereignty and security guarantees for a contiguous Palestine would be far better than the current situation, it is clear that this does not address the core discriminatory, and aggressive nature of the Israeli state itself. Israel has worked hard to make the two-state solution unviable by consistently encroaching upon Palestinian territory (Halper 2014). It is critical to consider alternatives in light of these events to consider alternative solutions. The peoples of the region must forge a new reality through a thorough and complete dismantlement of the repressive, supremacist, imperialist, colonialist, and apartheid characteristics of the state called Israel.  

Israel must be transformed into a place were full equal rights exist for Palestinians and Jews. This means that a single, inclusive state that is in complete conformity with international law is the only realistic and ethical solution. For this to happen, those responsible for war crimes and the crime of genocide must be tried, sentenced and punished. A new inclusive and anti-racist society must be constructed. There must be an immediate end to home demolitions, administrative detention, Jewish only roads, a dismantlement of the apartheid wall, and investigations into and prosecution of Israeli war crimes.  If these steps are not taken, the continuation of the settler-colonized antagonism and the accompanying apartheid-like system and genocidal violence will likely continue.

A key problem before us is that international law has no enforcement mechanism for powerful, imperialist states who violate it, even when they commit the most egregious of crimes. International law risks losing its relevance if Israel and the US are able to continue to pursue this genocide. Another layer of responsibility for the present situation lies in the effective inability of past and present leftist, socialist, communist movements to establish a truly internationalist world order where global production would be geared to human need and not to the enrichment of the few. The development of international socialist governance would have long ago abolished economies based on militarism. It is difficult to address humanity’s pressing problems in the context of global capitalism and imperialism that produce astronomical inequalities of income, wealth and power.

We all have a duty to stand up for Palestine and stand firmly against genocide. We must follow the examples of the brave students and professors around the country and countless millions around the world that have protested and shown their solidarity. We must learn from the Palestinians themselves who have consistently resisted the systematic destruction of their people. Countries such as Yemen, South Africa, Cuba, Colombia, and Bolivia have demonstrated solidarity with Palestine, as have countless organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, and Students for Justice for Palestine. Ending this genocide is a necessary step for humanity. It is impossible to move to a sane, less violent, anti-imperialist and internationalist world order, if we cannot stop genocide when it occurs in our midst.
 
Free Gaza! Free Palestine!
 
Works Cited:
 
Abunimah, Ali. 2014. The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Haymarket Books. Chicago.

AJLabs and Sanad Verification Agency. 2024. “Satellite images reveal the destruction of hospitals in Gaza”. Al Jazeera. April 18, 2024. Accessed online: May, 16 2024. 
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/4/18/satellite-images-reveal-israeli-destruction-of-hospitals-in-gaza

Al Jazeera. 2023. “Israel air strike on ambulances kills 15, injures 60, Gaza officials say”. Al Jazeera. November 3, 2023. Accessed online 5/18/2024 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/3/several-killled-in-israeli-attack-on-ambulance-convoy-gaza-health-ministry

Al-Sachi, Hadeel, and Ana Baba. 2024. “An Israeli airstrike killed 45 Palestinians in an encampment for displaced people”. NPR. May 27, 2024. Accessed online 5/30/2024 https://www.npr.org/2024/05/27/nx-s1-4982690/rafah-encampment-israeli-airstrike-hamas 

Batrawy, Aya. 2024. Why the U.N. revised the numbers of women and children in Gaza. N.P.R. May 15, 2024. Accessed online 5/15/2024 https://www.npr.org/2024/05/15/1251265727/un-gaza-death-toll-women-children

Canadian Medical Association. 2009. “Gaza’s health care system crippled before - and after.” Canadian Medical Association Journal. March 19, 2009. Accessed online. 4/8/2024 
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/180/6/608.full.pdf

Cordall, Simon Speakman, Mohammed R Mhawish, and Mat Nashed. 2024. “When Israeli soldiers shot at hungry Palestinians.” Al Jazeera. March 5, 2024. Accessed online 4/9/2024 
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/3/5/the-blood-was-everywhere-inside-israels-flour-massacre-in-gaza

Halper, Jeff. 2014. Obstacles to Peace. Re-Framing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The Israeli Coalition against Home Demolitions. Jerusalem.

Law for Palestine. 2024. “Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide- Continuously Updated.” January 4, 2024. Accessed online 5/30/2024 https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-database-with-500-instances-of-israeli-incitement-to-genocide-continuously-updated/

Martin, Abby. 2019. Gaza Fights for Freedom. Documentary. United States.

Medical Aid for Palestinians. 2021. “Not just a painful memory: Continuing to treat the Great March of Return’s gunshot wounds”. MAP Medical Aid for Palestinians. April 8, 2021. Accessed online 5/17/2024.  
https://www.map.org.uk/news/archive/post/1215-not-just-a-painful-memory-continuing-to-treat-the-great-march-of-returnas-gunshot-wounds

Mohammad, Linah. 2023. “Children make up nearly half of Gaza’s population: Here’s what it means for the war” NPR. October 19, 2023. Accessed online: 3/28/2024 https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1206479861/israel-gaza-hamas-children-population-war-palestinians#:~:text=The%20current%20war%20in%20Gaza,47.3%25)%20are%20under%2018.

Muhaisen, Tayseer. N.d. “Palestinian Refugees in the Gaza Strip, 1948-1967: The Political and Social Remodeling of a Cramped Palestinian Space” Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question. Accessed online 5/17/2024: https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/22188/palestinian-refugees-gaza-strip-1948-1967

Knickmeyer, Ellen and Rebecca Santana. 2024. “Chef José Andrés says aid workers killed by Israeli airstrikes represented the ‘best of humanity” AP. April 25, 2024. Accessed online. 5/7/ 2024 
https://apnews.com/article/memorial-world-central-kitchen-workers-gaza-israel-fd668fad5de83377c129ab832d699c70

Pappe, Ilan. 2006. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld Publications. Oxford.

Relief Web. 2024. “Press Release: A Disturbing Trend: Over 1000 Attacks on Health Care in the oPt since 07 October 2023”. OCHA Situation Report. March 28, 2024.

Save the Children. 2024. “Gaza: More than 10 Children a Day Lose a Limb in Three Months of Brutal Conflict”. January 7, 2024. Accessed online 5/30/2024 https://www.savethechildren.net/news/gaza-more-10-children-day-lose-limb-three-months-brutal-conflict#:~:text=Many%20of%20these%20operations%20on,World%20Health%20Organization%20(WHO).

Segal, Raz. 2023. “A Textbook Case of Genocide: Israel has been explicit about what it’s carrying out in Gaza. Why isn’t the world listening?”. Jewish Currents. October 13, 2023. Accessed online. 4/9/2024 
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

Stepansky, Joseph and Jillian Kestler-D’Amours. 2024. “Israel’s war on Gaza updates: ‘Rafah is on fire”. Al Jazeera. May 29, 2024: Accessed online 5/30/2024 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/5/29/israels-war-on-gaza-live-tent-cities-attacked-as-tanks-roll-into-rafah#:~:text=The%20UN's%20World%20Food%20Programme,on%20Gaza%20since%20October%207.

TWAILR. 2023. “Public Statement: Scholars Warn of Potential Genocide in Gaza”. TWAILR. Third World Approaches to International Law Review. October 17, 2023. Accessed online: https://twailr.com/public-statement-scholars-warn-of-potential-genocide-in-gaza/

United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Council. 2009. “Human Rights in Palestine and other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict” Human Rights Council Twelfth Session.. A/HRC/12/48. 
​
UNRWA. 2023. “Where We Work”. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Accessed online. 3/28/2024. https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip
​

Author

Isaac Christiansen is an Associate Professor of Sociology in Midwestern State University. He obtained his Master’s and PhD in sociology from Iowa State University in 2010 and 2015, respectively. His research and interests include topics related to health inequalities, imperialism, Marxist political economy, and socialist development. He is currently finishing his first book “Global Social Problems: Inequalities of Power and the Pursuit of Social Justice” which is expected to be out later this year. He has previously published in World Review of Political Economy, Nuestro Tiempo, International Critical Thought, The International Journal of Cuban Studies and CounterPunch.

​The recent (apparently) accidental death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, along with Iran’s prolific foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, has prompted much speculation and discussion about what changes in Iran’s political power arrangement may occur. How will this affect the nation of Iran itself? What are the prospects of the Resistance Axis against Zionism that Iran leads? As is often the case, the discussion in both the mainstream media and even many progressive/left media traffic in cliches and superficiality, even going so far to make Chicken Little proclamations that the Islamic Republic will imminently fall due to the death of some of its leadership. This mistakes the true pillars of power in the Islamic Republic of Iran to be individual clerics and politicians (rather than the foundational institutions these leaders stand on).

