The Political Tragedy of Capitalist Rule

By Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy

Republished from Monthly Review.

Toward the end of his life, Engels wrote: “It is a peculiarity of the bourgeoisie, distinguishing it from all other ruling classes, that there is a turning point in its development after which every increase in its means of power, that is in the first place every increase in its capital, only tends to make it more and more incapable of ruling politically.” Whatever may have been the validity of this statement a hundred years ago (Engels died in 1895), there can be no doubt that it applies with uncanny accuracy to the world of the late twentieth century.

Society is made up of parts that work together, sometimes more and sometimes less successfully, to produce its livelihood and reproduce itself. The master insight of Marxism is that during that period of human history that has been recorded (some four millennia) the decisive parts have been classes, one dominant and exploitative, the other dominated and productive. For most of this period both parts have been necessary: the brains above, the brawn below. They have also been in continuous conflict over the division of their joint product. The vision of Marxism has been that with increases in human knowledge and growth in the productivity of human labor, the necessity for this split tends to disappear. Brains and brawn tend to come together in the far more numerous productive class. From being a struggle over the division of a joint product, the conflict between the classes becomes increasingly concerned about what will be produced and for what ends. Making these decisions is surely what Engels had in mind when he spoke of “ruling politically.”

Successful political rule in a class society is far from being guaranteed. It involves on the part of the ruling class not only effective protection for its own power but also an understanding of the design of the system as a whole and action to see that the essential parts are maintained in working order and able to perform their respective functions. If a ruling class acquires a monopoly of power and used it exclusively for its own advantage, the result will be certain disaster. The historical record is replete with such tragedies. What is required for successful political rule, therefore, is either wisdom and self-restraint or counter-pressure from a non-ruling but powerful class or alliance of classes. Whatever may have been true of earlier times, it is pretty clear that no modern capitalist ruling class has ever been blessed with wisdom or self-restraint, from which it follows that such successes as may have been achieved in the way of political rule are the result of effective counter-pressure from other classes.

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Many examples, we believe, could be cited in support of this conclusion. One of the best and probably the most famous is the story as told by Marx in Volume 1 of Capital of how bourgeois governments in England, protesting and screaming all the way, finally came during a centuries-long struggle to accept the necessity of a comprehensive regime of labor legislation (prohibition of child labor, conditions of work, length of the working day, etc.). Similar stories could be, indeed have been, told about most of the other developed capitalist countries, including the United States. As for the underdeveloped capitalist countries of the world, most of them, sadly, have little or nothing in the way of successful political rule to boast of.

What has all of this, you may ask, to do with our opening quotation from Engels? His contention, you will recall, was that there is a point in the development of capitalist power after which its capacity for political rule declines. Our contention is that history has proved him absolutely right.

The last two decades have seen an unprecedented increase in the amount and power of capital on a global scale. Common sense tells us that capital has never been in a better position to rule politically, i.e., to do the things that need to be done for society to function reasonably effectively and with a minimum of destructive conflict and disturbance. In reality, of course, nothing of this kind has happened. Instead, capital has used its power exclusively in its own interest, and in doing so has set the world on the road to the disaster history should have taught us to expect.

What should we learn from this experience? First and foremost, that as the second millennium and the twentieth century draw to a close, capital has totally lost its capacity for political rule. Now more than ever what is needed is organized, militant struggle to check and reverse capital’s onslaught on the earning power and living standards of the world’s working and oppressed classes and on the natural environment that is the indispensable foundation for civilized life on an already endangered planet. And the final lesson surely is that success in this struggle must eventually lead to the definitive overthrow of the rule of capital.

The Rosenbergs: Traitors or Heroes?

By Stephen Millies

Republished from Struggle La Lucha.

In his funeral eulogy for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, W.E.B. Du Bois declared, “They died because they would not lie.” The Rosenbergs were burned to death in the electric chair by the U.S. government on Juneteenth 1953.

Du Bois, the legendary Black scholar, also arranged the adoption of the Rosenbergs’ two young children, Michael and Robert. The Jewish orphans were adopted by Anne Meeropol and Abel Meeropol. Abel wrote “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynching that Billie Holiday made famous. 

The Rosenbergs were blamed for the Soviet Union being able to develop an atomic bomb. Their frame-up and execution for espionage during the Korean War was the peak of the anti-communist witch hunt in the United States. 

The ruling class was in a frenzy because of the Chinese Revolution. The Soviet Union’s ability to defend itself against the Pentagon’s nukes made the banksters even more mad.

The FBI and corporate media insisted the Soviets “stole the secret” of the atom bomb. The real secret was revealed when the U.S. dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. By incinerating 100,000 people, including 30,000 Korean slave laborers, the Pentagon showed it was possible to develop nuclear weapons.

Showing it was what made it knowable. Some of the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project — the code name for the U.S. atom bomb project — gave the Soviets five years to match the U.S. effort. 

The rub wouldn’t be in the theoretical work. U.S. scientists knew the Soviet Union had capable physicists.

Among them was Lev Landau, who would win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1962. Even before the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev had devised the periodic table of the elements.

U.S. scientists thought the Soviets would have difficulty in making extremely pure chemicals and seals to lock in corrosive gases. Because of socialist economic planning, the Soviet Union was able to concentrate its efforts and explode a nuclear device on Aug. 29, 1949. It took four years, not five, to produce.

Decades of lies

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover immediately set out to nab the “communist spies” that smuggled secrets. How else could those “stupid people” in the Soviet Union have produced nuclear weapons? 

U.S. schoolchildren were taught their country was the land of great inventors like Thomas Edison. Newspapers told their readers that only the U.S. could have built the bomb.

Thirty years later, President Ronald Reagan said there wasn’t a Russian word for freedom. (There is. It’s svoboda.) 

So U.S. capitalists were astonished when the Soviet Union sent the first artificial satellite into space on Nov. 7, 1957 — the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Claims that the Sputnik satellite was the result of spying fell flat. The Pentagon wasn’t able to launch its own satellite until months later, on Jan. 31, 1958.

It would have been much more difficult to execute the Rosenbergs after Sputnik. It shattered the bigoted conception that 150 different nationalities in the Soviet Union couldn’t do science.

Today another big lie is being told. The People’s Republic of China is being blamed for the COVID-19 pandemic.

With no evidence, the media and even comedians like Jon Stewart are claiming the coronavirus “leaked” from a Wuhan laboratory. This is a blood libel similar to blaming Jewish people for plagues in medieval Europe or the racist myth that immigrants bring diseases to the U.S.

Building a frame-up

The FBI framed the Rosenbergs and a co-defendant, Morton Sobell, by connecting dots and forging evidence. At the end of World War II, the Communist Party in the United States had around 75,000 members, according to the University of Washington’s “Mapping Social Movements” project, including thousands of Black members. They fought racism and built unions.  

Over 10,000 party members were members of the U.S. armed forces. Some party members had government jobs, including the electrical engineer Julius Rosenberg, who was employed at Fort Monmouth army base in New Jersey.

The Manhattan Project had 130,000 employees. U.S. army counterintelligence agents constantly spied on them. 

Even J. Robert Oppenheimer, considered to be the father of the atomic bomb, was a suspect. The army hesitated appointing Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos laboratory because of his left-wing associations before the war.

Yet with thousands of U.S. Army and FBI agents prowling around, nobody claimed to have found any spy rings until after the Soviets exploded their bomb.

Julius Rosenberg was fired from his civilian job with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in January 1945 as a suspected communist. (He actually resigned his membership in 1942.) But Julius wasn’t arrested until July 1950.

At the time there were still around 40,000 Communist Party members. Hundreds of thousands of people had worked with the CP or the Young Communist League.

That was a big talent pool for Hoover and his FBI agents to construct a frame-up by matching people with left-wing backgrounds. They found out that Julius Rosenberg’s brother-in-law David Greenglass, an ex-YCL member, had worked as a machinist at Los Alamos. 

Presto! The “Rosenberg spy ring” was invented.

Under threat of the death penalty, David Greenglass told prosecutors whatever they wanted. His lying testimony sent his sister Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. It took five jolts of electricity to kill her.

Show trial

The Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell were convicted in a show trial. Although at the time a quarter of New York City’s population was Jewish, not a single Jewish juror was chosen.

One of the federal prosecutors was Roy Cohn, who had illegal “ex parte” conversations with presiding Judge Irving Kaufman in which Cohn urged the death penalty. After serving as Senator Joe McCarthy’s sidekick, Cohn became a lawyer and mentor for Donald Trump.

The evidence was flimsy. David Greenglass produced three crude sketches. One looked like a pie chart. A baby carriage couldn’t have been made from them, much less an atomic bomb.

Greenglass said his spy contact was Harry Gold, a chemist and pathological liar who admitted that he “lied for a period of 16 years.” Gold also claimed to be a courier for Klaus Fuchs, a scientist at Los Alamos.

Fuchs confessed he was a spy to a Scotland Yard detective and was jailed in Britain. Fuchs identified Gold as his contact from a picture.  

Fuchs’ statement and identification of Gold is questionable. Fuchs never confronted Gold in a U.S. court and thus couldn’t be cross-examined. It’s striking that the convictions of Greenglass, Gold and Fuchs would have been impossible without their confessions.

The FBI even suspected future Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, who had been Fuchs’ roommate at Los Alamos. FBI agents changed their mind only because Feynman was completely non-political.

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Morton Sobell was indicted because he was a schoolmate of Julius Rosenberg at New York’s City College and a former YCL member. The only witness against Sobell was Max Elitcher, who claimed vaguely to have seen Sobell visit Julius Rosenberg while carrying a container that could have had film in it. 

He then said he had no idea what was in the container, yet Sobell was sentenced to 30 years in prison.  He served 17, including five years at Alcatraz.

The prosecution stressed that Sobell and his family went to Mexico after David Greenglass was arrested. If Sobell was such a master spy, wouldn’t the Soviets have tried to help him escape?

Instead Mexican secret police kidnapped Sobell and turned him over to FBI agents at the border.

A key piece of evidence was forged. A hotel card from the Albuquerque Hilton was introduced to prove Harry Gold was in town to meet David Greenglass on June 3, 1945.

Miriam and Walter Schneir were authors of “Invitation to an Inquest,” a detailed exposé of the Rosnberg-Sobell case. They looked at copies of the card. It had different date stamps on the front and back despite Gold having checked in and out on the same day. 

When the Schneirs sought to examine the original card, the FBI told them that the evidence was destroyed, even though J. Edgar Hoover called the Rosenberg case “the crime of the century.”

Smearing the dead

Millions of people around the world rallied around the Rosenbergs. They saw parallels between their frame-up and the anti-Jewish persecution of French army officer Alfred Dreyfus decades before.

The American Jewish Committee, which represents the small section of the Jewish Community that’s capitalist, didn’t think so. Writing in the AJC’s Commentary magazine, historian Lucy Dawidowicz endorsed the Rosenbergs’ execution. 

Today when Jewish youth join marches supporting Palestinian liberation, Commentary magazine supports bombing and starving Gaza.

The publication of “Invitation to an Inquest” in 1965 sparked new interest in the Rosenberg and Sobell cases. The U.S. deep state counterattacked, particularly after the overthrow of the Soviet Union.

The FBI and CIA say they have proof that the Rosenbergs and Sobell were guilty. They point to the “Venona Project,” which consists of allegedly deciphered messages between Soviet agents in the U.S. and their Moscow headquarters. The documents claim to show that the Rosenbergs, Sobell and dozens of other people in the U.S. were Soviet agents.

Why should anybody believe U.S. spy agencies? These are the folks that told the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Even if the Venona papers are genuine, the rub is matching code names with individuals.  One of the alleged code names for Julius Rosenberg was “liberal.” Does that sound like a name for an accused communist super-spy? 

The code name linked to Morton Sobell described him as having a wooden leg, which he didn’t have. There was no code name for Ethel Rosenberg.

The Venona Project smeared a series of liberals who couldn’t defend themselves since they were dead. That was the case of the economist Harry Dexter White, who worked in the U.S. Treasury Department.

The deep state and the ultra-right use the Venona papers to support Joe McCarthy’s phony charge that President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration was filled with communists.

The documents have also been used to rehabilitate Elizabeth Bentley’s tarnished reputation. The professional liar gave dishonest testimony against the Rosenbergs, defendants in other trials and before a series of congressional witch-hunting committees.

Typical of the so-called “red spy queen” was her claim to have given the secret date of the Normandy landings to the Soviets. Actually, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower informed the Soviets of when D-Day would occur. He did so because he wanted them to launch an offensive and prevent German troops from being withdrawn from the Eastern Front.

Never forget the Rosenbergs

“I consider your crime worse than murder,” declared Judge Kaufman when he sentenced the Rosenbergs to the electric chair  

Worse than the killers of the 14-year-old Emmett Till? The two racists who tortured the Black youth to death got off scot-free. 

Gen. Douglas MacArthur wanted to drop dozens of atom bombs on Korea and China. Judge Kaufman blamed the Rosenbergs for the U.S. not being able to do so.

Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk wrote in his memoirs that the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs wanted President John F. Kennedy to approve a plan to launch nuclear first strikes against the socialist countries.

The whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg revealed that the Pentagon plan would have killed 600 million people. 

What if the Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell had helped the Soviets build an atom bomb? It was only because the Soviet Union — and later the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — were able to develop a deterrent to the Pentagon’s arsenal of atomic and hydrogen bombs that a nuclear holocaust was averted. 

But the Rosenbergs and Sobell didn’t have the ability to penetrate the Manhattan Project. The FBI wanted them to finger dozens of liberals to back up Joe McCarthy’s fantastic claim of “20 years of treason” under the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. 

The courage of Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell prevented this nightmare.

Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted for supposedly typing reports. She was arrested almost a month after Julius Rosenberg was jailed to put pressure on him to lie.

David Greenglass later admitted he lied about Ethel Rosenberg’s typing. Justice demands that Ethel Rosenberg be given a presidential pardon.

When Morton Sobell was 91 years old, he was badgered by New York Times reporter Sam Harris into saying he and Julius Rosenberg offered information to the Soviets. It was from their jobs as electrical engineers, not from the Manhattan Project.

Twenty-seven million Soviet people died defeating Hitler. Yet during World War II both Britain and the United States refused to share new anti-aircraft weapons and radar with the Soviets.

If Morton Sobell and Julius Rosenberg did indeed help the Soviets, it wasn’t espionage to help a gallant ally. It was whistleblowing, like Daniel Ellsberg did when he released the Pentagon Papers or the truth-telling by Chelsea Manning about U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The best way to honor the Rosenbergs is to fight even harder to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Ruchell Cinque Magee, Sundiata Acoli, Mutulu Shakur and dozens of other political prisoners.

One way to do so is to donate to the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which helps the children of political prisoners, at RFC.org.

Red Scared: Revising History at the Victims of Communism Museum

By Billie Anania

Republished from The Baffler.

“THERE IS NO WAY he is a victim of communism,” my partner quips, pointing to a photo of the late Pope John Paul II. We are near the end of our visit to the new Victims of Communism Museum, standing in an elevator-size lobby with photographs of “victims” screen-printed all over the walls. Among the many victims and honorees: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the Dalai Lama, Romanian writer Herta Müller, Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, and Hungarian neofascist Viktor Orbán.

These public figures are the latest faces of a long campaign to flip the historical script. Ai Weiwei, among the highest-selling artists in the world, has earned his keep resolutely opposing the Chinese Communist Party. Meanwhile, Orbán’s vocal denunciations of Soviet occupation helped launch a political career filled with what critics call “pure Nazi speech.” Despite the cognitive dissonance of this display—Müller’s father served in the Waffen-SS, for god’s sake—the strategy allows the decades-old Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to position all anti-communists as renegade freedom fighters regardless of their fascist associations, thus rebranding its Holocaust revisionism anew. What better destination for their new museum than Washington, D.C., just one mile away from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum?

Originally founded during the Clinton era by a unanimous act of Congress, the Victims of Communism Foundation is a relic of Cold War-era propaganda. Its central belief that communism has claimed “more than 100 million” victims was lifted from The Black Book of Communism, a controversial piece of Western agitprop that has since been delegitimized by its own contributors. The book, as well as the foundation, peddle the spurious notion that a “double genocide” took place in the twentieth century: one by fascists and another by so-called “Judeo-Bolshevik Communists.”

According to the Victims of Communism team, all Nazis killed by Soviets are victims of communism, as are all deaths resulting from Covid-19. Inside the museum, Mao Zedong figures as a “mass murderer,” but Adolf Hitler is nowhere to be found. Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, too, are portrayed as running authoritarian, anti-democratic regimes, yet British colonialism and American imperialism garner nary a mention. Hardly anywhere in the foundation’s documents, or in the museum, are Nazis, fascists, royals, colonizers, or capitalists portrayed as aggressors. In fact, World War II isn’t even included in the museum’s timeline.

Is now a good time to mention that the Victims of Communism Foundation’s original co-chairman, Yaroslav Stetsko, once led the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to ally with Nazi Germany alongside Stepan Bandera, who is now a national hero of Ukraine? Not only does the foundation count Nazi sympathizers among its scant few donors, but many other immortalized “victims” were involved in the deportation and extermination of Jews, Poles, Roma, Serbs, Belarusians, and Ukrainians on behalf of Nazi puppet regimes across Europe. I went into the museum expecting to see the usual suspects among the victims—from Holocaust perpetrators Ante Pavelić and Roman Shukhevych to the kulaks and Cuban plantation owners—but was surprised to find the vaunted list has gotten a facelift. Perhaps they hope to attract a new generation of culture warriors, or just far-right trolls with Turning Point USA aspirations.

