The following paper by Mick Kelly, the Political Secretary of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), was presented at the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) International Theoretical Conference on Fascism in the 21st Century in the Imperialist Heartlands. Sydney Loving of the Central Committee of FRSO also participated in the conference, which took place November 28-29, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Comrades and friends,

Let me start by thanking the National Democratic Front of the Philippines for organizing this most important event. In providing a venue for revolutionaries to address the big theoretical issues facing our respective movements, the NDFP is making a real contribution to our collective efforts to shatter the chains of monopoly capitalism.

The question of fascism is an important one, and it can impact one’s strategy, tactics, and a host of organizational measures; in fact, the fascism question can be one of life and death. There is also a wealth of important texts that address the issue, and of special importance are those of works of R. Palme Dutt and Georgi Dimitrov – both of which received wide circulation by the Communist International.

Comrades might be interested to know that the issue of fascism is a mass question among large numbers of progressive people in the U.S., given the wave of attacks unleashed by the reactionary Trump administration, Over the past 9 months, millions of people, in big cities and small towns, have taken to the streets. The extremely sharp struggles against mass deportations – including the uprising in Los Angeles and high level of struggle in Chicago and Portland, Oregon – make up one of the main issues shaping domestic politics.

We see the overall conditions as extremely favorable for building communist organization. As FRSO has been able to play an important role in these fights, we continue to be in a period of extraordinary growth.

What fascism is

For some, “Fascism” as an invective – a sort of swear word, the worst thing that you can call someone or some action of government – as opposed to a political category with a scientific definition. This is a long-standing tendency on the part of the petty bourgeois left, and certainly there is no one here who does that. Others, like the Trotskyites [1], see fascism as the product of a mass movement of the petty bourgeoisie. That is not correct either.

We are in agreement with the definition adopted by 13th plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International which states fascism is, “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”

At the 7th Congress of the Communist International, Dimitrov pointed out, “The accession to power of fascism is not a ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie – bourgeois democracy – for another form, open terrorist dictatorship.” [2]

This is an important point. While it is true there is not a qualitative difference between fascism and bourgeois democracy, in the sense that they are both ways that the monopoly capitalist wield state political power, there is a qualitative difference in so far as one is very different than the other when it comes to democratic rights of working and oppressed people.

Fascism and capitalist democracy are different forms of political rule. The fact that there is real difference between the two means that revolutionaries will employ different tasks, objectives, and organizational measures depending on the form of bourgeois rule. Communist organizing in a period of open terror is for all practical purposes illegal.

Fascist governments wage aggressive wars characterized by extremes of national chauvinism. In fact, bourgeois democratic governments have always done the same and often resort to the use of open terror to maintain control of their colonies or neo-colonies. In fact, the use of open terror in the neo-colonial or colonial settings is a feature that is common to fascist and bourgeois democratic governments.

In his important work The State and Revolution, Lenin points out, “A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell (through the Palchinskys, Chernovs, Tseretelis and Co.), it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”

Why would the ruling class give up this “best possible political shell”? Stalin responds that it is because they have to:

In this connection the victory of fascism in Germany must be regarded not only as a symptom of the weakness of the working class and a result of the by the betrayals of the working class by Social-Democracy, which paved the way for fascism; it must also be regarded as a sign of weakness of the bourgeois, a sign that the bourgeois is no longer able to rule by the old methods of parliamentary and bourgeois democracy, and, as a consequence, is compelled in its home policy to resort to terrorist methods of rule — as a sign it is no longer to find a way out of the present situation on the basis of a peaceful foreign policy, and, as a consequence, is compelled to resort to a policy of war. [3]

Finally let me quote from R. Palme Dutt, “Fascism is not inevitable. Fascism is not a necessary stage of capitalist development through which all countries must pass. The social revolution can forestall Fascism, as it has done in Russia. But if the social revolution is delayed, then the menace of fascism becomes urgent.” [4]

So, there are several themes that should be circled back to. First, fascism employs open terrorism. Sure, there can be courts and parliaments, but open terrorism is what the fascist state is organized around and for. Secondly, fascism is a tool of the financial oligarchy – particularly its most reactionary and chauvinist sectors. And finally, there is the issue of extreme national chauvinism and fascism’s war-like nature.

To what degree is there a fascist danger in the U.S.?

In the entire epoch of monopoly capitalism, fascism is a latent tendency and therefore a possibility, given that the necessary conditions are present. In a context where the decline of U.S. imperialism is accelerating, where polarization is sharpening in the political superstructure, it is necessary to have a materialist evaluation of the objective conditions. That includes a realistic assessment of an immediate fascist danger.

When identifying what fascism is, in our view the most essential feature is the use of open terror by the ruling class, meaning the legal possibilities to organize for socialism are slim to nonexistent. That is not currently the situation in the United States, and communists in the U.S. need to utilize every avenue and opportunity to build the people’s struggle while developing revolutionary organization.

It is a fact that there are fascist groups and there are people in government who are pro-fascist. These elements are present in the military too. Their attacks should be met head on. The events of January 6, 2021, when Trump attempted to block the peaceful transfer of power and his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, speaks volumes about the lengths reactionaries will go to – as well as some of the limitations that necessity places on them.

The U.S. has always repressive place. Even as it went to war on German fascism and was an important part of the world anti-fascist coalition, 120,000 Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps.

Whatever assessment one has about a fascist danger, repression and resistance to repression need to be taken seriously. This means opposing reactionary laws and measures that restrict our democratic rights. It also means pushing back hard against legal attacks we face. Over the past 15 years our organization has faced a fair amount of repression, [5] and we have developed some capacity to deal with it. The most recent example was the defense of an immigrant rights activist and comrade who was charged with conspiracy to further civil disorder in the aftermath of the anti-ICE rebellion in Los Angles. We build a broad, national defense campaign and charges were dropped.

All quantity includes quality – and there is a whole political landscape between capitalist democracy and open terror (fascism) that could be very different from what we have experienced over the past 50 years.

Fascism is a tool of the most reactional monopoly capitalists to prevent revolution. In the U.S. today, we are not in a revolutionary situation. An effective strategy against fascism would necessitate building the broadest possible united front to stop it, like for example the Popular Front employed by U.S. communists from the mid-1930s on. If there is an immediate danger of capitalist democracy being replaced by open terror, we can and will adjust our strategy and organizational functioning accordingly.

Comrades: communists have a rich history of resisting repression and defeating fascism. It was Soviet soldiers who planted the flag bearing a hammer and sickle on the ruins of the “thousand-year Reich.” Our comrades of the Philippines have repeatedly demonstrated it is possible to grow and thrive in the context of U.S.-sponsored terror. The road might be a hard one, but our future is bright.

Let me close with a quote from the outstanding revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist Mao Zedong:

I have said that all the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? I also said that the tsar of Russia, the emperor of China and Japanese imperialism were all paper tigers. As we know, they were all overthrown. U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown, and it has the atom bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger.

Long live proletarian internationalism! Long live the unity of the world’s peoples! Victory is certain, together we will win!

Notes

[1] Trosky states in Fascism: What it is and how to fight it, “The fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders from the rank and file. It is a plebian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers. It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum proletariat, and even to a certain extent from the proletarian masses; Mussolini, a former socialist, is a “self-made” man arising from this movement.”

[2] Dimitrov, The Fascist offensive and the tasks of the Communist International in the fight for uniy of the working class against fascism, 7th Congress of the Communist International, page 127

[3] J. Stalin, Report to the 17th Party Congress, CW vol. 13, page 300

[4] R. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution

[5] In 2010 more than 70 FBI agents carried out coordinate raids against antiwar and international solidarity activist – including the homes of a number of FRSO members.

#RevolutionaryTheory #FRSO #Statement #Fascism #NDFP #Philippines #Lenin #Stalin #Mao #MarxismLeninism

In his extraordinary work, The Foundations of Leninism, J.V. Stalin, the principal leader of the Soviet Union after Lenin, explained, “Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect.” In other words, theory is based on the summation of practical experience. General lessons are drawn from that experience, and then applied, tested and enriched through application in practice to our particular conditions. The 1938 work The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) – Short Course stands out as an invaluable wellspring of theory because it provides a summation of the experiences of the Bolshevik Revolution from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. It is a summation that we can and must learn from to apply to the revolutionary tasks at hand here and now.

Indeed, such was the value of the Short Course that during the Yan’an Rectification Movement, Mao Zedong wrote, “... in studying Marxism-Leninism, we should use the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course as the principal material. It is the best synthesis and summing-up of the world communist movement of the past hundred years, a model of the integration of theory and practice, and so far the only comprehensive model in the whole world. When we see how Lenin and Stalin integrated the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete practice of the Soviet revolution and thereby developed Marxism, we shall know how we should work in China.”

Stalin’s role in writing the Short Course

The authorship of the Short Course has long been a topic of discussion. Some have asserted that it was written by Stalin. Others have said it was written by a committee. The fact is that it was written by a committee of party historians under the political and theoretical guidance of Stalin. 

The book Stalin’s Master Narrative, edited by David Brandenberger and Mikhail Zelenov, shows exactly what Stalin’s contributions to the book were. He revised or rewrote significant portions of the book, and cut major sections as well. For example, he cut sections that praised his individual contributions too highly, as well as sections that overestimated or overstated the scope and strength of the counterrevolutionary Trotskyite conspiracy. Meanwhile, the section on Dialectical and Historical Materialism is entirely Stalin’s work. 

Liberals, Trotskyites, and anti-communist academics often look at Stalin’s direct involvement in the authorship of the Short Course and use that to dismiss the book as self-promotion. The revisionist Khrushchev even listed Stalin’s authorship of the Short Course among Stalin’s “crimes” in order to denigrate Stalin and bury this important text. Modern scholarship has revealed the “crimes” of Stalin in the so-called “Secret Speech” to be fabrications by Khrushchev, and this is no different. Khrushchev blames Stalin for self-aggrandizing in the book, but we now know that Stalin had no patience for such lavish personal praise, and we can see that he cut such praise heavily from the book. 

In any case, Marxists ought to understand that Stalin’s leading role in the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet State placed him in a unique position to give an accurate, Marxist-Leninist summation of events, in the interests of developing communist theory and practice. The purpose of the book, contrary to what the revisionists and other anti-communists claim, was to educate the Party from top to bottom in Marxist-Leninist theory from a decidedly practical point of view. Indeed, if there is one current that runs steadily throughout the book, it is the unity of theory practice. 

The unity of theory and practice in the Short Course

We can see then that one of the remarkable things that the Short Course does is to unite the practice that it is summing up with the theory that guided it at the time. In this way, it looks at the major works of Lenin and Stalin and contextualizes them, explains why they were written, and breaks down their main points in relation to the struggles that they sought to inform. 

As the book traces the history of the Bolsheviks from 1883 with the formation of the Emancipation of Labor group, through the development of the Soviet Constitution adopted in December of 1936, it strives to draw out both theoretical and practical lessons that can be taken up by revolutionaries, and to show the dialectical unity between theory and practice. It is a work of historical materialism, after all. So in it we see how the important ideological, political and organizational questions arose from the material reality of the time and place in which they were born.

The Short Course takes the time to explain practically all of Lenin’s major works and how they contributed to the revolution. It explains how many of Lenin’s writings formed the foundation for the Bolshevik party. Thus, it explains how Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? formed the ideological foundation for the Marxist-Leninist party. It explains how Lenin’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Back similarly formed the organizational foundation. And it explains how Lenin’s Materialism and Emperio-Criticism formed the philosophical foundation. In this way, the Short Course is an essential textbook on Leninist theory.