In the following essay I intend to make the argument that Iran’s system has a deeply grassroots character built on mass working class support, which makes its political system extremely difficult to dislodge- despite the best efforts of the US Pentagon and the CIA, the Zionist entity, the Gulf monarchies and their Wahabbi/Salafi proxies. It can be argued that Iran is not only anti-imperialist, but socialist, a rare model of Islamic socialism that has not existed elsewhere since Libya’s model of Islamic socialism was destroyed in 2011.

How Iran’s unique economy developed

First, some historical context is necessary. In its 2,500 years of history, Iran/Persia has never had an economy that could be considered a free market. The state has always played a dominant role. From the ancient Persian Empire onwards a powerful, centralized monarchy ran what could be considered a ‘palace economy’ whereby the great bulk of resources went to the king and his officials, who redistributed resources as they saw fit. In essence, the palace planned the economy (this system also existed in ancient Egypt, Babylonia and China).

This system had a nobility, but they never had the same power or status that the feudal nobility possessed in medieval Europe. The Persian emperor was so vastly wealthier than all the nobles put together that they were completely subordinate to him. The emperor was also obligated to protect the serfs from the worst abuses of the nobles, and “Debt Jubilees”, in which the emperor canceled the debts of peasants to their lords, were a tradition.

Iran/Persia got its first exposure to the global capitalist system with the rise of the petroleum economy. Oil was discovered by British speculators in Abadan in 1901, and 13 years later British capitalists acquired effective control over all major oil production in Iran, a monopoly they held for 37 years via the Anglo Iranian Oil Company. For 2/3rds of a century Iran’s oil production was dominated by foreign imperialists: first the British until the 1950’s and later the US from the 1950’s until the 1979 revolution. As bad as this exploitation was, it was largely confined to this one industry. Since petroleum was fairly disconnected from the rest of Iran’s economy, foreign exploitation of that commodity did not have the same debilitating and deforming effect on the countries overall economic development that, for example, the British cotton industry had in Egypt and India, which meddled deeply in those countries' food production. Iran was never formally colonized, meaning it kept much of its traditional economic structure and social cohesion intact.

The Pahlavi Ancient regime

The Shah Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s last monarch who reigned from 1941 to 1979, was a brutal US backed autocrat. Nonetheless, some of his policies unwittingly set the stage for Iran’s revolutionary economic system today. Desiring to turn Iran into a great modern power, the Shah enacted a series of reforms between 1963 and 78 that radically altered Iranian society, known as the “White Revolution” (white being the color of the monarchy). These included major land reforms in the countryside, where the rural estates of big landowners were broken up and redistributed as small plots to the peasantry. This completely upended the rural feudal order. The Shah did this not out of benevolence to the peasants but to break the power of the traditional landed nobility, who he compensated by granting them ownership of businesses in the major cities.

The Shah also reinvested some of Iran’s massive oil revenues into the country's manufacturing base outside the oil sector, kick starting an industrial revolution in the country. He imposed trade barriers and tariffs to keep out foreign competitors and protect local Iranian industrial capitalists. Paved roads and railways connecting the major Iranian cities were built for the first time. Urbanization accelerated and the modern working class exploded in numbers (the urban population went from 7.2 million in 1960 to 18.2 million in 1979, which was 33% to 50% of the total population in two decades). Iran produced virtually no steel in 1960, by 1977 it was producing as much steel as Britain.

But the fruits of this modernization and development in the 1960’s-70’s did not reach the overwhelming majority of Iranians, and this is what doomed the monarchy. In 1973 85% of all private industry in Iran was owned by only 45 families. The Iranian capitalist class was tiny and completely dependent on the Shah for contracts and favors- the Shah preferred it this way, as he wanted to be sure no one amongst the Iranian bourgeoisie became potential rivals. Thus, the Iranian capitalists had no political independence from the monarchy.

Iran’s middle class was somewhat larger, about 5% of the population, or around 2 million out of 40 million people total. Many were culturally liberal and adopted Western fashions and trends. But 95% of the Iranian people remained deeply exploited, impoverished and highly religious workers, farmers, artisans and small shopkeepers. They grew to resent the monarchy’s rampant corruption, the neglect of the urban and rural poor, the Shah’s alliance with Western imperialist powers and disrespect for traditional religious and social norms.

The Shah, obsessed with centralizing power around himself, had systematically weakened and reduced the size of two classes which had a vested interest in defending his regime, the landed nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. He also alienated much of the middle class with his refusal to make liberal political reforms and his personalized, autocratic rule. He wound up with millions of enemies and only a handful of allies.

These tensions came to a boiling point in 1978-79, when the working-class majority, in alliance with nationalist minded petit bourgeois and Islamic clergy, rose up in their millions against the monarchy.

Thus, the revolution in Iran quite swiftly destroyed the political power of the Iranian bourgeoisie, who were expropriated or fled the country when the monarchy collapsed. In 1979 state power passed from the hands of the monarchy which ruled in the interests of a handful of capitalists and aristocrats to a vanguard of Islamic clergy whose base of mass support rested on the impoverished working class/peasant majority. The centrally planned economy which was already in place was redirected in service of the Iranian people and nation as a whole instead of a small elite.

What is important to recognize is that while the Islamists, liberals and Marxists who took part in the revolution against the Shah had different ideas regarding what path Iran would take following the deposing of the monarchy, there was significant cross pollination in terms of their ideas. Shia populism, representing a dissident strand of Islam that had often been at odds with the wealthy and the powerful in the Muslim world over the centuries, had common ground with many aspects of socialist thought.

A notable example of this was the political and religious development of Mahmoud Taleghani, a leading intellectual influence on the Iranian Islamic Revolution and a lieutenant of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Taleghani was imprisoned alongside Iranian Marxists under the Shah and frequently engaged in debates and discussions with them. While rejecting Marxism on the grounds that he found historical materialism incompatible with Islamic faith, he took their arguments seriously and socialism heavily influenced his ideas. In Taleghani’s famous book “Islam and Ownership” he argued in favor of collective ownership of natural resources in the national interest, saying this was in line with Quranic teachings. Taleghani was even called ‘the Red Mullah’ for this reason.

In the economic policies implemented by the leadership of the Islamic Revolution since 1979, conceptions of social justice, the uplifting of the poor and an opposition to usurious financial speculation at odds with healthy national development have helped shape Iran’s economic institutions.

How do these state institutions of Islamic socialism operate in Iran? Let’s examine them in turn.

1. The Bonyads

One aspect of Iran’s post 1979 economy which is very non capitalist is known as the Bonyads. These are Islamic charity organizations, essentially run as cooperatives, which are responsible for providing social services and welfare to Iran’s working classes. They are usually administered by religious clergy. Although they receive state funds and subsidies, they are not directly state run and make the day-to-day decisions as to how funds are allocated and spent. Eighty percent of Bonyads are estimated to run at a loss yet continue receiving state subsidies because their function is social, not profit driven. Twenty to thirty percent of Iran’s entire economy consists of these Bonyad enterprises. One of the more famous Bonyads, the Mostazafan Foundation of Islamic Revolution, is the single largest holding company in the entire Middle East. It consists of the Shah’s expropriated personal properties.

The Bonyads employ up to five million Iranians, causing Western business outlets and pro neoliberal Iranian opposition groups to complain that these organizations are ‘overstaffed’, bloated and inefficient. In a capitalist framework, having large institutions devoted to reducing unemployment as an end in itself makes no sense, but under the religious and economic justice priorities of the Bonyads it makes perfect sense. In Islam “zakat”, or charity is one of the Five Pillars of Faith for any true believer. Iran is unique in that it took a practice that was normally the prerogative of individuals to carry it out and made it a central duty of the state to subsidize and promote.

2. The Basij

This is another component of Iran’s revolutionary system and how the government is connected with the working masses. The Basij is often incorrectly described as only a pro government militia. Although that is one of its functions, it doesn’t come close to describing the actual picture.

The Basij were first created during Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq, where local councils were set up on a community, village and neighborhood level to defend the Islamic Revolution from foreign invasion and internal counterrevolution. When the war ended in 1988, the Basij took on many other functions besides military, community service, education, health clinics, infrastructure construction/repair, and disaster relief. Their mandate is to serve the Iranian masses. Joining is voluntary, and the only requirement for joining is that you agree with the principles of the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Today the Basij councils have 17 million members. Each council has a “base” at a neighborhood or village level. Approximately 60-80,000 of these bases exist nationwide, with as few as ten people or as many as 100+ assigned to each base. Their recruits are overwhelmingly drawn from the working class and the poor. Half the Basij are youth, and one third are women. Basij are not only Muslims- there are also Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Basij as well.