After more than an hour wandering around the building, I was left deeply unsure what, in their view, even constitutes a “victim” of communism, let alone a “communist.” No one will walk out of this institution knowing much more than some fudged numbers and fashy buzzwords. This kind of hyperbolic revisionism meets roadside tourist trap is capitalist projection at its finest, an alternative history built by dark money and reinforced by disinformation. Nonetheless, considering how much the art world masks its own regressive politics, an unabashed right-wing exhibition of this magnitude is a genuine treat for sickos like me.

Part fascist propaganda, part Epcot ride, the Victims of Communism “museum” is actually just three claustrophobic rooms of dystopian imagery and haunted house sounds, all designed to shock and appall. Tickers run at the bottom of screens endlessly tallying “victims,” while jump-cut documentary footage rushes between shots of Cuba, China, Poland, and Hungary. Along the floors and walls, the words WAR, REVOLUTION, and TERROR pop out against deep shades of black and crimson. LIES, one placard announces near an illuminated image of Eastern European Christians holding crosses. RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION, reads another, juxtaposed with stock imagery of barbed wire.

I can only describe the videos in this place as Ken Burns documentaries from hell. The first begins once visitors trigger a foot plate, enhancing the venue’s dungeon-esque quality. Then a series of jagged screens light up, interspersing photographs of Lenin, Trotsky, and Tsar Nicholas with an ominous, staccato orchestral score. Rather than address the complex historical conditions leading up to the October Revolution, our humble narrator goes straight for the gold: “Reformers hoped for a democratic solution—the Bolsheviks had another idea.”

It was hard for me not to burst out laughing at this appeal to Menshevik supremacy, but I held my cool, lest I offend the solitary front desk worker—who was, I should add, the only other person in the building. Afterward, I noticed a small glass display that held a first edition of The Communist Manifesto, as well as a Russian newspaper from the day after the Bolsheviks took power. “Marx and Engels’ manifesto gave birth to the world’s most violent regimes,” the nearby text intones. Lenin, too, is accused of single-handedly building the gulags and killing “hundreds of thousands” of Russians, leaving a “blood-soaked legacy” upon his death a few years later. Based on this room alone, one might surmise that communism is an individualistic, tyrannical ideology oriented around exploitation.

Of course, they would be wrong, but no matter to our humble curators; the museum never sets out to define communism in any capacity. In their selective version of history, once upon a time, Marx and Engels wrote an evil little pamphlet, and then—skipping right over the Paris Commune—we find ourselves in 1917 at the start of the Russian Revolution. We then jump, curiously, from Stalin consolidating power in the 1930s to the Cold War and beyond. These glaring gaps in history feel intentional in the displays devoted to starvation and imprisonment, in which Soviet gulags take precedence, but Nazi concentration camps are nowhere to be found.

A related video juxtaposes the gulags with prisons in Vietnam, China, Korea, and Cuba. Paintings and sketches made by detainees are interwoven with quotes from Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (a favorite of Steve Bannon and Jordan Peterson). Hearing the words of prisoners and experiencing their art, I was somewhat moved by the concept of creative resilience in confinement, particularly given the brilliant work produced by incarcerated artists here in the States. But it’s hard not to see this as artwashing Nazi war crimes, or what Ljiljana Radonić calls “comparative trivialization.”

By downplaying the Holocaust, the museum can seamlessly move to the Holodomor and Great Leap Forward, two periods of enforced economic reform that they portray as intentional massacres. And with little wall space remaining, they do a speed-run through Vietnam, China, North Korea, and Cambodia, sloppily tying together Juche, the state ideology of North Korea, with the Khmer Rouge. This rhetorical trick, which is hard not to perceive as racist, allows them to gloss over the nuances inherent to these distinct regions while avoiding what happened in Cambodia before Pol Pot took power. (As Anthony Bourdain once said, if you visit Cambodia, you will “never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.”) In a final video, the narrator also claims that Czech protesters from 1968 desired, above all, “democracy and free markets,” rather than the loosening of Soviet control over creative and political forms of expression. As it ended, my gaze fell on a nearby wall photograph showing an East German guard fleeing to West Berlin, which is credited to the CIA.

Toward the exit, an interactive choose-your-own-adventure game allows visitors to reflect on all this “information” as a Cuban, Korean, or German individual. Two paths can be chosen on the screens provided: in the first, you comply with a newly appointed communist government, while the other takes you on the dissident path. No matter which path I chose, however, my protagonist ended up compromised—either by facing persecution or bringing shame on my legacy. The framing is utterly nihilistic, a downward spiral resulting in entrapment no matter the response. In many ways, it resembles how people describe getting arrested in the United States.

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Before going any further, I should clarify a few things. I don’t doubt the existence of persecution and suffering in communist countries. I’m well aware of the mortal consequences of agrarian reforms in China and Russia, as well as the problems of absolute power. But the Victims of Communism Museum is not the place to find valid critique; it’s a wasteland of thinly veiled bigotry. Their fast-and-loose analysis feeds into a far-right strategy to whitewash imperial, feudal, and fascist histories, developed at a time when Western countries welcomed former Nazis into top-brass positions. Moreover, selectively lifting stats from long-debunked sources only further promotes disinformation; for an example, look no further than the “horrors of socialism” resolution recently passed in the House, which parrots the “100 million victims” statistic.

Undercutting all of this, of course, is the role that Western powers have played in constraining—violently and otherwise—Soviet and Third-World autonomy. Not a single revolution of the twentieth century went without its fair share of trade sanctions, assassination attempts, and disinformation campaigns. Rather than focusing on building a new society, revolutionary movements have always been forced on the defensive—and even still, freedom of art flourished in the well-funded Soviet film industry, and Vietnam successfully ousted its occupiers. Should we really be taking what Holocaust revisionists claim about China, Cuba, and elsewhere today at face value?

Conflating communism with fascism—while conveniently eliding the horrors carried out by its own fascist honorees—is old hat for this foundation, and the museum treads well-worn territory. Curiously, many of the foremost “victims” are men, and few are Black. I almost have to admire their attempts to tiptoe around slavery and identity politics, if it weren’t for the number of Black radicals persecuted by and within capitalist countries—from the outright assassinations of Amílcar Cabral and Patrice Lumumba to the persecution of intellectuals like Assata Shakur and Paul Robeson. Of course, even the nightmare fantasies concocted here include a tinge of casual racism, and it’s remarkable they even thought to acknowledge communist revolutions in Africa (albeit in small text near the exit).

As this all makes clear, the museum is not really for anyone who disagrees with conservative doctrine, or even for centrists playing both sides; it’s for far-right ideologues who already champion the views espoused here and would like their children to do the same. As with most roadside attractions, every reactionary impulse is thrown to the wall to see what sticks. While Covid-19 is simultaneously a hoax and communist plot, you can still find the Victims of Communism-branded hand sanitizer in its gift shop, along with supposedly real fragments of the Berlin Wall, anti-Che Guevara shirts, bracelets made by a Ukrainian jeweler, and—oh my—a Nora D. Clinton book on the perils of quarantining. Communists are simultaneously to blame for Covid-19, as well as for lockdowns, but please do remember to wash your hands!

By now you’ve likely seen the videos of the expansive encampment across from the museum in D.C.’s McPherson Square. Social media posts hardly convey the scale; there are countless tents across multiple city blocks keeping the city’s unhoused population warm through the winter months. “When you step outside the building you conveniently enter the real-time updating Victims of Capitalism Museum,” one astute reviewer noted. While D.C. officials recently cleared the premises—an action endorsed by the entire Washington Post editorial board—I doubt they recognize the irony here.

This is the world the Victims of Communism Foundation seeks to preserve, and the one they also tend to blame on their liberal opponents—who are also, supposedly, all communists. Coincidentally, the museum is located in the United Mine Workers of America Building where, as Mike Davis has written, union leader John L. Lewis notoriously banned communists and imposed top-down leadership to limit local autonomy. Much like Lewis, the museum’s goal is to obfuscate, yet for anyone with a working smartphone, much of it can easily be written off. At the same time, Eastern European countries like Hungary, Lithuania, and Latvia have all passed laws criminalizing opposition to the “double genocide” claims, so maybe the propaganda really is working.

For now, the Victims of Communism Museum continues its mission uninterrupted—or at least from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., five days a week—all while its foundation still receives donations from fascist sympathizers across Eastern Europe and the Balkans. As recently as 2021, they installed a controversial memorial in Ottawa entirely with private funding. Rather than name victims on the memorial, the foundation instead listed the monument’s moneyed donors. Perhaps letting people Google victim names might get them into trouble again. At the very least, Canadian media remains skeptical.

“Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution,” a quote from Soviet officer Felix Dzerzhinsky reads on one wall back in the museum. True enough, but terror for whom? For the profiteers of state terror at home and abroad? Or enslavers of the prison-industrial complex who sit on museum boards? I fail to see what Mao or Stalin could do beyond the grave to significantly impact my life, but I can see how white nationalism threatens my agency. I can see that by flipping the script, fascists quickly transform into freedom fighters, and thus the severity of slavery and extrajudicial killing in capitalist countries become mere matters of opinion. Such sore winners will never be happy until every last speck of land is open for extraction—and even then, it still won’t be enough.

But, hey, don’t just take my word for it! Listen to the voices of their workers—or, if you will, the Victims of the Victims of Communism Foundation. One woman who worked there for a few months notes that “sexist and conservative management” contributed to a “toxic work environment.” Another employee claims that anyone who is not a “staunch conservative” will be “extremely uncomfortable” with management’s daily discussions and that employees are not allowed to “openly voice concerns.” While none of this sounds surprising for a U.S. nonprofit, it does speak volumes about an institution that claims to be on the right side of authoritarianism—turns out they’re just on the right.

What the Titan Submersible Says About Capitalist Culture

By Saheim Patrick

It is ironic that the name of the doomed sub that captivated the minds of Americans this past week, contains the suffix: -gate, a morpheme that has become de facto synonymous with conspiracy theories. The irony stems from the fact that conspiracy theories, or at least the ones that attach -gate to their title, are a direct product of the type of distracting, unified discourse characteristic of our current, US society that has allowed the topic of the OceanGate submersible to thrive.

The story, largely irrelevant for reasons which will be divulged, goes like this: five men aboard a twenty-two foot carbon-fiber and titanium craft, named the Titan, planning to tour the ruins of the famed Titanic shipwreck. At an hour and forty-five minutes into their expedition, contact was lost with their surface ship: the Polar Prince. In the days following, the story and question of whether they were alive or not, left the public reeling, and the media magnates sensationalizing. It is important, for the sake of critiquing the discourse surrounding it, to note that the men aboard paid 250,000 USD each for this trip. This particular detail has stoked a fire in the discussions of the event, namely on Twitter, and has promoted a false dichotomy, a false binary, in talking about the sub. The sides that you can take are presented as: finding the likely deaths of these men a tragic event, or ridiculing and showing apathy towards their deaths. It is not uncommon for a simplification of this sort to happen in modern discourse.

The dominant medium of communication in the US is social media. It is easy to believe it to be the Internet as a whole, but the difference between a technology and a medium must be noted (not only for this clarification, but for our understanding of modern discourse as a whole). Neil Postman’s 1985 treatise on dominant mediums of communication throughout history and television as a medium, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, tackles specifically this difference.

We might say that a technology is to a medium as the brain is to the mind. Like the brain, a technology is a physical apparatus. Like the mind, a medium is a use to which a physical apparatus is put. A technology becomes a medium as it employs a particular symbolic code, as it finds its place in a particular social setting, as it insinuates itself into economic and political contexts. A technology, in other words, is merely a machine. A medium is the social and intellectual environment a machine creates.

In other words, a technology is a machine, and a medium is the use of that machine. It then becomes clear that while the Internet is a dominant technology today, the dominant medium, its dominant use, is social media. And with this in mind, it becomes abundantly clear as to why discourse today is the way it is.

There is a constant, pervasive threat of irrelevance anytime one posts on social media, and I am sure that anyone who has spent more than a few days on any given platform can attest to the rapid speed at which one buzzing topic moves to the next. As a result, arguments, ideas, and discussions are spewed out quick and without any nuance. Actual engagement with the ideas being talked out cannot be risked. In the time it takes you to study, read a book, or to genuinely think about the subject you are so fervent about, there is a new point of mass interest, and you are left speaking into a void which no longer cares to hear what you have to say.

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It is then not surprising to me that discourse on Twitter has taken such an extreme split; such a sharp turning away from the simple and foundational idea that multiple things can be true about a given thing at once. It is possible to believe that the deaths of the billionaires aboard the Titan are sad. Objectively, I think if any one of us were in that situation, ignoring of course the circumstances that got them in the situation in the first place, we would be primally and utterly terrified. That is a chilling thought. However, it is also possible to believe, at the same time, that the reaction this has caused in us is utterly terrifying. What is there to happen when people believe that they have to passionately defend billionaires’ sanctity of life? What does this mean for revolution in America?

I will put it this way: we are slaves on a plantation. Our plantation’s master has gone away on a boating trip with neighboring plantation masters. On this trip, an accident happens which leads to our master, and his master friends, dying. If you asked me, a slave, to put myself in the master’s shoes, and to divorce myself from the fact that I as a slave do not even have the resources to take a boating trip, I would surely say that would be a scary moment for me and I may feel your idea of empathy. However, my master has died, his plantation still exists, a new master will come soon to rule that plantation, and I am still a slave. Therefore, that idea of empathy that you have has its limits on me. As well, if there were a group of slaves on the plantation so intensely tore up about master’s death and scolding other slaves for not being as tore up, it would lead me to fear that when the time to fight for our liberation comes, these fellow slaves will not be able to be counted on. It brings into question whether someone is truly for the people; for if you are not staunchly for the people, you are against them.

The even more frightening factor here is that people so loudly championing empathy for the billionaires are not even aware that they are serving capitalist interests. They cannot tell that — by the way that the meticulous, scientific system of capitalism works — anytime you defend billionaires, you are defending capitalism. It is no coincidence that this story was pushed as hard as it was. Within three days of the submersible going missing, a documentary on it has already been filmed, produced, edited, and sent to air. Ask yourself, and I mean seriously ask yourself: why do we not hear the stories of the people who are ruthlessly exploited by billionaires as much as we do this? In that answer is also the answer as to why you will not hear the same people championing empathy for these billionaires, also championing empathy for their victims, whom are countless and suffering daily.

Aside from the political thought that this story may inspire, it is a synecdoche of a larger culture of irrelevant news and information that has been in place for centuries in US. What so many people fail to recognize about this story, and its parts, is that it simply does not matter.

What bearing does this have on your day-to-day life? I am not asking this to say that any story or information that is not directly related to you cannot have value, but I am saying that a lot of the information sensationalized by US media has no actual value, and for a reason.

It is the job of the capitalist system to keep the people subordinated and unconscious. If the system succeeds in doing this, people will blindly practice, uphold, and promote the interests and values of capitalism. For if the masses of people took even the most simple view of capitalism, it would become abundantly clear how unjust it is. A handful of people control and own not only the means of production, but the production, while those who work on these means of production and produce have no stake in where they work and often can’t even access what they produce. It is clear from even this base-level understanding of capitalism that it is a system built on exploitation. By extension, to keep people subordinated, unconscious, and unaware of this, they must remain uninformed; or, better yet, consumed with useless information. As Kwame Ture once put it, “the capitalist system makes the people think they’re thinking, when in fact they are not thinking.” Therefore, when the people waste our time discussing a situation which has no true effect on our lives, convinced that value can be traded for entertainment — and then, at that, discuss without a tinge of nuance, critical thinking, or rhetoric — the capitalist rejoices! This is because all while doing this, the people truly believe we are contributing to an important cultural discourse. Sure, the culture is having discourse, but what is it doing for the culture?

This irrelevant news disguised in a cloak of being relevant is not new. As Henry David Thoreau incisively remarked in 1849:

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate .... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

My point is this: if you can tell me five facts about the Titan submersible, or any other nationally syndicated story, but not five about the community directly around you, you are not an informed person, you are a distracted one. And this battle of focusing and reshifting toward real issues and real change is one we must be constantly waging, because capitalism is constantly waging against that.

On the Concept of "Time Poverty"

[Photo credit: Marisa9 / iStock / Getty Images Plus]

By Rugveda Sawant

“In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time.”

-Karl Marx

There is a considerable amount of literature on “time-poverty” concocted by researchers and policy-makers. The term is used to denote lack of time an individual experiences to devote to personal and social activities which ends up negatively impacting their well-being.

Apart from the already established definition of the term, a fresh deconstruction of it may lead one to observe that if poverty is understood as a lack of (financial) resources, time-poverty may be understood as a lack of (financial) resources to purchase time rather than lack of time itself. The worker who does not own any means of production and has nothing but his labour-power to sell in order to sustain himself, must do so by lending it out for a certain duration of time to the capitalist who purchases it in order to extract surplus value. However, it becomes important to note that what is being sold and purchased here is not time, but labour-power. Time is not a commodity- it can be a measure of value but has no value in itself; it cannot be produced or purchased. Defining “time-poverty” as “lack of time” helps mask this simple contradiction; we are stuck with a term that fails to delineate the exact relationship between time and poverty, leading to the proposal of flawed solutions for a legitimate issue.