We can draw innumerable practical lessons from the book as well. For example, we can see how the Bolsheviks, despite being relatively small, were able, as early as 1905, to organize and mobilize the masses of the workers and peasants of the Russian Empire in order to have an influence that far exceeded their own numbers. It not only explains, but demonstrates, the necessity of armed struggle to smash the bourgeois dictatorship and institute the dictatorship of the proletariat: working class state power with the goal of building socialism and advancing towards communism. And it shows in practice how the Bolsheviks went about building socialism in the Soviet Union, for the first time in history. 

In its conclusion, the Short Course sums up its lessons. It emphasizes the central role of the revolutionary proletarian party itself: “The history of the Party teaches us, first of all, that the victory of the proletarian revolution, the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is impossible without a revolutionary party of the proletariat, a party free from opportunism, irreconcilable towards compromisers and capitulators, and revolutionary in its attitude towards the bourgeoisie and its state power.”

Second, it emphasizes the pivotal role of theory, “The history of the Party further teaches us that a party of the working class cannot perform the role of leader of its class, cannot perform the role of organizer and leader of the proletarian revolution, unless it has mastered the advanced theory of the working-class movement, the Marxist-Leninist theory.”

Third, it emphasizes the necessity of the hegemony of the working class party among the class, “The history of the Party further teaches us that unless the petty-bourgeois parties which are active within the ranks of the working class and which push the backward sections of the working class into the arms of the bourgeoisie, thus splitting the unity of the working class, are smashed, the victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible.”

Fourth, it emphasizes ideological struggle against opportunism, “The history of the Party further teaches us that unless the Party of the working class wages an uncompromising struggle against the opportunists within its own ranks, unless it smashes the capitulators in its own midst, it cannot preserve unity and discipline within its ranks, it cannot perform its role of organizer and leader of the proletarian revolution, nor its role as the builder of the new, Socialist society.”

Fifth, it emphasizes criticism and self-criticism, “The history of the Party further teaches us that a party cannot perform its role as leader of the working class if, carried away by success, it begins to grow conceited, ceases to observe the defects in its work, and fears to acknowledge its mistakes and frankly and honestly to correct them in good time.”

And finally, it emphasizes the mass line, “the history of the Party teaches us that unless it has wide connections with the masses, unless it constantly strengthens these connections, unless it knows how to hearken to the voice of the masses and understand their urgent needs, unless it is prepared not only to teach the masses, but to learn from the masses, a party of the working class cannot be a real mass party capable of leading the working class millions and all the labouring people.”

The Short Course today

The lessons of the history of the Bolshevik party are as vital today as ever. Not only is this book a textbook of Marxism-Leninism, but, as Mao said, the Short Course is also “a model of the integration of theory and practice.” We can see many of our own problems reflected in it, and by studying how the Bolsheviks addressed those problems, we can better understand how to move forward. The Short Course addresses party building, organization, the national question, imperialism, war and peace, strategy and tactics, and so much more, all in an accessible and understandable way. 

Often, when we read the writings of Lenin, we may feel detached from the broader context in which they were written. This book can serve to bridge the gap between those texts and their context, helping us to better understand their meaning and purpose. In that way, we can better understand how to apply the general theoretical lessons of those important texts to our own particular conditions. 

The problems that faced the Bolsheviks are not unique, and many of them still plague revolutionaries all over the world, including in the United States. Indeed, while our conditions may not be the same, the theory of Marxism-Leninism is essential for understanding and advancing our own revolution. We are still in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Our enemy is the capitalist class. Our goal is socialism, and ultimately, communism. And our way forward is the path first charted by Lenin, Stalin, and the Bolsheviks. 

#RevolutionaryTheory #RedReviews #USSR #Stalin #MarxismLeninism

To mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over fascist Germany, Fight Back News Service is circulating the following speech by Joseph Stalin. The speech was delivered on May 9, 1945.

COMRADES! Men and women compatriots!

The great day of victory over Germany has come. Fascist Germany, forced to her knees by the Red Army and the troops of our Allies, has acknowledged herself defeated and declared unconditional surrender.

On May 7 the preliminary protocol on surrender was signed in the city of Rheims. On May 8 representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of representatives of the Supreme Command of the Allied troops and the Supreme Command of the Soviet Troops, signed in Berlin the final act of surrender, the execution of which began at 24.00 hours on May 8.

Being aware of the wolfish habits of the German ringleaders, who regard treaties and agreements as empty scraps of paper, we have no reason to trust their words. However, this morning, in pursuance of the act of surrender, the German troops began to lay down their arms and surrender to our troops en masse. This is no longer an empty scrap of paper. This is actual surrender of Germany’s armed forces. True, one group of German troops in the area of Czechoslovakia is still evading surrender. But I trust that the Red Army will be able to bring it to its senses.

Now we can state with full justification that the historic day of the final defeat of Germany, the day of the great victory of our people over German imperialism has come.

The great sacrifices we made in the name of the freedom and independence of our Motherland, the incalculable privations and sufferings experienced by our people in the course of the war, the intense work in the rear and at the front, placed on the altar of the Motherland, have not been in vain, and have been crowned by complete victory over the enemy. The age-long struggle of the Slav peoples for their existence and their independence has ended in victory over the German invaders and German tyranny.

Henceforth the great banner of the freedom of the peoples and peace among peoples will fly over Europe.

Three years ago Hitler declared for all to hear that his aims included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the wresting from it of the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic lands and other areas. He declared bluntly: “We will destroy Russia so that she will never be able to rise again.” This was three years ago. However, Hitler’s crazy ideas were not fated to come true—the progress of the war scattered them to the winds. In actual fact the direct opposite of the Hitlerites’ ravings has taken place. Germany is utterly defeated. The German troops are surrendering. The Soviet Union is celebrating Victory, although it does not intend either to dismember or to destroy Germany.

Comrades! The Great Patriotic War has ended in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe is over. The period of peaceful development has begun.

I congratulate you upon victory, my dear men and women compatriots!

Glory to our heroic Red Army, which upheld the independence of our Motherland and won victory over the enemy!

Glory to our great people, the people victorious!

Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the struggle against the enemy and gave their lives for the freedom and happiness of our people!

#RevolutionaryTheory #Stalin #USSR #Fascism #WWII

In 1951 the principal leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, published Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. While it is a rather small book, its importance in the Marxist-Leninist understanding of socialism is quite large, and it deserves to be studied carefully. The book itself is a product of the discussions and debates in preparation of the excellent textbook, Political Economy, published by the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. Preparation of this textbook under Stalin’s guidance began as early as the late 1930s and was nearing completion in 1941 before it was delayed by the outbreak of World War II. As a result, it wasn’t finally published until 1954, shortly after Stalin’s death. 

Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR came out of this process, specifically from a 1951 conference concerning the Political Economy textbook. The Foreword to the First Edition of the Political Economy textbook makes note of this conference. It says, “Of very great importance for the work on this textbook was the economic discussion organized in November 1951 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the course of this discussion, in which hundreds of Soviet economists took an active part, the draft for a textbook of political economy submitted by the authors was subjected to a thorough critical examination.”

Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR is a summation of his views from this conference. It was printed in the party journal, Bolshevik, just prior to the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It presented Stalin’s thoughts on the issues raised by the conference and answered questions. It deals with a number of important questions or problems dealing with the laws governing political economy, particularly as it relates to socialist construction in light of the experiences of the Soviet Union up to that point. 

Stalin’s arguments

From the very beginning, Stalin drives home that when we are talking about socialist construction, we are talking about a law-governed process. He writes, “Marxism regards laws of science – whether they be laws of natural science or laws of political economy – as the reflection of objective processes which take place independently of the will of man. Man may discover these laws, get to know them, study them, reckon with them in his activities and utilize them in the interests of society, but he cannot change or abolish them.” In other words, we can’t just do whatever we want. We are bound by the laws of social and historical development. It is important to keep this point in mind.

Stalin addresses several dogmatic misconceptions regarding socialism. First, he discusses the question of commodity production under socialism. Stalin writes, 

“Certain comrades affirm that the Party acted wrongly in preserving commodity production after it had assumed power and nationalized the means of production in our country. They consider that the Party should have banished commodity production there and then. In this connection they cite Engels, who says: ‘With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer.’ These comrades are profoundly mistaken.”

Stalin is addressing a common dogmatic mistake. He points out that “Engels has in mind countries where capitalism and the concentration of production have advanced far enough both in industry and in agriculture to permit the expropriation of all the means of production in the country and their conversion into public property.” Stalin notes that the Bolshevik Revolution took place under different conditions and thus has to face the question differently. “And so, what is to be done if not all, but only part of the means of production have been socialized, yet the conditions are favourable for the assumption of power by the proletariat – should the proletariat assume power and should commodity production be abolished immediately thereafter?” These are the different conditions in which the USSR found itself. 

Stalin makes a very important point regarding commodity production under socialism: 

“It is said that commodity production must lead, is bound to lead, to capitalism all the same, under all conditions. That is not true. Not always and not under all conditions! Commodity production must not be identified with capitalist production. They are two different things. Capitalist production is the highest form of commodity production. Commodity production leads to capitalism only if there is private owner-ship of the means of production, if labour power appears in the market as a commodity which can be bought by the capitalist and exploited in the process of production, and if, consequently, the system of exploitation of wage workers by capitalists exists in the country. Capitalist production begins when the means of production are concentrated in private hands, and when the workers are bereft of means of production and are compelled to sell their labor power as a commodity. Without this there is no such thing as capitalist production.”

Stalin notes that there are two different production sectors in the USSR, “state, or publicly-owned production, and collective-farm production, which cannot be said to be publicly owned.” He notes that the collective farms are not ready to move beyond commodity relations. “At present the collective farms will not recognize any other economic relation with the town except the commodity relation – exchange through purchase and sale,” Stalin writes. “Because of this, commodity production and trade are as much a necessity with us today as they were, say, thirty years ago, when Lenin spoke of the necessity of developing trade to the utmost.” Thus Stalin explains that this is a “special kind of commodity production” which is a “commodity production without capitalists … concerned mainly with the goods of associated socialist producers.” 

Stalin further points out that some other conceptions, drawn from the Marxist analysis of capitalism, also cannot be artificially applied to the conditions of socialism. “Talk of labor power being a commodity, and of ‘hiring’ of workers sounds rather absurd now, under our system: as though the working class, which possesses means of production, hires itself and sells its labor power to itself,” Stalin explains. He goes on to say, “It is just as strange to speak now of ‘necessary’ and ‘surplus’ labor: as though, under our conditions, the labor contributed by the workers to society for the extension of production, the promotion of education and public health, the organization of defence, etc., is not just as necessary to the working class, now in power, as the labor expended to supply the personal needs of the worker and his family.” 

Related to this is the question of the Law of Value, and whether it continues to exist under socialism. The Marxist conception of the Law of Value under capitalism can be summed up like this: The value of any commodity is equal to the socially necessary labor time required to produce that commodity. In capitalist society the Law of Value causes the price of commodities to gravitate towards their value. In this way it regulates the distribution of labor-power and the means of production within the society and motivates technical progress. Stalin notes, “Value, like the law of value, is a historical category connected with the existence of commodity production.” Nevertheless, “the law of value can be a regulator of production only under capitalism, with private ownership of the means of production, and competition, anarchy of production, and crises of overproduction.” The function of the law of value under socialism is thus restricted primarily to the circulation and exchange of commodities, namely consumer goods. 