A required part of becoming a member of the Basij is ideological, religious and political education. Members are expected to take classes in the Quran, studying the works of key thinkers of the Iranian Revolution (for example, Ayatollah Khomeini, Morteza Motahhari, Ali Shariati, Mahmoud Taleghani), the struggle in Palestine, ethical codes of conduct, and other subjects. The Basij are under the direct command of the Supreme Leader of Iran and answer to no one else.

One of the appeals of the Basij is access to higher education, 40% of undergraduate university positions and 20% of graduate school positions are reserved for Basij members, making it attractive for working class people to join.

When you look beyond the ideology espoused, the structure and function of the Basij is almost identical to that of the Communist Party apparatus that existed in the USSR and which still exists in China, Cuba, Vietnam and the DPRK today. The Supreme Leader of Iran, the Guardian Council and the religious clergy in the holy city of Qom function as the politburo/party vanguard, while the Basij councils are the equivalent of the soviets in Russia or the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in Cuba, which keep the leadership rooted in the working masses. Whether the ideology is Marxism Leninism or Shia populism/Islamic socialism, the institutions themselves are very similar.

One cannot possibly understand how the Islamic Republic has held together for 45 years in the face of war, sanctions, imperialist encirclement, and ethnic separatist terrorism if one doesn’t recognize the popular and working-class backbone of the Iranian state.

3. Iranian Revolutionary Guard

It might seem strange to include them in an analysis of Iran’s economic system, but the Revolutionary Guard are key players in Iran’s planned economy. They directly own and control much of Iran’s vital infrastructure outside the oil industry- roads, natural gas, railways, even banking. Many of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard were Basij militia in their youth, and thus have been heavily vetted as patriotic and committed to the ideas of the Islamic Revolution. The purpose of them managing Iran’s infrastructure is Iran’s national security above all else.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are important to mention because Western media coverage often talks about Iran’s state run assets being ‘privatized’, especially during the tenure of President Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), when in reality most of these so called privatizations transferred state run enterprises (under the purview of the Iranian parliament) to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. So, Iranian assets were moved from state control to state control- not privatization at all, not in the neoliberal sense anyway.

So, between the Bonyads, the officially state-run sector, and enterprises run by the Revolutionary Guards, the majority of Iran’s economy is either directly controlled by the state or subsidized by it.

In conclusion, the lesson to be taken from this overview of Iran’s economy is that whether you can technically label Iran’s economy as socialist or not (despite the many controversies over what socialism is), it is crystal clear that it is NOT a neoliberal or free market system. The main purpose of this economic model is to 1) Ensure the economic sovereignty and national security of Iran and 2) Provide a safety net for the working classes and rural poor who are the main base of support for the Islamic Republic. It is not about enriching individuals.

Even allowing for corruption where unscrupulous individuals misuse such institutions to enrich themselves (a problem in every socialist system including the USSR and China), it is a very difficult environment for a conventional bourgeoisie to grow, much less flourish. The arch neoliberal heritage Foundation ranks Iran in terms of ‘economic freedom’ (openness of its markets) in the bottom ten, along with the DPRK, Cuba, and Venezuela.

Contradictions and Ongoing Challenges of Iran’s Islamic Socialism

Obviously, the threat of a direct military confrontation with Zionism is dominating the headlines, as is ISIS terrorism (the heinous attacks on the memorials for General Soleimani that killed over 100 people this January comes to mind). But the biggest vulnerability of the Islamic Republic are the class contradictions arising from within Iran itself. Without resolving these contradictions, Iran cannot continue to be the effective leader of the Resistance Axis and the player in the emerging multi polar world it aspires to be.

In certain ways, the Islamic Revolution is burdened by one of its greatest successes: the expansion of its middle classes. In 1979 only 5% of Iran’s population was middle class, now over 34% is. This was not a mere accident, but a result of government policy. In the wake of the Iran Iraq war, the government provided university scholarships for millions of family members of veterans of the conflict; In effect, Iran’s version of the GI Bill. This gave many working-class men and women access to a university education for the first time and allowed them to enter the middle class. In a twist of irony, this very class created by the Islamic Revolutionaries has largely come to turn against the Islamic socialist system.

Liberals and even many Marxists ignore the class dimension of these clashes in Iranian society. This class conflict is best represented and explained by the two main parties in Iranian politics. There are the Reformists (as represented by President Khatami who was in office from 1997-2005) and President Rouhani (served 2013-2021), and the Principalists (represented by President Ahmadinejad when he served 2005-2013), and Raisi (who served from 2021 until his death in 2024). The Iranian middle class tends to vote for the Reformers, the working class tends to vote for the Principalists. There are of course exceptions, but these are the general trends.

The Iranian middle class tends to desire more personal freedoms and resents the conservative religious laws enforced by the clergy. As aspiring entrepreneurs, they feel stifled by the large public sector, and demand privatization of the state-run enterprises/the bonyads. Many are also unenthusiastic about Iran’s commitment to the Palestinians and other anti-imperialist causes, feeling that these constitute an unnecessary drain on Iran’s resources.

By contrast the working class/rural poor majority, roughly 2/3rds of the population, feels differently. They support maintaining the state sector (since they materially benefit from it), and since they are extremely religious, tend to view cultural liberalization as creeping Western influence.

The two camps have come into increasing conflict with each other. The West funds, encourages, and carries out information warfare in support of the Reformist camp, since they see them as more likely to destabilize and bring down the Islamic Republic.

In 2009, President Ahmadinejad won re-election, and the Reformers cried fraud, mobilizing a largely upper middle-class movement known as the Green Movement. Working class Principalists supporters, Basij activists, and police fought against them in the streets and dozens were killed, and thousands arrested. Western and Iranian exile media gave overwhelmingly positive coverage to the Green Movement.

The same playbook unfolded in 2021-2022. In 2021, another Principalist, Raisi, won Iran’s national elections. The next year, the same middle-class forces that supported the Green Movement seized upon the death of Mahsa Amini to kick start mass protests against the government- protests which became violent. Hundreds were killed by the police and security forces as well as by the protesters themselves (the exact numbers of those killed and the circumstances of their deaths is hotly disputed). There was also an ISIS terrorist attack on a Shia shrine at the same time as the protests, further contributing to the destabilization.

How can these contradictions in Iranian society be resolved? The harsh US sanctions on Iran give encouragement to the Reformist/middle class tendencies, who believe that if Iran relaxes its anti-Western posture, drops its anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist policies (especially its support for Palestine), the sanctions will be lifted and the new prosperity from trade with the West will boost the middle class. This was the logic of President Rouhani's nuclear deal with the Obama administration in 2015. While it did initially succeed in increasing Iran’s trade with Europe, the Trump administration pulling out of the deal and assassinating General Soleimani in 2020 proved the Principalist arguments against the agreement correct, and badly damaged the credibility of the Reformist camp.

By contrast, the late President Raisi’s strategy has been to turn to the rising Chinese/Russian economic bloc for economic support instead, working around the US sanctions and not compromising on the Islamic Republic's anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist principles. It seems likely that with time, prosperity coming from trade via the Belt and Road will help create a different middle class, one that has access to the consumer goods and opportunities it desires, but one that is also loyal to the Islamic Revolution and turns to the East instead of the West for inspiration.

Therefore, the notion that the Iranian system is a house of cards in imminent danger of collapse is in error. Given the deep well of support and legitimacy the system has with the majority of the population, a rapid collapse is unlikely barring a nuclear conflict or some equivalent catastrophe. Hopefully, the turn towards the BRICS and multipolarity will be continued by whoever Raisi’s successor is in a prudent fashion to resolve Iran’s external and internal contradictions. Iran’s upcoming Presidential elections on June 28 will provide more clarity on the path forward, but a continuation of the path the late Raisi took is likely, due to the factors outlined in this essay.

Sources/Further reading:

Kevan Harris, A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran(University of California Press, 2017)

Razmin Mazaheri, Socialism’s Ignored Success:Iranian Islamic Socialism(PT. Badak Merah Semesta, 2020).

Vali R. Nasr, The Shia Revival(W.W. Norton, 2006).

Mahmoud Taleghani, Islam and Ownership(Mazda Publishers, 1983).

Woman, Life, Fiction: Exposing the Lies Behind Iran’s 2022 Color Revolution.(January 8, 2024) RTSG publications. https://rtsg.substack.com/p/woman-life-fiction

Graphic of social gains of the Iranian Revolution:

Author 

​Marius Trotter is a writer residing in Massachusetts. He comments on history, politics, philosophy and theory. He can be reached by his email [email protected]

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Author 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was their reasoning in the past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) Redlibs (Anti-Democrat)

SO, WHAT HAPPENED?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voting was imminent.