Even though a more liberal understanding is that people, no matter what their financial status, can experience “time-poverty”, a more sophisticated argument observes that it is an issue more relevant to and persistent amongst the income-poor. [1] To avoid ambiguity, let us replace “poor” with the working class and “rich” with the capitalist class. The working class earns its money through ‘wages’ while the capitalist class earns it through ‘profits’. The following illustration by Engels will help us understand how ‘wages’ and ‘profits’ are earned:

“The capitalist takes the labourer into his workshop or factory, where all the articles required for the work can be found – raw materials, auxiliary materials (coal, dyestuffs, etc.), tools, and machines. Here, the worker begins to work. His daily wages are, as above, 3 shillings, and it makes no difference whether he earns them as day-wages or piece-wages. We again assume that in 12 hours the worker adds by his labour a new value of 6 shillings to the value of the raw materials consumed, which new value the capitalist realizes by the sale of the finished piece of work. Out of this new value, he pays the worker his 3 shillings, and the remaining 3 shillings he keeps for himself. If, now, the labourer creates in 12 hours a value of 6 shillings, in 6 hours he creates a value of 3 shillings. Consequently, after working 6 hours for the capitalist, the labourer has returned to him the equivalent of the 3 shillings received as wages. After 6 hours’ work, both are quits, neither one owing a penny to the other.

“Hold on there!” now cries out the capitalist. “I have hired the labourer for a whole day, for 12 hours. But 6 hours are only half-a-day. So work along lively there until the other 6 hours are at an end – only then will we be even.” And, in fact, the labourer has to submit to the conditions of the contract upon which he entered of “his own free will", and according to which he bound himself to work 12 whole hours for a product of labour which cost only 6 hours’ labour.

Similarly with piece-wages. Let us suppose that in 12 hours our worker makes 12 commodities. Each of these costs a shilling in raw materials and wear-and-tear, and is sold for 2.5 shillings. On our former assumption, the capitalist gives the labourer .25 of a shilling for each piece, which makes a total of 3 shillings for 12 pieces. To earn this, the worker requires 12 hours. The capitalist receives 30 shillings for the 12 pieces; deducting 24 shillings for raw materials and wear-and-tear, there remains 6 shillings, of which he pays 3 shillings in wages and pockets the remaining 3. Just as before! Here, also, the worker labours 6 hours for himself – i.e., to replace his wages (half-an-hour in each of the 12 hours), and 6 hours for the capitalist.” (Frederick Engels, Wage Labour and Capital, 1891)

Profits are earned by appropriating unpaid labour of the working class. Profit constitutes the amount of time that the worker has spent in producing value that does not belong to him. The magnitude of profits can be increased by increasing intensity of labour, productiveness of the labour or by increasing the length of the working day. But no matter how these three variables shift, (relative) wages and profits remain in inverse proportion to each other. [2] Lower the wages, more the profit. More the labour-time that remains unpaid, more the capitalist gains. Once this is clear, one can start to see how “lack of time” that one class of the society faces is a gain for the other. The issue of “lack of time” devoid of class analysis leads to vague rhetorics [3] and empty solutions. All sincere critique must elucidate how the “lack of time” that the “poor” face and which affects their “well-being” is an inevitability under capitalist production. [4]

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It is argued that women are the most “time-poor” since they are ones who usually perform domestic and household work which (widely) remains unrecognized and unpaid. The burden of performing these tasks leaves them with very little time for themselves. Recognition, remuneration and provision of alternative arrangements of such work will lead to diminution of the time deficit that women face. Researchers by employing the methodology of time-use surveys have made proclamations like “rich women work harder than poor men”. [5] Such statements are as contrived as the terms “rich” and “poor” are abstruse. Women unarguably are burdened with domestic and household work, which to a very large extent remains gendered. However the premise that it is “unpaid” is false. Even though this work may not be remunerated directly, it is accounted for in the wages earned by the worker:

“The manufacturer who calculates his cost of production and, in accordance with it, the price of the product, takes into account the wear and tear of the instruments of labour…In the same manner, the cost of production of simple labour-power must include the cost of propagation, by means of which the race of workers is enabled to multiply itself, and to replace worn-out workers with new ones. The wear and tear of the worker, therefore, is calculated in the same manner as the wear and tear of the machine.

Thus, the cost of production of simple labour-power amounts to the cost of the existence and propagation of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and propagation constitutes wages. The wages thus determined are called the minimum of wages. This minimum wage, like the determination of the price of commodities in general by cost of production, does not hold good for the single individual, but only for the race. Individual workers, indeed, millions of workers, do not receive enough to be able to exist and to propagate themselves; but the wages of the whole working class adjust themselves, within the limits of their fluctuations, to this minimum.”  (Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital, 1847) 

Therefore, even if household and domestic work was to be paid for separately, it would lead to a relative decrease in wages, not leading to any sort of substantive improvement in the life of the working class. The gendered nature of the oppressive burden of household work can be understood as an effect of the patriarchal system but the cause of it lies in the exploitative nature of class relations under capitalism. The patriarchal system itself, at the outset, is a result of the historical division of labour within a class society. The condition of women being domestic slaves to their husbands will not be made better, in any real sense, by demanding for household work to be remunerated.[6] According to the calculations of the capitalist, it is already recognised and paid for in the wages of the worker. As explained above, the impoverished status of the working class is directly linked to the prosperity of the capitalist. Therefore, any demands for alternative arrangement or socialisation of domestic work that might emancipate women from their current state of slavery and proposals about providing free goods and services via public policy, remain incompatible with and a utopia under the capitalist mode of production.

The burden of “unpaid work” that leads individuals to face a “lack of time” is a legit issue. However, it cannot be understood in isolation from the process of production of which it is a part. Marx writes:

“All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.” (Karl Marx, Vol 1., Capital, 1887)

It is this very phenomenon that can so easily lead one to think of household work (domestic slavery of women) as unpaid while overlooking the exploitative nature of class relations within the capitalist mode of production. The concept of “time-poverty“, which wrongly posits time as a commodity, furthers the concealment of the worker’s unpaid labour. The worker appears to be selling his time and not the value creating source that is his labour-power. It becomes easier then, for the price of this “time” to be detached from and determined independently of the value created by him. Terms like “time-poverty” when undisguised reveal themselves as nothing but plain, old poverty. Averse to the dilution and deviation that this term begets, one must not lose sight of the fact that the fight for personal and leisure time is inextricably tied with the fight for socialism.

Notes

[1] “...time-poverty among the better off accounts for very little of the total, and that genuine time poverty is more than a qualitative loss resulting from individual choices. Rather, most people who are time-poor are also income-poor and suffer from other (often multiple) deprivations.” Ghosh, “Time Poverty and the Poverty of Economics,” 2.

[2] “The share of (profit) increases in the same proportion in which the share of labour (wages) falls, and vice versa. Profit rises in the same degree in which wages fall; it falls in the same degree in which wages rise.” Marx, Wage Labour and Capital, 37.

[3] “Though it is difficult to say how much leisure or free time a person needs, one can say that a person who does not get enough leisure is under time stress.” Hirway, Understanding Poverty, 28.

[4] “Capitalist production, therefore, of itself reproduces the separation between labour-power and the means of labour. It thereby reproduces and perpetuates the condition for exploiting the labourer. It incessantly forces him to sell his labour-power in order to live, and enables the capitalist to purchase labour-power in order that he may enrich himself.” Marx, Vol. 1. Capital, 406.

[5] Ultra-poor women rank at the bottom in terms of burden of total work. They spend 32.74 per cent of their total time (53.42 hours) on work. They are followed by non-poor women (and not by ultra-poor men) who spend 31.66 per cent of their time (53.18 hours) on work. That is, rich women work much harder than ultra-poor men in terms of the time put into work. Hirway, Understanding Poverty, 35. Also quoted by Jayati Ghosh in “Time poverty and the poverty of economics” with an addition that “This partly reflects the lack of paid work for poor men as well as the greater burden of unpaid work borne by women in their own households.”

[6] “Payment for the housewife’s “reproductive labour” in the house, i.e. for domestic slavery, in addition to keeping the working family’s standard of living the same, and consequently the level of the housewife’s freedom on the same level as before, is something that would serve to perpetuate the idea of the housewife as the beast of burden that bears on her back all the social pressure exerted on working-class homes (including psychological and physical abuse). It would keep her away from social life, imprisoned within the four walls of her house, making her numb with chores that mangle her body and dull her mind.” Rey, Is housework an “unpaid” job?

Stalin in Ukraine: A Critical Examination of the Holodomor

By Anton

Republished from the author’s blog.

In this piece, I will examine the situation in the Soviet Union, particularly in Ukraine, 1932–1933, of what is commonly referred to as “Holodomor”.

“Holodomor” refers to the claim of an “intentional man-made famine-genocide in Ukraine caused by Communist collectivization of the Soviet Union” or often times more specifically, of Stalin himself.

To begin, I will start with its origins. Its origins are widely credited to a Welsh man named Gareth Jones. Who was he? Jones before arriving in the Soviet Union in March of 1933, he was in nazi Germany. In an article entitled, “WITH HITLER ACROSS GERMANY” which was published on February 23rd of 1933, he outlines his experience flying on Hitler’s private plane along with other high ranking nazi officials such as Goebbels. In the piece he says of the nazi leaders, “There is nothing hard and Prussian about my fellow-passengers. They could not be more friendly and polite, even if I were a red-hot nazi myself.” Continuing, after fawning over the nazis, he says regarding Hitler: “There are two Hitlers — the natural boyish Hitler, and the Hitler who is inspired by tremendous national force, a great Hitler. It is the second Hitler who has stirred Germany to an awakening.” In a following article by Jones, he states regarding Goebbels that “He has a remarkably appealing personality, with a sense of humour and a keen brain. One feels at home with him immediately, for he is amusing and likeable.”

After leaving nazi Germany, he arrived in the Soviet Union. After arriving, Gareth Jones reported that “millions are dying of hunger”. In the article he gives multiple anecdotes of unidentified and nameless persons — devoid of any information of any backgrounds, of their class interests, etc — making claims such as “we are waiting for death”, while presenting the entirety of not only Ukraine but the entire Soviet Union, as a monolith.

Following this, on the 13th of April of 1933, Jones expands in this article his claim regarding the cause of the situation. He states “the main reason for the catastrophe in Russian agriculture is the Soviet policy of collectivisation.”

Today, by the “holodomor-genocide” campaigners, collectivization is pushed as being the sole cause of the situation. Despite this, Gareth Jones of all people, even admitted the following factors played a role: natural droughts in some areas, landowning kulaks who he says their “incentive to work disappeared”, “massacre of cattle by peasants not wishing to sacrifice their property for nothing to the collective farm”, and that “prices have dropped most in precisely those products, wheat, timber, oil, butter, & co., which the Soviet Union exports, and least in those products, such as machinery, which the Soviet Union imports”.

In the previously attached article from April 13th of 1933, Jones also predicted that the next harvest will likely be worse and stated, “The outlook for the next harvest is, therefore, black. It is dangerous to make any prophecy, for the miracle of perfect climatic conditions can always make good a part of the unfavourable factors.”

Jones placed the blame mainly on the Soviet policies of collectivization, but still admitted — unlike the “holodomor-genocide” campaigners of today — the previously stated factors. Today if you mention these factors, you are demonized by certain people as being just as bad as the people who deny the holocaust, that you are a genocide denier equal to a holocaust denier.

Here we have the following factors by Jones, aside from collectivization:

1. Drought

2. Exporting grain & co. for industry machinery

3. “Disincentives” among ex-landowners

4. Slaughter of cattle by disgruntled ex-landowners

Before moving forward, it is important to take into account the location and the era of which this situation had occurred. For centuries prior, the entire region had regularly struggled against famines and droughts, including in Ukraine. Due to the economic backwardness of the feudal era, the entire region was largely ill-prepared to overcome these situations. As Jones mentioned, the Soviet Union was importing machinery. This was true. The reason for this was that it was that industrialization, as part of the first five-year plan, was a key to improving the agricultural system and overcoming the famines which had been inherited from the pre-revolutionary era. In a sense, the decision was as follows: “Do not industrialize, save some food, and allow the famines to continue anyway, or do industrialize, sell some food, and try to overcome the famines as quickly as possible”.

According to anti-Communist Nicholas V. Riasanovsky in “A History of Russia”, he states that the Soviet Union went from being the 5th in terms of industrial power, to second, only behind the United States, within the span of the first five-year plan. This bares out in many ways that industrial production was rapidly expanding. The first of which is that after industrialization and the end of the second world war, the famines which had plagued the regions for centuries, had stopped. They did not worsen, or even continue. It is also made clear through the fact that the industry of the Soviet Union was capable of repelling nazi Germany to the point of pushing the Germans not only out of Moscow, but all the way back to Berlin and the Reichstag. Finally, it is also shown by official statistical data of the Soviet Union. Granted that many will claim statistics from the Soviet Union cannot be trusted at all or are entirely fabricated, the fact still remains that even the western capitalist governments such as the United Kingdom will begrudgingly admit that during the era “almost all heavy industries [in the Soviet Union] enjoyed substantial increases in production”.

From “Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard” by Douglas Tottle

Regarding the issue of kulaks having no “incentives” to work, Isaac Mazepa, a hardline nationalist who had nothing but hatred of the Soviet Union & Communism, admitted the same as Gareth. He notes in the excerpt that kulaks and nationalists had first began murdering collective farm workers and Communist officials then eventually adopted a “passive” form of resistance. He openly admits that kulaks and anti-Communists had intentionally and knowingly left ‘whole tracts unsown’ and left “20, 40, and even 50 per cent” of crops to rot in the fields. To reiterate, this is not being claimed by a Soviet government official or a Communist, but by a leader of the Ukrainian nationalists and anti-Communists.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance has stated that “Starting in February 1933, in order to ensure the spring sowing campaign, assistance began to arrive in Ukrainian regions. It was designated for local party leaders and activists as well as for those who worked at the collective farms.” It is in this that we begin to realize the class character of the situation and understand a little more of the truth of the situation. Above, Jones noted that the ex-landowning class refused to work in collectives saying they had ‘no incentive’, then we have Mazepa stating that many refused to sow land and harvest grain in the collectives out of spite, then the Institute claims that the aid was given to what largely amounted to those who worked. In essence, the picture painted by these admissions is exactly what Louis Fischer had stated when he was in Ukraine in 1932, as shown below.

From “Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard” by Douglas Tottle

This begins to paint a picture of exactly who, largely but not exclusively, starved and suffered. Though “the kulaks starved themselves” is regarded as “Stalinist propaganda”, that is effectively something that the “holodomor-genocide” campaign itself has inadvertently through this admitted to be true.

According to the infamous anti-Communist Robert Conquest, he reaffirms that kulaks did in fact slaughter their own cattle out of spite.

“The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine” by Robert Conquest

Though some will undoubtedly claim that since these statistics come from the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934 that it must be fake, despite Conquest even saying that the numbers are “supposedly lower than the reality”, it is shown to be evident due to the fact that Soviet documents report that the Soviet Union had to and did import cattle to attempt to replace some of that what the kulaks destroyed.

To summarize this far, it has been well-documented, even among anti-Communists of the early “holodomor-genocide” campaign, that in fact kulaks did refuse to work and actively acted to harm the production of the harvest, kulaks did slaughter their cattle out of spite for the collective farms, natural drought did impact the harvest’s quantity, and industrialization was crucial to stop the famines.

According to Gareth Jones, collectivization was supposedly the main reason for the situation of 1932–1933 and he said that famines would likely continue due to it. By the end of the year of 1931, according to official statistics, the percentage of farms that were collectivized was only at 52.7%. By the end of the year of 1933, the percentage of farms that had been collectivized rose to 65.6%. Had collectivization as a policy, in and of itself, been responsible for the situation, then it would only be inevitable that the situation would not only continue, but intensify and worsen. But it did not. Given that by the end of year of 1937 some 93% of farms had been collectivized, it would only make sense that if the situation from 1932–1933 had been caused by collectivization with only 52.7% of farms being collectives that in 1938 there would be a situation much, much, much worse and intense. But it wasn’t. Unfortunately, Jones was unable to witness this fact to prove his theory wrong for himself as he had passed away in 1935.

In addition, and despite some people (i.e., Norman Naimark) saying “The Soviet Union made no efforts to provide relief”, reports show that the Central Soviet Authorities sent hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food aid to Ukraine. In early February of 1933, Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk regions each received 3,300 tonnes of food aid. By the end of February, the Dnipropetrovsk region received 20,000 tonnes of food aid, Odessa received around 13,000 tonnes, and Kharkiv received almost 5,000 tonnes. Reports document that from February to June in the year of 1933, over 500,000 tonnes of food aid was sent to Ukraine.

