Framing Russigate & the crisis of imperialism

Following the Helenski summit where President Donald Trump met with President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, the corporate media in the United States was thrown into a mad dog like frenzy spouting all sorts of ridiculous claims like this summit was analogous to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Pearl Harbor, and even the Nazi Holocaust.

In the lead up to the summit, the entire corporate media seized upon the fact that Trump was even open to meeting with Vladimir Putin berating him in the news daily, urging him not to meet with Putin. When the summit did take place both major capitalist parties claimed that it was Trump’s duty to denounce Putin and force him to come clean about hacking the 2016 elections.

Trump was branded a “traitor” for committing the “treason” of meeting Putin as an equal and attempting to carry out basic diplomacy and bilateralism. We saw the same thing when Trump met with Kim Jong-Un, the corporate media beat the drums of war and relied on racist caricatures of North Korea and chairman of the Workers Party, Kim Jong Un. “How could he? How dare he!” the media chattered. Yet, this is the same media that doesn’t bat an eye when the President meets with leaders of Saudi Arabia and Israel. They fall into line with the Pentagon’s point of view and don’t critically appraise or analyse states based on their subservience to the U.S. unipolar outlook. It is for this reason that Trump was depicted as a “traitor” and being “treasonous.”

The modern Russian state is not nearly as powerful as the former Soviet Union, but as a rising capitalist power it seeks to assert itself on the international arena while its stabilizes itself domestically. We should remember that after the fall of the Soviet Union, Western imperialists essentially neocolonized the entire economy seizing huge industries with billions of dollars, for only millions. Natural resources were looted and some progressive economists even remarked that Russia was being “Latin Americanized” referring to the imposition of “shock doctrine” neoliberal reforms.

The class character of the Russian state matters here, although it is clearly a capitalist state, it exists in the periphery of global capitalism. It’s class structures are similar to the bourgeois nationalist governments in South America insofar as its bourgeoisie is split between nationalists and a comprador bourgeoisie.

According to a June 2017 Pew Research Center Poll, 87 percent of Russians have confidence in Putin and think their country has gained stature on the world stage. Also 73 percent approve of Russia’s handling of relations with the U.S. Clearly, there is a base of support for Putin’s government. The Russiagate narrative doesn’t help us one iota in understanding either U.S. foreign policy towards the state and the internal dynamics of Russia. Neither the bourgeois press or the Democratic party hacks can help us intelligently and critically analyze Putin’s appeal nor understand what is driving the current hostilities with the liberal and neoconservative wings of the U.S. ruling class.

In Putin’s time in office, he has “ordered the oligarchs to pay taxes and jailed or exiled some, regained national control over oil and gas deposits sold to ExxonMobil and other Western oil companies under Yeltsin, and asserted control over the Russian Central Bank. Putin has further prevented Russia’s disintegration while implementing policies that improved infrastructure, living standards, and led to a decrease in corruption and crime, something the Times has admitted. Inflation, joblessness, and poverty rates have declined while wages have improved. Putin has overcome Western sanctions by improving trade relations with China and other “BRIC” nations [Brazil, Russia, India, China] and advanced his vision of a Eurasian Union uniting Kazakhstan and Belarus in a regional trading bloc.” [Kurmarov, Marciano, The Russians are coming, again]

Russian Foreign Policy — Rational and Retaliatory

Following U.S. led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the invasion of Iraq, regime change in Libya and assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, and the blatant support for neo-Nazi and fascist government of the Ukraine. On top of this NATO has continued to build up its military presence on Russia’s borders. In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were admitted into NATO, despite Russian criticism. In the next decade, seven Central and Eastern European countries, including Estonia and Georgia were also admitted into NATO. No wonder the liberal imperialists are furious when they hear Trump badmouth and cast doubt on NATO, if NATO is weakened, which is really just a extra-legal military alliance chiefly led by the U.S. to “fight communism” but now is a vehicle for extra-legal regime change operations like we saw in Yugoslavia and Libya.

In addition, “soft power” tactics of using the National Endowment for Democracy [NED], essentially the “human face” of the CIA, funds a large deal of Putin’s opponents, regardless of their politics. This has led the U.S. to support fascists, Islamists, and pro-West liberal forces. Many Non-governmental organizations or NGO’s have been removed from Russia because of this comprehension, that the imperialist role that NGO’s have played in destabilization plots and regime change operations not only in Russia but all over the world.

Is there any reason that the Russian government would not act in defense of its legitimate interests not only in Russia, but in the region? Can we imagine, Russia having dozens of military bases in Mexico and Canada while giving millions of dollars to political dissent movements in the U.S. regardless of their actual allegiance to “democracy” and “freedom.”

The Russian Revolution & the birth of the Global Class Struggle

The anti-Russian hysteria exists within a social and historical context. The relationship between Russia and the U.S. is shaped by the U.S./Western reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, the ensuing Cold War that took form during World War 2 and matured in its aftermath, U.S. encirclement and “containment” policies towards the former Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation, and the long geopolitical implications of the “global class war” between capitalism and imperialism and national liberation movements and socialism.

Throughout the post-World War 2 period up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world was divided between the forces of revolutionary nationalism and socialism and imperialism and neo-colonialism. A study by Ruth Ledger Sivard analyzed that 125 military conflicts from 1946 to 1981, 95 percent in the Global South, found “Western powers accounting for 79 percent of the interventions, Communists for 6 percent.” In the cases where socialists and communists did intervene they were in conflicts “around their borders with the exception of Cuba, which supported multiple African liberation wars against European colonial powers.” [Kuzmarov, Marciano, The Russians are coming, again]

Our party stated in our text, “Imperialism in the 21st century”: “As WWII came to an end, the Soviet Red Army liberated Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romanian, Austria, Hungary, Albania, and the eastern half of Germany. Yugoslav Communists led by Josip Broz Tito liberated Yugoslavia. In Greece, communist-led forces drove out the Nazi occupiers and struggled for power. The Communist Party in France was the strongest political party in that country as a result of their role in the armed struggle to defeat the Nazi occupiers.

Asia became the center of communist-led revolution in the post-WWII period. Communist forces took control in northern Korea and in northern Vietnam. In China, a full-scale civil war broke out between the communists led by Mao Zedong and the Western-backed Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-Shek. Tens of thousands of soldiers from North Korea joined their comrades in China in the armed struggle between 1946 and 1949. Once Chinese communists took power in October 1949, two-fifths of the world’s population was now living in countries that were ruled by communist parties.”

“Strangle the Bolshevik Baby in its crib” — 1918–1920 US backed ‘White terror’

It is quite ironic to see the U.S. corporate media’s shrill cries of “Russian aggression” and intimations that somehow Russia poses a threat to the United States democracy. The irony is that, historically, it has been the United States government that has posed a threat to Russia and democracy all over the world.

At the onset of the Bolshevik Revolution President Woodrow Wilson deployed over ten thousand American troops along with 11 other nation’s militia, to violently suppress the revolution and as Winston Churchill said “strangle the Bolshevik baby in the crib.”

U.S. troops were in Russia in support of White Army counter-revolutionaries who carried out wide-scale atrocities including anti-Semitic pogroms against Jews. To add, this war was carried out without Congressional approval and was opposed by U.S. War Department and commander in Siberia, William S. Graves.

What did the U.S. stand to lose in the Bolshevik victory? In 1917 the U.S. held investments of over $658.9 million in the country, up from $26.5 million in 1913. In 1916 J.P. Morgan helped to set up the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce. On the eve of the Revolution, Dean E.F. Gray of the Harvard Business School considered “Russia an inviting field for American business enterprise.” The massive nationalization campaigns led by the Bolsheviks threatened to financial interests of the rising U.S. financial oligarchy.

The liberal administration of Woodrow Wilson sent tens of millions of credits for military supplies to the class collaborationist Kerensky government to keep Russia in World War 1. In roughly the same time period, the Wilson administration was suppressing revolution in Mexico and promoting U.S. westward expansionism. Within Russia, the U.S. sent machine guns, grenades, and explosives to support the counter-revolutionary Admiral Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak. Kolchak declared himself the “Supreme Ruler of Russia” and his forces would wreak absolute terror and havok on the Russian people.

In Ekaterinburg, where the Bolsheviks executed Tsar Nicholas II and his family, Kolchak supported the Cossack massacre of at least two thousand Jewish Russians, which was a part of a larger anti-Semitic wave of porgroms. This didn’t matter one bit to the “freedom loving” Democrats of the U.S. In fact, Wilson set up a “little war board” in opposition to Congress, sending millions of dollars of armaments to Kolchak and his army of rapists, thugs, and racists.

This initial invasion laid the groundwork for future U.S. — Russia/Soviet relations which were marked by tremendous amounts of violence which claimed the lives of tens of millions of people. As Marxists, we know that history “weighs like a nightmare” on the minds of the living, and neither the ruling classes of Russia or the U.S. have forgotten this ordeal. It is the public who has their historical memory wiped and it is our task to remember critically so we may act today in our historical class interests.

Racism in support of imperialist intervention

The alarmism of the U.S. corporate media relies heavily only racialist tropes of Russia rooted in Soviet-phobia and orientalism. In alignment with the long European tradition of labeling Russia as being inherently malicious, devious, and prone to wanton tyranny, compared to the “enlightened” and “civilized” Western Europe, the corporate media has reinvigorated these tropes in order to imbibe fear and reactionary nationalism in the minds of the American public. Tellingly, the “Father of Containment” doctrine, George F. Kennan argued that it would be of no use to try diplomacy with the former Soviet Union because they were inherently malicious which was shaped by geography and history of invasion by “Asian hordes.” To Kenna, the “Bolshevik Revolution had stripped Russia of its brittle veneer of European culture” embraced since the reign of Peter the Great.

Russia in the Western European and American imaginary has always occupied the space of the “implacable Other.” Several U.S. politicians and military leaders repeatedly construe Russia as a land of “savages” ruled by “semi-Asiatic despots.” In the racialist imaginary of the West, Russia was not one of the “civilized peoples” meaning they were not allowed into the white Anglo-Saxon imperialist club.

On Russian “Aggression”

Russia is often depicted as a nation that is aggressive when it comes to foreign policy. These charges saturate our news 24/7, the media just continues to beat the dead horse of “Russian aggression” and even “Russian imperialism”(!!!)

The media is never neutral territory, as Malcolm X explained cogently, “if you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people doing the oppression.” As Marxists, we argue that the media is a part of the state apparatus; it is it’s ideological arm that works in tandem with its repressive arm. When the media in this country reports on Russia’s foreign policy, it leaves out the vital context of what surrounds Russia: NATO expansionism and threats to its sovereignty.

Since the Bolshevik Revolution, the U.S. has had a policy of doing anything and everything to undermine the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union was destroyed, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker pledged to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand east to the Russian border. In the near 30 years since then, that is precisely what has happened.

Authors Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano summarize in their “The Russians Are Coming, again: the first cold war as tragedy, the second as farce”: “The United States also provocatively increased its naval presence in the Black Sea, carried out military exercises in former Warsaw Pact countries, forged ties with former Soviet republics like Azerbajian, built oil pipelines to bypass Russia with the involvement of major Western oil companies, and covertly supported Putin’s opponents through the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] along with Islamic terrorists in Chechnya as the British had done a century and a half earlier.”

Whenever Russia responds, and I want to emphasize here, responds, to various acts of hostility coming from the West and forces backed by them in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, the media decries “Russian imperialism!” “Russian aggression!” “Putin is trying to rebuild a Soviet empire.” One can hardly claim such a thing when one looks at the facts. The facts show dozens of NATO bases surrounding Russia, a installed fascist regime in the Ukraine, a slew of sanctions, and a long paper trail of CIA type organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy.

The Tasks of a Peace & Anti-War Movement amid mass hysteria

During the last Cold War, anti-Sovietism served the ideological function of disciplining the working class and petty bourgeois in every way. Unions were purged of progressives, socialists, communists, and anarchists. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs for simply being associated with left of liberal progressive causes, even religious communities were persecuted because of their work in serving the poor and charitable causes.

The Cold War was a period of massive domestic reaction. As Kuzmarov and Marciano remind us: “Dissenters who were red-baited, vilified, harassed, fired from jobs, and arrested for their political views were tragically among those most supportive of economic and racial justice.” The rabid anti-Communist atmosphere lent itself to the suppression of all forms of political dissent. The fear created through the media that the “Russians are coming” directly parallels what is happening today.

Hysteria surrounds us emanating from the corporate media. For example, despite Hillary Clinton actually winning the popular vote by 3 million marks, widespread Black voter suppression, and the DNC leaked emails showing the Democratic Party working to undermine the Sanders insurgency within the party; half of Clinton voters nevertheless believe that Russia not only leaked emails but tampered with vote tallies. Did Putin arrange it so that Clinton would win the popular vote? Did Russia suppress the Black vote all across, but not limited to, the U.S. South?