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

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

That motion was ignored.

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

Finally, the big vote.

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

Predictably, the results were 'unclear.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author

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

​Introduction

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

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

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

The 80th Anniversary of D-DAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to British military historian Richard Overy,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The result was a long stalemate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oceanic tides turn inexorably but slowly, yet not imperceptibly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


SOURCES:

“Abbaye d’Ardenne”, Government of Canada/Gouvernement du Canada, 
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/memorials/abbaye-ardenne.

Adams, Sharon, “Quick and quiet, this folding bike played a key Canadian role in Normandy”, Legion: Canada’s Military History Magazine, June 6, 2022, https://legionmagazine.com/d-day-bicycle.

Ambrose, Stephen E. Americans at War, New York, 1998

“Battle of Stalingrad”, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Stalingrad.

Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II, second edition, Monroe, Maine, 2012. 
Carroll, Peter N., and David W. Noble. The Free and the Unfree: A New History of the United States, second edition, New York, 1988.

“Estimated Battle Casualties During the Normandy Invasion on June 6, 1944”, Britannica, 
https://www.britannica.com/story/estimated-battle-casualties-during-the-normandy-invasion-on-june-6-1944.

Foot, Richard. “D-Day and the Battle of Normandy”, The Canadian Encyclopedia, February 7, 2006, 
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/normandy-invasion#:~:text=Total%20Allied%20casualties%20on%20D,Over%205%2C000%20Canadian%20soldiers%20died.

Gatzke, Hans. Germany and the United States: A “Special Relationship”? Cambridge, MA and London, 1980.

Jersak, Tobias. “Öl für den Führer,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 11, 1999.

Jones, Dustin. “80 years ago, the Soviets began defending Stalingrad against Germany”, NPR, August 23, 2022, 
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/23/1119139781/stalingrad-germans-soviets-hitler-stalin-wwii-world-war-ii#:~:text=The%20battle%20came%20to%20an%20end%20on%20Feb.,at%20approximately%201.2%20million%20people.

Kimball, Warren F. “FDR and Allied Grand Strategy, 1944-1945: The Juggler’s Last Act,” in Charles F. Brower (ed.), World War II in Europe: The Final Year, New York, 1998, pp. 15-38.

Lacroix-Riz, Annie. Les élites françaises entre 1940 et 1944. De la collaboration avec l’Allemagne à l’alliance américaine, Paris, 2016

Lacroix-Riz, Annie. Les origines du plan Marshall: Le mythe de “l’aide” américaine, Armand Colin, Malakoff, 2023. 

Loubet, Manon, “La question pas si bête: mais que faisait Charles de Gaulle le 6 juin 19440”, 14actu, June 2, 2019, 
https://actu.fr/normandie/bayeux_14047/la-question-pas-bete-mais-faisait-charles-gaulle-6-juin-1944_24378078.html.

Overy, Richard. Why the Allies Won, London, 1995.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Such is the extent of Islamophobia in Western societies since the start of this century that the notion that there even could be such a thing as ‘Islamic Science’ would be met with scepticism in some quarters. The 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistran and Iraq spawned a wave of anti-Muslim bigotry in Europe and North America that now make it the dominant form of racism in those parts of the world. The ill-conceived ‘War on Terror’ devised by Bush and Blair provoked counterattacks from the Muslim world by terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and Isis which exacerbated the negative stereotype of Islam that has prevailed in the West for decades.

Hard-right politicians such as Farage in the UK, Le Pen in France and the AFD in Germany have perniciously exploited the othering of Islamic communities in their countries for electoral advantage. Across Europe, Islamophobic policies such as burka bans and restrictions on Muslim worship have become increasingly normalised. The EU has adopted a ‘Fortress Europe’ siege mentality which condemns thousands of refugees, most of whom come from majority Muslim states, to watery graves in the seas surrounding the continent. In the UK, the government’s Prevent agenda is nominally aimed at tackling all forms of extremism but, in reality, blatantly penalises the Islamic community more than any other.

Historic ironySamuel Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, published in 1996, became one of the key texts that provided academic cover for this resurgence of Islamophobia in the West. Huntington took his title from a phrase used by another neocon U.S. commentator, Bernard Lewis, in an article titled ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage,’ written the same year. In that piece, Lewis claimed:

It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and movement in Islam far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations. The perhaps irrational, but surely historic receptions of an ancient rival against our Christian heritage, our secular present and the world-wide expansion of both. It is crucially important that we on our side should not be provoked into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival.

The great historic irony of Huntington and Lewis’ attempt to validate the assertion of U.S. military power in the Middle East since 9/11 is that many of the intellectual and technical innovations that allowed the West to rise to global hegemony from the seventeenth century onwards were devised by thinkers from that same region during what is known to historians as ‘the golden age of Islam’, lasting approximately from the nineth century to the fourteenth CE.

In one of the great outpourings of human creativity that matches Periclean Athens or Renaissance Florence, geniuses such as Al-Farabi, Al-Hazen and Ibn Sina made breakthrough discoveries in subjects such as chemistry, mathematics and medicine that shaped thinking for generations to come. Over time, these innovations would be transmitted north to Europe and be deployed for the purposes of colonial aggression by rising capitalist powers such as England, Holland and Portugal, ironically often against Islamic states such as Egypt and Turkey, which had previously surpassed them in terms of scientific achievement. The BBC Science presenter, Jim Al Khalili summarises this myth-busting historical point which the likes of Huntingdon, Farage and Le Pen would never acknowledge:

What is only now becoming clear (to many in the west) is that during the dark ages of medieval Europe, incredible scientific advances were made in the Muslim world. Geniuses in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus and Cordoba took on the scholarly works of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, India and China, developing what we would call “modern” science. New disciplines emerged—algebra, trigonometry and chemistry as well as major advances in medicine, astronomy, engineering and agriculture. Arabic texts replaced Greek as the fonts of wisdom, helping to shape the scientific revolution of the Renaissance.

Insurgent powerIslam emerged as a potent political force in the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century CE, unifying the Bedouin tribes of the desert with the growing wealth of merchants and traders in urban centres such as Mecca and Medina. The decline of neighbouring empires in Byzantium and Persia created a vacuum which the energised forces of the Prophet Mohammed were able to fill with revolutionary rhetoric premised on the equality of all peoples before the unifying figure of the deity, Allah. This appealed to the urban poor and slaves of the region, and accounts for the explosive growth of the faith in the decades following Mohammed’s revelation of his revolutionary message around 610 CE. Marxist historian of religion, Paul Siegel, notes how the insurgent power of early Islam was able to topple decaying elites in Persia, Syria and Egypt:

Beyond these countries Islam expanded like a compressed force that had been released. Within a century of Muhammad’s death (AD 632) it conquered the vast expanse between the Himalayas and the Pyrenees, an empire larger than the Roman Empire at its height. The great cities of Damascus, Jerusalem, Aleppo, and Antioch were taken. Alexandria, the foremost commercial city in all the world, fell after a siege lasting over a year. The border of China was reached; North Africa was added to the Islamic empire; Spain was acquired; Europe itself seemed threatened, as it was for centuries. Nothing had ever been seen like this amazing series of victories.

State-sponsored enlightenmentThe rapid conquests by the armies of the Prophet provided access for the new Islamic empire to the vast intellectual legacy of the ancient world. The new rulers of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties which presided over this golden age of the next few centuries had the political awareness to absorb the culture heritage of Greece, Persia and India and to encourage their own scholars and scientists to add to it. They were guided by the exhortations of the Prophet to value research and study in all areas of knowledge The Koran declares: ‘An hour’s study of nature is better than a year’s prayer’ and ‘go in quest of knowledge even to China.’

The modern demonisation of Islam as an anti-intellectual force by the hard right completely ignores this era of state-sponsored enlightenment which stretched across four thousand miles, from the Atlantic to the edge of India. Words such as algebra, algorithm, alcohol and zero which have become hard-wired into our way of life can be traced back to this epochal era when science took a quantum leap towards modernity. Noticeably, this was not a male-only intellectual resurgence either with prominent Islamic theorists such as Fatima al-Fihri and Sutayta al-Mahamili contributing as well.

The geographical spread of Islamic territories was part of the reason in 762 why the Caliph Al-Mansur established a research centre, and prototype university—known as the House of Wisdom in his new capital city of Baghdad. This included a library and teaching facilities for the pursuit of knowledge in subjects such as law, medicine, geography and mathematics. The necessity to produce workable maps for merchants across the empire provided the rationale for the advancement of academic study, as did the requirement for pilgrims to be guided on the annual Haj to Mecca by pioneering research in astrology and astronomy, at that time, regarded as related subjects. One of the greatest figures in the House of Wisdom was the ninth-century Uzbek mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, who became its director under the Caliph Al-Mamum.