According to archived documents, Joseph Stalin himself, along with Molotov, personally took it upon themselves to scold Joseph Vareikis, First Secretary of the Voronezh Regional Committee of the CPSU, on March 31st of 1933 for his objection to sending 26,000 pounds of potatoes to the Donbass region of Ukraine. These behaviors including, but not limited to, sending food aid and at that personally intervening to ensure food aid is being given, is fairly odd or strange behavior for, as the “holodomor-genocide” campaigners would say, a “genocidal maniac who wanted to kill Ukrainians”. Truly, there was no reason for Stalin to go as far as personally intervening in that situation as he did to ensure food aid was sent to Ukraine if he was genuinely trying to create a famine to crush Ukraine.

Regarding the issue of “intent”, on March 16th of 1932 the Politburo stated that “The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow in Ukraine.”

This is one piece of conflicting evidence among many that was presented to Stalin and others of the Central Soviet Authorities. Conflicting reports of whether or not there was an issue, and if so to what degree or totality, by regional members and others in Ukraine casts doubt on the claim that Stalin was aware of the situation or that he was orchestrating it. Though the Central Soviet Authorities and Stalin were suspicious of it being worse than some had claimed, they still pushed for them to be careful and cautious.

Following that, Stalin wrote on the 2nd of July of 1932 to Lazar Kaganovich and to Molotov regarding Kosior and Vlas Chubar stating “Give the most serious attention to the Ukraine. Chubar’s corruptness and opportunistic essence and Kosior’s rotten diplomacy…and criminally frivolous attitude toward his job will eventually ruin Ukraine. These comrades are not up to the challenge of leading the Ukraine today.” By this point, it is without a doubt that Stalin is aware of the situation and automatically began to critically evaluate the situation and isolate the problems.

Shortly after this, Stalin sent another letter to Kaganovich on July 17th and mentions to Mr. Lazar that “These shortcomings are a great economic (and political!) danger to us”. The claim that this situation had been an intentional and man-made situation on behalf of Stalin & co. does not square up with this. For if it was, Stalin would not be concerned of these “shortcomings” and would certainly not be viewing them as ‘dangerous’ to them.

It is at this point that it is also worth noting the distinction between squarely blaming Communism & collectivization for the situation and between identifying elements or persons within the government as being responsible in part for the situation, in the way that Stalin identified specifically Kosior and Chubar and specific failures produced by them that in part led to this situation being able to develop under their watch.

By August 1st of 1932, Stalin wrote, and quite poignantly & savagely, regarding Kosior that “Instead of leading the raions, Kosior keeps maneuvering between the directives of the CC CPSU and the demands of the raikoms — and now he has maneuvered himself into a total mess”. Stalin continues, ripping into Chubar, stating that “Chubar is no leader. Things are bad with the GPU […] Unless we begin to straighten out the situation in Ukraine, we may well lose Ukraine.”

At this point, it becomes beyond evident that Stalin is now aware of the situation, is actively concerned about the situation and worried, is actively identifying the problems that have allowed this situation to unfold as it did, and began taking steps to begin to rectify the situation.

The situation 1932–1933 being viewed as a “genocide to crush Ukrainian nationalist resistance” is further undercut by the fact that the situation encompassed the entire union in varying levels and degrees. Nevertheless of the varying intensities, it included but was not limited to, Siberia, the Volga, the Kazakh ASSR, etc. With that being said, it was then not a man-made famine from the start, as some pretend, to “crush Ukraine” nor was it manipulated and weaponized to do the same. We’ve seen the true cause of the situation, that the food aid sent from other regions less impacted to more impacted regions such as Ukraine, and that the Georgian leader Stalin, the “evil Russian chauvinist who wanted to crush Ukraine”, personally intervened to make sure food aid was being sent when a regional official within the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic objected to sending aid to Ukrainians in Donbass.

The situation in 1932–1933 did lead to suffering and some death. But the level of which has been grossly inflated and exaggerated, disrespecting the people who actually did suffer and perish — it belittles the truth of the situation. The estimated range of the “holodomor-genocide” campaigners ranges from 3 million to as high as 12 million, some even higher, like Conquest alleging 14 million. Regarding these tolls, “starved to death” is not always accurate or truthful — intentionally or not. At the same time, there was a record outbreak of over a million cases of typhus and typhoid fever, a dramatic spike from the prior years and higher than in the rest of the Soviet Union. This resulted in a number of people dying due to the diseases, but not from hunger. However among certain historians, it is not differentiated, or even often noted — intentionally or not. That in fact many of the people who “starved to death” were not all people who did.

In 2010, in the same ruling that the Court of Appeals of Kiev decided to qualify the situation as a ‘genocide against Ukraine, to crush Ukraine’, they also made some noteworthy admissions. In it they claimed that 10,063,000 people had “died”. However, their qualification for a “death” is rather unusual. They note that 6,122,000 of the “deaths” are unborn people. Not even unborn babies that did not make it, but a person never born, a fetus never even conceived. Approximately 60% of the “deaths” were not even people that were even born! This is unimaginably childish logic, equivalent to saying one person being murdered is actually 10 people being murdered because that one person being murdered may have had kids and they may have had kids too, etc. According with the ruling, that leaves slightly under 4,000,000 people they claim were actually alive. Of the usual death toll claimed by the campaigners, the Ukrainian court’s is only a third. Meanwhile the Soviet archives estimate that around 1,800,000 people died.

The death toll alleged by the Ukrainian court was approximately 4,000,000 and the Soviet archives estimated 1,800,000 deaths during this period, which includes from the typhus outbreak, typhoid fever, etc. The number of deaths during this period being so significantly lower than what today’s “holodomor-genocide” campaigners claim may be relevant to the fact that Jones himself had admitted on May 13th of 1933 that he never actually saw any dead people. Jones stated that “Mr. Duranty says that I saw in the villages no dead human beings nor animals. That is true…” continuing, he implies that the reason he didn’t see anybody who had died during his entire trip that all of the people who had died were buried before he had the chance to witness a single person who had died.

For whatever reasons, since the 1930’s, and even to this day, the “holodomor-genocide” campaigners repeatedly and constantly use photos from regions and eras which are not 1932–1933 Ukraine. Beyond simply ordinary people who falsely attribute a photo, whether it is intentional or not, it is also “journalists” and other so-called “experts” such as Anne Applebaum.

Anne Applebaum fraudulently using a photo of Russian children in the 1920’s as an example of “holodomor” in Ukraine in an article she wrote for the British tabloid called “The Times”

Unfortunately, and for some reason, this is a reoccurrence throughout the campaign.

Anne Reid fraudulently using a photo of Russian children in the 1920’s as an example of “holodomor” in an article she wrote for the American rag “The Wall Street Journal”

Above all, the misusing of photos is truly horrific and reckless. In the carelessness, or even in cases of intentional deceitfulness, the “holodomor-genocide” campaign citing photos from the Volga in the 1920’s or using photos from other famines disrespects the people who had actually perished or suffered in the photos we see.

From the anti-Communist “Black Book of Communism” where it openly admits that Ukrainian nationalists conducted pogroms and sought to create an ethno-state and purge ethnic minorities

Before moving forward, we must address what and who the “Ukrainian nationalists” were, that the Central Soviet Authorities and Stalin wanted to allegedly “genocide”. One major manifestation of Ukrainian nationalism existed in form of the fascistic Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) — which eventually extended itself into the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army”, of which both collaborated with nazi Germany and actively participated in atrocities of the holocaust such as the massacre of Babi Yar. Before and during the Soviet revolution, before the OUN was formed, the Ukrainian nationalists perpetuated some of the most horrific pogroms of the early 20th century.

Website of the oun-upa.national.org.ua with bios of various leading members. In this bio, it states that Mykhailo Kolodzinsky was trained in fascist Italy — in 1932 through 1933 — along with the fascist Croatian Ustaše. This was in fact at the will of the National Executive of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

The Ukrainian nationalists had connections and ties to among other fascist organizations and leaders, the Italian fascist regime.

From the book “Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult” by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe

The exact nature, the characteristic of what this rabid nationalism entails is fairly easy to understand — a similar variant of the nationalism by the nazi Germans.

From the book “Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult” by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe

This becomes much more clear and visible after 1932–1933 in which the Ukrainian nationalists are emboldened by the rise of Hitler in 1933 and become more violent and destructive. As a matter of fact, through analyzing “Ukrainian nationalism” and what ideology came with it (fascism, pursuing an ethno-state, etc) and the acts of the Ukrainian nationalists themselves (i.e., violent pogroms against ethnic minorities, aiding nazi Germany in committing crimes in the holocaust, etc) further bares out the truth of what “Ukrainian nationalism” exactly entails and means and what the people who bore that identity did and believed in.

Prominent Ukrainian nationalist, Eugene Onatskyi, regarding what “Ukrainian nationalism” actually means. From “Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist : Fascism, Genocide, and Cult” By Grzegorz Rossolinsk

Though the disdain for this nationalist movement by the Soviet authorities is brought up by “holodomor-genocide” campaigners, it is presented as if it was only the Ukrainian nationalists who received disdain. In fact, all sectarian ethnic nationalisms were treated in kind. German nazi collaborator Russian nationalist General Vlasov, in a similar sense to the Ukrainian nationalists, viewed Stalin and in fact Communism as being evil and the greatest threat to “his people”. In the civil war, the White Armies were largely a rabid Russian nationalist movement that the Red Army obliterated. When the White Armies failed, younger nationalists turned to German-style fascism; in Konstantin Rodzaevsky and the Russian Fascist Party were extremely nationalistic. Rodzaevsky was executed in August of 1946 after he voluntarily handed himself over to Soviet authorities after he had previously “fled” to land occupied by imperial Japan. Stalin, who was Georgian, also maintained an equal hostility to the rabid Georgian nationalist movement. It was Georgian Stalin who led the Soviet forces against the Georgian nationalist “August uprising” in 1924 and it was under Stalin that the rabid Georgian nationalist leaders were executed for their nationalistic treason.

The Black Book of Communism (page 231) counts executed and gulaged Russian nationalist nazi collaborators as ‘victims of Communism’

The idea that Stalin was uniquely hostile to bourgeois Ukrainian nationalism becomes less and less plausible as you examine Stalin’s hostility to the rest of the sectarian bourgeois nationalist movements, including the Georgian bourgeois nationalist movement.

Regarding the issue of “genocide”, we must first define it. According to the Genocide Convention of the U.N., it states “genocide” as being “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. In order for something to be qualified as a “genocide”, it must be that there was intent to kill or otherwise destroy said groups. That is more like the European colonialists invading the Americas and telling the Native people, such as through the Spanish requirement of 1513, that they must “submit, or we will kill everybody”, as they did. As noted above, the situation had been created through various factors, none of which were intentional by means of the Soviet Union, but of which a couple included intentional acts by the Ukrainian landowning class & Ukrainian nationalists — again, even admitted by Jones himself. It’s also been established that the Central Soviet Authorities had sent massive amounts of food aid to Ukraine, and that Joseph Stalin himself intervened against regional authorities of the Russian region in order to ensure food was taken from Russians and being given to Ukrainians.

The issue of “genocide” specifically, as a qualifying term, the vast majority of countries on this planet have rejected it. Of the nearly 200 countries on this planet, the vast majority reject the “holodomor-genocide” claim. Of the ones that do, let’s examine a few of them briefly. You have the U.S. which genocided millions of Native peoples in the Americas, Australia which genocided hundreds of thousands of Native peoples, Belgium which committed a genocide in the “Congo Free State”, Canada which genocided Native people, Israel which is currently genociding Palestinians, etc. Regardless, even with these genocidal countries accepting the “holodomor-genocide” campaign, it remains that the vast majority of the countries of the planet do not.

Upon analyzing and breaking down the “holodomor-genocide” campaign’s theory and the implications, it becomes much more visible as a violent and dangerous campaign. The campaign claims that Stalin fighting bourgeois-minded Ukrainian nationalism was tantamount to genocide. However, when you break down this logic and apply it elsewhere, it becomes more visible as the foolish logic that it is. If Stalin destroying rabid bourgeois nationalism that sought to create an ethno-state in Ukraine, which was part of the Ukrainian society, was “genocide”, then what would that mean for the crushing of bourgeois German nazi nationalism, when that was part of German society and resulted “in part” the destruction of some Germans? This logic would then also foolishly and wrongly interpret, for instance, the Haitian revolution as “white genocide” since it targeted and destroyed the French colonialists. And so forth. The notion that any of these can be considered “genocide” is far from being logical or sensible.

The Central Soviet Authorities had stated on December 14th of 1932 that Ukrainization policy had inadvertently given legal cover to rabid bourgeois nationalist elements to organize anti-Soviet agitation, treason. In the decree which is cited by the campaigners as proof of a secret conspiracy to crush Ukraine, if you actually read it, it states that they recommend them “expel petliurites” (the rabid Ukrainian nationalists who had conducted pogroms under Symon Petliura) and others, and for them to carefully supervise the implementation of Ukrainization as to not embolden the rabid elements. It also states the following: “…instead of the correct Bolshevik implementation of nationality policy, “ukrainization” was carried out mechanically in a number of raions of Ukraine, failing to take into consideration the peculiarities of every raion and without the meticulous selection of Bolshevik cadres. This made it easier for bourgeois nationalist elements, petliurites and others to create their legal facades and counterrevolutionary cells and organizations.”

The Black Book of Communism openly portraying the OUN/UPA terrorists who participated in murdering Jews with the nazis such as in Babi Yar, where they set up the syrets concentration camp as heroic victims who fought against the “Communists and Jews”

This was evidently true as the fascist OUN had formed and began to rise under this policy which bourgeois-minded Ukrainian nationalists had exploited. These elements of Ukrainian society, the bourgeois-nationalist elements, that eventually collaborated with nazi Germany and sought to create an ethno-state had themselves proven in retrospect that Stalin was correct to be critical of them and their nationalist movement. They were not going to be happy until an ethno-state was created. This is the so-called “national liberation” movement of the Ukrainian nationalists which Stalin allegedly crushed, though the Ukrainian nationalists and the OUN persisted. This further demonstrates, in retrospect, that the so-called “national liberation” of the rabid Ukrainian nationalists who are portrayed as victims of “Stalinist repression” are less like a legitimate national liberation movement such as that of the Haitian national liberation and more like the bourgeois-nationalist nazi German movement which sought a distorted and truly fucked concept of “national liberation”, to create an ethno-state and remove ethnic minorities.

The “holodomor-genocide” claim of today is even more detached from reality than the campaigners of decades prior. The ethnic interpretation of the situation 1932–1933, and especially of the magnitude they claim and in claiming that it was an intentional genocide to crush Ukrainians, is far from the truth. The conception that a famine was created as a weapon to “stop Ukrainian national liberation”, above all, makes the assertion that the rabid Ukrainian nationalists of the OUN & co. were in fact “liberators”, good people, not evil like the German nazis. OUN-B leader Yaroslav Stetsko stated in July of 1941 that he supports “the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine”.

The rehabilitation of the rabid Ukrainian nationalists such as the OUN & UPA is an inevitable consequence and implication of accepting the “holodomor-genocide” claim. This rehabilitation should be rejected, forcefully. The perception of the Ukrainian nationalists as being “heroes” rather than, as they actually were, pogromists and nazi collaborators who committed some of the most horrific crimes in the holocaust and sought to create an ethno-state, is highly objectionable. The “holodomor-genocide” claim, de facto, asserts that these people are “victims”. It’s at this moment that we begin to see exactly why the comparison between the “holodomor-genocide” and the holocaust is so incredibly insidious. The holocaust was the large-scale systematic killing of ethnic minorities and other groups of peoples, especially Jewish people, by the German nazis and their collaborators, of which included the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Meanwhile the “holodomor-genocide” campaign claims that the Ukrainian nationalists who perpetuated pogroms before the 1930’s and the crimes of the holocaust in the 1940’s are the same as their victims who they massacred in the holocaust.

In summary, we have established the following facts regarding the situation 1932–1933:

1. Natural drought played a role in creating the situation

2. Ex-landowning kulaks and Ukrainian nationalists did in fact refuse to work, murder collective workers, slaughter their own cattle, and otherwise actively sabotage the sowing and harvesting campaigns

3. Importing industrial machinery was the reason for exporting amounts of food in order to increase production as fast as possible

4. The cycle of famines which had existed for centuries prior and inherited by the Soviet authorities ended after the industrialization and collectivization policies had been fully implemented and the nazi invasion had ended

5. Under Stalin, the Ukrainization policy went into effect for over a decade before being changed due to rabid bourgeois Ukrainian nationalist elements exploiting it for treasonous activities

6. Stalin did not harbor any unique hostility to the Ukrainian nationalists anymore than he did the Russian nationalists who he fought in the civil war or even the Georgian nationalists who he fought in the August uprising

7. The Ukrainian nationalist movement in question was heavily tied to anti-semitism & fascistic beliefs before the 1930’s and exposed themselves in their true goals by aligning with nazi Germany in their hopes to create an ethno-state

8. Central Soviet Authorities sent hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food to the Ukrainians from other regions and Stalin himself personally intervened to scold a regional Russian official objecting to sending aid and made him send food

9. The situation of hunger encompassed the entire union to varying degrees, including impacting ethnic Russians

10. The situation in Ukraine during 1932–1933 was not intentional or man-made by Joseph Stalin or the Central Soviet Authorities

11. The overwhelming and vast majority of countries on this planet do not recognize this situation as being a “genocide”

The idea of “holodomor” as an intentional or man-made genocide which specifically targeted Ukrainians and was used to crush Ukrainian nationalists fails on multiple fronts. Due to the nature of this perspective, I am without a doubt positive that words will be placed in my mouth alluding to me claiming it was utopian or something of that nature, but I would just like to categorically say that during this period some people did die. Though we’ve established that a large portion of the people who did die were people from the ex-landowning class who refused to work or actively pursued actions to sabotage the harvest and lessen the production of food, which was unfortunately largely successful, as it played a major role in creating this situation, that did result in some innocent people suffering and dying. In my view, the situation of 1932–1933 was tragic, but the false claims, notions, and the ensuing logic of the “holodomor-genocide” campaign should be vehemently rejected.