Today’s Cold War is even worse, the struggle between Russia and the U.S. is a struggle between an capitalist state and an imperialist state with the latter collapsing internally and becoming more desperate to maintain its global hegemonic position. The Soviet Union no longer exists, today’s Russia does not claim to be any defender of the working class or the oppressed. It’s foreign policy must be soberly assessed on the basis of the interests of the nationalist bourgeois classes in Russia.

Having said that, the tasks today of any anti-war and peace movement would be to challenge the dominant corporate media narrative of Russiagate and its attendant hysteria. We must not only study history, but learn from it, and assimilate it’s lessons into our tactics, agitation, and propaganda. The U.S. was fine with Putin when he first came to power, but once he began to assert himself and the interests of the national bourgeoisie of Russia, he became a economic and political threat. The arms industries of the U.S. were able to fixate on new enemy number one: Putin/Russia in order to justify their now $717 billion dollar military budget.

What is happening now is what Noam Chomsky calls the “manufacturing of consent” where the mainstream corporate media inundates the public with constant racist demonizations of Russia and its leaders. While there are mounting dometic ills, like access to clean water, the booming prison industry, the tearing apart of immigrant families at the border with Mexico, the incessant police terror, the growing homelessness, and of course the fact that at least half of this country is poor or near poor.

The arch-imperialist running dog General MacArthur once said, that in order to sustain the Cold War the “[United States] government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a perpetual stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of a grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power [Russia or China] that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem to never have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”

On May 8th Donald Trump announced that the United States would be pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the “Iran Nuclear Deal.” He claimed that Iran was in violation of the agreement, that it posed an existential threat to the U.S. and was the “biggest exporter of terrorism” in the world. Everything Trump said was a flat out lie.

Thirteen of the 14 Muslim Groups identified by the U.S. intelligence community as actively hostile to the US are Sunni sectarians of the ultra right colonial creation: Salafism, not Shia, and are not supported by Iran:

– ISIS (Sunni)

– The Al-Nusra Front (Sunni)

– Al-Qa’ida Central (Sunni)

– Al-Qa’ida in Magheb (Sunni)

– Al-Qa’ida in Arabian Peninsula (Sunni)

– Boku Haram (Sunni)

– Al-Shabbab (Sunni)

– Khorassan Group (Sunni)

– Society of the Muslim Brothers (Sunni)

– Sayyaf Group in the Philippines (Sunni)

– Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan (Sunni)

– Lashgar i Taiba (Sunni)

– Jemaa Islamiya (Sunni)

– Houthis (Shia)

Moreover, it has been the United States which is supporting terrorism and aiding in the destruction of infrastructure and taking lives.

According to author Sean Naylor in his text Relentless Strike “JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] personnel also worked with the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), a militant Iranian exile group that had based itself in Iraq after falling afoul of the ayatollahs’ regime in Tehran. The State Department had placed the MEK on its list of designated terrorist organizations, but that didn’t stop JSOC from taking an attitude of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” toward the group. “They were a group of folks that could transit the border, and they were willing to help us out on what we wanted to do with Iran,” said a special operations officer.”

The MEK were classified as a terrorist group, until the United States decided that as long as the MEK would help kill Iranians rather than Americans, that they were no longer terrorists. The MEK’s history of terrorism is quite clear. Among more than a dozen examples over the last four decades these four are illustrative:

• During the 1970s, the MEK killed U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians working on defense projects in Tehran and supported the takeover in 1979 of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
• In 1981, the MEK detonated bombs in the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Premier’s office, killing some 70 high-ranking Iranian officials, including Iran’s President, Premier, and Chief Justice.
• In April 1992, the MEK conducted near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian embassies and installations in 13 countries, demonstrating the group’s ability to mount large-scale operations overseas.
• In April 1999, the MEK targeted key military officers and assassinated the deputy chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff.

Despite this history, a bipartisan parade of prominent U.S. political and military leaders has lobbied on behalf of MEK and has been well compensated in return.

In fact, the speech US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave this past Monday was written by a MEK senior official.

Trump decision reflects his utter stupidity

This decision sent shockwaves throughout the world that we are still dealing with now. The European Union, a bloc of states that has multi-billion dollar deals in trade deals with the Islamic Republic suddenly became threatened with sanctions should it resume trade or economic exchange with Iran. State leaders in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany all made public statements denouncing the U.S. decision and called for “reason” and “dialogue” on the road to re-ratifying the deal.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPoA is a deal struck under the Obama administration in 2015 that “will produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance and energy.” When the sanctions were lifted back in 2015 when the deal was struck, exports of oil, gas, and other products rapidly increased. This was supposed to also release $100 billion to $120 billion of Iran’s frozen assets. But in reality, only about $35 billion have been released.

The JCPoA recognizes Iran’s right to develop “a peaceful nuclear programme, including its enrichment activities, to a commercial programme for exclusively peaceful purposes, consistent with international non-proliferation norms.”

Iran is a signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and has stated for years that its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes related to power generation and medical applications. The U.S. has signed the treaty as well however, they actively violate it every day they threaten other nations with destruction if they buck U.S. corporate and financial interests. According to Article VI in the NPT: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament.” The term “good faith” has a legal meaning that precludes continuing to develop nuclear weapons and threatening their use as the U.S. has repeatedly done since signing the NPT. Moreover, it was under President Obama that nuclear weaponry not only continued to develop without interruption but it spent 1.2 trillion dollars to “modernize” the weaponry by making “usable nukes” which are really just smaller nuclear weapons that instead of killing hundreds of thousands and millions would only kill thousands and tens of thousands. How humane!

Several other nations like India, Pakistan, Israel, and for a time South Africa did not sign the NPT. It is worth mentioning that Israel, the country that is the only state in the Middle East that actually possess an arsenal of nuclear bombs as well as a demonstrated history of threatening to use weapons of mass destruction to attain its political ends in wiping out historic Palestine and Palestinians.

It is inaccurate to state, as the U.S. media commonly do, that Trump has withdrawn from the JCPOA. The accord has no “out” option and is binding on all signatories. As a signatory of the JCPOA, the U.S. did not legally have the option to pull out. Item 26 of the JCPOA states: “The U.S. Administration, acting consistent with the respective roles of the President and the Congress, will refrain from re-introducing or re-imposing the sanctions specified in Annex II that it has ceased applying under this JCPOA. … The U.S. Administration, acting consistent with the respective roles of the President and the Congress, will refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions.”

And the IAEA has determined time and again that Iran is in compliance. Even Netanyahu’s outrageous show, relying on documents whose authenticity remains to be determined, did not claim any violations of the JCPOA — just the unproven claim that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in the 2000s.

Even if the U.S. had a legitimate claim of an Iranian breach of the JCPOA, it could still not legally pull out. It would have to resort to the “dispute resolution process provided for under this JCPOA.”

Why did Trump decide to violate the JCPOA?

Ever since he was on the campaign trail for the 2016 presidential elections,Trump has been attacking the nuclear deal as the “worst deal ever.” It can be safely stated that Trump has little actual knowledge of the JCPOA and its provisions. Considering his all-around ignorance, it is quite possible that Trump actually thinks President Obama and all European imperialist leaders were duped by Iran. Given Trump’s self-declared mastery of the “Art of the Deal,” Trump may genuinely think that his great negotiating skills can get a better deal for the U.S., hence his dissatisfaction with the JCPOA.

French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel tried to convince Trump to stay in the JCPOA with the promise that they would get Iran to make more concessions. Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif responded to this effort by criticizing the European leaders for offering “the United States more concessions from our pocket.” Iranian officials have flatly stated that they would not re-negotiate a deal signed over two years ago, nor would they agree to tack on new conditions to it. To maintain his own standing as a tough-talking master of negotiations, Trump had to leave the deal he had so thoroughly criticized for years.

But opposition to the Iran nuclear deal goes much deeper than Trump’s ignorance as an individual. Long before Trump’s election, a significant part of the U.S. ruling class opposed the nuclear deal. Imperialists do not typically back down from demands they place on oppressed countries. They usually impose conditions and issue threats. So-called negotiations between the U.S. and Iran went back over a decade. But it was only during President Obama’s second term that Washington showed a real interest in reaching an agreement. The key event that led to a shift in policy was the failure of the Obama administration to overcome strong opposition to its push for bombing Syria.When Obama was forced to take bombing Syria off the table, the imperialist dream of clearing the Middle East of independent states had to be shelved. But not all factions of the U.S. ruling class have been willing to give up that dream.

Following the downfall of the Soviet Union, U.S. imperialism took up the goal of removing the remaining independent states in the Middle East, at the time Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya, in North Africa. Since then, the U.S. has overthrown the states in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011. Syria is severely weakened as a result of a civil war that the U.S. has done much to foment.

So there are no strong, independent states in the region that the U.S. needs to worry about, other than Iran. Today, in many ways, Iran is the lynchpin of resistance to imperialist domination of the Middle East. It provides vital financial and military support to Syria. Iran’s support is key to the continued strength of Hezbollah, a Lebanese resistance force that delivered a crushing blow to Israel’s myth of invincibility in 2006. Iran also supports Palestinian resistance against Israel’s criminal state. Iran’s removal from the scene would be a welcome development for the U.S. and Israel alike.

Up to recently, Trump’s top advisors were also recommending against pulling out of the JCPOA. But National Security Advisor McMaster was replaced with Bolton and Secretary of State Tillerson was replaced with Pompeo — two notoriously war-mongering politicians.

Imperialism, Unipolarity, & the fall of the Empire’s core

Up until the fall of the Soviet Union, the world had been largely divided up into two blocs, one representing the imperialists and the other representing the forces of socialism and anti-colonial nationalism. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union and previously with the rightward shift in the People’s Republic of China, the United States has been the world’s unchecked and unrivaled global hegemon.

In the years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation and its neighboring countries have been victims of a neo-colonial looting of their economies and NATO encirclement. Additionally, all the states that were either formed by an anti-colonial national liberation movement or were apart of the “non-aligned” or “Bandung” movement which leaned on Soviet and US support were targeted for regime change in order to wipe out any vestige of resistance to the burgeoning unipolar era of imperialism. States like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and more became targeted because of the need for the imperialist nations, principally the US to rapidly accumulate capital and spread their hegemony to nations that were still sovereign, independent, and therefore were not totally subservient to the dictates of Western monopoly capital.

The “unipolar” era of imperialism however, will not last forever as is being evidenced by the defeat of US imperialism in Iraq and now in Syria. Additionally, the rise of anti-imperialist “Pink Tide” movements in Latin America indicate that so long as imperialism exists there will be resistance to it in one form or another. Lastly, the rise of Russia and China as political and economic powers in their own right complicates the US ability to dominate the entire world’s countries and their markets.

It is in this context of a rising resistance to imperialism, be it economic, political, and militarily that we must see the intra-class conflict playing out in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement.

Who supports the JCPoA and Why?

In the aftermath of Trump’s declaration renouncing US participation in the JCPoA, several European leaders made public statements criticizing Trump’s actions. French President Emmanuel Macron said “France, Germany and the UK regret the US decision to leave the JCPOA” on Twitter. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a radio interview that the “deal is not dead” and that European leaders committed to the JCPoA will meet with representatives from Iran to discuss the future of the JCPoA. The Foreign Ministers of Germany and the UK, Heiko Maas and Boris Johnson respectively, issued statements of regret at US removal and support for the existing agreement. The decision made by Trump highlights the trajectory of his administration in the international arena; the US will continue to isolate itself in attempts to posture as a strong leader of the so-called “free world” when in fact its significance and clout are tattering.

So what is it that drives the leaders of these murderous imperialist countries to support the JCPoA? Do they truly believe that this deal “makes the world safer” or is in the interests of “international peace and stability”? Well, that depends on what one defines as safety and peace. Safe for whom, or what? Peaceful for whom, or what?

It is economic self-interest that drives these nations to support the JCPoA not concern for Iran or genuine peace, for there can be no genuine peace internationally, and certainly not domestically, so long as class society and the state exist.

As The Hill reports: “French trade with Iran collapsed after sanctions were imposed in 2006. When those sanctions were lifted, France-Iran trade grew 118 percent from January to October 2017, compared to the same time frame the previous year. French oil company Total concluded a deal worth about $4.8 billion to develop the world’s largest gas field in South Pars over 20 years. Airbus entered into a deal to sell 100 airplanes to Iran estimated to be worth $18 billion. French carmakers Renault and Peugeot also have sizable markets in Iran.”

When the sanctions were lifted, trade boomed as European companies flocked to do business with Iran. As Forbes reports: “In 2015, the value of imports and exports between the EU and Iran stood at $9.2 billion. After the nuclear deal was inked, that grew sharply to $16.4 billion in 2016 before hitting $25 billion last year.” Additionally, “automobile manufacturer Renault also signed a $780 million deal with Iran last year which will include a production plant capable of producing 150,000 vehicles a year.”