Arabic numeralsAl-Khwarizmi’s pivotal contribution to mathematics was his development of the number system which we now use ubiquitously, known pointedly as ‘Arabic numerals’. More manageable than the clunky system of Roman numerals which had prevailed in the West up to that point, Arabic numerals, which utilised the concept of zero and decimal notation, originally came from India and had been introduced to the House of Wisdom by a group of Hindu mathematicians invited there in 771. The multicultural and non-nationalistic nature of Islamic scholarship in the golden age, as evidenced in this case, is one of its most impressive aspects. The Caliphs pursued an explicit policy of tracking down and deciphering documents and ideas from non-Islamic civilisations known as the Translation Movement.

It would be another half a millennium after Al-Khwarizmi until this more sophisticated form of calculation would penetrate European thinking, partly thanks to a twelfth-century translation of his work, Concerning the Hindu Art of Reckoning. Al-Khwarizmi was also tasked by the Caliph with calculating the circumference of the Earth, which he did with an incredible degree of accuracy. His lasting influence right up to our time is perfectly illustrated by the fact that the word ‘algorithm’, which of course refers to an inescapable element of the digital age, is based on a Latinised corruption of his name. The Marxist historian of mathematics, Dirk Struik, reflects on Khwarizmi’s significance:

Al-Khwarizmi’s work plays an important role in the history of mathematics, for it is one of the main sources through which Indian numerals and Arabic algebra came to Western Europe. Algebra, until the middle of the nineteenth century, revealed its Eastern origin by its lack of an axiomatic foundation, in this respect sharply contrasting with Euclidean geometry. The present day school algebra and geometry still preserve these tokens of their different origin.

PolymathsA figure from the Islamic golden age who is possibly more familiar to many British schoolchildren due to his importance in the history of medicine as studied at GCSE is Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna. Like many of the thinkers of this milieu, he was a polymath whose books, Canon of Medicine and Book of Healing not only dominated the subject long after his lifetime in the eleventh century but also contained digressions on topics such as logic, geometry, astronomy and philosophy. Our notion of academic specialisms usually pursuing avenues of thought unrelated to each other is a product of the division of mental labour which accompanied the rise of capitalism and would have been alien to polymaths such as Al-Khwarizmi and Ibn Sina. Their concept of ‘science’ as a focus of study would have been much more wide-ranging than we are brought up to see it and would have including the above areas, plus even recognising poetry and music as valid forms of expressing ideas.

Born in Persia in 980 CE, Ibn Sina was a child prodigy who had memorised the Koran by the age of ten and went on to become the most authoritative physician, not only in the Islamic world, but also in medieval Europe. He proved his expertise by saving the life of the Caliph from a potentially life-threatening diarrhoeal infection and, as a reward, was granted access to the huge library of the Samanid dynasty at Bukhara. This treasure-trove of learning from antiquity, plus his own insatiable curiosity and hands-on experience, led Ibn Sina to develop many remarkable insights in a wide range of fields, such as discovering that light is made up of particles, the ground beneath our feet is made up of layers of geological strata and that disease can spread through water.

The Aristotelian LeftIntriguingly, a modern Marxist thinker who was particularly impressed by the work of Ibn Sina was Ernst Bloch, an intellectual refugee from Stalinist Eastern Europe who in numerous philosophical works, sought to devise a conceptual framework that might enable the left to rebuild its emancipatory and utopian agenda after the degeneration of the October Revolution. In Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left, first published in 1952, Bloch postulated that the materialist aspects of Ibn Sina’s research in medicine and science could be seen as anticipating the much later theories of dialectical and historical materialism, as devised by Marx and Engels in the nineteenth century.

According to Bloch: ‘Avicenna was a doctor and not a monk, a natural philosopher, not a theologian … without Avicenna, Marx would not have been able to upend the Hegelian world idea so naturally.’ Similarly, the great Lebanese Marxist historian, Hussain Muruwwah in his 1979 study of the golden age of Islam, Materialist Trends in Arabo-Islamic Philosophy, hailed Ibn Sina as an antecedent of the modern left who ‘combined metaphysics with political engagement and was persecuted for it … certainly a living embodiment of a sublime progressive idea called the unity of life.’

Bloch also regards the twelfth-century Islamic thinker, Ibn Rushd, as another progressive figure from the golden age who unwittingly sowed an intellectual seed that would ultimately blossom into Marxism centuries later. Known as Averroes in the West, he was a product of the diverse and multicultural society that existed in Islamic Spain, before being toppled by the Christian reconquest in 1492. In his lifetime, his birthplace of Cordoba rivalled Baghdad as the cradle of intellectual dynamism in the medieval world. In dazzlingly brilliant works such as The Incoherence of The Incoherence, Ibn Rushd sought to defend the legitimacy of reason and science as expressions of religious faith. Bloch argues that the capitalist West (but also the left that would emerge to challenge it) owe a debt to these figures: ‘it is Ibn Sina, along with Ibn Rushd, who—unlike Western scholars—represent one of the sources of our enlightenment and above all, of a most singular materialist vitality, developed out of Aristotle in a non-Christian manner.’

Hopefully, in a future enlightened society that has seen the back of Farage, Le Pen and the other progenitors of Islamophobia, intellectual heroes such as Al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd will receive the recognition in the non-Islamic world that they already hold among their co-religionists today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imperialist crisis and threats to humanity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Makeup for a monster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fascism is a form of capitalist rule

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Brown Wave and the Need to Mobilize the Left

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Party experience: know, be proud, spread

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The workers’ weapon is  solidarity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us always be firm in our choice!

Good luck to all of us!

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

​Author​

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

Republished from the Marx Engels Lenin Institute 

It was late April 1952 and the Korean War was nearing its second anniversary with no end in sight. In Canada, newspapers and the Canadian government erupted in fury when it was reported that the Canadian Peace Congress’ chairman implied that Canada may have supplied infected insects to U.S. forces, who were accused of bombing the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) and China with bacteriological or “germ” weapons.

China and the DPRK (also referred to as North Korea) accused the United States, under the umbrella of United Nations intervention, of using fleas, flies and other insects that had been deliberately infected with plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases, to deliver deadly pathogens to Communist troops and civilians.

The charges have long been considered a controversy with perhaps no definitive solution. In 2010, secret Korean War CIA communications intelligence reports were declassified, which described radio intercepts of Chinese and DPRK military units reacting to the biowarfare attacks. These reports have established that a preponderance of the evidence supports the fact the U.S. did engage in biological warfare during the Korean War.

The story regarding possible Canadian involvement in the germ war campaign was broken in a British United Press (BUP) dispatch on 14 April 1952. BUP reported that James G. Endicott, “chairman of the communist-backed Canadian Peace Congress,” claimed he had “‘fully proved’ Communist charges that the Allies are using germ warfare and believes the bacteria may have been produced in Canada.”

The Canadian Press news agency carried a rather larger account the next day. As published on page one of the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, a Moscow radio broadcast monitored in London said Endicott, who had been speaking at a press conference in Mukden (Shenyang), China, had “speculated on the possibility that some of the ‘infected insects’ allegedly dropped in northeast China were bred in Canada.”
​
Endicott was also quoted “as saying Canada has organizations producing bacteriological weapons for the U.S., including a ‘huge plant’ in Alberta.”

​The CPC chairman, the Reverend Dr. James G. Endicott, was not an unknown figure, nor was he politically naive. He was a famous churchman who spent over two decades as a missionary in China, and was a leader of Canada’s United Christian Church. Endicott was well-known inside Ottawa’s government hallways. In the 1940s he had been an adviser to Soong Mei-ling, aka Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, and China’s New Life Movement; a correspondent of government insider Lester Pearson; and during the final years of World War II, a secret OSS agent, code-name “Hialeah.”

Endicott had tried to convince Chiang Kai-Shek, unsuccessfully, of the importance of implementing land reform. Reporting back to the OSS on Chinese leaders in both the Kuomintang and Communist Party, Endicott found himself more and more drawn to the sincerity and popularity of the Communists, and he came to feel they offered the best hope for the Chinese people.

Endicott and the CPC had incurred the disfavor of many Canadian politicians by opposing the Korean War, and speaking out against the atrocities being committed by U.S. and allied forces there. Canada was part of the United Nations forces involved in the war.

Even before the Korean War, Endicott’s opposition to increasing Cold War government repression had attracted attention. In January 1949, multiple speaking engagements for Endicott in Vancouver were cancelled for overt political reasons.