From Atlanta to Palestine: Liberation By Any Means Necessary

[Pictured: US and Israeli soldiers conduct joint urban warfare training near Jerusalem. Credit: Tsafrir Abayov/AP]

By Alex Ackerman

On May 31st, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Atlanta Police Department conducted a raid and arrested three Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers. The activists’ work has supported those arrested for protesting against Cop City, a $90 million police training facility planned to be built in the Weelaunee Forest, known as one of the “four lungs” of Atlanta. In 2021, the Atlanta City Council voted to approve the plan to build Cop City, despite overwhelming popular opposition. In an eerie echo of history, on June 5th of this year, the council voted to approve the funding of Cop City, culminating in $67 million of taxpayers’ money. Hundreds of Atlanta residents spoke for more than 17 hours in opposition, yet the City Council aligned with the ruling class and the forces of capital. 

The “Stop Cop City” movement opposes the construction of this facility due to the combination of environmental harm it stands to inflict and the heightened threat of police violence against the surrounding neighborhoods, whose residents are primarily Black. The imminent destruction of 381 acres of forest to build a mock city for police training epitomizes the United States’ settler-colonial legacy of theft of indigenous life and land. Cop City would strengthen police tactics and expand resources for urban warfare, which law enforcement currently utilize across the country, particularly against Black people. The raid against the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, carried out by a heavily armed SWAT team, marks an escalation of state-sanctioned violence, as those in power work to maintain the hegemony of the capitalist state at any cost.

The recent raid against bail fund organizers highlights the encroaching presence of fascism and the broader militarization of police. In the United States, police violence serves as a continuation of settler violence waged against internally colonized populations, particularly Black and indigenous communities. In January of this year, queer and indigenous forest defender and “Stop Cop City” organizer Tortuguita was shot 57 times by Georgia state troopers, who were carrying out a similar militarized raid of the protestors’ encampment in the forest that is slated for destruction. This execution exemplifies the necessity of resisting Cop City, as such indiscriminate executions will only continue and be systematized with the completion of the facility. On a national level, this escalation of police violence is evidenced by the fact that police killed more people in 2022 than in any other year on record, with 1,241 people murdered, 97 percent of whom were killed in police shootings. Originating from slave patrols, police in their modern context function as an extension of the state to terrorize captive populations, preventing any potential disruption of the capitalist status quo. When any threats to this domination arise, the ruling class will expend all available resources to quell the opposition. For example, 42 protestors face domestic terrorism charges after Atlanta police stormed a music festival held by activists in the Weelaunee Forest. Additionally, three organizers face felony charges, with the potential of serving 20 years in prison, for the simple act of placing flyers that identified Tortuguita’s killer on mailboxes. These tactics of repression reflect a concerted effort to crush the growing dissent of the Stop Cop City movement. In this manner, the police raids in Atlanta, the murder of Tortuguita, and the charges of domestic terrorism demonstrate the lengths to which the capitalist class will go to preserve their hegemony, weaponizing the police as a cudgel against the masses. 

The United States is not the only settler-colonial, imperialist force heightening state-sanctioned violence. Across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have carried out mass raids, indiscriminately arresting Palestinians and wreaking havoc through destruction, injury, and death in the dead of night. Specifically, occupation forces murdered two-year-old Mohammed Al-Tamimi, who succumbed to his wounds after being shot in the head. Furthermore, on Wednesday, June 7th, the IOF detained university student and ex-political prisoner Layan Kayed after ransacking her family home at dawn. The state-sanctioned inhumanity against the Palestinian people serves as a means of tormenting Palestinians, enforcing their subjugation by the Zionist entity with the aim of humiliation and demoralization. In essence, the cruelty is the point. These nightly raids comprise a fraction of the extensive violence enacted by the Israeli state and settlers, which are co-constitutive, whose goal is the complete eradication of Palestinians from the land. 

In addition to the raids, just this past week, Zionist occupation forces have assaulted Palestinians at apartheid checkpoints, uprooted more than 100 olive trees, demolished at least five family homes in East Jerusalem, and bombed a house in Ramallah. The IOF intentionally targeted and shot Palestinian journalists Mo’men Samreen and Rabie al-Munir, who were wearing their press uniforms, during a Ramallah raid. This attack is reminiscent of the deliberate and cold-blooded murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, another Palestinian journalist. These campaigns elucidate the reality of settler colonialism as an ongoing process of dispossession. Just as the United States arose as a European settler colony, so, too, does “Israel” share such colonial origins. In the monograph Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, Fayez A. Sayegh illustrates the alliance between British imperialism and Zionist colonialism:

“On the one hand, Britain, by utilizing Zionist influence in the United States and in France, would avert international rule in Palestine, on the pretext that a British-sponsored program of Zionist colonization required British rule in Palestine. On the other hand, by playing a catalytic role in bringing about the designation of Britain as the ruling Power in Palestine, Zionism would at last be able to embark upon the long-awaited program of large-scale colonization in the coveted territory under the auspices and protection of a Great power…For the Zionist settler-state, to be is to prepare and strive for territorial expansion.”

Though alliances have shifted with the emergence of the United States as the dominant imperialist power following the second World War, the primary contradiction of settler-colonialism persists. The existence of the Zionist state presupposes the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and the military aid supplied by the United States equips them with the resources to materially realize the decimation of Palestinian life and land. 

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From Atlanta to Palestine, the resistance against occupational forces is directly enmeshed in the material struggle for the land. As Frantz Fanon elucidates, “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” The struggles against Cop City and for the liberation of Palestine are mutually imbricated, as they both demonstrate state-sanctioned, settler-colonial violence by imperialist powers. Furthermore, the collaboration between the US and the Zionist state is the result of the impetus to further entrench their domination over colonized and working class people. 

Situated in the very site of the Stop Cop City movement, the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) illustrates this connection between the settler-colonial, imperialist powers. This joint project between Georgia State University and Georgia law enforcement facilitates international exchanges, subsidized by the Department of Justice, wherein the IOF and American police participate in cooperative training sessions. Not only do these settler-colonial states exchange tactics of warfare, but each also manufactures models of surveillance that the other can exploit against its own population. Specifically, the Atlanta Police Department created the Video Integration Center, a network of over 5,300 public and private cameras, after former Chief of Police George Turner visited “Israel” and observed the command and control center in Jerusalem. Such collaboration highlights the boomerang effect of colonialism, in which Palestine is used as a laboratory to develop technologies of surveillance and brutality that are imported into the imperial core and deployed against colonized and working class people. 

This boomerang effect remains far-reaching and reveals the interconnected nature of monopoly capitalism, imperialism, and settler-colonialism. Imperialist states and transnational corporations cooperate in a manner that serves their common interests: the perpetuation of their hegemony. Microsoft, for example, funded the startup Anyvision to produce technology utilizing thousands of cameras and facial recognition software to monitor hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank and Jerusalem. Employed by Zionist occupation forces, this project directly infringes on Palestinians’ liberties and right to self-determination, especially when even a Facebook post criticizing “Israel” marks a Palestinian as a target. Anyvision’s executives stated themselves that Palestine was a “testing ground” for this technology. In an effort to dodge the backlash sparked by the revelation of Palestinian surveillance, Anyvision rebranded to Oosto. This technology now extends its reach internationally, utilized by both private companies, such as casinos and sporting stadiums, and the American government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol. More recently, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence has engendered new ways by which surveillance technology can be wrought against the colonized. The Zionist entity has installed remote-controlled guns that use AI tracking systems to target Palestinians, with one gun located in the Aida refugee camp. Before long, such weaponry will also be used to target marginalized people and political organizers in the United States, such as those in Atlanta. 

The nature of monopoly capitalism is such that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie entails cooperation between state governments and transnational corporations. Moreover, the alliance between the United States and “Israel” further speaks to their interdependence, characterized by their common weaponization of state-sanctioned violence. The United States funds the Zionist forces by appropriating $3.8 billion annually, the majority of which consists of military assistance. In return,  the Zionist entity functions as an extension of American imperial interests in the Middle East. Kwame Ture aptly describes the relationship between the US and the Zionist state in that “[t]he United States is the greatest dehumanizer in the world, and Israel is nothing but a finger of the United States of America.” In this manner, the shared tactics of state repression unite these settler-colonial, imperialist projects with the goal of solidifying their domination. The struggles in Atlanta and across Palestine, therefore, must be understood in the context of the international movement for decolonization and liberation from imperialism. 

Confronting the garish violence deployed by the capitalist state and settlers alike, resistance remains steadfast, despite the immense power and resources at the disposal of the settler imperialist empire. Organizers have engaged in a wide variety of actions in opposition to Cop City, including protests, juridical avenues, sabotage of police equipment and surveillance technology, and occupation of the forest through community encampments, which have been continuous targets of police raids. In a groundbreaking moment of direct action, forest defenders overtook a police outpost at the proposed building site, setting ablaze multiple vehicles, construction infrastructure, and a mobile surveillance tower. Pursuing avenues for political expression outside of bourgeois-controlled channels signals a shift in class consciousness and a growing understanding of the power of collective, organized action. 

Palestinians resist the occupation on a daily basis, incurring the wrath of Israeli forces yet prevailing nonetheless. The summer of 2021 saw the widespread mobilization of Palestinians across occupied territories, known as the Unity Intifada, resulting in global rallying cries for Palestinian liberation. This mass uprising evinced the revolutionary spirit of Palestinian people in their ongoing struggle for liberation. In September of the same year, six Palestinian political prisoners dug their way to freedom in an historic prison break, using six spoons as their only tools. Militant resistance continues to manifest across Palestine, illustrated by the Lion’s Den, an organization that gained momentum in 2022 after responding to heightened Zionist settler violence. These manifestations of popular revolt against state-sanctioned displacement and death explicate the will of the colonized in that no amount of brute military force can dissipate the steadfast conviction in the cause for liberation. 

To bring an end to settler-colonialism, imperialism, and all oppressive systems necessitates resistance by any means necessary. In an effort to maintain their illegitimate power, both settler-colonial entities criminalize this resistance with the aim of intimidating opposing forces into silence. The three Atlanta forest defenders arrested for flyering were detained in solitary confinement for multiple days, a purposefully torturous warning to every activist who dares defy the construction of Cop City. That these organizers faced legal retribution designates them as political prisoners subjected to persecution by the settler capitalist state. This form of state repression is rampant in Palestine, where over 1,000 political prisoners are incarcerated without charge or trial. In the face of this policy of administrative detention, detainees remain at the forefront of the struggle by organizing hunger strikes for their freedom. The deployment of this tactic across Atlanta and Palestine has only further intensified in recent years in response to growing resistance movements. 

The interconnected nature of these struggles highlights that resistance to imperialism requires solidarity across borders. The United States finances the Zionist occupation of Palestine, wherein weapons and technology are tested and subsequently imported back into the imperial core. Make no mistake: this fascist violence will not be contained only to Atlanta. If Cop City is built, the implications will reverberate not only across the country but also around the world. 

This escalation of state-sanctioned violence represents the fear of popular support and proliferating solidarity. Walter Rodney connects people’s political consciousness to their material conditions, explaining that “[s]o long as there is political power, so long as a people can be mobilized to use weapons, and so long as a society has the opportunity to define its own ideology and culture, then the people of that society have some control over their own destinies…” (255). If people take their destinies into their own hands, if people imagine a future free from capitalist and imperialist domination, these hegemons will crumble before our very eyes. Every martyr who has sacrificed their lives for the sake of this common cause against settler-colonialism and imperialism is not just a number, and they have not died in vain. The people with whom they shared a uniting goal uphold their memory by resisting every day until they achieve victory.  

Why Is Lula’s Government Environmentally Ambiguous?

[Photo credit: Grist / MAURO PIMENTEL / AFP via Getty Images]

By Diego Viana

On January 1st, 2023, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva walked up the ramp of the presidential palace to begin his third term as President of Brazil, he was accompanied by eight people who represented the diversity of the country's population. Among them was Raoni Metuktire, chief and spokesperson of the Mẽbêngôkre people of Northern Brazil (popularly known as “Kayapó”), who achieved international fame in 1989, when rockstar Sting took him on a world tour in defense of the Amazon rainforest.

The display of diversity was a response to four years of a far-right, nationalist government that trampled over the rights of women, the LGBTQIA+ community, and indigenous peoples especially. The new government began in a context of shock, in the country and abroad, over former president Jair Bolsonaro's open support of illegal miners who invaded the lands of the Yanomami people in the Amazon, poisoned their streams with mercury, and suppressed any attempt at resistance. The federal government knew about the spread of famine and diseases among the Yanomami and openly chose not to act.

For many on the Left, seeing Lula and Raoni hold hands brought hope. First and foremost, it felt like a whiff of reconciliation, after approximately ten years of estrangement. Like other social movements, indigenous rights activists felt that the Brazilian Left had betrayed them and given its support to the old hegemonic project of occupying the Amazon through cattle rearing, mining, and building inefficient and expensive hydroelectric power plants. On the other hand, Lula's first stint as President (2003-2010) was successful in reducing Amazon deforestation, especially after worrisome data presented in 2002 revealed that deforestation had cleared over 28,000 square kilometers.

Largely due to the efforts of the Minister of Environment, activist Marina Silva, deforestation fell continuously until 2011 — three years after she left her post. The government also, in accordance with the 1988 Constitution, helped restore the rights of indigenous Brazilians over their historical lands. The military reacted grudgingly, alleging that this would undermine national sovereignty. The agribusiness sector, who had their eyes on large tracts of land in the region, in turn responded by creating a "milestone thesis," according to which only the lands indeed occupied by indigenous groups in 1988 should be recognized. The Supreme Court is yet to judge the validity of this thesis.

The same period was nonetheless a time when a series of ambitious engineering projects in the Amazon, first developed as part of a national-developmentalist ideology held by the military dictatorship in the 1970s, were put forward, so as to favor a handful of monopolistic companies and the advance of agribusiness. Among these projects, the Belo Monte dam, built between 2010 and 2016 at an estimated cost of 40 billion Brazilian reals (roughly $8 billion), is probably the most well-known and also the most deleterious. Against continuous and vocal opposition from environmentalists and indigenous activists, these projects were accelerated under Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), also from the Workers' Party. Around 2012 or 2013, the president of the Workers' Party, Gleisi Hoffman, who still occupies that post today, referred to the indigenous and environmental activists who were fighting against Belo Monte as “minorities with unrealistic ideological projects.”

Representatives of agribusiness progressively assumed key positions in Rousseff's government. This culminated in the appointment of a landowner, Senator Kátia Abreu, as Minister of Agriculture in 2015. Abreu, who owns multiple large farms in the central plains of Brazil, was by then already known to her critics as "Miss Deforestation," with Greenpeace and other NGOs awarding her a satirical golden chainsaw trophy in 2009. In 2013, during a cattle auction aimed at raising funds for the expansion of what was dubbed “private security” for farmers, meaning armed groups historically known for massacres of the local indigenous and landless peoples, she echoed the Wannsee Conference by promising to find a solution to “the indigenous question.” The episode is portrayed in detail in the film Martírio, directed by Vincent Carelli.

Unsurprisingly, soy producers interpreted Abreu’s appointment as free rein to invade Guarani-Kaiowá lands in the Center-Western state of Mato Grosso do Sul. They proceeded accordingly, engaging in their usual displays of gun violence and neglect of indigenous health tantamount to biological warfare. It is remarkable how these tactics mirror those of the colonizers from centuries past. Since the 16th century, land grabbers eliminated indigenous settlements by distributing clothes and toys infected with smallpox and other diseases.

The anti-environmental policies culminating in the construction of Belo Monte distanced much of the Left from what was still, by far, Brazil’s leading popular party. Marina Silva, who quit as Minister of the Environment in 2008, ran for president against Rousseff in 2010 and 2014. In the latter occasion, she nearly made it to the runoff election, but was held back to a large extent by a smear campaign conducted by her former party companions. She reacted by announcing her support for the right-wing candidate, Aécio Neves, in a move that might have cost her most of her political capital.

And yet, after the traumatic experience of the far Right in office, Silva and Lula were reunited. That was not all. Raoni's presence in Brasília, the capital, expressed the new government's commitment to advance indigenous leadership. The administration also created a new ministry specifically designed to advance indigenous land claims, directed by activist Sonia Guajajara. The Federal Police, for years complicit in the crimes of landowners and illegal miners, resumed their operations, destroying equipment and removing invaders, aided by the national Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama).