Stalin also discusses the necessity of abolishing the contradictions between town and country, and between mental and manual labor. This means, primarily, further developing the productive forces, raising agriculture to the level of industry, and raising manual labor to the level of technical work through cultural and scientific education. These are essential tasks of the period of socialist construction. 

Stalin goes on to further address questions regarding the world market and the deepening crisis of capitalism, and the continuing inevitability of inter-imperialist wars after the peace of the second World War. 

Stalin also goes on to explain the difference between the basic laws of capitalism and socialism. He says the basic law of capitalism can be put like this: “the securing of the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of the population of the given country, through the enslavement and systematic robbery of the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries, and, lastly, through wars and militarization of the national economy, which are utilized for the obtaining of the highest profits.” In contrast, Stalin says that the basic law of socialism is “the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher techniques.”

The rest of the book goes into more particular aspects of the discussion around the Soviet Political Economy textbook. This is also worth careful attention, especially where Stalin answers particular questions and misconceptions, but unfortunately it's beyond our scope to get into all of that in this short review. 

Relevance of Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR for today

Stalin’s book sums up the lessons of socialist construction in the world’s first socialist state up to that point based on the principles of Marxist-Leninist science. For that reason alone, it is invaluable. Marx and Engels, the founders of modern scientific socialism, were rightfully hesitant to try to predict what socialist society would look like, though they were able to draw upon the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, and from the basic laws of historical materialism, some fundamental points that have held true. This is most apparent in Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program. But until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, it wasn’t possible to concretely sum up the sustained experience of socialism in practice. Stalin’s book does just that, drawing on 34 years of socialist construction.

These lessons are important for Marxists to grasp. It is essential for those who aspire to a socialist future to understand what socialism is, and Stalin’s work lays the foundation for just such an understanding. From here, we can also look at the experiences of socialism in practice over the past 74 years since Stalin’s book was written and draw further lessons. Notably, many countries have built socialism in conditions different from those of the Soviet Union, and we can draw positive and negative lessons from their experiences. For example, we see that after the rise of Khrushchev, revisionism took hold in the USSR. The revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism were “revised” to accommodate a lengthy process of “economic reforms” that accelerated ideological degeneration and finally to capitalist restoration in 1991. The people’s democracies of Eastern Europe fell earlier, in 1989. But some socialist countries were able to survive and thrive. Today, the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Democratic Korea still follow the socialist road, and have built socialism based on their own particular conditions. We have a lot to learn from studying their experiences as well. 

China in particular stands out. Looking at People’s China today is like looking into the future. By creatively applying Marxist-Leninist principles to Chinese conditions, the Communist Party of China has modernized their country, wiped out extreme poverty, and set out well on the way towards building prosperous and harmonious socialist society.

As General Secretary Xi Jinping said at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China, “To uphold and develop Marxism, we must integrate it with China's specific realities. Taking Marxism as our guide means applying its worldview and methodology to solving problems in China.” Xi also says in this same report that “We have identified the principal contradiction facing Chinese society as that between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life, and we have made it clear that closing this gap should be the focus of all our initiatives.” This is perfectly in line with Stalin’s basic law of socialism discussed above, applied to the contemporary Chinese situation. 

The United States is an advanced imperialist country, the most powerful monopoly capitalist power in world history. While the U.S. is, of course, very different from Tsarist Russia or pre-revolutionary China, with its own history and problems, it too is governed by the laws of capitalist development, and likewise, the process of building socialism in this country will also proceed according to objective laws. Understanding the experiences of the socialist countries helps us to understand those laws and learn from those rich experiences. 

Revolutionaries today would do well to study Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR as well as the 1954 Political Economy textbook to which it contributed.

#RevolutionaryTheory #RedReviews #MarxismLeninism #Stalin

Por Mick Kelly, Secretario Político, Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad (OSCL).

Este documento, escrito por Mick Kelly, Secretario Político de la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad (OSCL), fue presentado en la conferencia internacional titulada “Stalin: Las enseñanzas para la lucha de los comunistas de hoy”. La conferencia del 15 de octubre se celebró en Milán, Italia y fue organizada por el Partito dei CARC (Partido CARC), la Resistenza Popolare Milano (Resistencia Popular de Milán) y la Associazione Stalin (Asociación Stalin). También participaron el Partido Comunista de Cuba y el Partido Comunista de Filipinas. El documento fue presentado en la conferencia por el organizador nacional de la OSCL, Andy Koch.

Estimados camaradas,

En nombre de la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad, extiendo nuestro más cálido saludo a los participantes y organizadores de este evento importante sobre las enseñanzas de J. V. Stalin y la lucha de los comunistas hoy. Conferencias como ésta son vitales para el movimiento comunista internacional, ya que brindan un espacio para que los marxistas-leninistas profundicemos nuestra comprensión del mundo y cómo cambiarlo. También nos complace saber que se publicaron las Obras Completas de Stalin en Italia — como en todas partes, la difusión del pensamiento y las contribuciones de Stalin ayuda a iluminar el camino hacia la revolución y el socialismo.

El enemigo de clase odia a Stalin. Cuando se menciona su nombre, mienten — y justo cuando crees que van a terminar — mienten aún más. Lo hacen porque Stalin dirigió un vasto movimiento de la clase obrera y de los pueblos oprimidos que se extendió por todo el mundo, con la capacidad de plantear un serio desafío al capitalismo mundial. Al igual que Marx, Engels, Lenin y Mao, los atemorizó.

Los revolucionarios tienen una perspectiva, y aquellos que sirven como voceros del capital monopólico tienen otra. Mao señaló que cada idea, sin excepción, está “estampada con la marca de una clase”. Lo mismo se aplica a la forma en que se evalúa a Stalin. Los comunistas tienen una suma positiva del pensamiento y la práctica de Stalin.

Valoramos las numerosas contribuciones de Stalin a la teoría del marxismo-leninismo. En la práctica, fue un revolucionario proletario excepcional que ayudó a dirigir la revolución en Rusia y a establecer lo que luego sería la URSS. Stalin dirigió el proceso de construcción socialista, transformando un país con una economía atrasada y centrada en lo rural en un país verdaderamente moderno en el mejor sentido de la palabra. Los planes quinquenales desarrollaron la industria a un ritmo desconocido hasta entonces. En las vastas zonas rurales se revolucionaron las relaciones de producción — las antiguas relaciones de propiedad, que llevaban las huellas de la servidumbre, fueron barridas por el movimiento hacia la agricultura colectiva. Al mismo tiempo, se llevó a cabo una revolución en la superestructura social y se alimentó una nueva cultura socialista.

La URSS era un país rodeado de países capitalistas hostiles que querían destruirlo. Stalin demostró ser un maestro en el uso de las contradicciones en el campo enemigo, y cuando llegó el momento, proporcionó un liderazgo competente a la Gran Guerra Patria contra el fascismo.

JV Stalin fue un gran internacionalista proletario que se interesó profundamente por los movimientos obreros y de liberación nacional en todo el mundo. La teoría y la práctica de Stalin, tal como se pueden aplicar a la situación en la que nos encontramos hoy, será el enfoque del resto de este documento.

El Capitalismo Monopolista y el “Excepcionalismo Estadounidense”

En 1929, la Comisión Americana del Presídium del Comité Ejecutivo de la Internacional Comunista se vio sacudida por un debate que se estaba desarrollando dentro del Partido Comunista de los Estados Unidos.

Stalin se dirigió a la comisión durante un largo rato, planteando dos puntos importantes que son de verdadera importancia para los comunistas de hoy. El primero era el peligro del faccionalismo y cómo el faccionalismo socava la unidad que necesita un partido comunista para actuar con eficacia. Stalin habló de una posible crisis revolucionaria en desarrollo y afirmó:

“Para eso es necesario mejorar y bolchevizar el Partido Comunista de los Estados Unidos. Para eso es necesario trabajar por la completa liquidación del fraccionalismo y de las desviaciones en el Partido. Para eso es necesario trabajar por el restablecimiento de la unidad en el Partido Comunista de los Estados Unidos. Para eso es necesario trabajar para forjar verdaderos cuadros revolucionarios y una verdadera dirección revolucionaria del proletariado, capaz de conducir a los muchos millones de miembros de la clase obrera estadounidense hacia las luchas de clase revolucionarias. Para eso es necesario dejar de lado todos los factores personales y las consideraciones fraccionales y poner por encima de todo la educación revolucionaria de la clase obrera de los Estados Unidos.”

Stalin continuó afirmando:

“Tomemos una fábrica o una planta cualquiera. Supongamos que la mayoría de los obreros de esa fábrica se muestran inclinados a ir a la huelga, mientras que la minoría, alegando sus convicciones, se declara en contra de la huelga. Se inicia una guerra de opiniones, se realizan reuniones y, al final, la gran mayoría de la fábrica decide ir a la huelga. ¿Qué dirías de diez o veinte obreros, que representan a una minoría en la fábrica, que declaran que no se someterán a la decisión de la mayoría de los obreros, porque no están de acuerdo con ella? ¿Cómo los llamarías, queridos camaradas? Ya sabes que a esos obreros se les suele llamar rompehuelgas”.

El hecho de que el faccionalismo es un veneno para una organización comunista revolucionaria es bien conocido y debe ser tratado en consecuencia. Menos conocido era el debate subyacente entre los comunistas estadounidenses que estaba contribuyendo a alimentar la batalla faccional — el problema del “excepcionalismo estadounidense”. Mucho antes de que se convirtiera en una palabra de moda en los círculos políticos burgueses y en las campañas presidenciales estadounidenses, en el período previo a la Gran Depresión, la cuestión del excepcionalismo era un tema de debate entre los comunistas.

Un grupo de oportunistas de derecha dentro del Partido Comunista, liderado por J. Lovestone, argumentó que las leyes generales del capitalismo — incluyendo la teoría de crisis — no se aplicaban realmente a los Estados Unidos, que sería inmune a la crisis que envolvía al mundo capitalista.

“Sería un error ignorar las peculiaridades específicas del capitalismo estadounidense. El Partido Comunista, en su labor, debe tenerlas en cuenta. Pero sería aún más erróneo basar las actividades del Partido Comunista en estas características específicas, ya que la base de las actividades de cualquier Partido Comunista, incluido el Partido Comunista estadounidense, debe ser las características generales del capitalismo, que son las mismas para todos los países, y no sus características específicas en un país determinado.”

Lo que Stalin quiere decir aquí es que debemos entender las leyes del capitalismo y que estas leyes se aplican en todos los lugares donde hay capitalismo.

Hoy en día todavía surge la cuestión del “excepcionalismo estadounidense”. En los Estados Unidos y en algunos otros países capitalistas desarrollados, hay quienes sostienen que las leyes del cambio — que son, de hecho, las leyes del desarrollo de la sociedad, y que fueron expuestas por Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao y muchos otros — ya no se aplican (si es que alguna vez se aplicaron). Por eso, dicen cosas como que la clase obrera está “comprada” y es incapaz de cumplir su papel histórico de enterradora del sistema capitalista, atribuyendo en cambio ese papel a los movimientos sociales. O tomemos como ejemplo a los revisionistas modernos, que eliminan todo lo que es revolucionario en el marxismo. Niegan la necesidad de la dictadura del proletariado y plantean el argumento absurdo de que es posible tener una transición pacífica al socialismo, o niegan la inevitabilidad de las guerras libradas por las potencias imperialistas.