At a September 1949 “Partisans of Peace” conference in Mexico City, he charged the United States “with organizing in Canada a wide network of spies who are watching the life of the Canadian population.” There followed calls in the press to arrest him as a "traitor to the Motherland."  The notoriety led to Endicott being banned along with other peace activists from entering the United States.
​
However, Endicott’s charges about “spies” were not far off. Testimony in the U.S. Congress in January 1950 revealed the RCMP had been keeping files on thousands of “subversives,” which the U.S. used to impede entry into the United States, though Canadian officials denied it. With the controversy over Endicott’s purported statements about Canada’s involvement in the U.S. germ war in China and Korea, Canadian Justice Minister Stuart Gerson publicly told the House of Commons that “’such men’ as Canada’s Dr. James Endicott are kept under constant surveillance by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

​With Endicott’s latest charges about possible Canadian involvement in the “germ war,” there was renewed agitation in the press and in Parliament to charge the Canadian Peace Congress leader with treason.

External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson told the press that the Communists’ charges of a U.S. germ war were a “clumsy hoax.” Anyone who would believe such stories were no better, Pearson averred, than “bait on a Red hook”! Pearson indicated the government was investigating if Endicott had broken any laws.

In the end, Endicott was not charged with anything. It may have been that Canada was not interested in a trial, where secrets surrounding Canada’s biological weapons program might be exposed. As it was, O.M. Solandt, chief of the Defence Research Board (DRB), which had responsibility for Canada’s biological warfare program, had already gone on the record in October 1950 that Canada’s military was doing far-flung research on biological warfare, including “defence” against insects. According to Solandt, a portion of Canada’s biological research that was conducted at Fort Churchill was “so secret… it can’t be discussed.”

​The isolated site was also the location of the Canadian Winter Warfare School. According to a 2014 article about the history of Fort Churchill, during or just after World War Two, the U.S. Army Air Force built a military base nearby capable of landing large B-52 bombers.

In author Nicholson Baker’s 2020 book about the U.S. biological warfare program, Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act, Baker reported that Churchill was the site of “Canada’s Defence Research Northern Laboratory, which did cold-weather weapons testing.” The area had been used by Chemical Corps researchers since 1946 and was the site of a U.S. test release of radioactive mosquitoes in 1949. That same year, suspicions fell upon the site after a number of Inuit succumbed to a mysterious illness. (See Baker, pp. 214-215.)

​Quite famously, the first reports of U.S. germ warfare in 1952 came during the dead of the Korean and Manchurian winter. Critics pointed to pictures the Communists released of insects wiggling on mounds of snow. They made much of the fact that it seemed absurd to think insects could be used as weapons in such a harsh climate.

Was the secret work at Fort Churchill related to experiments with insect cold-hardiness or perhaps the breeding of more cold resistant insects and bacteria to be used in germ warfare during the Korean War? It seems likely, especially when one takes into account Canadian (and U.S.?) interest in exploring possible BW insect vectors existing in more northerly latitudes, as discussed more fully below.

Entomology laboratories in Canada and elsewhere already routinely used selective breeding or artificial selection to produce insecticide-resistant insects. The cold hardiness characteristics of insects were also extensively studied. Canadian military researchers were already using selective breeding to increase the virulence of bacterial pathogens.

Biological warfare researchers in the West, as well as in Japan, were interested in how their bioweapons would work in wintry conditions. This was important as from the standpoint of these countries, the Soviet Union, with its vast tracts of frigid countryside, was thought of as their most likely target.

Shiro Ishii, the leader of Unit 731, Japan’s World War Two biological warfare unit, was, according to General MacArthur’s office in postwar Tokyo, an expert on “the use of BW in cold climates.” Ishii’s specialty was use of insect vectors in biological bombs. This specialty was used by MacArthur and scientists from the U.S. Army Chemical Corps at Camp Detrick, to help validate the usefulness of Ishii and his associates to military and political leaders back in Washington D.C. The latter were considering a bargain to provide amnesty for war crimes to Japanese bio-researchers, in trade for what they had discovered in their very active germ warfare program.

Along similar lines, a U.S. Chemical Corps report on its research and development division in autumn 1951 specifically mentioned work on “cold weather agents.” Hence, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine Canada’s own scientists assisting with this issue.

Supplying infected insects

In his book, Six-Legged Insects: Using Insects as Weapons of War, entomologist Jeffrey A. Lockwood wrote about the collaboration between Canada’s biological warfare researchers and their U.S. compatriots at Camp Detrick. “Although Camp Detrick's upper echelon was partial to airborne dissemination of pathogens, the Canadians' progress with rearing and disseminating insect vectors could not be dismissed. Entomologists from the two countries collaborated on a series of field experiments ranging from the banal to the bizarre,” Lockwood wrote. (Lockwood, Kindle Edition, Location 2778.)

For his part, faced with strong public criticism from Canadian politicians and editorial writers, not to mention possible prosecution, Dr. Endicott denied having accused Canada of any cooperation with the United States in biological warfare attacks against China or the DPRK. But, Endicott reiterated his belief in the veracity of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s charges regarding U.S. use of biological weapons. His conviction stemmed from a recent trip to northeast China, where he visited alleged germ war attack sites, and interviewed Chinese scientists, as well as peasant witnesses to the infected insects and feather bomb attacks.

But were the charges of Canada supplying the U.S. with infected insects really false? After the Korean War armistice, an October 1955 article in the Calgary Herald profiled the Canadian military’s Suffield Experimental Station in Alberta. “A vast family of insects are reared at Suffield for use in experiments,” the article stated.

Both declassified records and oral histories have been used in recent years to document the fact that Canada was in league with the United States biological warfare program. Endicott, knowing he was walking on thin legal ice – the Canadian government had recently passed a draconian law against anyone speaking out against allied forces fighting in the Korean War – may have pulled his punches to stay out of prison.

The new law stated that a Canadian citizen could be prosecuted for “assisting, while in or out of Canada, any enemy at war with Canada or any armed forces against whom Canadian forces are engaged in hostilities whether or not a state of war exists between Canada and the country whose forces they are [fighting].”

Endicott, and the press interviewing him in Mukden, had hit a very sensitive topic. Canada had secretly provided major resources for use by the U.S. and British biological warfare programs. As recently as August 1945, Canada had been a secret supplier of infected insects to U.S. scientists exploring their use in offensive bioweapons. Even more, Canada had developed a special expertise in use of insect vectors to deliver infectious agents in warfare, an expertise that was unique to the field. Only Japan’s infamous Unit 731 had explored use of insects to deliver plague, encephalitis, cholera and other diseases to the degree that Canada had.

Today, Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), a branch of the Department of National Defence and successor to the DRB, still operates its vast Suffield Research Centre (SRC) in Alberta. In 2003 the U.S. national security journal, Homeland Defense Journal, called the SRC “one of the most effective and innovative research and training centers on chemical and biological warfare in the Western world.”

According to Canada’s 2022 submission to the UN Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) review conference regarding “confidence building measures” relevant to adherence to the Biological Weapons and Toxin Convention, Canada’s Biological Defence Program at DRDC spent “approximately $3,365,269 CAD.” Another $4 million was spent on contracts with “external entities” in industry and universities.

Canada’s BWC document states, “No offensive [BW] studies of any kind are permitted by the Government of Canada.” But it notes that military research does continue on “the mode of action and toxicity of toxins and the mode of action and infectivity of biological agents,” supposedly exclusively for defensive purposes. But the Canadian government has made such claims historically before, and has been proven to have lied.

This article will look at:

Canada’s biological warfare program,

How it developed in conjunction with both the U.S. and the United Kingdom’s own BW programs,

Whether or not Canada supplied the U.S. with insects for use in the latter’s large biological weapons field test program and later full-scale germ warfare operations during the final eighteen months of the Korean War.

Reports from Japan, Fear of Germany

At the very onset of World War Two, some Canadian scientists were advocating for use of biological weaponry. Everitt G.D. Murray, a Professor of Bacteriology and Immunology at McGill University, wrote to famous Canadian scientist Sir Frederick Banting that he favored the use of insects to distribute disease organisms. Banting had won the Nobel Prize in 1923 for his co-discovery of insulin, and now he was consulting with the National Research Council on the feasibility of bacteriological warfare.

Scientists and military officials in Canada were concerned that Italy and Germany would use chemical weapons in the new, then-unfolding world war, as they had, along with Canada and its allies, in World War One. This fear extended to the use of “germ” weapons as well, following reports of Germany’s use of anthrax and glanders in World War One.

Murray was prescient in advocating for the use of insects to deliver a pathogenic payload. According to the account described in John Bryden’s 1989 book, Deadly Allies: Canada’s Secret War, 1937-1947, Murray told Banting that lice, fleas, mosquitos and ticks could deliver disease to the enemy. He also foretold the use of rats infected with plague that could be dumped on the enemy as well.