Although the US is without a doubt top hegemon in the global capitalist-imperialist system, it faces competition from other capitalist-imperialist nations and blocs that are seeking to expand their capital. It is for this reason that the EU has reacted so harshly to Trump’s threatening of re-issuing sanctions on Iran. US corporations struggle to penetrate the Iranian market, and with the well publicized saber rattling and political turmoil, it is unlikely that this will change anytime soon.

Countries like France stands to lose billions of dollars in revenue if the sanctions regime of the US is reimposed and the JCPoA is scrapped entirely. However, the situation is more complex when one incorporates the reality of a rising China in the global capitalist market. In the wake of such a gargantuan fallout, Chinese state-owned CNPC could fill the gap left by the French and according to Reuters quoting a senior state oil official “the possibility of Total’s pullout is quite high now, and in that scenario CNPC will be ready to take it over fully.”

Currently, the CNPC holds a 30 percent stake in the field, France 50.1 percent, leaving the remaining 19.9 percent to Iranian national company subsidiary Petropars. However, in the case that France backs out of the JCPoA, the CNPC could take over Total’s 50.1 percent stake and become the leading operator of the multi-billion dollar project.

At the crux of this international debacle is the class interests and nature of the states involved. The rise of China and Russia are diminishing the role of the U.S. internationally, especially in areas where the U.S. had little to no influence and even among its partners who are seeking to exercise a more independent path. At home the corporate media and the talking heads of the ruling class continue to try to force the “Russiagate” issue down the throats of the people and there is no real resistance to this. If the U.S. does impose sanctions on European countries seeking to continue business with Iran they risk a direct confrontation with the EU and nations who have interests in Iran. This would further isolate the U.S. and open up opportunities to challenge U.S. unipolar hegemony. It would demonstrate that although capitalism has not been defeated, the current epoch of imperialism that we are in is on it’s last leg. All revolutionary and progressive forces should hope and work for the end of unchecked U.S. imperialist hegemony. If the U.S. diminishes, then more breathing space opens up for oppressed nations to function with sovereignty and the demoralization the imperialist ruling class would face at home would create conditions to strengthen the forces of revolution at home.

It’s not just Europe that stands to lose out

China’s trade with Iran was worth more than $37 billion in 2017 — it exported $18.59 billion worth of goods, a growth of 13 percent year-on-year. China accounted for about 21 percent of Iran’s exports; the United Arab Emirates, 14 percent (worth over $5 billion); Iraq, 14 percent (worth over $5 billion); South Korea, 9.5 percent (worth over $3.4 billion); and India, 6 percent from January to October 2017.

The US does not have much capital invested in Iran to be as worried about their assets as their European partners, in fact, last year the value of trade between the U.S. and Iran was just over $200 million. The “hardliners” in the US, neo-conservatives who are paving the path to war with Iran are fine with nixing the deal. From their persepective nothing but a completely subjugated Iran can fit into their neo-colonial imaginations. This does not mean those in favor of the deal are any less dedicated to the subjugation of Iran. The Democratic Party, which has many of these war hawks, generally takes the path of “low intensity” warfare, seeking to undermine Iran through more behind the door deals and subterfuge. With a cabinet filled with war hawks and generals who are linked to, and even on the payroll of, the war industry see billions of dollars to be made from confrontation with Iran.

Will Europe stand up to the US?

Iran’s immediate reaction has been cautious. President Rouhani has said that Iran would stay in the JCPOA, provided that it receives benefits from it. Supreme Leader Khamenei has said that Iran would have to get guarantees from the Europeans if it were to stay in the deal; otherwise the Europeans could prove to be untrustworthy like the U.S.

Every signatory of the JCPOA has expressed strong opposition to Trump’s move. Germany and France have specifically urged Iran to stay in the deal. Russia has stated that it will work with the other Europeans to see what can be done to protect Iran.

In a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, German Foreign Minister Maas said, “It is important to learn about the rules concerning the so-called secondary effects, that is, what does it mean for a European company’s America business if it continues to do business with Iran.”

If there were any doubts, on May 13, National Security Adviser John Bolton made it clear that the U.S. would go after European violators of the U.S. sanctions. So, there is little possibility that the U.S. will look the other way when European companies do business in Iran, even when the transactions have absolutely nothing to do with nuclear issues.

Ever since World War II, European imperialist countries have been relegated to the role of junior partners to the U.S. Given the absolute dominance of the U.S. in the post WWII era, they had no choice but to consent to this new relationship of forces. With the decline of the U.S. economic dominance in recent decades, at times, some European imperialists have challenged the U.S. — for example, France during the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. violation of the JCPOA and the humiliation of the Europeans is a good test to see whether they are willing to challenge the U.S. on this front. There have been statements of indignation from some European officials, such as those of France’s Economy Minister Bruno La Maire: “Do we want to be vassals who obey decisions taken by the United States while clinging to the hem of their trousers?” But the general tone of European leaders has been more cautious, like that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, vowing to stay in the JCPOA but cautioning against damaging their “valuable transatlantic partnership” with the U.S.

Conclusion — The Road to War, Paved on Trade?

The fact that Trump announced the U.S. intent to violate the nuclear agreement is a potentially dangerous development. For over a decade, John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor, has wanted nothing more than a war on Iran. Secretary of State Pompeo, the highest ranking U.S. diplomat, is as belligerent as they come. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been urging the U.S. to go to war against Iran since the time of President Bush II. Israel’s two rounds of bombing attacks on Syria, claiming the second time that it was responding to a (phantom) rocket attack by Iran, is an indication of how Israel wants to provoke Iran into a wider confrontation.

There have been objective factors keeping the U.S.from invading Iran, not the least of which is the fact that, unlike countries that the U.S. usually targets for annihilation, Iran has a significant capacity to defend itself. However, that may not be an impediment for the Trump war cabinet, which may be willing to go to war at all costs.

Further, the U.S. will likely engage in an intense destabilization campaign in a renewed effort for regime change. With Iran’s deepening economic crisis as a consequence of the sanctions, one can be sure that the Trump administration will be on the lookout for any domestic unrest. There will likely be opportunities for the U.S. to fund, organize and promote regime change from within.

The European Union has signaled that it will assert its interests and is seeking paths that challenge the U.S. albeit in a non-antagonistic form. The question that remains to be answered is “will the European Union stand up to the U.S. and what would the international fallout from that be? What would be our role and position?”

Regime change in Iran would be a horrendous ordeal. For one, it would cost trillions of dollars and with the U.S. military overextending itself day by day it is unlikely the U.S. would be able to unilaterally attack Iran. The MEK is a highly discredited organization with no real roots in Iran, it survives from the umbilical cord that is U.S. imperialism. A air campaign would not destabilize Iran and it would not alter their nuclear capacity. It might push Iran to develop nuclear weapons to defend itself, and this would be a valid exercise of its right to self-determination and self-defense.

Trump’s decision already cost Boeing a major airline sale to Iran worth $20 billion. Sanctions could cost the U.S. economy billions more if this causes global oil prices to increase.

The Trump administration’s ditching of the Iran nuclear deal has already cost Boeing a major airline sale to Iran worth $20 billion. The negative consequences of ratcheted up sanctions could cost the US economy billions more by causing a hike in global oil prices, higher prices at the gas pump and a possible reduction in domestic tourism and travel.

The danger of a U.S. war on Iran is a terrifying possibility. Even more terrifying is the possibility that such a war may escalate into a confrontation between the U.S. and Russia and/or China. With the danger of such a confrontation going nuclear, it is no exaggeration to state that the Trump administration’s war drive has the possibility of putting the very survival of humanity in peril. We, in the U.S. anti-war movement, must be vigilant against the danger of another war in the Middle East, as well as continued sanctions, militaristic machinations and imperialist war-mongering.

The anti-war movement here needs to look to the question of Afghanistan and reflect on our connection to it in order to clarify and accelerate our anti-imperialist movement. Afghanistan is the result of the old Cold War struggle between the big superpowers of the world. Afghanistan once had a progressive and secular government in the 1970’s through the 80’s but it was overthrown by U.S. imperialism working in collaboration with the far right wing theocratic fundamentalist Mujhadeen. The U.S. claimed it was “fighting communism” but in reality they were supporting those who would become Al-Qaeda and in fact helped a great deal to build their infrastructure.

After the Soviet Union fell, we saw U.S. imperialism go on a rampage throughout the entire Middle East. It tried to re-colonize all that it could now that the global anchor for the anti-colonialist movement, the Soviet Union, had collapsed. Now in 2017, after being in Afghanistan for more than 15 years, what can we say the U.S. is doing but colonialism? It has made Afghanistan more dependent in every sense of the word, politically, economically, and socially. Like China during its Opium Wars with the British, the rise in the drug trade and drug trafficking is a direct outcome of colonial occupation. The mass pumping of drugs into impoverished communities serves the political purpose of pacifying and killing the people slowly. This is colonialism on autopilot.

At home, the “War on Drugs” has created a similar response. The “War on Drugs” was a war that incarcerated over one million African Americans in a few decades. While in prison, many are forced to labor for free and in Massachusetts at MCI-Norfolk the water they are being forced to drink, bathe, and use is black and brown. It is toxic and is killing them slowly while they labor for the racist imperialist state claiming to be a “bastion of democracy and freedom.” Freedom for who? To do what? To enslave and rob and colonize? From Afghanistan to right here in New Hampshire we must call out the .01% who benefit from our pain and struggle and facilitate it by controlling government.

The War on Drugs led to the hyper militarization of Black and Brown communities while the industrial working class jobs left because of the capital flight caused by so-called “globalization.” The capitalist class in the U.S. decided that it would be more beneficial for them and their shareholders to move jobs and production to low wage countries where they can colonize or neo-colonize their nation and keep themselves afloat. This is all while we drown in our pain and struggle every day. From the bottle, to addiction, to joblessness, homelessness, struggling with medical bills and more the working class and oppressed people are suffering while this small minority of people are thriving off our work. When I say our I mean all the people from New Hampshire to Afghanistan to Korea. We all have more in common with one another as working people than we do with “our own” ruling class. The spirit of solidarity must run through our anti-war movement today. It must become a working class internationalist movement that stands up to war and its cause in monopoly capitalism stemming from the West.

Drug production has skyrocketed in Afghanistan, 93 % of the world’s heroin comes from the nation. From 2000 to 2015 overdose deaths linked to opioid derived narcotics have quadrupled according to the Center for Disease Control. The majority of the world’s heroin usage comes from Afghanistan, but with such destruction and political and economic chaos one has to wonder how this poor landlocked nation is able to supply the global heroin markets including the underground ones particularly in the United States.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s Afghanistan Opium Survey, 2016 saw a 43% increase in opium production over 2015. In the period from 1994 to 2001, the average annual land area used for opium cultivation was 60,625 hectares. This number has skyrocketed since the US-led NATO invasion with an average of 150,122 hectares used for production between 2002 and 2016.

The continuation of the domestic drug war and the war on terror are two daggers in the heart of the working class of this country and Afghanistan. The overproduction of opioids finds a market here in the U.S. as the working class becomes more and more depressed and oppressed by the continuation of neoliberal austerity and militarization of the police. In Afghanistan the Taliban is stronger than ever and the drug trade is a scourge to the population de-politicizing them and pacifying them. However, amidst all of this terrible trauma and carnage wrought by U.S. imperialism in conjunction with reactionary fuedalist theocrats in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East, the question of self-determination and social revolution loom.

Afghanistan was not always such a vassal state. After being ruled by a monarchy from the 1929 to 1973 in 1978 there was a revolutionary coup led by a Communist Party, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. In 1978 the socialist government announced a democratic reform program that included land reform, growth in public services, price controls, separation of church and state, full equality for women, legalization of trade unions and a sweeping literacy campaign. The new government cancelled the enormous debts of peasants and started training teachers and building school and hospitals all over the country. Women could no longer be sold into marriage or executed for so-called “infidelities.” Literacy campaigns were undertaken in the many different languages of the country. Despite violent resistance from rich landowners, 200,000 peasants in a country of 20 million received land from the socialist government. From 1978 to 1981, public school enrollment went from 5,000 to 600,000. Nineteen thousand teachers were trained. Immediately, the United States launched a counter-revolutionary offensive that lasted 14 year and became the largest CIA operation in history, costing an estimated $6 billion.

Despite the fact that Afghanistan had absolutely nothing to do with the infamous September 11th terrorist attacks in the U.S. the nation was still targeted for invasion by the U.S. imperialists. This just goes to show that the U.S. has absolutely no regard for life, the rule of law, or even their own constitution. The invasion has created the conditions for Afghanistan to become the world’s top opium poppy producer. Despite the billions of dollars the U.S. has pumped into the country post-9/11 ($25 billion to rebuild the economy and $8.5 billion to rid it of narcotics). But no amount of money can solve this problem. What is needed is to remove the imperialist occupiers and allow for Afghanistan to become a free, independent, and self-determining republic of the workers and peasants.