La Decadencia del Imperialismo Estadounidense

El capitalismo monopolista es un sistema regido por leyes, y los revolucionarios pueden entender esas leyes. El imperialismo es un sistema moribundo, y el declive del imperialismo estadounidense se está acelerando. En 1960, la economía estadounidense representaba aproximadamente el 40% de la economía mundial. Hoy, es alrededor de la mitad de eso. En su obra Los Fundamentos del Leninismo, Stalin afirma: “Lenin llamó al imperialismo ‘capitalismo moribundo’. ¿Por qué? Porque el imperialismo lleva las contradicciones del capitalismo hasta sus últimos límites, hasta el límite extremo, más allá del cual comienza la revolución”.

El declive del capitalismo monopolista es un fenómeno real que está configurando todas las contradicciones sociales en los Estados Unidos. Las contradicciones dentro de la clase dirigente se están agudizando, y Trump es el representante político ideal de una potencia imperial en decadencia.

El hecho de que Biden y Harris hayan mantenido muchas de las políticas de Trump relacionadas con la arquitectura financiera internacional — incluidas las que limitan el funcionamiento de la Organización Mundial del Comercio, el proteccionismo y la “desvinculación” de las economías de los Estados Unidos y la China Popular — son indicadores de que hay fuerzas económicas más amplias en juego, que llevan a la clase dirigente estadounidense a algunos puntos de acuerdo sobre qué hacer en un mundo en el que el poder estadounidense está decayendo. Pero en una serie de cuestiones, especialmente las que implican rivalidad inter-imperialista, como la OTAN o la guerra en Ucrania, no hay ningún consenso.

En la sociedad estadounidense, las contradicciones entre clases y nacionalidades también se están agudizando. Hay un notable aumento de huelgas importantes por parte de trabajadores estadounidenses, la más reciente en Boeing por parte de 30.000 miembros de la Asociación Internacional de Maquinistas.

La Cuestión Nacional

Entre las contribuciones teóricas más importantes de Stalin al socialismo científico se encuentra su trabajo sobre la cuestión nacional. A partir de su obra pionera de 1913 El Marxismo y la Cuestión Nacional, Stalin estudió y escribió sobre los movimientos de liberación nacional durante toda su vida.

En Los Fundamentos del Leninismo, Stalin señala:

“Anteriormente, la cuestión nacional se consideraba desde un punto de vista reformista, como una cuestión independiente que no tenía conexión con la cuestión general del poder del capital, del derrocamiento del imperialismo, de la revolución proletaria. Se suponía tácitamente que la victoria del proletariado en Europa era posible sin una alianza directa con el movimiento de liberación en las colonias, que la cuestión nacional-colonial podría resolverse en silencio, ‘por su propia cuenta’, fuera del camino de la revolución proletaria, sin una lucha revolucionaria contra el imperialismo. Ahora podemos decir que ese punto de vista antirrevolucionario ha quedado expuesto.”

Lo que se quiere decir aquí es que quienes se enfrentan a la opresión nacional y la clase obrera de la nación opresora se enfrentan a un enemigo común y que los movimientos de liberación nacional deben ser apoyados activamente. Bajo el liderazgo de Stalin, la Unión Soviética apoyó activamente los movimientos de liberación nacional.

Hoy en día, la importancia de este enfoque se destaca con claridad. Palestina es actualmente el eje del proceso revolucionario en el Medio Oriente, donde los golpes más duros se están asestando al imperialismo estadounidense y occidental. Asimismo, los Estados Unidos es una prisión de naciones. La opresión nacional y la desigualdad sistemática recaen sobre la nación afroamericana, cuyo territorio nacional se encuentra en el Cinturón Negro del Sur, y sobre la nación chicana, cuyo territorio nacional se encuentra en la parte suroeste de los Estados Unidos.

En el contexto de la rápida decadencia del imperialismo, la cuestión de la opresión nacional dentro de los Estados Unidos está desempeñando un papel importante en la definición de los contornos de la lucha — por ejemplo, las 27 millones de personas que salieron a las calles después del asesinato de George Floyd o las manifestaciones masivas en apoyo de Palestina durante el año pasado. La comprensión de la cuestión nacional ha permitido a nuestra organización, OSCL, ocupar un papel importante en estos eventos.

Lecciones del Pasado y Mirando Hacia un Futuro Brillante

Sobre todo, Stalin fue un revolucionario que nunca dudó en señalar el camino a seguir para el movimiento comunista internacional y nunca dudó en corregir los errores cuando los encontraba.

Por ejemplo, en los Estados Unidos, durante el último período del frente popular, especialmente durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, los revisionistas dentro del Partido Comunista llegaron al extremo de liquidar el Partido. Fue el movimiento comunista mundial, encabezado por Stalin, el que llamó la atención sobre el problema y exigió que se abordaran los errores.

Ahora nos encontramos en un período en el que se está produciendo una radicalización a gran escala en los Estados Unidos. Hay más personas que se consideran marxistas-leninistas que en cualquier otro momento desde la década de 1970. La situación para construir un nuevo partido comunista en los Estados Unidos es excelente.

El marxismo-leninismo es una ciencia, y Stalin contribuyó mucho a nuestra comprensión de esa ciencia. Y aprenderemos aún más aplicándola a las condiciones concretas que enfrentamos.

¡Viva el marxismo-leninismo! ¡Viva el movimiento comunista internacional! ¡Tenemos un mundo que ganar!

#RevolutionaryTheory #FRSO #Stalin #Statement #Espanol

This paper, by Political Secretary Mick Kelly of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, was presented to the international conference entitled “Stalin: The teachings for the fight of today’s communists”. The October 15 conference took place in Milan, Italy and was organized by Partito dei CARC (Carc Party), Resistenza Popolare Milano (Popular Resistance Milan) and Associazione Stalin (Stalin Association). The Communist Party of Cuba and the Communist Party of the Philippines also participated. The paper was delivered to the conference by FRSO National Organizer Andy Koch.

Dear Comrades,

On behalf of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, I extend our warmest greeting to the participants and organizers of this important event on the teachings of JV Stalin and the struggle of communists today. Conferences such as this one are vital for the international communist movement as they provide a venue for Marxist-Leninists to deepen our understanding of the world and how to change it. We are also glad to hear about the publication of Stalin’s Collected Works in Italy – as everywhere, spreading the thinking and contributions of Stalin help to illuminate the path to revolution and socialism.

The class enemy hates Stalin. When his name comes up, they lie and – just when you think they are going to wrap it up – they lie some more. They do so because Stalin led a vast movement of working class and oppressed peoples that spanned the globe, with the capacity to mount a serious challenge to world capitalism. Like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao, he frightened them.

Revolutionaries have one view of things, and those who serve as mouthpieces for monopoly capital have another. How could it be otherwise? Mao made the point that every idea without exception is “stamped with the brand of a class.” This same applies to how one evaluates Stalin. Communists have a positive summation of Stalin’s thinking and practice.

We appreciate the many contributions Stalin made to the theory of Marxism-Leninism. In practice, he was an outstanding proletarian revolutionary who helped lead the revolution in Russia and in the establishment of what would become the USSR. Stalin led the process of socialist construction, transforming a country that had a backward, rural-centered economy into a land that was truly modern in the best sense of the word. The five-year plans developed industry at a pace that was until then unknown. In the vast rural areas, production relations were revolutionized – the old property relations which bore the marks of serfdom were swept away by the movement to collective agriculture. Simultaneously, a revolution was conducted in the societal superstructure and new socialist culture was nurtured.

The USSR was a country encircled by hostile capitalist countries that wanted to destroy it. Stalin proved to be a master at utilizing contradictions in the enemy camp, and when the time came, he provided able leadership to the Great Patriotic War against fascism.

JV Stalin was a great proletarian internationalist who took a keen interest in the workers and national liberation movements around the world. The theory and practice of Stalin, as it can be applied to the situation we find ourselves in today, will be the focus of the rest of this paper.

Monopoly capitalism and “American Exceptionalism”

In 1929, the American Commission of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International was rocked by a debate that was taking place inside the Communist Party of the USA. Stalin addressed the commission at length, making two major points that are of real importance to communists today. The first was the danger of factionalism and how factionalism undermines the unity that is required by a communist party to act effectively. Stalin spoke of a potential developing revolutionary crisis and stated:

“For that end the American Communist Party must be improved and bolshevized. For that end we must work for the complete liquidation of factionalism and deviations in the Party. For that end we must work for the reestablishment of unity in the Communist Party of America. For that end we must work in order to forge real revolutionary cadres and a real revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, capable of leading the many millions of the American working class toward the revolutionary class struggles. For that end all personal factors and factional considerations must be laid aside and the revolutionary education of the working class of America must be placed above all.”

Stalin went on to state:

“Let us take any factory or plant. Let us assume that the majority of the workers of that factory show an inclination to go on strike, whereas the minority, on the plea of their convictions, declare against a strike. A war of opinions commences, meetings are held, and in the end the vast majority in the factory decide to strike. What would you say of ten or twenty workers, representing a minority in the factory, who declared they would not submit to the decision of the majority of the workers, since they were not in agreement with that decision? What would you call them, dear comrades? You know that such workers are usually called strike-breakers.”

The fact that factionalism is poison to a revolutionary communist organization is well known and must be dealt with accordingly. Less well known was the underlying debate among U.S. communists that was helping to fuel the factional battle – that is the problem of “American exceptionalism.” Long before it became a buzz word in bourgeois political circles and U.S presidential campaigns, in the lead-up to the Great Depression the issue of exceptionalism was a topic of debate among communists.

A group of right opportunists inside the Communist Party, led by J Lovestone, made the argument that the general laws of capitalism – including crisis theory – did not really apply to the U.S., which would be immune from the crisis engulfing the capitalist world. Stalin responded:

“It would be wrong to ignore the specific peculiarities of American capitalism. The Communist Party in its work must take them into account. But it would be still more wrong to base the activities of the Communist Party on these specific features, since the foundation of the activities of every Communist Party, including the American Communist Party, on which it must base itself, must be the general features of capitalism, which are the same for all countries, and not its specific features in any given country.”

The point Stalin is making here is that we must understand the laws of capitalism and that these laws apply in all places you find capitalism.

Today the issue of “American exceptionalism” still comes up. In the U.S. and some other developed capitalist countries, there are those who argue that the laws of change – which are in fact, the laws of society’s development, and which were laid bare by Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and many others – do not apply anymore (if they ever did). So, they say things like the working class is “bought off” and unable to serve its historic role as the grave digger of the capitalist system, ascribing that role instead to social movements. Or take for example the modern revisionists, who remove all that is revolutionary from Marxism. They negate the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and make the silly argument that it is possible to have a peaceful transition to socialism, or they deny the inevitably of wars being waged by the imperial powers.

Decline of U.S. imperialism

Monopoly capitalism is a law-governed system, and revolutionaries can understand those laws. Imperialism is a dying system, and the decline of U.S. imperialism is accelerating. In 1960, the U.S. economy represented about 40% of the world economy. Today, it is about half that. In his work, Foundations of Leninism, Stalin states, “Lenin called imperialism ‘moribund capitalism.’ Why? Because imperialism carries the contradictions of capitalism to their last bounds, to the extreme limit, beyond which revolution begins.”