In Bryden’s account, Murray suggested both insects and rats could be dropped using “break-apart containers dropped from aircraft or contaminated letters sent through the mail” (pg. 55). Perhaps not coincidentally, much later, during the Korean War, international investigators would determine (see report pg. 27) that the U.S. dropped plague-infected voles (a small field rodent) on the Manchurian village of Kan-Nan in April 1952 using self-destructive containers.

It’s not clear how early Murray was reading reports of Japan’s own biological warfare attacks on China, which utilized a number of specially designed biological bombs, including fragile glass or porcelain bombs, as well as some with parachutes similar to what Murray described. The extent of Japan’s deadly research on human subjects, including thousands of fatal experiments, was not known to U.S. scientists (and likely Canadian and British scientists as well) until a few years after the war.

But as Bryden’s research confirmed, by 1942 Murray’s work was referencing Japan’s Unit 731 research, as he followed reports of Japan’s use of fleas and other materials carrying bubonic plague.

Indeed in a Boston Globe article on 27 February 1942, journalist Fletcher Pratt wrote, “In December, just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes appeared over Chinjua, Chin and Chiu, in Chekiang Province... trailing behind them what appeared to be white fumes... [which] proved to be living fleas, infected with cultures of bubonic [sic] and typhus, and fish eggs with the same."

At the same time, Canadian researchers working for Canada’s top secret M-1000 Committee were being recruited to bring Canada’s extensive field testing apparatus and expertise for the purpose of assisting England in its crash program to develop a biological bomb using anthrax as agent fill. The U.S. would be brought on board as well, and a pilot plant to produce anthrax was set up at the U.S. biological warfare research facility at Camp Detrick, Maryland. Work on a more commercial plant began in Vigo, Indiana, but didn’t reach full status because the war ended before it could become operational.

The insect laboratory

The anthrax project didn’t mean the insect vector idea was abandoned, however. In August 1942, prominent bacteriologist and medical researcher at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario), Professor Guilford Reed asked Murray, now chief of the M-1000 Committee, to hire an entomologist. Reed wanted to establish a flea breeding colony at his biological lab at Queen’s, with the intention of developing a way to combine plague bacteria with flea-borne typhus as an offensive weapon. (See Bryden, pg. 111.)

Reed’s insect laboratory in Kingston was, as Bryden put it, “a Canadian innovation,” where there was a “special media” unit for infecting insects with deadly pathogens. During these dark days of world war, Reed concentrated on experiments with house flies, fruit flies, fleas and ticks. There were special projects to produce toxins from botulinum and gas gangrene bacteria, as well as experiments to increase the virulence of various types of germs via use of selective breeding. (Critics of today’s “gain-of-function” biological experiments may be surprised to know that attempts to produce more deadly pathogens in the laboratory go back many decades.)

According to Bryden, up until 1944, Canada alone of the Western allies was working on insect vector biological weapons. Reed had farmed out the breeding of the insects to Dominion Parasite Laboratory in Belleville, Ontario (Dominion was a site that researched “biological control” of insects). The bugs were then fed and infected with bacteria at Reed’s lab in Kingston, and further shipped to the Suffield experimental proving grounds in Alberta.

Opened in 1941, the Suffield complex extended over 2600 square kilometers (1000 square miles). This was likely the “huge plant” in Alberta Endicott was referring to in his April 1952 Mukden press conference.
​
In November 1944, Reed met with officials from the U.S. Chemical Corps’ Special Projects Division (SPD). The Chemical Corps, a division of the U.S. Army, had been given responsibility for the development of the U.S. biological weapons program. In doing so, it worked closely with the U.S. Air Force, including its Air Materiel and Strategic Air commands, the Navy, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Reed told SPD officials there had been good results with biological warfare field trials using houseflies at the Suffield Experimental Station. But experiments with fruit flies had proven disappointing. He suggested some experiments be moved to the U.S. biological weapons proving ground at Horn Island, off the coast of Mississippi. The U.S. researchers agreed, and so Canada joined Camp Detrick’s Project ONE – “ONE” being a strained acronym for the Army’s “Joint Insect Vector Project,” utilizing the second letter from each word.

The Horn Island tests were supervised by the U.S. Navy. The Canadians supplied the flies. Project ONE tests included the examination of insects native to Polynesia, and tested strains of salmonella, shigella, and tularemia, as well as botulinus toxin. The tests ran well into 1945. (See Bryden, pg. 214.)

The last of the major World War Two era field tests at Suffield, in the weeks just before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, concerned transmission of disease to food from flies released from 500 lb. cluster bombs. It’s not known what the results were. But this last experiment puts the lie to claims that Canada was not involved in offensive biological weapons research, and demonstrates its manifest interest in the development of munitions based on release of infected insects.
​
“Considerable study has, of course, been made”

An excellent snapshot of the state of Canada’s study of use of insect vectors for biological warfare can be discerned from an August 4, 1949 “Secret and Personal” report from the Defence Research Board’s Scientific Intelligence Division (SID). Signed by SID’s director, A.J.G. Langley, the report looked at “Possible use of insects as BW vectors,” particularly use of flies, fleas, lice and ticks.

​The document clearly shows that in the immediate years post-WW2, the plans surrounding use of BW was aimed primarily at the Soviet Union. Hence, the report’s focus on areas north of latitude 45º North.

The beginning of the Langley report clearly shows that work on living BW vectors, including insects and “rodents, etc.” had already been long underway.

“Considerable study has, of course, been made,” the report begins, “in the dissemination of BW agents via insects, rodents, etc. in special localities, i.e. the propagation of lice-borne typhus fever, flea-borne bubonic plague, tick-borne encephalitis, etc., but it appears that further studies of such possibilities are required….”

Langley described recent activities by Canada’s Bacteriological Warfare Research Panel:

At the 5th meeting of the B.W. Research Panel held on 20th January, 1949, Dr. Reed raised the point that the major effort on B.W. dissemination is on air-borne infections and that other methods should not be ignored. He referred to work on ground contamination, the use of containated fly baits, and the use of flies as vectors. Dr. [Charles A.] Mitchell said it would be valuable to have information on the insect pests found in the larger populated areas of likely enemy countries, with a view to testing them as possible carriers. The Secretary of the B.W. Research Panel, wrote to the Entomological Research Panel for the above information.

Reed’s own work on insects and biological warfare has already been described above. Charles A. Mitchell was chief of the Department of Agriculture’s Animal Diseases Research Institute in Hull, Quebec. He was also a member of the DRB’s Bacteriological Warfare Research Panel.

The Langley report showed that there was ongoing cooperation on BW matters between the BW Research Panel, the Entomological Research Panel, and three other divisions with the Defence Research Board, namely the Directorate of Scientific Intelligence (DSI), the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), and Arctic Research.

​The intelligence work on determining insect vectors of interest were sometimes carried out by covert means. One example was masking exploration of possible Soviet and East European (“satellite”) BW-associated entomological research behind exchanges of interest with other scientists on butterfly and moth distribution (Lepidoptera).

The report ended with a terse item re the “possibility of the existing more or less innoxious biting flies being used as B.W. vectors.” The idea that Canada had no interest in using insects as vectors of biological warfare had no basis in actual fact.

The Tripartite Agreement and the Korean War Years

As the late Canadian historian Donald Avery described in his 2013 book, Pathogens for War: Biological Weapons, Canadian Life Scientists, and North American Biodefence (University of Toronto Press), after the drawdown in military spending in the immediate aftermath of the end of World War Two, by 1947, Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom had resumed their wartime research collaboration on biological warfare.

A year earlier, Canada’s chemical and biological warfare programs were organized under the newly baptized Defence Research Board. Dr. Omond Solandt, who was Superintendent of Operational Research for the British Army during the war, was put in charge.

In August 1946, the Canadian, British, and American Tripartite Military Agreement on Chemical and Biological Warfare was formalized, and the first of what would be annual meetings between the three countries began the next year. Back in the United States, also in August 1946, the World War Two era U.S. Chemical Warfare Service was reorganized as the U.S. Army Chemical Corps.

As historian Albert J. Mauroni described it in “America's Struggle with Chemical-biological Warfare”, “The annual ABC (America-Britain-Canada) conferences combined British expertise, American resources, and Canadian testing grounds” (pg. 20).

Avery, now deceased, was one of the few historians to write in detail about this history, much of the documentation for which still remains classified to this day. He described in Pathogens for War how in summer 1947, Kingston’s Reed was asked to prepare a report “on major trends in offensive BW development” (e-page 1948).