For the U.S. peace, anti-war, and anti-imperialist movement this means that we must increase our agitation and broaden our analysis to encompass the connection between the war on drugs, the war on terror, and the intersection of the military-industrial complex playing buffer for the rampaging neo-liberalism destroying our lives. The billions being used for war, genocide, death and destruction could be reparations to those affected by the war on drugs and the war on terror. We cannot imagine a society based on social justice that is still an empire and warring with the people of the world. We emphatically reject the government’s crocodile tears about the current opioid epidemic. The imperialists must get out of Afghanistan and put that wealth under the control and at the service of the working people of the U.S. and the oppressed in Afghanistan. The chemical warfare of drugs and opioids must come to an end through a mass people’s movement centering self-determination and anti-imperialism. The A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition of which the PSL is a leading member of is a part of the People’s Congress of Resistance which seeks to unite as many progressive and grassroots resistance fighters to racism, sexism, and class oppression to build a united front against imperialism and for fundamental social and political transformation.

U.S. troops out of Afghanistan!

Reparations for the people of Afghanistan!

End the war on drugs and the war on terror!

Reparations for the victims of the war on drugs and terror!

In Defense of Workers States

China, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, and Cuba are all workers states. The dominant mode of production there is not capitalism nor imperialism. These nations came out of the ashes of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist revolutions. There material conditions were not ripe for any kind of healthy "socialism by the book" or "socialism as imagined" by self-described Marxists and socialists in imperialist and colonialist nations.

In these nations there was scarcity. Socialism needs abundance. In these nations there were remnants of backwards feudal ideology and anti-scientific attitudes. Socialism needs science and advancement of technology and modern agriculture to grow. In these societies they were "born under the gun" of imperialism - not just of one country but multiple. Hence it was not conducive to "the most democratic" of internal development although the democracy that was practiced was democracy of another kind (workers and peasants democracy over the ousted comprador ruling class).

These nations are not "workers utopias" nor are they without flaws. But being born under the gun they have had to put a lot of resources into defending their sovereignty and thus their states cannot simply "wither away" as Engels taught. Seeing the deeds of imperialism all over the world it makes total sense that these nations take every measure to defend their territorial integrity, sovereignty, and legitimacy. We in the imperialist nations must not scoff at their "non-ideal" social systems but work to destroy the primary contradiction of these nations - imperialism. When imperialism is destroyed, socialism can have the peace that it needs to develop. Socialism needs peace to develop not war. It is capitalist imperialism that needs war and bloated military budgets and military bases to protect global capital.

Many "Marxist" and "socialists" in the West, particularly the US base their notion of socialism on idealism. Idealism runs counter to materialism and ends up being reactionary in times of crises because reality is always more complex than some "socialist ideal" from the minds of people.

As Louis Althusser rightly pointed out in describing what a mode of production is, he says "Every concrete social formation is based on a dominant mode of production. The immediate implication is that, in every social formation, there exists more than one mode of production: at least two and often many more. One of the modes of production in this set is described as *dominant*, the others as dominated. The dominated modes are those surviving from the old social formation's past or the one that may be emerging in it's present. The plurality of modes of production in every social formation and the current dominance of one mode of production over those that are disappearing into being make it possible to account for the contradictory complexity of the empirical facts observable in every concrete social formation, but also for the contradictory tendencies that clash within it and find expression as its history (the observable real transformations in the economy, politics and ideology)."

This basically means that within feudalism there was remnants of slavery and within capitalism remnants of both feudalism and slavery and within socialism there will be remnants of the older societies of which they came from. But being purely EUROCENTRIC these "Marxists" and "socialists" measure how socialism developed in the 20th century using some absurd benchmark based on a dogmatic (and incorrect) interpretation of Marx and other teachers of the proletariat's works (if they even read Mao, Stalin, Che, Claudia, Assata, and so on).

So when workers in formerly colonized nations have to work harder to INCREASE production they claim "this is not socialism" yet what is the alternative? Autarky? Shared poverty? Socalized goats, chickens, ducks, and cows? One cannot nationalize a cow. This is pure folly. No, these workers must develop the abundance to then redistribute, whereas in the imperialist "advanced" and "developed" nations our first task will not be to "develop the productive forces" but rather simply redistribute both power and resources to working people primarily oppressed nations. So with this Eurocentric measuring stick they claim the entire 20th century was "not socialism" but the works of a single man - Stalin. Absurd. Even after Stalin was long and dead, they claim that wherever socialism won it was "Stalinism" that is simply giving way too much credit to Stalin and is not Marxist at all. It is "great man theory" at best and revisionism at worst (or maybe vice versa).

So whenever these "Marxists" see backwardness in socialist nations they decry "ah ha! not REAL socialism" (they are REALLY in their heads and NOT in REALITY). They forget Marx's words that "the mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." Unless they imagine that these post-revolution societies should just issue mass propaganda and brainwash the racism, chauvinism, sexism, what have you out of the minds of the workers and peasants.

In addition, adding to the point of the need for materialism and dialectics, Marx adds "no social order EVER perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself ONLY SUCH TASKS AS IT CAN SOLVE; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in their process of formation." (Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy).

Instead of recognizing that "the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." Socialism is built from the ruins of the past society (anarchist calm the fuck down and drop the brick lol).

Instead of looking for some ideal "socialist model" or pristine ideal - deal with the messiness that is reality. Recognize that "anyone therefore who sets out in this field (scientific socialism) to hunt down final and ultimate truths, truths which are pure or absolutely immutable, will bring home but little, apart from PLATITUDES and commonplaces of the SORRIEST kind (Engels, Anti-Duhring).

It is a bourgeois position to see socialism as a one big failure everywhere because "Stalin." As in Venezuela, instead of doing a concrete analysis they decry "authoritarianism" and "totalitarianism" both bourgeois squeals in a chorus of reactionary imperial propaganda. They throw materialism to the side and cling to their child-like Eurocentric idealism of socialism disregarding what one of the great teachers of the modern proletariat enlightened us on: "But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a level for construction after the manner of the Hegelians. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be INDIVIDUALLY EXAMINED before the attempt is made to deduce from them the political, civil-legal, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc, notions corresponding to them (Engels, Letter to Conrad Schmidt, 1890)."

Doing insult to the legacy of socialism, doing the bourgeoisie's handiwork "from the left" they claim. Not like "those Stalinists" who just "mindlessly defend dictators" they aid the ruling class whether they know it or not. *Sniffs* Pure Ideology - MY Gott!!! Our defense of ongoing actually existing post-revolutionary workers states is based in Marxism not social democratic liberal dogmatism and moralism as many on the left are.

As the socialist movement grows in the US many claim something they have been taught to hate. They are socialist but anti-communist. They are idealist and not materialist. And as once poignantly pointed out by Engels that "the materialist conception of history also has A LOT OF FRIENDS NOWADAYS to whom it serves as an excuse for NOT studying history. Just as Marx used to say about the French "Marxists" of the late 70's (1870s): "All I know is hat I am NOT a Marxist."

So as more socialists are born we should rejoice. But at the same time we should buckle down. More "socialists" being born in this post-Bernie euphoria or whatever the fuck is happening, we should as Marxists and Leninists work to build scientific socialist, historical and dialectical materialist cadre and leadership and not some run of the mill "we just want more things (at the expense of the global proletariat - in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East)."

Lastly, we should defend the current "dictatorships of the proletariat (and peasantry)" wherever they exist. It may seem to your bourgeois tinted eyes that this is somehow a "violation of democracy" but history has proven what Lenin outlined that "progress marches through the dictatorship of the proletariat; it cannot do otherwise, for there is no one else and no other way to *break the resistance* of the capitalist exploiters. But the dictatorship of the proletariat - i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors - cannot produce merely an expansion of democracy. *Together* with an immense expansion of democracy which *for the first time* becomes democracy for the POOR, democracy for the PEOPLE, and not democracy for the rich folk, the dictatorship of the proletariat produces a series of restrictions of liberty in the case of the oppressors (jail killer cops *coughs*). We must crush them in order to free humanity from wage slavery; their resistance must be broken by force; it is clear that where there is suppression there is also violence, there is no liberty, no democracy."

The aforementioned played out in US history post-Civil war when African Americans had what DuBois called the closest thing to a "dictatorship of the proletariat" that the US has gotten to. From 1865-1877 we had the most progressive years of US history. Blacks made laws that truly lifted all of the poor, outlawing contingencies on owning land to vote, establishing Freedmen Bureaus, establishing free public education in the South and many more progressive measures. How was all of this consolidated or how did it even happen? Well, the Northern army and armed Black working class people kept down the white supremacists BY FORCE. To the former slavemasters this was a "violation of their democracy" but to the former slaves this was true democracy. It was only when the Northern army withdrew that you had lynching fever and white terror reaction. It was only with arms and the political organization of the Black working class and their allies that they were able to carry out these progressive measures.

Why go through all of this? Why now? Well, again, just because the "socialist" movement is numerically growing says nothing of its quality. You can have a "socialist" organizations of hundreds of thousands of people (like in Europe) and still be subject to what the Panthers called "flunkeyism." What good are 100,000 social imperialists? Revisionists? Ultra-Leftists? If they are tied to the hip of imperialist and bourgeois conceptions while believing themselves to be not? They push pro-war narratives at a volatile moment claiming to be criticizing "from the left." They sow illusions among our class that Bernie Sanders and his ilk represent some kind of movement we can align with to defeat imperialism. They debase actual revolutions and the ongoing revolutions in DPRK, Cuba, China, Laos, and Vietnam because it doesn't match their pristine "ideal" of socialism.

Some halfway bald guy from Russia once said "without revolutionary theory, there will be no revolutionary movement" and an the bane of the neoliberal postmodern revisionist "PoC" brigade - Karl Marx - dropped the mic on "the weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but THEORY also BECOMES A MATERIAL FORCE AS SOON AS IT IS GRIPPED BY THE MASSES."

If post-modernist identity politics can and has become a material force once it was gripped by the masses (many college educated "PoCs") then SO TOO can revolutionary Marxism!

Since the violent clashes in Charlottesville white supremacy and fascism have become a prime target of many discussions on the Left and in the mainstream. Statues of confederate leaders and memorabilia to the legacy of settler colonialism and white supremacy have been taken down or are slated to be taken down. In Durham anti-fascist socialists took down a statue of white supremacist Confederate Army leader Robert E. Lee. In Baltimore city officials removed four statues in the dead of the night for fear that the indignant and empowered Baltimore masses might topple the statues themselves.

Here in Boston, activists and organizers have been preparing to confront the far right through mass mobilization but also putting forward the struggles of the grassroots organizations in the city.

The counter-demonstration is called “Stand for Solidarity” and is slated for August 19th in front of the Massachusetts statehouse. White supremacy is not something that lives only in the South, but all over this nation which was founded on the genocide of Indigenous nations and the enslavement of Africans. It is not simply the bad or bigoted ideas in the minds of those we call white, it is systemic and ingrained into this nation’s fabric. In order to destroy white supremacy it’s roots must be targeted: capitalism and settler-colonialism. It is with this knowledge that several actionable demands were made by the organizers of the Stand for Solidarity demonstration that speak to the failure of the state to provide for the health are welfare of the people. White supremacy is not abstract, it is very concrete, it eats away at people’s lives day by day so our strategy must be concrete as well and for this reason we have taken aim at the state and placed the blame for the rise of this white supremacist insurgency at their feet.

The Stand for Solidarity demonstration demands:

1. Remove all the memorabilia of racism and white supremacy in Virginia and Boston.

In Virginia, a confederate state, progressives and anti-racists have demanded that Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and any other Confederate sympathizers be removed from public display in the state. These monuments serve as staunch reminders of the scourge of white supremacy that remains firmly rooted in the United States. We completely reject the narrative that these are simply “historical” pieces. Rather they are the ever-present embodiment of ideals that non-white people are considered second-class citizens at best, and subhuman at worst, by the capitalist state.

Radicals out of West Virginia have demanded: 1. That the statute of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in Charleston, West Virginia be torn down and replaced with a monument to John Brown, the revolutionary abolitionist who organized and led a rebellion to capture weapons at the arsenal on October 16th, 1859 in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (modern day West Virginia).

2. That the state of West Virginia declare a holiday commemorating John Brown on the date of the raid.

In the Bay State and specifically Boston the legacy of colonialism and white supremacy are all around us. The town of Amherst is named for Sir Jeffery Amherst, the “Adolf Hitler to the Indians of the 18th century.” Dorchester’s Codman Square was named after Captain John Codman whose family was killed by the Africans he enslaved in his home. The so-called “freedom rider” Paul Revere grew up in a slave-holding family and inherited slaves and wealth from stolen labor. Dudley Square is named after another white supremacist Governor Joseph Dudley. The list goes on: Bowdoin, Ruggles, Seaver, Holbrook, Dorr, Winthrop, Peabody, Maverick, and Everett are names of the white men who all played key roles in the system of slavery in Massachusetts.