One might expect Lula’s administration to further reconcile with the indigenous community by abandoning big engineering projects and fighting agribusiness. They appeared to be starting these efforts in November, when President Lula attended the COP27 meeting in Egypt and declared that “Brazil is back.” He also brokered the return of German, Norwegian, British, and American investment in the Amazon Fund, which was created in 2008 under the management of the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES) to prevent deforestation and foster sustainable economic activities. The government's stated environmental goals involve reducing deforestation in the Amazon to zero, eliminating land conflicts, and rewriting the tax code to favor sustainable development.

This is where the picture begins to blur. The powerful landowners of the soy-exporting Central-West region have long pushed for the construction of a 580-mile long railway named “Ferrogrão,” which loosely translates to “grain rail.” It would cut through the Amazon rainforest, including protected areas like the Jamanxim National Park, slashing the cost and time of transporting the soybeans to the northern port of Belém. Another controversial project would allow for oil extraction in the “Equatorial Margin,” in deep waters near the estuary of the Amazonas river.

In March, President Lula's transportation minister, Renan Filho, expressed support for Ferrogrão, arguing that it reduces carbon emissions relative to the current use of trucks. Also in March, the president of Petrobras, Brazil’s enormous state-owned oil company, told investors that the Equatorial Margin project is a priority, though still in an early stage. The company expects $3 billion in investment. Other projects, such as a high-speed passenger rail line in the Northeast region, put to the test a passage of Lula's victory speech from October 13th of last year:

“We will show that it is possible to generate wealth without destroying nature”.

It is not entirely unsurprising that Lula's government is sending contradictory signals, trying to balance the demands of traditional, conservative pressure groups with the aspirations of social movements. There are both objective and subjective reasons for the mixed message. Firstly, it is hard to overstate the political power of agribusiness in Brazil. While the country has undergone a violent process of deindustrialization since the 1980s, agricultural and mining exports have become a financial lifeline for national accounts. As the influence of the manufacturing sector waned, that of landowners expanded. Productivity gains owed to the national research agency Embrapa’s development of a resilient soybean variant adapted to the tropics has turned vast zones of the previously untouched West into a powerhouse of soy and cattle.

Secondly, oil drilling is one of the few remaining areas where Brazil still invests in cutting-edge industrial technology. Sidelining the oil sector might prove suicidal for a government that draws much of its support from trade unions, as the fossil fuel sector is a stronghold of unionization in a deindustrializing country. The government also envisages oil production as a guarantor of energy security, until renewables become the main source of energy — most notably, biofuels and wind power in the Northeast.

Keep in mind that Lula's political profile has always been far from the radical leftist that both his conservative detractors and many of his left-wing supporters, in Brazil and abroad, tend to see. It would be kitsch, but not amiss, to describe him as a master of conciliation. As a union leader in the late 1970s, he excelled at negotiating deals between workers and employers. This shaped his politics for years to come.

At the negotiating table, Lula’s ultimate goal is always to reach a stable agreement. He has never been confrontational and is certainly not a revolutionary. While this attitude can certainly be criticized and faces the obvious limitation of objective conditions, recall that his much more confrontational successor, Dilma Rousseff, was sacked. This contrast should be read as an indication of what Lula's political ability, as one of the most important left-wing leaders alive, actually consists of. With his grasp of the stakes and possibilities of Brazilian politics, he acts as a manager of conflicts, identifying where advancement is and isn’t possible — frustrating as this might be for his grassroots diehards.

Beyond the individual figure of Lula, the ambiguity of the Workers' Party's record on indigenous rights and environmental policy offers a glimpse of the high political stakes in Brazil, a continent-sized country that houses half of the largest rainforest in the world and — at the same time — is one of the widest frontiers of agricultural expansion today. The interplay of political pressure and economic power from both sides of the dispute exposes the aporias and contradictions of 21st-century capitalism with unusual clarity.

To understand how the conflict plays out in Brazil today, look to the government. One expression of Lula's notorious ability for compromise and conciliation is his capacity to translate social conflicts into internal disputes between his ministers. This was the case between 2003 and 2010, and is now happening again. But is it possible to be a conciliatory leader in a country that derives much of its resources from predatory activities and still deliver on your promises to the environment and indigenous peoples?

That tension led to a rift which broke out in May of this year, when Ibama denied Petrobras the right to proceed with studies about the viability and safety of oil extraction from the Equatorial Margin, citing technical inconsistencies in the company's project. Petrobras' president, Jean Paul Prates, who is also a senator from the Workers' Party, regretted the loss of a “golden opportunity” to develop the Northern state of Amapá. The episode shows that, even within the government and the Left in general, many still consider fossil fuels a source of economic progress and think of environmentalism as a hurdle. Petrobras later announced it would revise its application, allegedly addressing the issues raised by Ibama.

All of this took place while Lula was attending the G7 meeting in Japan. Without mentioning the crisis among his supporters, the President structured his speech, given in Kyoto on May 19th, around the problems of oil dependency, war, and climate change. Here is the opening sentence:

“When G7 was created, in 1975, the main global crisis revolved around oil. Forty-eight years later, the world still has not managed to get rid of its dependency on fossil fuels.”

His main point was to rehash the demand presented last year at COP27: that the wealthiest countries should make good on their pledge, first expressed in 2009, to allocate $100 billion to climate action every year. To his domestic audience, in contrast, Lula tweeted allusively about "clean jobs" and "exploiting the Amazon's diversity" so that the region's 28 million people can "work and eat." The tweet was a masterpiece of ambiguity, sounding like a diplomatic dispatch in its capacity to express nothing at all.

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This was not the end of the story. On May 24th, Congress took two worrisome steps that many on the Left interpreted as capitulation, especially since the government presented little to no resistance. First, a commission approved an interim measure that, if carried out, would force changes in the structure of government, removing important agencies from the Environment, Agrarian Development and Indigenous Peoples ministries, such as the registry of rural properties, the administration of water resources, and the demarcation of indigenous lands. These agencies would be reassigned to ministries where the bureaucracy is controlled by the agribusiness sector, such as the agriculture ministry.

Later that day, the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, passed a resolution that accelerated a vote about the milestone thesis, in such a way that NGOs, social movements and indigenous organizations would not have time to mount significant protests that have so far prevented the project from advancing. By voting on May 30th, Lira would also get ahead of the Supreme Court, who scheduled their own vote on the constitutionality of the rule for June 7th. A previous favorable decision by the House might predispose the Justices.

While these moves were a clear show of how powerful the agribusiness caucus remains, the episode as a whole elicited a swift response from civil society and Silva. The Minister made a speech warning of possible international backlash to the impending environmental destruction. She acknowledged that the country is going through a "difficult moment." Nevertheless, she promised resistance, saying that "good trees grow with stronger winds." Lula, in turn, tried to project calmness by saying — during an event at the Manufacturing Federation of São Paulo — that the political game was only just beginning. Subsequently, he summoned the ministers of the areas concerned for an emergency meeting.

It is hard to predict where these various conflicts are heading. But it is significant that the President has consistently stood by his environmental minister in both disputes. While it might be premature to declare that these episodes will result in victories for Silva, they certainly do not yet represent the defeat many on the Left are seeing.

It is worthwhile to contrast this episode to 2008, when — as Minister of the Environment — Silva lost a similar battle, which turned out to be consequential. Back then, Lula chose to side with Rousseff, the Minister of Mines and Energy at the time, by opting to proceed with the construction of the Belo Monte dam. The defeat led Silva, who was still a member of the Workers' Party, to leave for the Green Party and also resign from her post.

After 15 years, Silva’s position appears to be stronger. What’s changed? The answer may lie in the forces Silva brings with her into the government and, as a consequence, into its internal disputes. Silva's reconciliation with Lula represents a tentative alliance between the Workers’ Party and the emerging subset of “green capitalism,” backed by a powerful faction of the financial and corporate sector.

The emergence of green capitalism created a significant fault line within capital itself. While fossil fuels had become somewhat disgraced — at least until the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict —, “green” or “sustainable” capitalism has presented itself as the sole alternative to the archaic, unproductive model of extractivism and commodity export to which Brazil reverted in the last four decades.

More recently, development projects promising to boost the economy without destroying the Amazon have come to the fore. These projects hope to multiply the yields and jobs in the Northern regions of the country, which would thus become the new epicenter of economic growth, estimated to account for approximately 14% of the Brazilian gross domestic product. The prospect of new fields for investment with potentially high returns has attracted the attention of corporate and financial leaders from the more developed Southeast region of the country, particularly the two biggest cities and main financial centers, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 

Brands such as Natura (cosmetics) and Raízen (biofuels) have become household names, brandishing their fame as sustainable and green. The owners of these companies, as well as bankers like Maria Alice Setúbal (Itaú bank) and the orthodox economist Eduardo Giannetti, have become Silva's main interlocutors in the last decade and helped create her party, Rede Sustentabilidade. When Lula and Silva joined forces in the presidential campaign last year, these actors were brought closer to the Workers' Party, to whom they are in principle hardly sympathetic.

For Lula, the most important gain lies in recovering part of the capitalist sector’s support, which was entirely lost after the chaotic economy of the Rousseff years. At least some of this has already taken place. In the 2018 election, big money in Brazil sided overwhelmingly with the far Right to elect Bolsonaro. In 2022, the divide was less clear-cut, with many representatives of the economic elite in São Paulo declaring their support for democracy in the abstract and occasionally for Lula explicitly.

If this is so, then the President is currently trying to accommodate not two, but three social forces. Within the capitalist setting, he has to mediate the tug of war between two forms of exploitation of the land: the nearly monocultural soy and meat complex on one hand and the technology- and capital-intensive bioeconomic project on the other. This is the local form of the global impasse of demanding to divest from fossil fuels while upholding an energy-intensive lifestyle based on growth and consumption.

It is hard to assess how much of this conflict is merely superficial, as major investors have no scruples in investing on both sides. It is also unclear to what extent we are looking at an attempt to greenwash capital as a whole. We should not forget that even the cleanest of large-scale economic activities must rely on such industries as lithium, cobalt, and rare-earth mining, or palm tree plantations, where working conditions are often degrading and the environmental record is hardly better than that of the fossil fuel industry.

Which brings us to the third actor: civil society, particularly social mobilization and environmental activism. With the aforementioned vectors of capitalism as a background, what strength do these groups have to achieve their policy goals? So far, there are signs that they are more capable of achieving their aims today than they were two decades ago.

Even during the dark times of far-right government, yearly assemblies of indigenous nations in Brasília called “Acampamento Terra Livre” (Free Land Camp) helped to attract attention to their plight and might have been able to freeze the far Right's project to limit their land rights to the territories occupied in 1988 when the Constitution was adopted (after a particularly harsh period of expulsions and persecution during the dictatorship). But this does not mean that they are strong enough to push the government toward more aggressive action in their defense. In May, the agriculture minister Carlos Fávaro, himself a soy producer and representative of agribusiness, expressed sympathy for the "milestone thesis" in an interview and suggested that the President might also have a favorable view. 

Also, the Landless Workers Movement (MST), one of the most important social movements in Brazil pushing for land reform, has established itself as a relevant producer of food products — particularly organic ones. In March, after less than three months of the new Lula government, the leader of MST, João Pedro Stédile, declared that initiatives for land reform were “too slow” and that the movement would increase pressure on Brasília to secure more incentives for family agriculture and organic crops.

A wave of mobilization, including the occupation of unproductive properties, was planned for the following months. Needless to say, the MST is the most maligned entity among the Right, as it represents the opposite kind of occupation of the territory. In May, far-right Congresspeople approved the creation of a commission to investigate the movement, with accusations that go as far as terrorism.

It is no wonder that Raoni's presence next to Lula had such an impact on public opinion and foreign commenters. Yet, politically, the gesture was as pragmatic as ever. Nevertheless, the playing field has clearly changed, apparently in favor of the environment, even if one is justified in suspecting high levels of greenwashing.

If we recognize that the climate crisis runs as two parallel conflicts — one between two brands of capitalism and, the other, against capital itself — it is remarkable that Lula is once again internalizing both struggles in the structures of his government. While the fundamental ambiguity at the core of his politics remains untouched, it is permeable to outside pressure (ie, social struggle), the ultimate source of political change.

Diego Viana is a Brazilian economic journalist. He earned his PhD in political philosophy from the University of São Paulo and covers Brazilian politics, economy, and social conflict.

Cornel West, the Pitfalls of Bourgeois Politics, and Forging a New Future Among the Rubble

By Colin Jenkins

On Monday, June 5th, Dr. Cornel West announced his bid to run for the presidency of the United States in 2024. Coming on the heels of two such runs by Bernie Sanders, as well as current runs by Marianne Williamson and Robert Kennedy, Jr. West is seeking to fill what many view as a “progressive” void on the grandest electoral stage. However, in contrast to the other three, West, a longtime member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), will shun the Democratic Party and run on a third-party ticket under the People’s Party.

West’s announcement came via his Twitter account, where he has one million followers, and has amassed over 18 million views, 47k likes, and 18k shares in a few days. The announcement coincided with an interview on Russell Brand’s Rumble livestream, Stay Free, and sparked a flurry of mainstream news reports over the last few days.

As the buzz continues to gain momentum, we should ask ourselves a few questions. What does this candidacy mean for working-class politics? Considering the recent betrayals by Bernie Sanders, can we expect anything different from West? Can any significant change come from participating in bourgeois elections? And, finally, should working-class people invest our time, energy, and resources to support West?

What does this mean for working-class politics?

While West’s candidacy could properly be described as the most potentially-overt, working-class (aka anti-capitalist, left-wing) endeavor we have seen on this stage since perhaps the 1960s, it remains to be seen how far he is willing to go. Outside of the Green Party, which has made strides to fill this void in recent years by including explicitly anti-capitalist wording in its national platform and running candidates such as Ajamu Baraka, there is no actual, organized, mainstream left in the United States. Socialist parties that are grounded in working-class emancipation exist, but they are typically small, fragmented, at constant war with one another, and subjected to mainstream censorship. The Green Party itself falls into the same traps, is scattered and unorganized due to a lack of resources, and has been chronically hamstrung by the capitalist duopoly’s (Democrats and Republicans) increasingly difficult standards for getting on ballots.

A major problem for authentic working-class politics in the US is the widespread misconception that Democrats and liberals are, in fact, “left wing.” This is an ahistorical belief that is ignorant to the formation, and subsequent historical developments, of political ideology. It is also an issue that has been historically unique to the US, as an international powerhouse birthed from the fascistic wombs of Native Genocide and chattel slavery and maintained by fascist tendencies embedded within the utter dominance of capital (the wealthy minority) over labor (the working majority). It goes without saying that the US government, in serving global capital, has thrived on exploiting not only much of the world, especially the Global South, vis-à-vis colonialism and imperialism, but also much of its own population, especially working-class peoples from historically-marginalized demographics (black, brown, women, migrants).

Thus, the country’s proclaimed “democracy,” or “republic,” has never actually been democratic in any genuine manner because self-determination and self-governance do not, and cannot, exist under capitalist modes of production. A “common good” can also not exist, which means that a so-called “social contract” cannot exist. These are realities that were firmly understood by the founders of the country, all of whom were privileged men of wealth hell-bent on breaking free from the confines of a monarchy while simultaneously arranging their own elaborate system of class dominance for centuries to come. The masses have been led to believe that the two capitalist/imperialist political parties which run the US exist in vastly different ideological wings, and that we have civic empowerment through the act of voting. However, this could not be further from the truth. And a West candidacy has the potential to destroy this illusion simply by showing the people what a genuine working-class (aka left-wing) candidate looks like – something most have never seen.

However, before we decide on where to stand with West’s campaign, there are many questions that need to be pondered. Because West’s track record is a mixed bag. There are aspects of his politics that are promising, just as there are aspects that are problematic. In light of the last few elections, we can’t help but ask ourselves if he will choose the same path as Bernie Sanders by building potentially radical momentum among the masses, only to pull the plug and herd us back to the Democrats? Or will he understand the importance of truly breaking from not only the capitalist duopoly, but also the dominant bourgeois (capitalist) institutions, narratives, and psychological tactics that have us all trapped in a tightly-manicured ideological space, inundated with delusions, paranoia, and hysteria pushed by capitalist media? Will he use this campaign in an ironically-masterful manner to steer us away from the electoral arena? And, if so, can he leave us with at least a foundation of formidable working-class organizations that are prepared for both the fascist wave and the demise of both capitalism and the United States as we know it?

the bernie lesson, the good and the bad of west, and will we ultimately be sold out again?

So, will West and his campaign ultimately herd us back to the Democratic Party? Anyone who has been involved in working-class politics – most notably, the Bernie Sanders campaigns – would likely ponder this question with fear, and understandably so. Sanders has been the closest thing we have had as a representative of the working class on a national stage in decades. Sanders’ first run in 2016 was especially electric in this regard, as he railed against capitalist greed, did not shy away from the “socialist” label, and generally maintained a solid campaign in support of the working-class masses, at least by US political standards. In terms of tangible results, Sanders spearheaded a formidable organizational following and gave millions of young adults the courage to call themselves “socialists,” even if perhaps many still did not know what this meant.