In 1949, Reed undertook a study on “Possible Use of Insects as BW Vectors — Scientific Intelligence Aspects.” The project had the backing of DRB’s Bacteriological Warfare Research Panel. While supposedly advancing public health and insect abatement issues, the work also was “for [the] purpose of B.W. attack in areas outside Canada having an insect infestation similar to certain Canadian areas.” (Avery, e-page 1951). Reed hoped the Tripartite team would work together gathering a comprehensive list of insect vectors. Avery states this didn’t happen, but one wonders if that changed over the next few years.

According to Avery, “The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 produced intensified interest in Canada’s biological warfare program. As a result, the Defence Research Board once again asked Guilford Reed to provide an update of the major scientific and technology developments that had occurred in the biowarfare field, based on open and classified sources.” (Avery, e-page 1945-1946).

Reed complied. The Tripartite group had made decent progress and conducted field trials – presumably at Suffield – on anthrax, Brucella suis, Francisella tularensis, Yersinia pestis and botulinum toxin. According to Avery, “DRB had not yet developed an effective BW dispersal system, although several options had been explored…” including bombs, sprays, and insect vectors. “Reasonable accurate estimates [had] been made of the rate at which house and fruit flies distribute bacteria of the enteric and dysentery group of bacteria from contaminated baits to human or animal foods.” (Avery, e-page 1948-1949).

The bait idea was of unique Canadian origin. The breeding and storage of insects in the amounts needed for use in insect-vector munitions was a problem. Reed and his associates had hit upon the idea of utilizing native insect populations, infecting them by widespread use of infected baits dropped in the area under BW attack.

From an operational standpoint, Reed told the DRB, there were still issues in vaccine supply – an essential aspect of operational use of biological weapons – as well as “problems in surveillance and detection.”

Working with both U.S. and British scientists, Canadian BW research extended far beyond insect vectors. Ft. Detrick researchers used the DRB’s Grosse-Île facility for research on anti-animal pathogens because facilities to work with “exotic and dangerous animal pathogens… were not available in the United States.” The pathogens included “African Swine Fever, Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis, Newcastle dicers, fowl plague, hog cholera, rabies, and Rift Valley Fever.” (Avery, e-page 1952)

The large Suffield Experimental Station in Alberta had by this point “assumed a major role in carrying out biological weapons trials for American and British military planners” (Avery, e-page 1953). Biological field tests were conducted on pathogens such as botulinum toxin [code name X], Francisella tularensis, and Brucella suis, the latter a particular favorite of the U.S. Chemical Corps because its high infectivity meant greater facility in the incapacitation of enemy troops.

According to Avery, scientists at Suffield, Detrick, and the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah worked together on various joint projects: “Fort Detrick had a large number of chambers to do highly specialized operations. Suffield had a rather exclusive wind shed with a facility for doing other specialized operations. Dugway had not chambers or wind shed but they had a large amount of available space” (ibid.).

“Collaborating with the Japanese bacteriological war criminals…”

On 22 February 1952, the Foreign Minister of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Bak Hon Yong, released a statement charging the U.S. with waging biological warfare. Two days later, Chou En-lai (Zhou Enlai), Foreign Secretary of the People’s Republic of China, also publicly charged the U.S. with similar attacks in northeast China.

Bak’s statement read in part:

According to authentic data available at the Headquarters of the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers, the American imperialist invaders have, since January 28 this year, been systematically spreading large quantities of bacteria-carrying insects by aircraft in order to disseminate contagious diseases over our frontline positions and our rear….

In perpetrating these ghastly crimes, the American imperialists have been openly collaborating with the Japanese bacteriological war criminals, the former jackals of the Japanese militarists whose crimes are attested to by irrefutable evidence. Among the Japanese war criminals sent to Korea were Shiro Ishii, Jiro Wakamatsu and Masajo Kitano.

Presumably the DPRK and the Chinese had intelligence regarding the presence of Japan’s former Unit 731 personnel among U.S. military units associated with biological warfare. It would take another long article to document what is known about Ishii and Japan’s biowarfare project’s links to components of the American military, such as the U.S. Army Medical Corps or the U.S. Far East Medical Section’s Unit 406 Medical Laboratory.

Readers can follow up this aspect of the history in Japanese historian Takemae Eiji’s book, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy (Continuum Publishers, 2002), along with Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman’s comprehensive monograph, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea (University of Indiana Press, 1998).

The association between Japan’s World War Two biological warfare program and the kinds of attacks reported against the DPRK and China in 1952-53 was something “which could hardly have been absent from the minds” of members of the International Scientific Commission (ISC). The ISC issued a report in September 1952 validating the Communist charges. Led by famed British scientist Joseph Needham, and six other Western scientists, as well as one Soviet and one Chinese scientist, the ISC began their report with a consideration of the probable Japanese links.

There was nothing in the ISC report, or any other investigation into the alleged biological warfare charges, linking Canadian research on biological weapons and insect vectors to the U.S. biowarfare campaign. This is not surprising as the work was top secret, and even today, seventy years later, much remains classified or lost, and information about Canada’s BW program during the Korean War remains quite thin.

James Endicott may have had connections in government that told him more than he felt safe revealing. In his pamphlet, I Accuse, written in summer 1952 at the height of the controversy over the germ warfare charges, there is only one mention of Canada’s biological warfare program.

“In South Alberta, on a vast area . . . the Suffield experimental station has gained world-wide renown for its field experiments in Chemical and biological weapons” (ellipses in original). This quote, however, is not from Endicott himself, but he cites it in the pamphlet, and indicates it appeared in Reader’s Digest magazine in January 1951. This was the safe way to reference material that otherwise Endicott’s enemies might have used to prosecute him.

The repression and legal and bureaucratic obstacles to investigating Canada’s biological and chemical warfare research, as well as its tripartite cooperation with similar programs in the U.S. and the UK, has long prevented historians and journalists from knowing the full impact of that research, even if the occasional article surfaces. Only very recently has the extent of U.S. governmental covert operations against proponents of the germ warfare charges in the West been more fully revealed.

But given the close cooperation of Canadian scientists with their peers at Ft. Detrick and Porton Down, including research concerning insect vectors and dissemination of same in offensive biological weapons, it seems highly likely that when governmental archives are finally fully opened, the world will see that Canada played an important, and possibly essential role in the planning and implementation of the covert biological warfare program run by the United States during the Korean War.

Endicott speaks before thousands

On Sunday 11 May 1952, Dr. Endicott appeared before approximately eight to eleven thousand attendees at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens. He was the featured speaker at a rally commemorating the close of a three-day session of the Canadian Peace Congress. According to Endicott’s biographer, son Stephen Endicott, in his 1980 book, James G. Endicott, Rebel Out of China (University of Toronto Press), the meeting was threatened by Endicott’s “opponents [who] arrived at Maple Leaf Gardens with eggs, tomatoes, firecrackers, stink-bomb, and placards” (pp. 295).

In response to the threat, Peace Congress officials had called upon five hundred “peace supporters, seamen, auto-workers, steel and electrical workers, miners from Sudbury, and other trade unionists” who volunteered to protect the meeting. In the end, there was no significant disturbance (p. 296). The Canadian government intervened to the extent it could by preventing black scholar W.E.B. DuBois from crossing the U.S. border to address the meeting.

Speaking to the crowd, Endicott ridiculed the attempts to legally silence him. “Their charges came in like a lion and went out like a lamb,” he said (p. 297). He noted that he had volunteered to appear before his governmental accusers, but they had refused.

As early as 1 April, 1952, Endicott had cabled External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson: “PERSONAL INVESTIGATIONS REVEAL UNDENIABLE EVIDENCE LARGE SCALE CONTINUING AMERICAN GERM WARFARE ON CHINESE MAINLAND URGE YOU PROTEST SHAMEFUL VIOLATION UNITED NATIONS AGREEMENTS."

But Canada’s government did nothing, except make threats against Endicott. For his part, Dr. Endicott continued to make his germ warfare charges. In July, before an audience of 400 at the Dreamland Theatre in Edmonton, Endicott lambasted a report by three Canadian scientists whose criticism of the BW charges was being used by the Allies to discredit the Communist BW charges internationally. Endicott also accused the Americans and their allies of killing “600,000 women and children… in Korea by Napalm, jellied gasoline.”

Note: A follow-up article by this author will consider the critique made by the three Canadian scientists.
In Dr. Endicott’s pamphlet, I Accuse, published after the May 1952 speech, the former missionary, turned activist against imperialist war crimes, asked the public:

If you had seen what I have seen, what would you say?

What would you say if you had seen with your own eyes sections of the brains of children who had died from acute encephalitis following germ-war bombardments by U.S. aircraft?...

If you had talked to churchmen and Red Cross officials who thoroughly confirmed what the others said?

If as a result of all this you found out beyond reasonable doubt that germ warfare had been committed, what would you say?

Would you be silent? That would make you an accomplice.

Or would you speak out?