We demand that these monuments and locations, starting with Codman Square and Dudley Square, be renamed after Black Liberation fighters like General Harriet Tubman, Haitian independence heroes Toussaint Louverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines, the Jamaican Maroon Dutty Boukman, George Jackson, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, W.E.B. DuBois, and more. No more racist, colonialist, white supremacist memorabilia! Take them all down and rename them! This month is #BlackAugust a month of Black radical resistance and self-work and now could not be a better time to raise these demands.

2.)Drop ALL charges on anti-racist/anti-fascist protesters and pay for their medical fees in VA!

All across the country people are standing up to confront fascism in all its forms. The state has cracked down more on the anti-fascists and anti-racists than the white supremacists. It is no error that our Black Liberation movements have been systematically sabotaged yet fascist white supremacist terror groups have been allowed to grow unchecked. Instead of stamping out white supremacy and fascism, the state enables it and criminalizes defenders of the people’s rights and democracy. We demand that all those in Virginia, especially Takiyah Thompson, have all court charges dropped and that all those injured have their medical bills paid for by the state for free. Fighting fascism, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism is no crime! It is right to rebel against fascists reactionaries!

Here is a list of 8 ways to help the Charolttesville anti-fascists: https://medium.com/@solidaritycville/charlottesville-organizers-ask-you-to-take-these-8-actions-b50ec8c3cfbb

3.)End the Racist Deportations — Free Francisco! Pass the Safe Communities Act!

Mr. Rodriguez has lived in the U.S. since 2006. He has lived in the greater Boston area for 10 years, specifically in Chelsea for the last 6 years. He is the father of two American citizen children, 10-year-old Mellanie and a 5-year-old Jessica, and a baby on the way. For the past five years, he has been a janitor at MIT. In addition, he runs his own carpet cleaning company. He is a member of his children’s school parent committee, of the community organization Chelsea Collaborative, of the Church Tabernaculo biblico seguidores de Jesus, and a union member of 32BJ SEIU (Service Employees International Union) at MIT. Mr. Rodriguez has no criminal record, pays his taxes, and contributes to his community, church, children’s school and workplace.

When Mr. Rodriguez arrived to the country, he applied for asylum in 2007. He was denied asylum in December of 2009, and his appeal was denied in July of 2011. He was later granted prosecutorial discretion and has received a Stay of Removal every year since that time. However this past month, when Francisco applied for a Stay, it was denied. If ICE grants Mr. Rodriguez a Stay of Removal, he can continue to work, take care of his family, and contribute to our community. In addition, next year Mr. Rodriguez’s mother, who is a legal permanent resident, will become a citizen. Soon afterwards, a pathway to residency will open for Francisco when his mother files a petition on his behalf.

We demand that you Mr. Rodriguez be granted a Stay of Removal so that he can take care of his family, particularly his U.S. citizen young children and elderly legal permanent resident mother, while he waits for his pathway to residency and citizenship to open. For as long as Francisco remains in the United States, I am certain he will continue to be an exceptional member of our community.

4.)End Charlie Baker’s cuts! — Fully fund the HIV budget & the Youth on Fire Homeless Day Shelter

The opioid crisis is the crisis of neoliberalism. Charlie Baker’s 1.9 million dollarr cuts to the BSAS (Bureau of Substance Abuse Services) only deepen the wounds of systemic racism and maintain the inequalities facilitated by white supremacy. The dire conditions create the conditions of poverty all around but particularly for the Black community which has been targeted by a racist so called “war on drugs.” This war as impoverished many communities and led to the creation of the world’s largest incarcerator state. Baker’s cuts on deepen the knife in the back of the poor and working classes of Boston. White supremacy relies on this myth that the source of society’s problems lie with oppressed nations — Mexicans and African Americans or some eternal “Other.”

The cuts come on the heels of statements made by Baker that he sees that Narcan is “life saving” while he cuts tens of thousands of dollars funding

5.)Jail ALL Killer Cops: Justice for Terrence Coleman, Usaama Rahim, Santos Laboy & All Victims of Racist Police Terror! Free David Wright!

Police brutality is the material force of one of the arms of the white supremacist state. While state officials love to pose as if they are defenders of democracy yet when officers murder people and abuse their power there are no reprecussions. These tyrannical measures reveals to the masses of people, especially those in the oppressed nations all over the U.S. from the barrios of Spanish Harlem to Standing Rock, that the police are not on the side of the people — that was never their function nor can it ever be under this system.

Just this year 765 people were murdered by the police in the U.S. Last year 1152 people, and 1307 in 2015 both under Obama. Police brutality is not some aberration to white supremacy — but its material force in this society. This force weighs on us like a nightmare, there is no democratic process when it comes to the police but a sham of democracy in the courts as police officers are allowed to murder with impunity. The disproportionate violence meted out to oppressed communities and nations in the U.S. can only be ended through the breaking apart of the current state apparatuses. As the movement against police terror has declared “the whole damn system is guilty as hell.” And we meant the-whole-damn-system, root and branch. How are we supposed to believe that the police are here to “protect and serve us” when everyday they only protect themselves and racists like those in Charolettesville and they only serve the ruling class as they steer this ship into a fascist abyss.

Right here in Boston, the police murder and get away with it and terrorize and get a check — they produce nothing but oppression and are not a part of the democratic masses rising up against the burgeoning fascist movement. There is not a democratic bone in today’s police. We demand that the police who killed Terrence Coleman be indicted and tried to the fullest extent of the law. We demand that the case of Usaama Rahim be re-opened. We demand that all past cases of police terror be re-opened and re-tried. We demand justice for all those families left with the scars of the terror of white supremacy.

Last year the Boston police murdered a Black disabled man by the name of Terrence Coleman in his house right in front of his mother.

6.)Free, Drinkable, & Clean Water for All the Prisoners at Norfolk!

Norfolk prison, the prison where “Detroit Red” matured into the man we remember as Malcolm X or El Hajj Malik Al-Shabazz, has been exposed for poisoning their prisoners via their water system. In 2011 the water filtration system was found to be grossly inadequate and in need of replacement. The state officials claimed that they would follow the law and ordinances to replace the water filtration system. No such changes were made.

Today, the Boston Globe exposed the prison for having water that is “black like tea” and brown, grey with heavy metals in the water exposing the prisoners to all sorts of deadly diseases. Despite being fined thousands of dollars by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, the water treatment system at the prison remains unfixed and prisoners are forced to drink, bathe, and use water that is toxic. Prisoners have been complaining and doing their own activism to get the word out to the world. According to a survey carried out by the prisoners themselves the water is “regularly brown, and that filters in the communal sinks of housing units are routinely clogged with sediment.” Moreover, and most shocklingly, the prisoners have reported that “the prison allegedly provided jugs of bottled water to the dogs that live in the prison and are trained by inmates to become service providers for the disabled.”

Inside the prison prisoners are forced to work long hours for meager pay (literally cents per hour) and if they refuse they get punished. The materials used for recreation comes from the levies imposed on the prisoners and if they need to purchase something they have to do so with their meager funds. Some 1,500 human beings trapped in cages are being forced to use contaminated water that may cause “tremors, slowed speech, and other neurological disorders that resemble Parkinson’s disease.”

This sad state of affairs has been going on for years. Just because one is incarcerated does not mean they lose their humanity and should be subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment.” We demand that prisoners human rights be upheld and they be granted access to free, clean, drinkable water!

7.)Stop the War on Black America! Amend the 13th Amendment — End legalized Slavery!

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Such reads the 13th amendment to the constitution. This amendment was passed during the latter years of the civil war to ostensibly end slavery — no such thing ever happened. Instead, the adding of this clause “except punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” has created the legal precedent for the maintenance of an enslaved underclass of human beings, mainly of color/non-white. It is within this context that mega corporations were able to get super profits off the backs of prisoners who produce for corporations like Sears, McDonalds, Nintendo, and Starbucks.

Buoyed by the “war on drugs” has created the conditions of neo-slavery for millions of people in the U.S. We see ourselves today as “New Abolitionists” on a mission to drive the stake in slavery. The U.S. champions itself as a bastion of freedom and democracy but in reality it is the world’s largest jailer and incarcerator.

8.)No War on North Korea! No War on Venezuela! End the Sanctions

North Korea, also known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, asserted its right to hit back in retaliation to any military aggression, as is the right of all sovereign countries. The U.S. military has for decades recklessly endangered the people of Guam — a colony denied its independence by the United States — by basing large numbers of strategic military assets there. Should war come to Guam, the blame would be entirely on the shoulders of the U.S. military who occupy the island without regard to the will of the people.

While the in-your-face imperial arrogance of Trump’s statements may be new, the policy of nuclear blackmail has been used by the United States in Korea for over half a century. During negotiations at the end of the fighting in the Korean War, the United States said it would destroy the North with nuclear weapons if they did not agree to the terms of the armistice. This year’s massive Foal Eagle/Key Resolve military exercises conducted by U.S. and South Korean troops included an atomic bombing drill where a U.S. bomber simulated a nuclear strike. The DPRK has offered to suspend its nuclear weapons program in return for the suspension of these drills — the United States has refused.

Some sectors of the U.S. imperialist establishment argued 60 years ago that if the People’s Republic of China obtained nuclear weapons it would pose a dire and imminent threat to the United States, and these forces advocated preemptive war. More than a half century later, the United States has obviously accommodated itself to China possessing nuclear weapons and has “normalized” relations with the country. This can be and should be the path taken regarding North Korea as well.

The ANSWER Coalition condemns Donald Trump’s recent outrageous comments, and is committed to building the struggle against U.S. war and militarism in Korea and in all countries. Furthermore, we demand the decolonization of Guam with reparations and the immediate departure of the U.S. military from the island.

The South American nation of Venezuela finds itself again in the throes of imperialist intervention and domestic counter revolution. Since the onset of the process called the “Bolivarian Revolution” the country has been rife with turmoil and calamities. If one bases their analysis of the country on what is presented in the mainstream corporate media, then one would be led to believe that recent events in Venezuela are marked by the struggle against an “authoritarian” or “totalitarian” dictatorship by a democratic and non-violent opposition. Even some who consider themselves “Leftist” or even “Marxists” have joined in on the chorus of slander and disinformation. However, when we peel back the thick layers of imperialist propaganda and shrill cries of counter revolutionaries domestic and exiled, the reality is much more complex.

The Bolivarian Revolution has always been an enemy to the rich and wealthy elites in the U.S. and in Venezuela. For the first time in modern Venezuelan history, Afro and Indigenous populations were empowered to change their society from the grassroots with the backing of the state. An anathema to the domestic reactionaries, the process is often described as one of a surging of “hordes” of lower class Black and Brown people by the Venezuelan elite based opposition.

The title of this image is “Miko Mandante”, meaning “Ape Commander” to mock the affectionate title “Mi Comondante” used by the masses of Venezuelan people who support Chavismo and the Revolution.

Although Hugo Chavez Frias is no longer with us, the revolution continues as does the hatred of the Venezuelan oligarchy towards the poor and Afro and Indigenous people of the country. In April of 2002 the opposition carried out a coup against Chavez, kidnapping him and abolishing the constitution made by the people who have been historically excluded. This living constitution, one of the most progressive in the world, codified social rights for Afro and Indigenous populations.

During this time, the Venezuelan media, which is still firmly in the hands of the right wing oligarchs published story after story about how Chavez was trying to “implement a Cuban style dictatorship” and that he was standing against “freedom and democracy.” One has to wonder how one runs a political dictatorship and allows the media of their political opponents to not only own the majority of the media companies but to spread slander and falsehoods with impunity.

In the film “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” the so called “democratic opposition” — after trouncing on the young constitution of the poor, Afro, Indigenous — admitted to staging the coup in tandem with high ranking military officers who were linked to the U.S. State Department. The only media station the Chavistas had had been taken down following the coup; it was their only means of mass communication with the people. The proposition that the Venezuelan government carried out “censorship” of the opposition flies flat in the face of reality when we look at the role and actions of the media leading up to the coup.

Venezuelan right wing media claimed that Chavez was an agent of Cuba, had homosexual relationship with Fidel Castro, was high off cocaine, and mentally ill or unstable and other slanderous statements in an attempt to discredit him. Fortunately, the Venezuelan masses took to the streets and were supported by the transforming military forces to negate the coup attempt.

Media Lies Today

Today we hear again these shrill cries and lies coming from the opposition and U.S. media. Recently mainstream U.S. media published stories that spoke of a “crackdown” on two leading opposition figures: Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma. The two were put on house arrest after being found guilty of calling for, planning and promoting violent protests that have caused the deaths of at least 100 people, billions of dollars in damage to public property, and the lynching of three Afro Venezuelans alleged to be Chavista activists.

Despite being protrayed as a “prisoner of conscience” and a “fiery leader” by the U.S. corporate press, leaked US diplomatic cables reveal a more telling picture of the figure: “for the opposition parties Lopex draws ire second only yo Chavez. The only difference bewtween the two is that Lope is a lot better looking.” In addition U.S. State Department officials have described Lopex as “arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry.” In true hypocritical form, the U.S. backs reactionaries they know are not popular among the people and are far from anything like a “Nelson Mandela.” Let us not forget that it was the U.S. government that supported the apartheid South African government and collaborated in the jailing of Mandela.

The other man arrested, Antonio Ledezma, is also a reactionary of the highest order. He was mayor of Caracas in 2008 and a supported of the failed coup attempt in 2002. In addition in 2014 he was a vocal organizer of violent protests which claimed the lives of dozens of Venezuelans. But what Ledzma is most known for is his role in the 1989 Caracazo uprising which claimed at least 500 lives (although the true number is unknown).

Ledezma was arrested and charged in 2015 with having a major role in planning a U.S. backed coup to oust the democratically elected Nicolas Maduro. Based on his having made three phone calls to a NY based number that Venezuelan authorities believe is the financier of the coup plot, Carlos Manuel Osuna Saraco. Other collaborators in the coup plot were also found to have made multiple calls to the same number as well.

Far from being any kind of “Nelson Mandela” Leopoldo Lopez is a representation of some of the worst of the worse within Venezuela’s opposition. We should have no sympathy for him and his class who have shown themselves in deed to be neocolonialists of the highest order.

Venezuela is being targeted not because it is violating democracy but because it is practicing it. Since the coming of Hugo Chavez through democratic elections and the Bolivarian Revolution to reclaim national independence and break from neoliberalism, Venezuela has been in the eye of the imperialists. The recapturing of the country by the neocolonialists would put Venezuela’s vast resources back into the back pocket of U.S. monopoly finance capital. It has the world’s largest oil reserves as well as the world’s second largest gold reserves and a substantial amount of mineral wealth.

Not Every Revolution is Revolutionary

In 2011 Time magazine named the person of the year “the masked protestor” in response to the waves of protests that shook the world from NYC to Egypt. Some have been caught up with the aesthetic of protesting while the content escapes them. It should be stated clearly: “not every fire is an omen of liberation and not every mask conceals a comrade.”

The Venezuelan opposition seeing that they were fighting an uphill battle against the Chavismo government sought to prettify themselves and remould themselves to gain public traction and international attention. As author and Venezuela partisan George Ciccarihelo-Maher states in his book Building the Commune:

“When the Venezuelan right took the streets under the guise of spontaneous popular resistance to an authoritarian regime, it had patiently studied the tools, imagery, and social media techniques more often associated with progressive or leftist causes. Protesters took strategically to Twitter, with desperate hashtags like #SOSVenezuela and #PrayForVenezuela that earned them naive retweets from celebrities like Cher and Madonna. Their overarching goal was to integrate their own protests seamlessly into the narrative of global revolt and resistance.”

Simple images of people protesting (could be anywhere in the world, the Venezuelan opposition has used images from Chile, Brazil, Indonesia to dead bodies in Aleppo) is not enough to convey the political content of a movement. Hitler and his fascist Brownshirts came to power through massive street demonstrations, if they were repressed in the streets would be so quick to retweet and share images of this naively claiming they are moral evidence against those doing the repressing? No! They should be repressed. The fact that the opposition today is still being talked about as if it is democratic or non-violent let alone peaceful speaks to the sheer fact (and weight) of bourgeois propaganda and ideology.

In April of this year armed gangs aligned with the opposition attacked the Hugo Chavez Frias maternal and children’s hospital in Caracas with 54 children inside. Twenty eight newborn babies had to be transferred for their safety. As hospital manager Dr. Rosalinda Prieto stated at the time: “We were attacked by violent groups that showered us with stones and sharp objects (and) then burned a large amount of garbage from the hospital — then smoke penetrated inside the premises.”

On June 30th it was reported that two opposition protesters attacked a state owned food storehouse. About 40 tons of food that would have been distributed to the poor and working classes through the Mercal subsidized food market and subsidized government programs were set in flames. The assault is estimated to affect some 40,000 families. Where is the mainstream media denouncing this act of violence? This violence which directly starves the poor and working class of Venezuela, is ignored because it does not fit into the narrative that the government is inept and that is why people are hungry. But, there is more!

On June 27th a police officer hijacked a helicopter and attacked the buildings of the Ministry of the Interior and Justice as well as the Supreme Court of Justice. The officer put out a clarion call for others to join the reactionary opposition in its quest to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro. The culprit, Oscar Alberto Perez, was a member of the CICPC (Venezuela’s Penal, Criminal and Scientific Investigation Police Agency) threw four grenades from within the helicopter at the Supreme Court Justice building as they were convening a celebration for Journalists Day. Fortunately, no one was injured in the attacks. Why haven’t the US corporate media covered or denounced these acts of terrorism? If the same were to happen in the US, it would be called a tragedy and swift punishment for the perpetrator would have been called for. But, when it is Venezuela, a firmly anti-imperialist state that does not cow or bend over for US imperialism, it is ignored or worse — heralded as a righteous act against a “dictatorship.”

Again on July 16th the far right opposition showed their true colors, not as “democrats” but as frauds and spinsters. On July 16th an illegal plebiscite was held which had a ballot option calling for the violent removal of the democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro. This election was less than representative and had many irregularities. Many voters were observed voting multiple times in multiple locations and there was no electronic or even analog system in place to prevent this. The plebiscite was not conducted through the country’s National Electoral Council. Duplicate social media posts from right wing accounts claiming to originate from far different locations showed the exact same image of voters participating.

What the opposition is doing and has done is very crafty. They lure the state’s forces with property damage, terrorist attacks, setting up barricades (guarimbas) and then when they get repressed they cry wolf sending images across the world claiming this is the work of a tyrannical government. We should reject this knee jerk notion that just because one is protesting that the cause is sanctified or that just because one is getting repressed that it is unjust. There are class characters to protests, repression, and even media. The world is politicized and to arm oneself, one must have a political compass that can guide one through the morass of bourgeois lies, slander, hypocrisy, and disinformation. Without one, we end up supporting enemies of the people masked as “democrats” and “Nelson Mandelas.”

Malcolm X once said “the media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty inncoent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

We cannot rely on the mainstream corporate media or the public rhetoric of our own ruling class politicians to give us an analysis that arms us with truth. We must look for alternatives, from voices that have been resisting imperialism for decades and consistently spread anti-imperialist information. Media is still majority privately owned in Venezuela but they have small alternatives from the grassroots and state. A part of the anti-imperialist struggle is to seek truth from facts and expose the lies of our government as they try to shape the world in their image.

Why is Venezuela being targeted?

The corporate owned mainstream media in the imperialist centres often present the governments and leaders of nation states that are recalcitrant to subjugating their sovereignty and markets as not democratic enough, authoritarian, or gross violators of human rights. Ignoring the fact that the US and their allies routinely support reactionary theocratic states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, many are victims of massive disinformation campaigns to create the necessary psychological conditions that allow for US imperialist intervention to occur unchallenged.

Venezuela’s current situation has the hallmarks of previous scenarios: lucrative resources, a history of U.S.-backed coup attempts, U.S.-led economic sabotage and a U.S.-funded political opposition.

To cut right to the matter, the US media bellows that the opposition forces in Venezuela are suffering under democratically elected President Maduro’s “dictatorship.” In addition, they claim that the Venezuelan government is at complete fault for the food shortages, inflation, and all things wrong with the country. Moreover, the media one sidedly portrays the opposition as “peaceful” and “non-violent democratic” opposition. Below I will outline why these points are pure rubbish; the opposition is far from “democratic,” “peaceful,” or “non-violent.”

One has to wonder, how is it that the right wing opposition claims to be living under a dictatorship while in 2015 the MUD coalition won the National Assembly? What kind of dictatorship allows their political opponents to run in elections, win seats, and then use that power won (through the widened democracy created by the socialist government) to then leverage for the violent overthrow of the government and re-institutionalization of neoliberalism.

A major call by the opposition in 2015 was for the calling of a Constituent Assembly and Presidential elections. This is a fact that the corporate media leaves out as they continue to claim that the Maduro government is tightening its grip on political power through the process. The same process that is now denounced as a “self-coup” and a “power grab” is precisely what the opposition had been calling for for quite some time now. Lets not forget that the Constituent Assembly allows for no sitting public official to run lest they lose their political seat, so how is Maduro carrying out a “power grab” when it is the grassroots who are electing their own representatives and not government officials or functionaries. These lies by omission belie the fact that the Venezuelan opposition are not only dastardly, violent, and racist, but they are thoroughly opportunist. If their ideas were so great they would participate in the democratic process and if their ideas for change were valid they would be accepted by the masses.

Following this May Day declaration, Maduro later published Decree 2830 which laid emphasis on the following aims of the Constituent Assembly:

1. Restore cooperation between public powers

2. Develop a post oil economy

3. Give constitutional status to the social Missions

4. Strengthen the justice system to tackle corruption, impunity, speculation, etc.

5. Give constitutional status to the Communes etc, as new forms of democracy

6. Defend Venezuelan sovereignty against foreign intervention

7. Promote pluriculturalism over racial and social hatred

8. Recognize youth rights

9. Preserve biodiversity and promote ecological culture

Nomination for candidates happened from May 30th to June 2nd. Potential candidates were tasked with gathering signatures from 3% of their electorate. Government officials or those who hold public office were restricted from becoming a candidate lest they give up their political office.

55,314 names were put forward. 6,120 candidates met the conditions and were accepted by the National Electoral Council as candidates, 3,546 for the territorial vote and 2,574 for the sectoral vote.

What is the Constituent Assembly?

The Constituent Assembly is a body that is drafted democratically by the people of Venezuela in order to put forward a new constitution. The Constituent Assembly chose 545 independent members elected by secret ballot. There will be 364 seats chosen by region with at least 1 representative for each municipality and 2 more for each municipality which is a state capital. 8 seats will be chosen by Indigenous peoples and 173 seats by sectors making up workers, farmers, people with disabilities, students, pensioners, the business sector, and the communes/communal councils. Within the sectoral vote there are further subdivisions, truly showing the remarkable diversity and democratic nature of the Assembly. They are as follows:

8 for Campesinos and Fishers

5 for Business people

5 for the Disabled

24 for Students

28 for Pensioners

24 for Communal Councils

79 for Workers

The workers’ sector is itself sub-divided thus:

17 for public administration

14 for service sector

12 for social area

11 for commerce

11 for self-employed

6 for industry

4 for construction

2 for oil industry

2 for transport

While the bourgeois media clamors that this is the implementation of a “dictatorship” it is in reality the democratic and constitutional right of the Venezuelan people. It is an exercise in self-determination of an oppressed nation that must be respected. Moreover, by including so many sectors of society and going the extra mile to make sure that voting is accessible and open this process is far more democratic than anything the U.S. or any other imperialist nation could cough up.

In the U.S. where there is massive voter suppression, particularly of oppressed nations such as the African American nation, there are rarely any accommodations in place to make voting as easy as possible. Election day is not a holiday and often times working-class people are stuck at work instead of exercising their basic democratic rights. In Venezuela the socialist led government relocated some voting centers to avoid violence from the U.S. backed right-wing opposition. In addition voting booths were kept open for an extra hour to ensure that everyone who wanted to vote was able to.

A U.S. human rights and labor lawyer, Dan Kovalik, who observed the elections in the country described the voting centers saying “People were very enthusiastic,” and that the voters “waited in long lines in the hot sun to vote.” Kovalik noted that a couple of the voting centers he’d visited “were actually like big festivals” where food was being served, music played and people were “dancing, celebrating.” The people of Venezuela do have right to dance and celebrate, they are a part of a process that the American masses have been systematically denied from doing for over 200 years: re-writing and updating the constitution.

Finally, despite the corporate media noise, the process is by no means finished as a referendum will be held at a later date to determine if all Venezuelans accept or refuse the new constitution drafted by constituent members. The process has only begun and is not in the least over.

Results of the ANC & Prospects for the Revolution

The Constituent Assembly vote turned out 8,089,320 Venezuelans, roughly 41 percent of the population. Many traversed mountains, rivers, and rough terrain to exercise their right to self-determination. Overall, the voting process was peaceful despite reports of isolated acts of violence coming from the right-wing opposition. The loggerhead counter-revolutionaries have no plan for social transformation of the country, they only wish to oust the left leaning government, re-establish capitalist political rule, and maintain their privileges.

Indigenous Socialist President of Bolivia congratulated Venezuela “for their democratic participation in the election of the Constituent Assembly.” Support also came from Russia with Moscow advising world leaders to “restrain” and renounce the “destructive” plans to pressure Venezuela. The Council of Electoral Specialists of Latin America composed of former presidents and magistrates from electoral organizations throughout Latin America called on the international community to respect the will of the Venezuelan people. In addition, demonstrations by social movements and unionists were held this past Sunday at various Venezuelan embassies in Chile, Mexico, London, Malmo, Sweden, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, El Salvador and more in solidarity with the Assembly vote.

Come August 3rd the elected members of the Constituent Assembly will be sworn in as the new legislative body. It will be installed within 72 hours after the announcement of the elected constituents and will work from the Federal Legislative Palace in Caracas, according to the decree that convened it.

This group of various origins and interests will discuss and drafts a new national constitution based on the proposals by different sectors of society. The constituents will have at least three months to draft the new text and are expected to focus their work on justice and economic issues.

The final text of the new Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will go to an open and free referendum where all citizens will decide whether to approve it.Depending on what the constituents include in the final text, the country could face general elections for President of the Republic, mayors, governors and other publicly elected officials.

The referendum is scheduled to be held on December 19, while the elections for governors in the country is scheduled for December 10.Popular sectors hope to win a majority in the assembly along with the government in order to strengthen the economic and judicial system and protect the social missions initiated by the Bolivarian Revolution to provide free or low-cost health care, education and food.

According to the government, new forms of participatory democracy will be developed, as well as support for sovereignty, cultural programs, social rights and environmental programs.

Even if the opposition were to win the majority in this assembly, they would still be bound by the 1999 Constitution which vastly expanded rights for oppressed and marginalized sectors. They would still need to work on the basis of the fundamental rights given to the people in the current constitution.

The Bolivarian Revolution is not over. With 18 years under its belt and the vast inclusion of many oppressed sectors of society (who were outcasts in pre-revolutionary Venezuela) the revolution not only has hung on, but it has expanded a base for the seeds of democratic grasroots popular power to be achieved. It is not a socialist revolution, but the alignment of forces, the isolation of the counter revolution, and the forwarding of peace and stability makes the ground much more fertile for more radical transformation in the future.

On July 7th and 8th anti-capitalist protesters descended upon Hamburg, Germany in opposition to the G20 Summit. “Welcome to Hell” was their slogan to greet the leaders of 20 of the world’s leading economies. The G20 Summit is a gathering of the world’s 20 leading economies, and their subsequent heads of state. The nations include: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, Indonesia, India, Italy, Mexico, Japan, Russia Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Republic of Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, EU and Commission. It should be remembered that within the G20 is the G7, of which Russia was suspended from for role in the Crimea and the Ukraine of which the U.S. and Western imperialist forces are fully supporting neo-Nazi forces and far right wing reactionary groupings.

The slogan “Welcome to Hell” was directed at the G20 leaders and their reactionary policies. As protest organizer Andreas Bleschmidt claims “it’s a combative message…but it’s also meant to symbolize that the G20 policies worldwide are responsible for hellish conditions like hunger, war and the climate disaster.”

G20 & the slow collapse of Unipolarity

A few days before the G20 “Welcome to Hell” protests in Hamburg, Germany, Donald Trump made the statement in Warsaw that: “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”

Trump’s statement was not made in a political vacuum. With the rise of ultra right nationalist and fascistic trends in the Western political establishments, his questioning whether “the West” (the imperialists) has the “will” to survive, is just dog whistle plea meant to stoke Western imperial chauvinism. In the same speech he goes on posing the questions “Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

So called “Western values” are profit at the expense of the rest of humanity; they are imperialist values which Trump is trying to tap into. But make no mistake, the world is being “subverted” and there are groups out to “destroy” it, but they are not the imaginary bogeys which Trump is trying to conjure. The enemy itself is the West, it is the primary contradiction of our era: imperialism and national oppression. The justifications churned out that supported capitalist imperialist “globalization” are cracking and the rise of far right wing ostensibly “anti-establishment” politics rest on the backdrop of an actually decaying social order. Global capitalism is in rapid decline, the planet is at stake and all life on it; the rise of the right must be challenged by the global anti-capitalist/imperialist and anti-colonial forces.

The liberal establishment, represented by the Democratic party in the United States and the ruling parties of Europe do not have the backbone nor framework for successfully challenging Trump let alone the decaying society they sit atop of. The rise of terrorism and the scapegoating of Muslims as the “enemies of the West” is a sign of the decadence of Western “civilization.” The fact that the so called “War on Terrorism” has only increased terrorist attacks and destroyed entire nations causing mass migration and subsequent super exploitation of oppressed nations. But, this is the foundation of Western “civilization” so what is Trump really carping about?

What “civilization” maintains a trillion dollar plus military industrial complex that supports neo-Nazis in Ukraine, clerical religious fascists in Syria, and Israeli settler colonial genocide of Palestine, and Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war on Yemen. These are a few examples but they speak to the real values of this system and its political representatives. Trump’s talk about defending Western values “at any cost” mean increased police and security state powers and expanding it as a repressive apparatus of the state. Let’s not forget that despite all the talk about “free trade” and “big government” or better yet inefficient “regulation” the era of neoliberal capitalism actually strengthens the state not diminish it. It is the state that clears the path — quite violently — for new rounds of capitalist accumulation.

The “will” that would be necessary to hold together this decaying state of affairs on the part of the people would be no will at all, but just generalized political apathy and a disorganized and divided working class movement. On the part of our oppressors, their “will” is evident in the policies they implement towards refugees fleeing nations caught in the webs of neocolonialism. Their “will” is evident in the repressive security policies they implement and the austerity measures they take that exacerbate poverty and social antagonisms within the working class.

The “Western civilization” Trump talks about is not worth saving. It is the problem itself. As anti-colonial writer Aime Cesaire pointed out decades ago with regard to a faltering European power “A civilization that proves itself incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization. The fact is that so-called European civilization — “Western” civilization — as it had been shaped by two centuries of bourgeois rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems of the proletariat to which it has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem.”

Trump and his ilk are mad that the unipolar era is cracking. The rise of formerly oppressed nations like Brazil, India, Russia, China, and South Africa threatens U.S. monopoly finance capital. Nations like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or “North Korea” remain defiantly opposed to U.S. imperialism by building its capacity to defend themselves, socialist Cuba refuses to bow to bullying from the U.S. and asserts their sovereignty and independence (they still hold our sister comrade Assata Shakur safe!), and Trump’s refusal to sign the Paris Agreements have isolated the U.S. on a global scale amidst these shifting relations of power in the global class struggle.

The G20 and U.S. Isolation

The G-20 consists of the finance ministers of 19 economically “significant” nations, as well as financial representatives from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These officials gather one to two times per year to discuss the world economy and make joint decisions affecting finance. On the surface, this seems to be a harmless — even positive — thing, considering the most recent worldwide financial crisis in 2008.

Since the last crisis the U.S. economy has never truly “recovered,” nor can it. Capitalist economic “recovery” has brought in worse jobs than left with longer hours, less control over working hours, lower wages, increased costs of living, more incessant war on oppressed nations, and more state violence from the prisons and cops.

It is an iron law of capitalism in its imperialist stage that the rate of profit will drop and imperialist nations will be forced to go to war in order to kickstart the capital accumulation process through cracking the remaining “closed” economies of China, DPRK, Cuba, Iran, and others. Like a vulture, the imperialist system continues to prey on oppressed nations, but the turning of the tides in repelling imperialist plots in Syria and the subsequent realignment of emerging nations is the writing on the wall. Imperialism is not invincible, it’s armor is cracking before our very eyes.

Behind all of the diplomatic wheeling and dealing wars rage on in the global South, with the flames of violence fanned by the domination of capital over labor and nation over nation.

The rise of nations like Russia and China threaten the global unipolar economic order because the long reign of U.S. monopoly finance capital rooted hegemony is slipping away. Underdeveloped nations are turning to China and Russia for favorable trade deals as well as for diplomatic relationships to questions such as terrorism and security.

G20 Protesters Expose Neoliberal Crackdown on Civil Liberties

Those who gathered from June 6th-9th numbering around 100,000 people in Hamburg, Germany to protest to G20 Summit emphatically stated their broadly anti-capitalist and pro-democracy views. A statement by the NoG20 group which helped organize the mass demonstrations said “The politics of neoliberalism and war is decided in the heart of our cities, closed off to citizens, protected by a militarized police force and backed up by the suspension of political rights. This shutting-down of democracy has one purpose only: to defend the indefensible. Our demonstrations speak for and of a different world.” “…we call for the defence of basic civil and political liberties currently being denied: the right to protest, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of movement” reads the statement released by the NoG20 group. In the wake of recent terror attacks in the U.K. the ruling class elites in the West have used this as an opportunity to bolster the repressive arms of the state in the name of “counter-terrorism.”

History has shown us that under the guise of “defending our rights” from some dangerous “other” political space opened up for the capitalist ruling class to crack down on the people’s movements and our democratic civil rights. Revolutionaries must be opposed to the draconian policies that are on the way following both terrorism and scapegoating of “Black Bloc” types or anarchists. While we obviously disagree with either means of struggle as Marxists have already pointed out particularly Russian Revolutionary V.I. Lenin and Huey P. Newton.

While we must continue to struggle to hold on to, and extend, our basic civil rights and liberties, we must not limit ourselves to this. In addition, it is right to rebel against capitalism, but it is better to make revolution, so our struggles will have to take on the form that has historically been able to guide the working classes and oppressed to challenge and defeat the bourgeoisie: the communist party.

Another World is Still Possible, it is Absolutely Necessary!

In a “Against G20 Hamburg” video created in the run up to the protests the October Revolution of Russia is commemorated as this year will be it’s 100th anniversary. Unfortunately it takes anti-communist swipes at the Soviet Union claiming that the revolution did not fulfill its promises due to “Stalin’s terror” destroying the revolution. While Soviet Union was not destroyed because of Stalin, but from imperialist powers working to sabotage the revolution since day one and do as Winston Churchill said of strangling the “Bolshevik baby in the crib.” The decades of attack, sabotage, espionage, sanctioning, and even supporting fascist and ultra-right Nazis and terrorists, were all primary contradictions the Soviet Union had to deal with. These objective conditions wore the Soviet Union down and facilitated its downfall. It is no accident that after the Soviet Union fell there was a sharp rise in far right wing activity and hate crimes.

The video goes on to speak about the reality that we are not strong enough to overthrow the government but we should still fight them because “their power ends where our revolt begins” and proceeds to declare that “a better world already exists.” It also states that there are no governments to support, implying that all governments and states are the same, lumping the governments of oppressed nations with those of the oppressor. What it ignores it that there are workers states left in the world, and they do deserve full solidarity in this age of decaying imperialism. These states are flawed and are not “worker’s utopias” but they are the living breathing remnants of revolutions that shook global politics in the 20th century.

In the statement released by the group NoG20 they say “…we call for the defence of basic civil and political liberties currently being denied: the right to protest, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of movement.” In the wake of recent terror attacks in the U.K. the ruling class elites in the West have used this as an opportunity to bolster the repressive arms of the state in the name of “counter-terrorism.” They claim this is being done to protect us from so called Islamic terrorists and mystify the problem in various ways such as liberal narratives centering “tolerance” and neoconservative Islamophobic “battle of civilizations” mentalities. The reality is however though, that the U.S. “tolerates” supporting neo-Nazi junta groups in the Ukraine, Al-Qaeda offshoots in Syria and Libya, and has a long history of “tolerance” to repressive dictatorships that carry out its neo-colonial and neoliberal economic policies.

The character of the protest as laid out further in the statement was promising in showing that there is a consciousness that is focused on system change. The statement reads: “Our demonstrations speak for and of a different world: One, which is not driven by the logics of racism, misogyny, homophobia and the fear of difference, a world that takes the huge climate changes caused by human action seriously while meeting health, educational and social needs today. We reject a world in which a sports shoe can cross the Mediterranean while people drown. We speak for different cities: Cities, which are not hollowed out by real-estate speculation and the privatisation of public services, cities, which are lively and diverse, where people can disagree freely and express their own hopes for a better world, cities like the Hamburg we know and love.”

The rise of anti-capitalist consciousness particularly with an attention to special oppressions is absolutely necessary to transform the existing repugnant social relations under imperialism.

G20 Contradictions in the Enemy Camp

Not all was well within the G20 camp of the bourgeois leaders of imperialist nations. Germany’s Angela Merkel disagreed sharply with Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreements. His decision is isolating the U.S. on a global level and with the rise of Russia and China in addition to the variegated ways the global working class is struggling for a socialist world from the Philippines to Cuba and Venezuela to Argentina. Socialism is beginning to re-gather it’s global momentum as an alternative to neoliberal capitalism in the era of globalization.

Russia and China are moving into closer alignment than anytime since the Sino-Soviet split and this alliance coupled with the frictions between the Trump led U.S. imperialism and the G-19 nations that did sign the Paris Agreement is an opportunity for the revolutionary socialist movement to create a pole for an alternative system. We are still living in non-revolutionary times and the crisis of capitalism — it’s anarchy in production subsequent political chaos — needs to be met with the necessary revolutionary forces. As we saw in the Occupy movement, the Egyptian Revolution, and let’s go back to the 1999 Battle of Seattle an event that landmarks this nebulous anti-globalization and anti-partyism. These political crises were not met with the proper forms to make inroads on state power and thus contend or challenge power. We should never let a good crisis go to waste. The G20 shows the unity and disunity among these so called global leaders. The contradictions that disunite them should be pressed upon and we can do this through building and organized and disciplined revolutionary organization that can confront monopoly finance capitalism — imperialism- in a deconstructive but also constructive way.

The generalized anti-capitalist, anti-globalization tendencies marching and demonstrating alongside animal rights activists, peace activists, civil liberties activists, and more show that what Marxists have put forward — all of our struggles against oppression intersect at the capitalist system. It is the capitalist system that is the cause of our oppressions and gives them material force over our lives. It is the global capitalist economic order that is threatening life on earth but also continuing to foster divisions among the working people to distract us from our true enemies are.

Despite the objective conditions worsening, there is still a gap to be filled by a revolutionary subject: the class conscious working class armed with revolutionary theory, party, and mass organizations embedded with the majority of society. The

If in 2003 the demonstrations of some 10 million people in 600 cities across the world could not stop the invasion of Iraq, then what will? Protesting is not enough. It is necessary but not sufficient. Our class, the global working class and oppressed, must unite in our strategic assault against capitalist imperialism. This means principally not simply equating all nation states to be exactly the same — to put the slave on the same pedestal as the slavemaster — but being principally anti-imperialist and not just focus on the domestic negative effects of neoliberal globalization. Imperialism is increasingly omnicidal and environmentally disastrous, revolution is no longer a “possibility” but a dire necessity for the oppressed and exploited peoples of the world.

State Repression

Despite the rhetoric of neoliberal capitalism, that the state’s role in society would shrink and allow for less government intervention, the 2008 crisis and subsequent build up of the rudiments of a police state proved otherwise. It was the U.S. and other European imperialist states, and their lackeys, that bailed out the big banks with public monies and initiated widespread repression of the Occupy Movement and the massive surveillance of activists in the Black Lives Matter movement.

The G20 brought out these contradictions for all the bear witness. The mainstream corporate media focused on the violent clashes between protesters and the police forces, which were corralled from all over Germany (20,000 of them) to suppress activists demanding “a better world” for the many and not the tiny super rich elite.

At the end of the protests of the army of 20,000 police officers 476 were reported to have suffered injuries such as cuts and burns from fireworks and eye damage from laser pointers. In addition, 186 people were arrested and 225 were taken into custody by the police. Allies of the Angela Merkel government have used this opportunity to flap their gums about “violence” and “left wing extremism” when their nation continues to exploit and oppress people in the formerly colonized world such as Syria, Libya, and Yemen. As one protester Stefan Hubert, a 32 year old graphic designer remarked “It’s ridiculous that police say some of us are violent when starting tomorrow the leaders of the world’s largest weapons exporting and importing nations will be arriving in our city (Reuters).

Following the protests German justice minister Heiko Maas, of Angela Merkel’s SPD coalition stated that more money is needed from the federal government to prevent so called “left wing extremism.” Maas described the protesters as “anti-social” and “hard criminals” as well as having “committed serious crimes in Hamburg, including attempted murder.” Like a constant feedback loop the state threatens to and takes steps to tighten its security apparatuses in the wake of such wanton actions.

As Black revolutionary Walter Rodney once asked “by what standard of morality can the violence used by the slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of his slavemaster?” While we may not agree with the tactics employed we reject this false equivalency to terrorism.

Rodney poses a good question for all revolutionary forces to mull over. The widespread damaging of property could hardly be equated to one’s “chains” under capitalist imperialist society. We shed no tears for broken windows or damaged property, but such actions carried out to “welcome” the bourgeoisie “to hell” do nothing of the sort, but just widen the spectre of repression when our class is clearly still not organized on a mass level.

The “hundreds of anti-capitalist militants” that torched cars, looted shops, and threw molotov cocktails are not the main problem, but the lack of a coherent alternative to neoliberalism is. Every year the G20 Summit is opposed by hundreds of thousands if not millions across the world but as one Marxist author points out emphatically as to the hackneyed method of response “this anti-capitalist methodology had already become a caricature itself. The confrontations were echoed as tragedy or farce, there was a tied recognition that nothing would be accomplished, and the militants arrested were guilty only of demanding the right to protest.” It must be realized that it will take more than a weekend of protests, molotov cocktails, and destruction of property to stop the capitalist imperialist death machine.

Fastforward to today. There are only five “actually existing” socialist states left. Global communism is hardly a threat. The terrorism that the U.S. supported is now both their punching bag but also it’s Frankenstein creation. The economy has “downsized” since the 1980’s shifting production to the global South, into prisons, and the low wage near zero job protection sectors. Concomitant with the neoliberal counter revolution of the 1980’s the state and capital began to inch closer and closer to each other, a process that began more definitively at the beginning of the Korean War.

In a desperate attempt to salvage the economy the U.S. imperialists use the state as a bankroller for their militarism and war spending. In a system of guaranteed profits for the private military contractors “trillions are spend to fund the U.S. war machine. most of the money goes to privately owned corporations to produce goods and services that do not compete with other commodities seeking buyers in the capitalist “free market.”” In essence, when the government purchases war planes and military gear and so on, the bill is footed with public money, with taxpayer money. Because “military commodities do not circulate as normal commodities, like food and clothing” they are not used until there is a need to: war. With an overproduction of military commodities, and a dwindling domestic economy already over-saturated with commodities and massively indebted wage workers this may seem like a “fix” for the economic crisis of capitalist imperialism. But, alas, there is no success for the capitalist without a reflective action for their opposite: the working and oppressed.

These military commodities, in order to be replaced, must be used — that is plain fact. The more they stockpile and grow old, the more they devalue as commodities. The U.S. may not be subject to competition in this field domestically, but with the rise of Russia and China they face competitors in military and security training. Not only this, whatever “prestige” the imperialists used to have, through nominally supporting “independence” for post-colonial states only o neo-colonize them later, is fading away. The oppressed remember Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and they are witnessing Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela today struggle ardently against imperialist domination. Russia and China, on the other hand do not meddle in sovereign nations affairs and actually trade with nations on a much more favorable level as they are both still developing nations and were both historically victims of not only U.S. but Western European imperialism. With their good name and deeds, as evidence by the “New Silk Road” led by the Chinese government and Russia’s ability to quell the crisis in Syria and engage in basic diplomacy, the U.S.’s star is plummeting and the brazen antics of Donald Trump only further isolate the U.S. as evidenced by the Paris Agreements and the U.S. withdrawal from them. Even former hardcore allies like the reactionary Turkish regime is moving away from U.S. centered global politics. The further the U.S. grows as an isolated regime run by a clown as President, the more space will open up for radical possibilities, class struggle, and great victories or defeat. It depends on our analysis of actually existing capitalist imperialism and where the principal contradiction still lies in this age/era.

The Pentagon ensures that the costs of the military will be put on the public’s dime. Not to mention that the budget does not even account for “veterans care, military training, and long term housing for soldiers” in addition to any significant care for the sexual and mental health of soldiers as reports of rape/sexual assault and suicides are increasing rapidly. Let’s not forget the many reports of the heinous deeds of U.S. soldiers tacitly supporting rape of children in Afghanistan when they are not raping and abusing themselves such as they are wont to do in places where they occupy like South Korea.

As society becomes more and more militarized and policed the people will rebel and express ideas about their conditions. Often times we hear the argument that “my tax dollars should not be paying for war.” But, would you be okay with it if the capitalists actually paid for their own wars? To the extent that they spent until they won? In any case, to revert back to such a situation would be impossible, we cannot move history backwards. The clarity on imperialism and why the economy is the way it is — on rapid spiraling decline causing the crazed search for new markets or to crack open closed ones (DPRK, Syria, Cuba, etc) is key. We cannot imagine a new society, a socialist society, without planning for peace and reparations to the oppressed nations the U.S. has terrorized. Our entire way of life must change.

Currently our education system serves the capitalist imperialist system. “Universities often must develop weapons or biological technology in order to receive funding from the U.S. government. State university systems receive millions of dollars each year from the Pentagon.” As a comrade of mine oft complains about, “during career fairs at MIT the weapons manufacturers are on display” they are bandied about and groveled at by the administration. These imperialist organizations “recruit engineers, physicists, and chemists to work at nuclear weapons and other laboratories.” The “jobs” are growing in destruction, how symptomatic of decaying capitalist imperialism. One’s livelihood is the spread of literal death or the means of destruction at the very least.

What is most dangerous in this period for revolutionary forces is the development and expansion of the military-industrial complex into the media and ideological state apparatuses. From State Department “socialists” to revising Hollywood films to contain CIA/FBI propaganda messages or the “humanitarian” imperialist campaigns like KONY2012 or support for color revolutions in Syria, Ukraine, and Libya, the level of ideological struggle must pick up to meet the massive enemy propaganda and indoctrination. Anti-imperialism must be the guiding force for any 21st century socialist movement in the heartland of capitalist imperialism.The global financial crisis of 2008 showed how interconnected the global economy is and how integral U.S. monopoly finance capital is. If we make revolution here, it will undoubtedly reverberate worldwide and accelerate the already existing socialist states transitions as well as the existing people’s struggles in Nepal, India, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

In sum, we must build anti-imperialist consciousness beyond the narrow Economistic ways Social Democrats and left liberals pine about. We should focus on the new developments in the political economy of capitalist imperialism, but we must not forget that “politics is concentrated economics” and that we must be equipped to lead our class to political victory on the way to the social revolution. It is our Leninist duty confront and combat the continuing principal contradiction of our era: monopoly finance capitalism aka imperialism.

Extended quotes are from the PSL book: Democracy & Class Society

The strange reality that the residue of the “new social movements” and “New Left” politics is one of neoliberal fragmentation and not of proletarian and oppressed unity, which the latter would actually be much more approximate in terms of politics. The history of socialism, being built under siege by a global capitalist imperialist system, happened under the most non-ideal circumstances. As elaborated by Marx “what we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”

We built the best with what history gave us and enriched the science of making revolution and governing and creatively applying theory to meet the realities of concrete social practice in attempting to build revolutionary organization. One can easily join join the ranks of the white supremacist enemies in attempting to name the history of communism as a white man’s affair that is an act of erasure and burying one’s sharpest weapons against the rule of capital.

As #AssataTaughtWe “i viewed it suspiciously, as some kind of white man’s concoction, until i read works by African revolutionaries and studied the African liberation movements.” It was the discovery of our own historical revolutionary struggles while wielding the “weapon of theory” Cabral calls it that deepened sister Assata’s understanding of not just her life or Black life, but life of the oppressed all over the world.

The re-introduction of Assata’s likeness should not be a one sided symbolic return but a full return that is a rupture with the problematics of the perpetual divisionary logic of the “new social movements” theory and its subsequent identitarian approach. When class analysis is made out to be some “economic determinism” or the populist non-scientific “income” one makes, we take steps backwards in realizing it’s functional use as a method of analysis specifically on the side of the working and oppressed masses.. Sister Assata made this distinction based on the Panther’s updated analysis of the Black historical experience in the US through Marxism-Leninism; she states “I got into heated arguments with sisters or brothers who claimed that the oppression of Black people was only a question of race. I argued that there were Black oppressors as well as white ones. That’s why you’ve got Blacks who support Nixon or Reagan or other conservatives. Black folks with money have always tended to support candidates who they believed would protect their financial interests. As far as i was concerned, it didn’t take too much brains to figure out that Black people are oppressed because of class as well as race, because we are poor and because we are Black.”

The starting point of an emancipatory politics cannot start from a subjectivist one sided empiricist politics of identity. The idea of the modern, a concept often claimed by Europe, must be challenged. The history of modernity does not belong to the Europeans, but to the colonized who were the subjects of revolutionary struggle in the 20th century. The revolutionary centers were always in the Global South. In rejecting the project of building a modern civilized world we must not forget who it was that actually civilized this world: it was the colonized the oppressed, exploited toilers, and their allies. Ending of slavery, liberating nations from colonialism, and defeating fascism. To in one stroke mark this truly world historic movement towards socialism as a “white man’s concotion” or property is to bury one’s head in the sand of white supremacist anti-communist dribble.

Moreover, to the disbelief of many a liberal white and non-white, it is particularly ahistorical and belittling to posit that the only way people of color can come to socialism, or even just anti-capitalism, is to be “brainwashed.” Was Assata “brainwashed” was DuBois “brainwashed” what about Langston Hughes? The list goes on. Some of these folks could be described as what the BLA said being “too emotionally hung up on white people to the point of ideological blindness.” In a time of much chaos and the confusion — when Hillary Clinton is tweeting about “intersectionality” and al-reich fascist Richard Spencer uses identity politics in the forwarding of a white nationalist fascist project saying he wants to make the US a “safe space for people of European descent — a return to what lightened the horizons of the global oppressed not too long ago could bring us out of this ideological stupor.