However, as beneficial as Sanders was to many, some noticed warning signs early. In a 2015-piece at Black Agenda Report, as the Sanders phenomenon began to gain steam, the late Bruce Dixon published a scathing critique, and what would come to be a prophetic warning, about Sanders serving as a “sheepdog” for the Democratic Party and its anointed candidate, Hillary Clinton. Unfazed by the momentum, Dixon brilliantly noted,

“Spoiler alert: we have seen the Bernie Sanders show before, and we know exactly how it ends. Bernie has zero likelihood of winning the Democratic nomination for president over Hillary Clinton. Bernie will lose, Hillary will win. When Bernie folds his tent in the summer of 2016, the money, the hopes and prayers, the year of activist zeal that folks put behind Bernie Sanders' either vanishes into thin air, or directly benefits the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

Dixon’s article was labeled as unnecessarily cynical by many at the time. However, to those who had followed electoral politics from a working-class perspective for some time, it was an accurate reflection of a decades-old tactic used by Democrats:

“1984 and 88 the sheepdog candidate was Jesse Jackson. In 92 it was California governor Jerry Brown. In 2000 and 2004 the designated sheepdog was Al Sharpton, and in 2008 it was Dennis Kucinich. This year it's Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. The function of the sheepdog candidate is to give left activists and voters a reason, however illusory, to believe there's a place of influence for them inside the Democratic party, if and only if the eventual Democratic nominee can win in November.”

In the end, Dixon’s warnings and predictions came to fruition. Sanders did, in fact, throw in the towel, publicly lauded Clinton, and asked his army of loyal followers to support her in the general election against Trump.

A much greater degree of skepticism followed Sanders’ second run in 2020. In a 2019 piece for Left Voice, Doug Greene exposed Sanders as a consistent supporter of US imperialism, opening with the following breakdown:

“On February 19, 2019, Vermont Senator and “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders announced his plans to run for the Democratic Party nomination for President. The announcement was met with cheers from large swaths of the American left who identify with his support for expanded labor rights, Medicare for All, free college, and a litany of other progressive issues. Those appear to be very compelling reasons to back the Sanders’ campaign. However, when it comes to American imperialism and war, Sanders may offer slightly different rhetoric than other Democratic candidates or Donald Trump, but his record proves him to be no alternative at all.”

Greene went on to provide detailed examples of Sanders’ support of the US war machine as a battering ram for global capital, which included backing the arms industry during the Reagan years, supporting sanctions and bombings during the Clinton years, supporting Bush’s initial response to the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center, providing lukewarm responses to Israel’s brutalization of Palestinians while refusing to support the BDS movement, and finally “by voting in favor of the military budget in 2009, 2010, and 2013, and supporting Obama’s military actions against Libya, sanctions against Russia, providing a billion dollars in aid to the far right Ukrainian government in 2014, and supported arming the Saudi Arabian monarchy to fight ISIS.”

Ultimately, despite being slighted by the Democrats, which pulled every backdoor maneuver possible to push their corporate candidate, Joe Biden, to the forefront, Sanders once again willingly stepped back, publicly proclaimed Biden to be worthy of the office, and asked everyone to support Biden. While Sanders had already lost a significant amount of support after his first betrayal, this second act of treachery seemed to be the final nail in his coffin, and legacy. Now, in retrospect, it is difficult for many of even his loyalist followers to see Sanders as anything other than what Bruce Dixon labeled him – a sheepdog who stole the immense time, energy, and resources that he received from millions and handed it over to the capitalist/imperialist Democratic Party, with no strings attached.

Which now brings us to Cornel West, who happened to be a vocal supporter of Sanders. To be fair, Marianne Williamson or Robert Kennedy, Jr. fit the profile of “sheepdog candidate” much more so than West does. West offers us much greater potential in terms of constructing an authentic, working-class campaign. But, still, we must ask ourselves, is he any different than Sanders?

In many ways, he is. First and foremost, West is not a career Senator of the US imperialist state and a direct surrogate of the Democratic Party. While West supported Sanders during the runups to both presidential elections, he ultimately had the integrity to “disobey” him by endorsing Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, in the 2016 general election. And while West, like many others, threw all of his weight behind the political ascendency of Barack Obama in 2008, he showed bravery and consistency by reconsidering this support shortly after Obama took office, publicly criticizing the country’s first black president for his Wall Street appointments, rampant drone strikes, record deportations, and unwillingness to take action for the struggling working-class masses, including the millions of black USAmericans who experienced no tangible benefits from the administration. In doing so, West faced a harsh backlash from much of the black community, who were understandably high on the symbolic victory and immense significance of seeing a black man in the oval office. Many viewed West’s criticisms of Obama as “petty jealousy,” despite the fact that they were perfectly consistent with West’s track record and represented a level of intellectual honesty that is rare in these times.

West has also remained steadfast in his support of the Palestinian people against the apartheid regime in Israel, something that typically amounts to political suicide in the United States (see the recent example of Robert Kennedy, Jr. quickly changing his tune on this very matter when pressured). And perhaps the most important difference is West’s willingness to shun the Democratic Party and run as a third-party candidate under the People’s Party. There has been much to say about why West chose this relatively-unknown party over the seemingly obvious choice of the Green Party, and that may be worthy of investigation, but the importance of this decision is more so in the blatant rejection of the Democrats, who have maintained a decades-long stranglehold on progressives, much of the working class, a large majority of the black community, and even some socialists, despite ongoing militarism, pro-corporate policies, and covert racism.

West has openly pushed for internationalism and has provided a more nuanced opinion on the situation between Russia and Ukraine, ultimately placing much of the blame on the United States and NATO, while calling for the disbandment of NATO. It is difficult to imagine someone like Bernie Sanders, who is a career Senator of the very state responsible for much of the strife in that region, thinking such things, much less saying them out loud. In fact, Sanders notably hopped on the “Russiagate” train following the 2016 election and has toed the Democratic party line since then.

However, in many ways, West is not different. In 2020, West joined other public intellectuals in supporting Biden as the “anti-fascist choice” in the general election against Trump, essentially going against his consistent opposition of both capitalist parties under the impression that Trump represented the greater threat. West described the battle between the two parties as “catastrophe (Trump and Republicans)” versus “disaster (Biden and Democrats)” and, while noting that Biden was not his first choice, ultimately proclaimed that “catastrophes are worse than disasters” in his official endorsement of Biden:

“There is a difference in neofascist catastrophe and neoliberal disaster,” he said. “Catastrophes are worse than disasters. Disasters have less scope and range regarding certain kinds of issues. I never want to downplay the least vulnerable in our society — our gay brothers, lesbian sisters, trans, Black poor, brown poor, Indigenous poor. They are more viciously attacked by the neofascists than the neoliberals. But the neoliberals capitulate to the attack. I would never say they’re identical, but I would say poor and working people are still getting crushed over and over again.”

On a Facebook post made on September 4, 2020, West shared a video link of his speech along with the explanation that, “An anti-fascist vote for Biden is in no way an affirmation of Neoliberal politics. In this sense, I agree with my brothers and sisters like Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Paul Street, and Bob Avakian.” Fifteen months earlier, however, in a Fox News appearance on The Ingraham Angle, West correctly referred to Biden as a “dye-in-the-wool, backward-looking neoliberal with little vision and even less courage” who “represents a past that hurt black people.”

West’s attempts to be a unifying force throughout his role as a public intellectual has led him to appear on platforms that many view as problematic, especially in a time when overt fascism is converging around various forms of bigotry, including Fox News, Joe Rogan’s podcast, Real Time with Bill Maher, and the former founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes’s, show, to name a few. There are also questions regarding the new People’s Party itself, which has faced criticisms about its ineffective organizing and willingness to include right-wing populists in a big-tent effort to focus on common struggles. This approach has led to some internal strife, rooted mainly in race dynamics, where some black members have felt understandably uneasy about the inclusion of working-class whites who exhibit racist and xenophobic undertones. It is unclear how substantial this problem is within the party but, at a time when identity politics has largely overshadowed and obstructed working-class unity, it is safe to assume it is potentially significant. Nevertheless, West has obviously embraced the party, being a founding member himself, enough to run as its presidential candidate.

West has openly supported the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) movement, which may not seem problematic on the surface, as the call for reparations for black descendants of US slavery is a righteous and worthy cause. But, in doing so, West has ignored a perceived betrayal of Pan-African principles by the organization, which excludes most of the African diaspora throughout the world to embrace a peculiarly pro-US orientation. In a nuanced critique of the organization, Broderick Dunlap tells us,

“There is no question that Black folks in the United States are entitled to reparations for slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and centuries of racist violence. There is also no question that the United States has caused insurmountable harm to Africans outside of the US. To deny that is to deny history and reality. Understanding that the demand for reparations is an attempt to hold America accountable for harm done to Black folks, excluding Black folks from the conversation contradicts what ADOS claims to be trying to achieve. Besides the impracticality of trying to distinguish between people who are deemed ADOS and other diasporic Africans and biracial Black folks, Africans are socialized and racialized the same as Black folks born in the US. This contradiction is the primary reason it would serve ADOS leaders to adopt Black internationalist principles, so they can build a movement ‘informed by and engaged with real-world struggles.’”

Perhaps the most problematic aspect of West’s politics, though, has been his willingness to express anti-communist talking points. This willingness stems from the red-scare era of US history, when anyone and everyone who merely “sympathized” with socialism and communism were ostracized, exiled, imprisoned, and even murdered by the US government. And while such fears have certainly dissipated since the end of the Cold War and disbandment of the USSR, public intellectuals with large platforms and tenures at major universities are seemingly still held to this standard, with Noam Chomsky being the most notable of this bunch.

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West’s longtime association with Michael Harrington’s DSA also represents an in-between, anti-communist position between capitalism and socialism that is often indistinguishable from mid-20th century US liberals. From this standpoint, folks like West and Sanders can safely deliver vague socialist talking points while serving as social democrats, but are ultimately limited by their peculiar faith in US democracy and reformism, which becomes even more problematic by their anti-communism.

West’s constant yearning for unity among the people, while certainly commendable and needed, can and has led to extending an open hand to elements of the working class who are likely irredeemable, if not simply dangerous, due to their fierce bigotry, intense xenophobia, and blatant misogyny. And his unwillingness to commit to forceful politics over vague intellectualism has led him to make problematic assessments, one of which included a tweet from 2011, in which he oddly proclaimed Ronald Reagan as “a freedom fighter in terms of supporting our Jewish bros & sis in the Soviet Union & opposing vicious forms of communism.”

Granted, this tweet was made as part of a series of tweets that addressed Barack Obama’s public adoration of Reagan – ironically stating “this glorification of Ronald Reagan is really a sad commentary on our lack of historical consciousness” and concluding that Obama was “chasing the cheap fantasy of bipartisanship.” But, nonetheless, it provides a good example on how the weight of anti-communism, which seems to be holding West hostage, can be a potentially blinding force during a time when it, as a direct product of Nazism and fascism, needs to be snuffed out once and for all. In the end, such a blind spot is not only a massive liability, but also seemingly suggests the potential to drift back into the hands of the Democratic Party.

Can any significant change come from participating in bourgeois elections?

Oddly enough, if any significant change comes from this campaign, it will exist outside the realm of electoral politics. We would be foolish to believe that A) West can win, and B) even if he did win, he would have the power to single-handedly enact policies that would benefit the working-class masses. While this may sound defeatist, it is not. Because the reality is the US government and its entire political system are not only completely controlled by the will of capital, but were deliberately set up by the founders for this very reason: “to protect the opulent minority from the toiling majority,” to paraphrase James Madison.

Does this mean the working class has never won meaningful concessions from the government, via electoral politics? Of course not. Bourgeois democracy, despite its deliberate orientation as a force of capital, has represented a battleground between the class interests of the capitalist minority and the working-class majority in the past. In fact, during times of capitalist crises, the system has responded in ways that have resulted in very real concessions for the working class. In the US, the most notable period that included such concessions came during the 1930s, when “New Deal” policies were implemented in response to the Great Depression. Throughout the 20th century, Keynesianism represented the primary macroeconomic policy direction deployed by the government in its management of capital, using high tax rates on corporations and the wealthy to fund governmental programs designed to both supplement capitalist growth and soften the systemic parasitism of that growth. And, in the 1960s, coming on the heels of radical uprisings throughout the country — most notably, the antiwar and Civil Rights movements — “Great Society” policies were created to provide more assistance and opportunities to working people.

It should be noted, though, that the underlying reasons for many of these concessions were tactical, as they have been made to prevent a radical or revolutionary break from the dominant capitalist/imperialist system. In other words, they were just as much forms of appeasement issued by the capitalist class, for the sake of their own survival, as they were hard-fought gains won by the working class, for our betterment. Many gains were the direct result of organized labor struggles, but were also made possible by the US military’s brutalization and looting campaigns of the Global South via colonialism and imperialism. They were also products of the US’s advantageous post-world-war-two positioning, the Marshall Plan, and the fact that US infrastructure was virtually untouched by the ravages of the war. And much of these gains excluded black and brown members of the US working class, as well as women, all of whom continued to be relegated to hyper-exploited positions within the working class, often confined to internal colonies and subjected to compounded social and material forms of oppression. These inconsistencies, as well as the inability of these reforms to affect the modes of production, left such legislation vulnerable to both circumvention and rollbacks.

It is important to include context behind these concessions because we must understand, first and foremost, that all of capitalist society rests upon a fundamental class struggle between those who own and control the means of production (capitalists) and those of us whose only chance for survival is to sell our labor to those owners (workers). With this understanding, we can see that societal progression, or regression, is the result of this dialectical battle. The sobering reality for the working class is that capitalists always have the upper hand because they have claimed ownership of the means we use to function and survive. And, while capitalist governments like that of the United States have awarded us some rights, and have occasionally given us some concessions, they are ultimately tools that are wielded by the capitalist class to maintain their dominance over us.

Thus, bourgeois (capitalist) democracy is a brilliant scheme for the (capitalist) ruling class because it gives off the appearance of freedom via constitutional documents, legal systems, voting, and a variety of supposed civil/human rights. Beneath the facade are extremely strict power dynamics represented primarily by these class distinctions (again, the minority class who own/control property and the means of production overseeing the majority class whose only basis of survival is our labor). The working-class masses are repressed and controlled in nearly every way possible within this arrangement. Injustice is a daily part of our lives that we learn to accept to survive the drudgery. 

In some instances, where gross injustices occur, we are awarded the "right" to appeal to the systems that exist on the surface, but this "right" always places the burden of proof on us. Therefore, since we have no time, money, energy, and resources to dedicate to these processes (because we're all working our lives away while living paychecks to paychecks), it is incredibly rare for any sort of justice to materialize against a powerful state/class that has seemingly unlimited amounts of time, money, energy, and resources to oppose us. In this never-ending, losing scenario, the ruling class and all of their institutions (including schools and media) can simply say: "we gave you inalienable rights and encourage you to use them if you feel wronged," knowing very well these rights, and the systems put in place to exercise them, are nothing but manufactured dead ends hidden behind virtual freeways.

This systemic understanding brings us back to the question at hand: can significant change come from bourgeois elections? If we were to look at the history of the US, we would surely conclude that it can, as noted above. However, when looking at capitalism as the regressive system that it now is — due to its fascistic foundation of claiming “private property” as a social relationship for capital to employ (exploit) labor; its birth from trillions of dollars of “free capital” generated by chattel slavery; its tendency to centralize wealth and, thus, political/social/governmental power; its cancer-like need for never-ending growth; its bloodlust for expansion and theft via war; and its array of elements that are riddled with internal contradictions which only worsen over time due to perpetually falling rates of profit — we should understand that it has reached a very late stage. In other words, the concessions that were made in the past are, quite frankly, no longer possible. The formation of an industrialized — albeit, mostly white — “middle class” was an anomaly only made possible by the unique stages of historical development that existed in the 20th century.

The capitalist coup called “neoliberalism” put an end to all of that. And it did so during a period of time (1970s/80s) when falling rates of profit were decimating the Keynesian model, the gold standard was removed, monopoly capitalism became entrenched, corporate governance (what Mussolini himself referred to as “fascism”) was cemented, and globalization and financialization became prominent factors in wealth extraction. Pro-capitalists will claim all of these things are “artificial mutations” of “true, free-market” capitalism, caused by “too much government involvement,” but the truth is they are mature stages of capitalism that were inevitable, absent a socialist revolution. Clever terms like “cronyism” and “corporatism” merely refer to natural developments caused by capital accumulation (and, conversely, widespread dispossession) and the concentration of wealth and power that has allowed capitalists to gain control of all aspects of society, including the entirety of government.

The sobering lesson from all of this is that any meaningful concessions from the capitalist class (via the electoral arena) will likely never materialize during capitalism’s late stages. The system has become so cannibalistic and riddled with crises that it has been feeding on itself for at least the past forty years. The industrialized “middle class,” or aristocracy of labor, has been all but destroyed, small capitalists are being devoured by big capitalists, and the economic system has become fully intertwined with the government. Thus, we are already decades deep into a very real transition from covert fascism to overt fascism, as the system scrambles to shield itself from crises after crises.

During this process, capitalism has been propped up by so many tricks and tactics coming from the capitalist state — corporate subsidies, quantitative easing (“printing money”), constant meddling by the federal reserve, etc. — that it is too far gone to respond to the needs of the people. These tricks and tactics are necessary for the system’s survival; or, in more precise terms, necessary to protect and maintain the wealth of the capitalist minority, by further degrading the working-class majority and perpetually “kicking the can down the road.” But, this road comes to an end. And we are fast approaching that end.