The decline of monopoly capitalism is a real phenomenon that is shaping every social contradiction within the United States. The contradictions within the ruling class are sharpening, and Trump is an ideal political representative of an imperial power in decline.

The fact that Biden/Harris have retained many of Trump’s policies concerning the international financial architecture – including policies that limit the functioning of the World Trade Organization; protectionism; and the “delinking” the economies of the U.S. and People’s China – are indicators that broader economic forces are at work, leading the U.S. ruling class to some points of agreement about what to do in a world where U.S. power is slipping. But on a host of issues, especially those that involve inter-imperialist rivalry such as NATO or the war in Ukraine, there is anything but a consensus.

In U.S. society, the contradictions along class and national lines are also growing sharper. There is a notable uptick in major strikes by U.S. workers, most recently at Boeing by 30,000 members of the International Association of Machinists.

The National Question

Among Stalin’s most important theoretical contributions to scientific socialism was his work on the national question. Starting with his pathing-breaking 1913 work Marxism and the National Question, Stalin studied and wrote about the movements for national liberation his whole life.

In Foundations of Leninism Stalin notes:

“Formerly, the national question was regarded from a reformist point of view, as an independent question having no connection with the general question of the power of capital, of the overthrow of imperialism, of the proletarian revolution. It was tacitly assumed that the victory of the proletariat in Europe was possible without a direct, alliance with the liberation movement in the colonies, that the national-colonial question could be solved on the quiet, “of its own accord,” off the highway of the proletarian revolution, without a revolutionary struggle against imperialism. Now we can say that anti-revolutionary point of view has been exposed.”

What is being said here is that those facing national oppression, and the working class of the oppressor nation, face a common enemy, and that movements for national liberation should be actively supported. Under Stalin’s leadership the Soviet Union actively supported the national liberation movements.

Today, the importance of this approach stands out in sharp relief. Palestine is currently the pivot of the revolutionary process in the Middle East, where the heaviest blows are being landed on U.S. and Western imperialism. Likewise, the U.S. itself is a jailhouse of nations. National oppression and systematic inequality are visited upon the African American nation, which has its national territory the Black Belt South, and on the Chicano nation, which has its national territory in the Southwest portion of the U.S.

In the context of imperialism’s rapid decline, the issue of national oppression inside the U.S. is playing an important role in defining the contours of struggle – for example, the 27 million people came out into the streets after the murder of George Floyd. Or the massive demonstrations in support of Palestine over the past year. Understanding the national question has allowed our organization, FRSO, to play an important role in these events.

Lessons from the past, and looking towards a bright future

Above all else, Stalin was a revolutionary who never hesitated to point the way forward for the international communist movement, and never hesitated to correct errors when he found them.

For example, in the United States, during the later period of the popular front, especially during World War II, revisionists within the Communist Party went so far as to liquidate the Party. It was the world communist movement, headed by Stalin, that called attention to the problem and demanded the mistakes be addressed.

We are now in a period where large scale radicalization is underway in the U.S. There are more people who view themselves as Marxist-Leninists than at any time since the 1970s. The situation for building a new communist party in the U.S. is excellent.

Marxism-Leninism is a science, and Stalin contributed a lot to our understanding of that science. And we will learn still more by applying it to the concrete conditions we face.

Long live Marxism-Leninism!

Long live the international communist movement!

We have a world to win!

#RevolutionaryTheory #Socialism #Stalin

The Foundations of Leninism is a collection of lectures given by J.V. Stalin to Sverdlov University in 1924, shortly after the death of Lenin in January of that year. The nine lectures that make up the book cover topics of history, methodology, style of work, theory, and strategy and tactics, as well as exposition and analysis of particular issues, such as the party, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the national question, and the peasant question. On each of these topics, Stalin lays out the Leninist position succinctly and concretely. 

Stalin’s lectures and the book that came out of them have to be understood in the context of the period in which it was written. After the death of Lenin, a sharp ideological struggle over the direction of the Soviet Union gripped the party and the masses. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) needed to chart a course for how to transition from the New Economic Policy, which sought to stabilize the economy following the “war communism” of the Civil War period, to the period of socialist construction.

During Lenin’s illness the Trotskyites headed up a group of opportunists who put forward the “Declaration of Forty-Six Oppositionists.” According to the History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks) – Short Course, “In their declaration, they prophesied a grave economic crisis and the fall of the Soviet power and demanded freedom of factions and groups as the only way out of the situation.” The History goes on to explain, “The platform of the forty-six was followed up by the publication of a letter by Trotsky …[which] harped on the old Menshevik themes which the Party had heard from him many times before.” After a long discussion in all levels of the party, Trotsky’s opposition line was defeated at the Thirteenth Party Conference. But, as the History of the CPSU explains, “In the autumn of 1924, Trotsky published an article entitled, ‘The Lessons of October’ in which he attempted to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism.” 

It is in this context that Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism was published. For this reason, the 1949 book Joseph Stalin: A Political Biography by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute calls Foundations of Leninism “a most effective weapon in demolishing Trotskyism ideologically, and in defending, explaining, and developing Leninism.” The book systematically laid out “everything new and distinctive associated with the name of Lenin, everything he contributed to the development of Marxist theory.” Foundations of Leninism thus draws clear lines of demarcation between Leninism and all forms of opportunism. 

The Marxism of the current era

As Stalin writes in the introduction, “The foundations of Leninism is a big subject.” We can’t address all of it here. But we can touch on some of the major points. 

First, let’s look at Stalin’s definition of Leninism: “Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.” He expands further on this, saying, 

“To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period, (we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians’ preparation for revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical inevitability. But Lenin, the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of developed imperialism, in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.”

In other words, Leninism further develops Marxism in the current period, the era of imperialism, or monopoly capitalism, when the contradictions of capitalism are pushed to their extreme. It develops revolutionary theory, strategy and tactics, in this context. It is under these new conditions that Leninism seeks to address the problems posed to the revolutionary movement by the contradictions inherent in the imperialist system. Stalin emphasizes that “Leninism emerged from the proletarian revolution, the imprint of which it cannot but bear,” and that “it grew and became strong in clashes with the opportunism of the Second International, the fight against which was and remains an essential preliminary condition for a successful fight against capitalism,” and thus, “the ruthless struggle against this opportunism could not but constitute one of the most important tasks of Leninism.” 

Stalin emphasizes that there are three contradictions which imperialism brings forward that need to be understood as carrying particular importance. First, there is the contradiction between labor and capital. Second, there is the contradiction among the financial groups and imperialist powers. And third, there is the contradiction between the imperialist nations and the oppressed nations and peoples of the world. “Such, in general,” writes Stalin, “are the principal contradictions of imperialism which have converted the old, ‘flourishing’ capitalism into moribund capitalism.” 

Theory and practice 

Stalin lays particular importance on Leninism’s method of analysis. He emphasizes that this method relied upon testing the theoretical dogmas and policies of the parties of the Second International. These dogmas and policies were found to be insufficient for leading a revolutionary movement forward. Stalin breaks down several of these dogmas piece by piece, showing how Leninist theory must reject dogmatism and combine theory with practice in the course of revolutionary struggle. This is summed up by noting, “It is precisely this critical and revolutionary spirit that pervades Lenin's method from beginning to end.”

On the importance of theory in Leninism, Stalin notes, “Some think that Leninism is the precedence of practice over theory in the sense that its main point is the translation of the Marxist theses into deeds, their “execution”; as for theory; it is alleged that Leninism is rather unconcerned about it. … We also know that theory is not held in great favor by many present-day Leninist practical workers, particularly in view of the immense amount of practical work imposed upon them by the situation.” 

Against this, Stalin puts forward an excellent definition of Marxist theory: “Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect.” For Leninism, theory and practice must be united. Theory without practice is worthless, and practice without theory “gropes in the dark.” 

Explaining the importance of theory, Stalin emphasizes that “theory can become a tremendous force in the working-class movement if it is built up in indissoluble connection with revolutionary practice.” Indeed, writes Stalin, “theory, and theory alone, can give the movement confidence, the power of orientation, and an understanding of the inner relation of surrounding events; for it, and it alone, can help practice realize not only how and in which direction classes are moving at the present time, but also how and in which direction they will move in the near future.”

Stalin brings particular attention to two theoretical points of Lenin’s: first, the criticism of spontaneity and the importance of a vanguard party, and second, Lenin’s theory of proletarian revolution. 

The first point here is to emphasize that Leninism understands that the spontaneous economic battles of the working class are not sufficient to bring about a socialist revolution, but rather that a political struggle against the bourgeois state, led by an organized and disciplined vanguard, made up of its most advanced and class conscious workers, armed with the most advanced revolutionary theory (Marxism-Leninism) is necessary to overthrow the dictatorship of capital and build working class state power. Today, when no such vanguard party exists as a material reality, the central task of Marxist-Leninists is to build one. 

The second point is to understand that Lenin understood the era of imperialism to be the eve of socialist revolution due to the internal contradiction of the monopoly capitalist system. Previously, the socialist movement believed that socialist revolution must first come to the most advanced capitalist countries first. Contrary to this, Leninism asserts, “The front of capital will be pierced where the chain of imperialism is weakest, for the proletarian revolution is the result of the breaking of the chain of the world imperialist front at its weakest link.” In 1917, this weak link was Tsarist Russia. 

Proletarian dictatorship

The Foundations of Leninism explains Lenin’s theory of the state clearly and succinctly. 

“The state is a machine in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies. In this respect the dictatorship of the proletariat does not differ essentially from the dictatorship of any other class, for the proletarian state is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie. But there is one substantial difference. This difference consists in the fact that all hitherto existing class states have been dictatorships of an exploiting minority over the exploited majority, whereas the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the exploited majority over the exploiting minority.”

Stalin outlines two essential conclusions that Lenin draws from this theory of the state. First, the state isn’t a “complete” democracy, but rather, it is democracy for the working class for the sake of the repression of the capitalist class. Second, the proletarian dictatorship “cannot arise as the result of the peaceful development of bourgeois society and of bourgeois democracy; it can arise only as the result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic apparatus, the bourgeois police.” 

“In other words,” writes Stalin, “the law of violent proletarian revolution, the law of smashing of the bourgeois state machine as a preliminary condition for such a revolution, is an inevitable law of the revolutionary movement in the imperialist countries of the world.” 

The National Question 

The National Question, the question of how the socialist revolution should relate to the nations oppressed by imperialism, is of particular importance to Leninism. Self-determination is a key point here. “Leninism broadened the conception of self-determinism, interpreting it as the right of the oppressed peoples of the dependent countries and colonies to complete secession, as the right of nations to independent existence as states.” Further, Stalin explains, “the national question can be solved only in connection with and on the basis of the proletarian revolution, and that the road to victory of the revolution in the West lies through the revolutionary alliance with the liberation movement of the colonies and dependent countries against imperialism. The national question is a part of the general question of the proletarian revolution, a part of the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Leninism also recognizes that “the revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the existence of a democratic basis of the movement.” This an essential point to drive home, especially today as Zionists and opportunists both demand the denunciation of Hamas and the division of the Palestinian resistance in the face of U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza. Every socialist must understand that the defeat of Israel, as a tool of U.S. imperialism, as a blow against the monopoly capitalist class, and must therefore unequivocally support the unified Palestinian resistance in its just struggle for liberation. 

The same is true within the U.S. where revolutionaries must recognize the right to self-determination of the Black, Chicano and Hawaiian nations, including their right to secede in their national territories of the Black Belt South, the Southwest and Hawai’i, respectively. Likewise, revolutionaries in the U.S must support immediate independence for the colonies, and the sovereignty of native peoples. 

This is why the strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the liberation struggles of the oppressed nationalities must form the core of the united front against monopoly capitalism in the U.S. 

Strategy and tactics

The Foundations of Leninism has a lot to say about Leninist revolutionary strategy and tactics. Here we will emphasize the distinction that Stalin makes between revolutionary strategy and tactics and reformism. While Stalin was drawing from a body of practice where a revolutionary situation was at hand in Russia and many other places, there is much to here to inform our thinking today.

“To a reformist,” writes Stalin, “reforms are everything, while revolutionary work is something incidental, something just to talk about, mere eyewash. That is why, with reformist tactics under the conditions of bourgeois rule, reforms are inevitability transformed into an instrument for strengthening that rule, an instrument for disintegrating the revolution.”

“To a revolutionary, on the contrary,” Stalin explains, “the main thing is revolutionary work and not reforms; to him reforms are a by-product of the revolution. That is why, with revolutionary tactics under the conditions of bourgeois rule, reforms are naturally transformed into an instrument for strengthening the revolution, into a strongpoint for the further development of the revolutionary movement.”

In other words, revolutionaries struggle for reforms in order to build the revolutionary movements and set the conditions for revolutionary struggle. This is why we say again and again that there are three cardinal principles in revolutionary organizing: we must win all that can be won and strike blows against the enemy; we must raise the level of consciousness and organization of the masses; and we must win the advanced from these struggles to Marxism-Leninism and build revolutionary organization. 

Foundations of Leninism today

Today we still live in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, and Marxism-Leninism is theory that the working class needs to understand and put into practice in order to overthrow the old society and build a new one, socialism, where working people are in power and can put the needs of the people first.

As imperialism lashes out everywhere, from Palestine to the Philippines, we need to understand the lessons of Leninism, and stand in solidarity with oppressed people everywhere in our fight against our common enemy – the monopoly capitalist class at the head of the U.S. imperialist machine of oppression, war, exploitation, misery and death. U.S. imperialism is in a period of prolonged decline, during which it only becomes more vicious.

We have to be organized to fight back. Lenin emphasized that there are objective and subjective conditions for a revolution to take place. The objective conditions are that there is an economic crisis that becomes a political crisis for the ruling class, where they can no longer rule in the old way and we can no longer live in the old way. The subjective conditions are that the working class is conscious of itself as a class, and that it is organized, with a party capable of leading a broad revolutionary movement. 

The objective conditions can be analyzed and impacted by struggle, but the subjective conditions are even more within our power to change to our benefit. We can and must use Marxism-Leninism to grasp the tasks of the movement, build the organization and consciousness among the masses, and prepare ourselves to seize the time. Reading The Foundations of Leninism can help a great deal in helping revolutionaries orient themselves for the struggles ahead.

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Since the writing of The Communist Manifesto and the founding of the First International, proletarian internationalism has been a cornerstone of scientific socialism, and is a pillar of Marxism-Leninism. Today, in the era of imperialism, putting genuine proletarian internationalism into practice demands that we be consistent anti-imperialists.

Beyond any moral questions, there are two obvious, material reasons for this proletarian internationalist, anti-imperialist unity. On the one hand every dollar that goes to imperialist war is a dollar that could have been spent on people’s needs at home. But even more importantly, every blow struck against imperialism weakens the monopoly capitalist class here.

What imperialism is and what it is not

First, let’s be clear on what imperialism means. Understanding the link between imperialism and monopoly capitalism is essential. Indeed, imperialism and monopoly capitalism aren't just linked, they’re synonymous. Failing to understand this, some people think any kind of big country is an empire and that any empire is imperialist, from ancient Rome to socialist China. But this is an idealist and metaphysical view. In other words, this view fails to look at how imperialism develops historically, according to definite material processes. It should be obvious that the Roman Empire and the U.S. empire are qualitatively different.

If we look at imperialism historically, we have to understand its relationship to the dominant socio-economic system. V.I. Lenin developed the scientific analysis of imperialism in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, to help the working-class movement understand the demands that this new historical stage of capitalism placed on the socialist movement. In “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” Lenin writes, “Imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is threefold: imperialism is monopoly capitalism; parasitic, or decaying capitalism; moribund capitalism. The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism.”

Lenin goes on to explain that imperialism, as monopoly capitalism, has five principal characteristics:

“Monopoly manifests itself in five principal forms: (1) cartels, syndicates and trusts—the concentration of production has reached a degree which gives rise to these monopolistic associations of capitalists; (2) the monopolistic position of the big banks—three, four or five giant banks manipulate the whole economic life of America, France, Germany; (3) seizure of the sources of raw material by the trusts and the financial oligarchy (finance capital is monopoly industrial capital merged with bank capital); (4) the (economic) partition of the world by the international cartels has begun. There are already over one hundred such international cartels, which command the entire world market and divide it “amicably” among themselves—until war redivides it. The export of capital, as distinct from the export of commodities under non-monopoly capitalism, is a highly characteristic phenomenon and is closely linked with the economic and territorial-political partition of the world; (5) the territorial partition of the world (colonies) is completed.”

This is the historical materialist view of imperialism as it exists today. Thus, Lenin points out that “Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism in America and Europe, and later in Asia, took final shape in the period 1898–1914. The Spanish-American War (1898), the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and the economic crisis in Europe in 1900 are the chief historical landmarks in the new era of world history.” The rise of imperialism in the U.S. led to the colonization of foreign territories and contributed to the development of oppressed nations within the borders of the U.S., such as the Chicano Nation in the Southwest, the African American Nation in the Black Belt South, and the Hawaiian Nation.

Dialectically, the era of imperialism has led to the development of four fundamental contradictions operating on a world-scale: the contradiction between labor and capital, the contradictions between the imperialists among themselves, the contradiction between the imperialists and the movements for national liberation, and, following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the contradiction between the imperialist and socialist systems.

It is important to note that some people choose to ignore the historical connection between the development of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. They argue that countries like China are imperialist, because they engage in foreign trade. Looking at the difference between the foreign policy of China and the imperialist countries will help us understand what imperialism is in practice, and what it isn’t. Basically, what these people fail to understand is that imperialism is fundamentally exploitative, extractive and violent.

Imperialism relies upon predatory loans, structural adjustment programs, unequal trade agreements, privatization and liberalization, to ensure that it can extract as much profit from its colonies and neocolonies as possible. Capital is exported to the underdeveloped countries in order to exploit cheap labor. By locking these oppressed nations and peoples into a permanent state of underdevelopment it is able to achieve a higher rate of exploitation than it can otherwise. This super-exploitation allows the imperialist powers to prop themselves up with these super-profits, using them as a kind of life-support, to prolong the existence of the capitalist system far beyond its natural lifespan.

This inevitably leads to the sharpening of the contradictions between the imperialists themselves and the contradiction between the imperialists and the movements for national liberation. For this reason, the imperialists must back all of this up with military force. For the U.S., this includes a network of military bases, spanning the world, and its military alliances, like NATO, which it dominates. It will not hesitate to intervene militarily, or to arm and fund its proxies, such as Ukraine and Israel. It will stage coups and assassinate leaders. There is no price in human bloodshed and suffering that is too high to protect U.S. hegemony and imperialist super-profits.

China’s foreign policy in the developing world is nothing like this. It is neither exploitative nor extractive and is based on equal and mutually beneficial trade agreements. It is also fundamentally peaceful. The countries that benefit from trade and development from China are not locked into underdevelopment by China. Nor are they targeted for Chinese military intervention, or coups. On the contrary, China provides an alternative to imperialist underdevelopment that many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are glad to take.

China doesn’t do this because the Chinese are nice and the imperialists aren’t. The imperialists are violent, exploitative and extractive because they must be. The imperialist system is governed by laws, laws inherent to capitalism. China behaves differently because these are laws from which the working class has freed itself in the socialist countries. Socialism, and China in particular, is thus a counterbalance to imperialism in the world. This counterbalance causes the contradiction between the imperialist and socialist systems to sharpen, leading to a constant barrage of anti-China propaganda and increasing aggression from the U.S. towards China.

Imperialism and war

Beyond this question of what imperialism is and what it isn’t, there is further confusion about what it means to be consistently anti-imperialist in relation to the question of war. Because monopoly capitalism relies upon military intervention, that is, upon war, to further its aims, progressive people everywhere rightly oppose imperialist war. But it is possible to make a very dangerous error here.

There is a pacifist trend in the anti-war movement that originates in the ideology of the petite bourgeoisie. These people oppose all war, regardless of who is fighting and for what. They see the violence of the imperialists and the violence of the oppressed as equally bad. These are the kind of people who, in the face of Zionist apartheid in Palestine and the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, demand first and foremost the movement’s condemnation of Hamas. They demand peace, condemning both the reactionary violence of the oppressor and the revolutionary violence of the oppressed. There is a material basis for this kind of thinking. The petite bourgeoisie is a class stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are driven down by the monopoly capitalist class, but they also benefit from the exploitation of labor and support the capitalist system. By taking this pacifist approach, they wash their hands of the whole conflict, and try to cling to the status quo.

On the other hand, there are also social-democrats who turn a blind eye towards imperialism. These people believe that “socialism” can be built within the framework of monopoly capitalism, despite the super-exploitation of the oppressed peoples of the rest of the world. This is why the representatives of this ideology tend to lend their support to the U.S. wars for empire, while they clamor for “socialism” at home. They see “socialism” as social programs under capitalism, like Medicare, public works projects, the postal service, and fire departments. Their “socialism” doesn’t challenge the power of the monopoly capitalists but would merely regulate it. Based on the so-called “Nordic model,” this kind of “socialism” is really just imperialism dressed in red—they advocate socialism in words, but imperialist in deeds. This is what Lenin called “social-imperialism.” These reformists argue for class collaboration, denying that the contradiction between the working class and the capitalist class is fundamentally antagonistic. And so, these “socialists” don’t understand that the starting point of socialism is the seizure of political power by the working class.

Some of these social democrats are the “progressive except for Palestine” variety. They support progressive reforms that would help working and oppressed people, but when it comes to foreign policy, especially in regard to support for Israel, they hold social-chauvinist and downight reactionary positions. Right now, as Israel continues to wage a genocidal war against the Palestinian people, these so called “socialists” have nothing but praise for Zionism and the Israeli apartheid state, and nothing but scorn and condemnation for principled anti-imperialists who stand in solidarity for the unified Palestinian Resistance.

We must be absolutely clear: victory for the resistance in Palestine is a victory for working and oppressed people everywhere, and that victory is coming closer every day. History will remember the Israeli state together with apartheid South Africa, as a stain on history and a mark of shame to everyone who ever supported it. As PFLP leader Leila Khaled once put it, “The supreme objective of the Palestinian liberation movement is the total liberation of Palestine, the dismantlement of the Zionist state apparatus, and the construction of a socialist society in which both Arabs and Jews can live in peace and harmony.” When that day comes, not only will the Palestinian people be liberated from oppression, but a mighty blow will be struck against the monopoly capitalist class in the U.S. that relies on the Zionist state to maintain its hegemony in the Middle East.

Social-chauvinist thinking isn’t a new problem, but it must be addressed again. Indeed, Lenin fought these tendencies in the Second International. Lenin argued that true proletarian internationalism means that socialists should support the defeat of their own imperialist governments in their wars of domination and plunder. Lenin put it simply, saying, “During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government.” During World War I, Lenin fought against those in the socialist movement who called for a “class truce” during the inter-imperialist war.

Some “socialists” even supported “defense of the fatherland” wrongly identifying the interests of the working class with the national interests of the capitalist ruling class. In his 1915 essay “The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War” Lenin takes to task those “socialists” like Karl Kautsky in Germany and Leon Trotsky in Russia who opposed the slogan of revolutionary defeatism, that is, the call for the defeat of one’s own imperialist government and the demand to transform the reactionary inter-imperialist war into a revolutionary, civil war. In his 1916 article, “Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International,” Lenin further attacks these social-chauvinists, saying, “War is often useful in exposing what is rotten…”

But imperialist war is only one side of the equation. The reality is that some wars are unjust and others are just. Mao Zedong put it this way in his book, On Protracted War.

“History shows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive, just wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars; we actively participate in them. As for unjust wars, World War I is an instance in which both sides fought for imperialist interests; therefore, the Communists of the whole world firmly opposed that war. The way to oppose a war of this kind is to do everything possible to prevent it before it breaks out and, once it breaks out, to oppose war with war, to oppose unjust war with just war, whenever possible.”

The wars carried out by the imperialists for hegemony, to divide and redivide the world, and to protect their super-profits, are unjust. They sacrifice the lives of millions for the sake of profit, to make sure the lines on the graph go up, and that the vaults of the shareholders are filled to the brim. This is why the U.S. gives billions in military aid to its proxies, like Israel, to maintain its foothold in the Middle East. No matter the war crimes or atrocities, the U.S. is always ready with its checkbook. These wars impede progress.

On the other hand, wars that oppose imperialism, that fight for national liberation from foreign capital and their domestic lackeys, are progressive, just wars. From Palestine to the Philippines, people are fighting tooth and nail to throw off the yoke of imperialism and colonialism, to achieve national liberation, independence, and dignity. These wars are just and should be supported.

During World War II, in “The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War,” Mao put it like this:

“The specific content of patriotism is determined by historical conditions. There is the ‘patriotism’ of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler, and there is our patriotism. Communists must resolutely oppose the ‘patriotism’ of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler. The Communists of Japan and Germany are defeatists with regard to the wars being waged by their countries. To bring about the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler by every possible means is in the interests of the Japanese and the German people, and the more complete the defeat the better.... For the wars launched by the Japanese aggressors and Hitler are harming the people at home as well as the people of the world.”

Because the anti-imperialist struggle is the strategic ally of the working class movement, Mao explains, “in wars of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism.”

During World War II, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union transformed the nature of that war. The war began in 1939 as an inter-imperialist war for the redivision of the world between the imperialist powers, but once the Soviet Union came under attack in June of 1941, it was no longer correct to regard the war as a purely inter-imperialist war. The contradiction between the imperialist and socialist systems came to the forefront, leading communists to join in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany, the main danger to the USSR. Furthermore, communist-led resistance movements, particularly in China, Yugoslavia and Albania, were waging just wars for liberation against imperialist occupation.

Friends and enemies

At the core of all this lies an important point, that Mao summed up well: “We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports.” Who is the enemy? The imperialist, monopoly capitalist class. Who does the enemy oppose? Everyone fighting against oppression and for liberation, and everyone who challenges their hegemony. Who does the enemy support? Anyone who will serve their interests, who will help them in their drive for domination and exploitation.

Stalin makes this crystal clear in his 1924 book, The Foundations of Leninism, when he says, “The revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the existence of a democratic basis of the movement.”

Stalin gives the example of Amanullah Khan in Afghanistan: “The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism.”

To clarify this point, Stalin contrasts the nationalist movement in Egypt to the Labor Party in Britain. He writes “the struggle that the Egyptians merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British ‘Labor’ Government is waging to preserve Egypt's dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origin and the proletarian title of the members of the government, despite the fact that they are ‘for’ socialism.”

This may seem strange to some people, but the reason for this is simple. The monopoly capitalist class that is oppressing, in Stalin’s example, the Egyptian independence movement, is the very same monopoly capitalist class that is exploiting the British working class. Their defeat by the Egyptian independence movement weakens them, helping the British working class to overthrow them. There is a strategic alliance that is possible here, even among classes with different interests, because they share this common enemy.

U.S. imperialism is in a state of prolonged and inevitable decline. Since the historic defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, the United States has grown more and more desperate. Like a cornered beast, it lashes out everywhere. For all of its snarling, biting and clawing, it accomplishes little at great cost. Its place of dominance in the imperialist system, established at the end of World War II, is slipping away. The labor movement is seeing an upsurge, the national liberation struggles are advancing, and the socialist countries are gaining strength. U.S imperialism fights on many fronts, and each defeat it faces is a victory for the working class here and around the world. Everyone who wants socialism should celebrate every blow struck against the imperialist, monopoly capitalist class.

J. Sykes is the author of the book “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook

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The publication of the new English translation of Domenico Losurdo’s book, Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend, is a major event for Marxists, as well as for scholars of Soviet history in the English speaking world. Originally published in Italian in 2008, Iskra Press has just released the first authorized translation into English, thanks to the translation work of Henry Hakamäki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro.

The late Domenico Losurdo was a first-rate philosopher, historian and scholar, and the author of many important works such as Liberalism: A Counter-History (2005) and Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History (2003). One of the most significant studies of Stalin ever written, English-speaking activists and scholars have long hoped that this important book on Stalin would be translated from Losurdo’s native Italian, but left-leaning publishers of Losurdo’s other books, such as Verso, refused to touch it.

It is noteworthy, as a bit of history about the translation, that when Henry Hakamäki wrote to Verso Books requesting that they publish Losurdo’s Stalin, Verso senior editor Sebastian Budgen responded, calling the book “one of Losurdo’s worst books” and insisted, “We will continue to publish the books by him that have intellectual merit and are based on real and serious research, but not these kinds of texts.” Hakamäki has noted, however, that the book contains at least “346 works cited in it, and has well over 1000 points of citation within the text.” Indeed, Losurdo is a world renowned scholar, whose research methodology in Stalin mirrors that of his other works. We can only assume, then, that by “these kinds of texts,” Budgen means that Verso will not publish books that challenge the anti-Stalin paradigm in scholarship, no matter how well researched.

Interestingly, this controversy regarding the book’s publication really cuts to the heart of what the book is about. The title of the book refers to the idea that a “black legend” has been constructed around Stalin with the intent of discrediting communism. This “black legend” regarding Stalin is the subject of the book. What does this mean? In historiography, which is the study of historical writing and research, a “black legend” refers to a sustained trend of fabrication, exaggeration, decontextualization, and distortion which aims to paint the subject as monstrous and without redeeming qualities.

In this sense, the book isn’t a biography. Losurdo’s book is a “history and critique” of the demonization of Stalin rather than a summation of the period of Stalin’s leadership in the Soviet Union, or an analysis of the figure of Stalin himself. The book breaks down this “black legend” in a systematic way, based on rigorous and well documented research. It shows how the history of Stalin and the Stalin era has been decontextualized, distorted, fabricated and exaggerated, in order to manufacture a political mythology of Stalin as a villain.

Stalin is a major figure in the history of the international communist movement, and both his theory and practice deserve careful study and summation, not just by scholars, but also by socialists and activists who are interested in building a better society. The demonization of Stalin has always been a cornerstone of anti-communism in the United States, and this demonization has been repeated by academics and even “socialists.” Some of these are indeed anti-communists, while others simply lack the courage to stand up to the anti-Stalin propaganda. Others still simply need to become better informed, which this book can help with.

But outside of the imperialist countries, Stalin is widely regarded as a great figure, who accomplished incredible things. Stalin is recognized for transforming the Soviet Union from a backwards, semi-feudal country to a world power, and for defeating Nazi Germany and saving the world from fascism. During the period of Stalin’s leadership of the USSR, the Soviet Union abolished illiteracy, did away with unemployment, provided universal healthcare and housing, and put an end to the cycles of economic crisis and famine that had plagued Russia for centuries prior to the Bolshevik Revolution.

While the Trotskyites had long shrieked impotently about “Stalinism,” the true origin of Stalin’s demonization in the West, according to Losurdo, is Khrushchev’s so-called “secret speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, “On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences.” The first chapter of Losurdo’s book, entitled “How to Cast a God into Hell: The Khrushchev Report” deals with dissecting the claims made against Stalin by Khrushchev in his “secret speech.” From there, Losurdo goes through the many charges against Stalin from then to now, looking at the historical, political and social context as a whole, and helps the reader to come to a fair conclusion about what really took place in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s leadership. Through the course of Losurdo’s work, the picture we are left with is very different from the one we are usually taught.

Losurdo notes that as scholarship has progressed. “On the whole,” he writes, “the caricatured portrait of Stalin drawn first by Trotsky and then by Khrushchev no longer enjoys much credit.” He also explains that “it now becomes clear that the Secret Speech is entirely unreliable. There is no detail in it that is not contested today.” And yet it still remains a cornerstone of the anti-Stalin paradigm.

As the Communist Party of China wrote shortly after Khrushchev’s secret speech, “the question of how to evaluate Stalin and what attitude to take towards him is not just one of appraising Stalin himself; more important, it is a question of how to sum up the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the international communist movement since Lenin’s death.” This is why Losurdo’s Stalin is an important and valuable book. It is a work of scholarship destined to shake up the predominant, anti-communist history that is taught at every level of U.S. society. It is also important for activists and revolutionaries to read.

Stalin himself once said, “Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect.” Losurdo has made an important contribution to our understanding and summation of that experience, and this translation helps to make it more accessible to readers in the United States and other predominantly English speaking countries. Today, people in the U.S are taking up socialist and revolutionary ideas in a way not seen in a very long time. Everyone who is interested in socialism’s history or its future should read this book.

This book is available from the Iskra Books website: https://www.iskrabooks.org/stalin-history-and-critique J. Sykes is the author of “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook.

#UnitedStates #BookReviews #MarxismLeninism #Stalin

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following article written by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong on the 60th birthday of Joseph Stalin. Stalin, Friend of the Chinese People

On the Twenty-first of December, Comrade Stalin will be sixty years old. We can be sure that his birthday will evoke warm and affectionate congratulations from the hearts of all revolutionary people throughout the world who know of the occasion.

Congratulating Stalin is not a formality. Congratulating Stalin means supporting him and his cause, supporting the victory of socialism, and the way forward for mankind which he points out, it means supporting a dear friend. For the great majority of mankind today are suffering, and mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help.

Living in a period of the bitterest suffering in our history, we Chinese people most urgently need help from others. The Book of Odes says, “A bird sings out to draw a friend's response.” This aptly describes our present situation.

But who are our friends?

There are so-called friends, self-styled friends of the Chinese people, whom even some Chinese unthinkingly accept as friends. But such friends can only be classed with Li Lin-fu, the prime minister in the Tang Dynasty who was notorious as a man with “honey on his lips and murder in his heart”. They are indeed “friends” with “honey on their lips and murder in their hearts”. Who are these people? They are the imperialists who profess sympathy with China.

However, there are friends of another kind, friends who have real sympathy with us and regard us as brothers. Who are they? They are the Soviet people and Stalin.

No other country has renounced its privileges in China; the Soviet Union alone has done so.

All the imperialists opposed us during our First Great Revolution; the Soviet Union alone helped us.

No government of any imperialist country has given us real help since the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan; the Soviet Union alone has helped China with its aviation and supplies.

Is not the point clear enough?

Only the land of socialism, its leaders and people, and socialist thinkers, statesmen and workers can give real help to the cause of liberation of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people, and without their help our cause cannot win final victory.

Stalin is the true friend of the cause of liberation of the Chinese people. No attempt to sow dissension, no lies and calumnies, can affect the Chinese people's whole-hearted love and respect for Stalin and our genuine friendship for the Soviet Union.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #MaoZedong #Socialism #Stalin

December 21 marks the birthday of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.

Though reviled in the West, Stalin oversaw the period of socialist construction in the USSR. Under his leadership the country abolished illiteracy, unemployment, homelessness, and put an end to Russia's centuries-long history of famines. Under the leadership of Stalin, the USSR played a key role in turning back the tide of fascism and the defeat of Nazi Germany. This victory was not just a victory for the Soviet Union and socialism, but a victory for the peoples of the world. Under his leadership, the country went from an agrarian backwater to a major industrial power, well on its way to becoming the world's greatest space power. During the time he led the world revolutionary movement, the number of countries governed by working people grew from two to twelve.

The leader of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, died in 1924. Upon his death, opposition forces in the country which had been cowed into submission by Lenin's personal prestige made their move, and a power struggle ensued. At a leadership level, the struggle pitted Stalin, who had been Lenin's closest political ally, against Leon Trotsky, who had fought Lenin many times over the preceding 22 years. The main policy difference was that Trotsky did not believe it was possible to construct socialism in the USSR; he believed they would have to wait until revolutions happened in other countries to move forward. Stalin's victory in this struggle was a political precondition for the construction of Soviet socialism.

Much of Stalin's time in leadership was occupied with the problem of defending the country from foreign invasion. In 1931, he remarked that the country was industrially and economically 50 or a 100 years behind the developed countries. “We must make good this distance in ten years,” he said. “Either we do it, or we shall go under.” The next ten years were spent in frantic efforts at industrialization, and great sacrifices were made in this effort.

But when, in 1941, Nazi Germany and a coalition of other countries invaded the USSR, only the great strides in industrialization that the USSR had made allowed them to fend off this genocidal assault.

Stalin also played a tremendous role in the anti-colonial movement. In 1924, most of Africa and much of Asia were still occupied by European powers. The Soviet Union under Stalin gave an enormous amount of support to the peoples in these countries struggling for freedom and equality. Vietnamese anti-colonial rebels even named a mountain after him.

The Soviet Union has been gone nearly 30 years, but it remains dangerous to the world's rich people, because it remains an example of a successful society which did away with rich people entirely. Because of this, the USSR and its leaders, and above all Stalin, are subjected to an unending litany of abuse and defamation.

Still, if the wealthy hate him, the revolutionaries still remember him positively. Stalin told his close comrade Molotov in 1953: “I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of history will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.”

No one should expect to make a revolution with the approval and the advice of the class they are attempting to overthrow. The rubbish heaped on Stalin is itself simply a reflection of the reality that he held to a revolutionary course throughout his life. As the great Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara said, “In the so-called mistakes of Stalin lies the difference between a revolutionary attitude and a revisionist attitude.”

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #Socialism #USSR #Stalin

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following article written by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong on the 60th birthday of Joseph Stalin Stalin, Friend of the Chinese People

On the Twenty-first of December, Comrade Stalin will be sixty years old. We can be sure that his birthday will evoke warm and affectionate congratulations from the hearts of all revolutionary people throughout the world who know of the occasion.

Congratulating Stalin is not a formality. Congratulating Stalin means supporting him and his cause, supporting the victory of socialism, and the way forward for mankind which he points out, it means supporting a dear friend. For the great majority of mankind today are suffering, and mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help.

Living in a period of the bitterest suffering in our history, we Chinese people most urgently need help from others. The Book of Odes says, “A bird sings out to draw a friend's response.” This aptly describes our present situation.

But who are our friends?

There are so-called friends, self-styled friends of the Chinese people, whom even some Chinese unthinkingly accept as friends. But such friends can only be classed with Li Lin-fu, the prime minister in the Tang Dynasty who was notorious as a man with “honey on his lips and murder in his heart”. They are indeed “friends” with “honey on their lips and murder in their hearts”. Who are these people? They are the imperialists who profess sympathy with China.

However, there are friends of another kind, friends who have real sympathy with us and regard us as brothers. Who are they? They are the Soviet people and Stalin.

No other country has renounced its privileges in China; the Soviet Union alone has done so.

All the imperialists opposed us during our First Great Revolution; the Soviet Union alone helped us.

No government of any imperialist country has given us real help since the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan; the Soviet Union alone has helped China with its aviation and supplies.

Is not the point clear enough?

Only the land of socialism, its leaders and people, and socialist thinkers, statesmen and workers can give real help to the cause of liberation of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people, and without their help our cause cannot win final victory.

Stalin is the true friend of the cause of liberation of the Chinese people. No attempt to sow dissension, no lies and calumnies, can affect the Chinese people's whole-hearted love and respect for Stalin and our genuine friendship for the Soviet Union.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #Socialism #Mao #Stalin

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following article written by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong on the 60th birthday of Joseph Stalin

Stalin, Friend of the Chinese People

On the Twenty-first of December, Comrade Stalin will be sixty years old. We can be sure that his birthday will evoke warm and affectionate congratulations from the hearts of all revolutionary people throughout the world who know of the occasion.

Congratulating Stalin is not a formality. Congratulating Stalin means supporting him and his cause, supporting the victory of socialism, and the way forward for mankind which he points out, it means supporting a dear friend. For the great majority of mankind today are suffering, and mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help.

Living in a period of the bitterest suffering in our history, we Chinese people most urgently need help from others. The Book of Odes says, “A bird sings out to draw a friend's response.” This aptly describes our present situation.

But who are our friends?

There are so-called friends, self-styled friends of the Chinese people, whom even some Chinese unthinkingly accept as friends. But such friends can only be classed with Li Lin-fu,[1] the prime minister in the Tang Dynasty who was notorious as a man with “honey on his lips and murder in his heart”. They are indeed “friends” with “honey on their lips and murder in their hearts”. Who are these people? They are the imperialists who profess sympathy with China.

However, there are friends of another kind, friends who have real sympathy with us and regard us as brothers. Who are they? They are the Soviet people and Stalin.

No other country has renounced its privileges in China; the Soviet Union alone has done so.

All the imperialists opposed us during our First Great Revolution; the Soviet Union alone helped us.

No government of any imperialist country has given us real help since the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan; the Soviet Union alone has helped China with its aviation and supplies.

Is not the point clear enough?

Only the land of socialism, its leaders and people, and socialist thinkers, statesmen and workers can give real help to the cause of liberation of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people, and without their help our cause cannot win final victory.

Stalin is the true friend of the cause of liberation of the Chinese people. No attempt to sow dissension, no lies and calumnies, can affect the Chinese people's whole-hearted love and respect for Stalin and our genuine friendship for the Soviet Union.

#China #PeoplesStruggles #MaoZedong #Socialism #Stalin #SovietUnion

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following article written by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong on the 60th birthday of Joseph Stalin Stalin, Friend of the Chinese People

On the Twenty-first of December, Comrade Stalin will be sixty years old. We can be sure that his birthday will evoke warm and affectionate congratulations from the hearts of all revolutionary people throughout the world who know of the occasion.

Congratulating Stalin is not a formality. Congratulating Stalin means supporting him and his cause, supporting the victory of socialism, and the way forward for mankind which he points out, it means supporting a dear friend. For the great majority of mankind today are suffering, and mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help.

Living in a period of the bitterest suffering in our history, we Chinese people most urgently need help from others. The Book of Odes says, “A bird sings out to draw a friend's response.” This aptly describes our present situation.

But who are our friends?

There are so-called friends, self-styled friends of the Chinese people, whom even some Chinese unthinkingly accept as friends. But such friends can only be classed with Li Lin-fu,[1] the prime minister in the Tang Dynasty who was notorious as a man with “honey on his lips and murder in his heart”. They are indeed “friends” with “honey on their lips and murder in their hearts”. Who are these people? They are the imperialists who profess sympathy with China.

However, there are friends of another kind, friends who have real sympathy with us and regard us as brothers. Who are they? They are the Soviet people and Stalin.

No other country has renounced its privileges in China; the Soviet Union alone has done so.

All the imperialists opposed us during our First Great Revolution; the Soviet Union alone helped us.

No government of any imperialist country has given us real help since the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan; the Soviet Union alone has helped China with its aviation and supplies.

Is not the point clear enough?

Only the land of socialism, its leaders and people, and socialist thinkers, statesmen and workers can give real help to the cause of liberation of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people, and without their help our cause cannot win final victory.

Stalin is the true friend of the cause of liberation of the Chinese people. No attempt to sow dissension, no lies and calumnies, can affect the Chinese people's whole-hearted love and respect for Stalin and our genuine friendship for the Soviet Union.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #MaoZedong #Socialism #Stalin

London, U.K. – When thinking of London, one often thinks of Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, double-decker buses, and fish and chips. We might also think of its fabulous museums, concert halls and cultural life. One thing we might not think of is that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and even Josef Stalin all had an important relationship to the City of London. Across the city, one can find all sorts of interesting places related to the history of Marxism and the workers' movements.

Karl Marx lived many years in London, spending hours in the British Library writing Capital, organizing the British Workers and playing an important role in building the International Workingman's Association. While in London, I went to Dean Street in Soho and visited the apartment where Marx lived from 1851-1856. All one can see now is a blue plaque stating that Marx lived there, but one can stroll down the streets and get a feeling for the environment where Marx lived during some of his most productive years. Not far from Marx's home is the Red Lion Pub, which is where Marx and Engels discussed the ideas that resulted in the Communist Manifesto.

Visiting Highgate Cemetery, one can see Marx's grave. There is a massive statue of Marx of bearing the inscription “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it.” Many important revolutionaries are buried alongside and around Marx, including Claudia Jones, the great African American communist leader; Saad Saadi Ali, an Iraqi communist; and Dr. Yusif Mohamed Dadoo, former leader of the South African Communist Party.

In addition to Marx and Engels, London has a lot of historical sites related to Lenin and the early history of the Bolshevik Party. In Islington, a historical working-class neighborhood in London, is located Lenin's former office while he was editor of Iskra from 1902-1903. It is now the Marx Memorial Library and Workers School, and contains a stunning wall mural painting and hundreds of Marxist books. One can visit the Crowns Pub next door, which is where Lenin and many Bolsheviks held important political discussions for the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which resulted in the split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.

London is absolutely worth visiting, not just for its architectural beauty and cultural life, but for its exciting socialist history. One can get a real feeling for the world that the founders of Marxism-Leninism lived in, the places they discussed their ideas, and the homes where they lived.

#LondonUK #London #Socialism #VILenin #KarlMarx #FrederickEngels #Stalin #HighgateCemetery