The only thing that capitalists and their state are concerned with now is protecting themselves from the imminent collapse, which means we’re already well into a significant fascist transition. The fact that unfathomable amounts of money are being thrown at military and police during a time when tent cities, homelessness, and drug overdoses are taking over every major city, and working people everywhere cannot afford rent or food, tells us that the US government, which is a direct manifestation of the capitalist class, is unable to see past its own interests to avert this collapse. So, it has chosen to dig in and protect the increasingly wealthy minority from the increasingly desperate majority.

West will not have a chance to win the election, and will likely not even capture a miniscule percentage of the vote. He may not even make the ballots in most states. And, even worse yet, if he were to win the election in some dream scenario and assume “the highest office in the land,” nothing substantial would come from it. Because the system was set up to represent wealth (or capital), not people. And the days of meaningful capitalist concessions are long gone.

Despite this, West and his campaign should approach the election with the intent to win, because that is the way to build genuine momentum. But, in this process, the focus must be on building a new world from the ravages of the inevitable collapse. This is where our time, energy, and resources should be, and should have been for decades now, but we’ve been too enamored with bourgeois politics to begin that transition. However, it’s not too late to regroup and refocus. And West’s campaign, like Bernie’s campaigns, can be a catalyst for this shift. Bernie sold out, chose his career, and failed. West can succeed in serving as a launching pad, for us, if he chooses the correct path.

Should working-class people support West’s campaign?

Working-class people should support West’s campaign, if he chooses the right path. We need to divest from bourgeois politics and the capitalist system. A campaign like West’s, which will ironically occur in the bourgeois electoral arena, can be a major catalyst in this divestment. So, what do we need to understand, and what will he need to do, to stay on the right path?

1. We need to understand that electoral politics are both a time suck and a dead end if the goal is to win elections, assume office, and enact legislation. Therefore, campaigns should only be used to educate, agitate, and form counter-hegemonic and liberatory institutions and organizations.

2. We need to understand that building working-class consciousness is the primary need at this moment in time. Challenging capitalist propaganda from mainstream media, providing knowledge and historical context, and offering reality-based narratives as a counter to the extreme paranoia and delusion pushed by capitalist media is the way to do this.

3. We need to understand that authentic working-class politics (aka a left-wing) must be built from the ground-up in the United States. It must initially be anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and rooted in the working-class struggle against the capitalist ruling class. In this process, any remnants of anti-communism, which are almost always products of fear and/or ignorance, must be ironed out.

4. We need to understand that liberal identity politics and culture wars are being disseminated by the ruling class to whip up hysteria among the masses, cause widespread confusion and misdirected rage, and keep the working class not only further divided, but constantly at each other’s throats. We must challenge this head-on by keeping the focus on class struggle while, at the same time, not allowing for bigoted elements to fester, as they are mere remnants of capitalist culture and naturally anti-working-class.

5. We need to understand that fascism is already here in the US, and it has always been here for many of the hyper-marginalized members of the working class. This understanding includes the knowledge that the capitalist system has become fully intertwined with the capitalist government and is being protected by both capitalist political parties. In other words, Democrats are not anti-fascist; they are just as much a part of the transition to overt fascism as Republicans are.

6. We need to understand that formidable working-class institutions and organizations need to be built NOW, because time is running out. These organization and institutions must exist completely outside the realm of electoral politics, which means they must be organized, funded, and maintained by us, with no ties to, or relationships with, bourgeois politicians, the capitalist parties, or the US government.

What will West and his campaign need to do to make this happen?

1. West and his campaign must understand that the purpose of this run is not to win, assume office, and enact legislation. It is also not to build a political party to do these things moving forward. If those things happen to occur as a corollary development, then fine, but the primary goal should be to use this platform to radicalize (aka educate) and organize the US working class.

2. West and his campaign must use this platform to promote working-class consciousness. This can be done by attacking mainstream (capitalist) narratives head-on, offering counter narratives based in reality, and deconstructing the hysteria and paranoia being disseminated by media.

3. West and his campaign must show what a true left looks like. This means that he must be unapologetically radical by exposing the roots of our problems, which are not things like immigration, inflation, and “corruption,” but rather are capitalist modes and arrangements of production, imperialism, and the bourgeois state, which has been intentionally constructed to shield these roots. He should expect red baiting and take ownership of it without fear of being “unelectable,” which is easy to do if you are not ultimately concerned with winning an election. He should be openly socialist. He should be clear about what socialism actually is — the people owning and controlling the means that are used to sustain society. He should be clear that the welfare state is not socialism, but rather a necessity of capitalism. He should be clear that social democracy is merely a softer version of capitalism that simply cannot be maintained because of the predatory nature of the capitalist class in this late stage. Using very clear wording, even technical wording, goes against West’s oratory style, but he must make an effort to include such deliberate terminology along with his traditionally soulful approach.

4. West and his campaign need to keep the focus on class struggle by avoiding the inevitable pitfalls of liberal identity politics and culture wars. This does not mean ignoring the social realities of marginalized identities, which of course are naturally intertwined with class oppression, but rather by constantly keeping the focus on the basis of class. This is something West has done exceptionally well in the past and there is no reason why this should not continue moving forward on this particular stage.

5. West and his campaign need to express the reality that fascism is already here in the United States and is in a transitional period from being covert (in that it has always existed in the margins as well as in the foundation of both capitalism and the United States) to overt. He must explain that fascism is capitalism in decay. He must explain that the exponential funding of military and police by the capitalist class and its government will naturally come home to roost on the entirety of the US working class. And he must publicly rid himself of the belief that Democrats are allies in the fight against fascism.

6. West and his campaign must use this platform to build actual organizations and institutions, on the ground, throughout the country, funded and maintained by the people. These organizations and institutions must be constucted to last far beyond this campaign, and must be built with the understanding that they will never work with bourgeois institutions, including the government and political parties owned by the capitalist class. These organizations should exist to meet the most basic needs of the people: food programs, clinics, self-defense, political education, ideological development, etc. all rooted in a working-class culture formed in direct contrast to bourgeois culture.

A means to an end?

From a dialectical perspective, Dr. Cornel West’s announcement to run for president of the US is a seemingly positive development for the working-class masses, in our struggle against the forces of capital. This is not necessarily saying much, as we have had very little reason to pay attention to, let alone participate in, bourgeois elections for quite some time. Thus, this is not positive because West has any chance of winning or assuming office — he does not — but because it provides us the opportunity to finally break away from the stranglehold of bourgeois politics and the two capitalist/imperialist political parties. We should seek to use this campaign as a way to build our own proletariat infrastructure throughout the country — community centers, clinics, food programs, networks, schools, etc. — something that will be needed as both the capitalist system and US government continue their rapid descent into overt fascism.

As West throws down the gauntlet against what he, and many others, see(s) as systemic ills, he will find himself stuck between two vastly different worlds: one where the masses of people desperately need, and I believe are ready for, an unapologetically radical candidate from the left; and another where dominant society and its very real mechanisms of capitalist violence and oppression will simply not allow this need to be delivered. The best thing West can do in this moment is dedicate himself to serving this need. Whether or not he and his campaign choose to use this opportunity as such a catalyst remains to be seen.

By all signs, Cornel West is a social democrat. And, history tells us we should be very wary of the compromising nature of social democrats. So, we should be skeptical. We should continue working on our own efforts and projects to construct authentic, working-class organizations and institutions. We should pace ourselves and not throw too much energy, physical or emotional, behind West and his campaign. But we should also give this a chance to serve our needs — use it as a potential tool whose frequency can increase if we find it on the right path, or decrease and even discarded if it becomes clear that it will not be fruitful. We should attempt to steer it in the right direction because it is the best option we have been given on this type of platform, if only for the fact that it exists outside the Democratic Party.

Our present reality is dismal. Our immediate future is dystopian. Capitalism is rotting away and taking us with it. Fascism is here. The capitalist government and all of its institutions are clearly responding by choosing an increasingly-predatory and barbaric direction. We must forge our own way, dig ourselves in, and prepare for the absolute worst, while building our own institutions that show the promise of a better world. West and his campaign are a potential tool in starting to build this future.

How the Capitalist Class Censors Dissenting Voices Via the US Government: The Case of TikTok and the Midwestern Marx Institute

By Carlos Garrido, Noah Krachvik, and Edward Liger Smith

​The First Amendment of the United States Constitution says that “Congress shall make no law… Abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Yet in 2023 the United States is attempting to extradite Julian Assange because he published proof of U.S. civilian executions in Iraq, systematic torture at Guantanamo Bay, and the DNC rigging of the 2016 primary election against Democratic Socialist candidate Bernie Sanders, which is itself a violation of the Democratic rights enshrined in the American Constitution. The U.S., with its supposed constitutional guarantee of free speech and media, has indicted four leaders from the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) and Uhuru Movement on flimsy claims of “advancing Russian propaganda,” simply because they challenge the narrative of the imperialist financial cartels and war mongers. Even if we look only at these examples, how can we say there is freedom of speech or press in our modern age of neoliberal capitalist-imperialism? The Political establishment has shown that it will crack down on anyone who shares information that is damaging to its foreign policy interests, and most social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, owned by wealthy shareholders like Mark Zuckerberg and others, have proven not only to be impressionable to the influence of US intelligence agencies like the FBI and other institutions of the ruling class, but (after the release of the Twitter files) directly steered by them at times.

No social media platform is more tightly linked to the intelligence community, NATO, or US State Department than the incredibly popular Tik Tok app. In 2020 the Midwestern Marx Institute for Marxist Theory and Political Analysis, within a few months of work, amassed 375,000 Tik Tok followers when the app was still owned and operated by the Beijing, China based company Bytedance, a testament to the people-oriented algorithms of Bytedance that allow any content that is genuinely popular to go “viral”, and a stark contrast to the money-centered way our Western software works. Unfortunately, that year the Biden administration would force ByteDance to hand over management of their U.S. servers to the Texas-based company ORACLE, a company with intimate ties to the CIA. No sooner had news of this forced change of control happened would the Institute have its account, which received millions of views on many videos containing factual information that challenged the narratives of the US war machine, banned from the platform. A second account that we started when the first one was wiped quickly accumulated 200,000 followers, and right when a growth parallel to the previous account was evident, the second account would also be banned. This blatant censorship would continue without explanation as the Institute had five more accounts banned by Tik Tok after they started to quickly gain popularity. It was later revealed that Oracle had hired a litany of former US State Department and Intelligence Operatives to manage the content for Tik Tok, as well as a few NATO executives for good measure. Tik Tok said that they deleted 320,000 “Russian accounts” which included many American socialist organizers who have never been associated with Russia in any way, such as an account ran by an organization of socialist organizers called “The Vanguard” that had over 100,000 followers when it was deleted.

Countless hours of our work that helped inform millions of people were stripped from the internet with little to no explanation, while truly hateful and incendiary accounts were allowed to remain up. Our institute's co-founder and editor, Eddie Liger Smith, was doxxed twice during this period, having his phone number, job, private social media profiles, and location shared by two creators working in tandem to attack Midwestern Marx. Both responsible accounts, Cbass429 and ThatDaneshGuy, were allowed to remain up until recently, when Cbass429 was finally banned for a completely unrelated incident. However, ThatDaneshGuy still has 1.6 million followers on Tik Tok, where he consistently calls for his political opposition to be fired from their jobs. ThatDaneshGuy called for his followers to contact Eddie’s place of employment and ask for his firing, claiming that it was deserved because of Eddie’s stance against US backed regime change efforts in Iran, which Danesh conflated with support for the Iranian Government executing people. Similar campaigns to these have been waged against other Institute co-founder Carlos Garrido and Institute contributor Kayla Popuchet, the latter who, like Eddie Smith, was fired from their place of employment because of the work they do for the Institute. On Tik Tok, the voices which speak the truth and champion peace are quickly banned, while those who harass and deceive people with imperialist lies are upheld by the algorithms.

Since the transfer of power to US entities, Tik Tok users have been fed a steady diet of neoliberal and imperialist propaganda, while critical voices are systematically being censored by the app’s content moderation staff. Neoliberal commentators like Philip Defranco are never made to retract errors, such as when Phil claimed that Russia blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline, despite all the evidence at the time pointing towards a Biden Administration sabotage. Award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later proved this to be the case in his detailed report on the incident. Despite all this, Defranco never had his account suspended or removed for posting this misinformation, and his video remains on the platform to this day, as do his comments accusing anyone who suggested the US might have sabotaged the pipeline of believing “Putin propaganda.” The Midwestern Marx Institute had predicted that Biden sabotaged the pipeline before it was revealed in detail and was unsurprisingly attacked and reported for doing so.

Censorship, clearly, does not emerge out of a void. And so, we must ask the question: what are the social conditions which make censorship necessary? Who does the censored speech threaten? Who does it uplift? In whose interests is censorship carried out? On whose side is truth - a category our moribund imperialist era, dominated by postmodern philosophical irrationalism, scoffs at? The liberal ideal of freedom of press can never be actualized so long as the press is owned by a small ruling class, by corporations and shareholders who profit from war and the exploitation of the mass of people. They will always censor dissent and push coverage that suits their foreign and domestic interests. This has been the case throughout history, and the modern Western ruling class is, in this regard, no different from any other. It lies, it manipulates, it misinforms to the best of its ability. It needs a population that can view its actions as ethical and just, and so it must spend countless hours and dollars papering over every crack that appears in the facade its media apparatus has built around the minds of the people.

A revolving door between the media, intelligence agencies, NATO, and the U.S. State Department is only the logical result of a society based on capitalist relations of production, where capitalists not only control the production of material goods, but the production of information as well. The ruling class sees the media, including social media, as a vital part of the societal superstructure that is needed to maintain and reproduce the relations of production at the core of society. In other words, they see it as an important tool to convince you that capitalism and U.S. Imperialism are good and eternal. Under these social relations, the constitutional right to free speech and media have always been exclusive - it excludes all speech and media which substantially challenges the dominant forms of societal intercourse. The freedom of speech and media is, therefore, actually the freedom of pro-capitalist speech and media. V. I. Lenin’s description of the media in capitalist society rings truer than ever in the 2020s, it is dominated by an “atmosphere of lies and deception in the name of the ‘freedom and equality’ of capital, equality of the starved and the overfed.” Any absolute statements about the freedom of the press must be followed by the Leninist question: “freedom of the press… for which class?” The capitalist media’s freedom to deceive the masses in their defense of the existing order is in contradiction to the masses’ interests in searching for and publicizing the truth.

Those who keep our people misinformed and ignorant, who have made their life’s purpose to attack truth-tellers, do so under the insidiously categorized guise of ‘combating misinformation.’ In their topsy-turvy invented reality, as Michael Parenti called it, they posit themselves as the champions of truth and free speech – a paradox as laughable as a vegan butcher. Anyone with the courage to fight for the freedom to speak truth to power should unite in fighting this blatant attack on our constitutional rights. We must stand against this censorship from our ruling class, those who are the worst purveyors of misinformation imaginable, and who now, in the backwards-world name of ‘fighting misinformation,’ censor the truth. 

There is ‘fighting misinformation,’ and there is fighting misinformation. The divide of class interests between the ruling class of the West, and the good, honest, hard-working people who live under their regime could not be clearer. One side finds it necessary to invent a reality, under the guise of fighting the ‘mis-informers,’ that paints the world in a disfigured backwardness, the other side, on the contrary, is sick to death of being lied to by the media machine, and their screams of “fake news” grow more and more common every day. The American people not only deserve the truth, but absolutely need its existence to find commonality in the world, stability, and the ability to pursue lives of meaning and dignity. They are tired of the private monopolization of media that has erased the ability for regular working people to speak on an equal playing field; they feel their voices drowned in a sea of well-funded lies by MSNBC, Fox News, and the rest of them. This struggle has crystallized into a fight over The Truth itself.

And so, if fighting misinformation is to be done, we must begin by asking: Where was the crackdown on the media outlets who got 4.5 million people killed by claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Where are the crackdowns on those who are lying us into a third World War with nuclear-armed powers? Where are the crackdowns against those who play the drums for those marching humanity towards nuclear Armageddon? Why is it only the outlets calling for peace that are dubbed “Putin propagandists” and wiped from the internet? Where are the crackdowns on the blood-thirsty warmongers? The answer is: they are nowhere, and they will continue to be nowhere while giant corporate financial interests control the lives and realities of regular Americans. Truth is censored and lies are proliferated because it serves the interests of the ruling capitalist class, and only through the overthrow of this class can a real freedom of thought, not an abstract empty freedom to deceive the people, be achieved. Until then, all we can have – it seems – is a media and culture that elevates the most odious imperialist voices while suppressing those who seek truth and peace. Nonetheless, the fight must continue, and with the dignity that comes from the incessant speaking of truth to power, the enemies of humanity will fall.

Let us remember the words of Julian Assange, whom the imperialists have rotting in a prison because of his sterling bravery… because he is a true journalist and not a lapdog of the powerful: “if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by TRUTH.”

Carlos L. Garrido is a philosophy teacher at Southern Illinois University, editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute, and author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism and Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview.

Noah Khrachvik is a working class organizer, teacher, and editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute. 

Edward Liger Smith is an American political scientist and editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute.