Hi, everyone,
I visited Xinjiang recently. Before I went, I asked my followers what they would like me to see for them, and one of them wanted me to check whether there is the book of “1984” by George Orwell in Xinjiang’s bookstores and libraries.
Ironic, considering that the CIA and Britain’s FCDO used the snitch Orwell’s works in their cultural war against Communism.
Related:
The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (PDF)
Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism
There is no need to belabour the point that Social Democracy has nothing in common with those bought-and-paid-for moralists who, in response to any terrorist act, make solemn declarations about the ‘absolute value’ of human life. These are the same people who, on other occasions, in the name of other absolute values—for example, the nation’s honour or the monarch’s prestige—are ready to shove millions of people into the hell of war. Today their national hero is the minister who gives the sacred right of private property; and tomorrow, when the desperate hand of the unemployed workers is clenched into a fist or picks upon a weapon, they will start in with all sorts of nonsense about the inadmissibility of violence in any form.
A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.
Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.
Almeda Sperry to Emma Goldman, 1912, by Jonathan Ned Katz
These letters suggest that some kind of active sexual relationship did occur between the two women. There is also no doubt about the character and intensity of Sperry’s feelings, so strongly and unambiguously expressed. The letters indicate that Goldman returned Sperry’s affection, though with less passion and desperate need than Sperry felt.
In one undated, and atypically puritanical statement, Sperry tells Goldman:
Never mind about not feeling as I do. I find restraint to be purifying. Realization is hell for it is satisfying and degenerating.
In another undated letter Sperry writes to Goldman:
God how I dream of you! You say that you would like to have me near you always if you were a man, or if you felt as I do. Dearest, I would not if I could. I would soon die…. the thought of distance adds to my terrible pain–so pleasurable. I want no calm friendships. The thoughts of annihilation used to appeal to me. Today they do not. …
The letters do suggest that Goldman in her personal relations with Sperry had come close to that tabooed homosexual activity which she early and publicly defended in lectures, to the chagrin of even her unconventional anarchist comrades. The writings of Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Almeda Sperry suggest that at least some American anarchists were, at an early date, more than usually tolerant and open-minded about homosexuality.
Related:
Read More »The ghosts of 1968 are haunting Barack Obama, which is tremendously unfair, I say as his coeval, given that our cohort spent the Chicago Democratic Convention sticking baseball cards in our bicycle spokes rather than pelting Mayor Daley’s finest with porcine epithets. But guilt by association is ironclad in these days when American political discourse is controlled by hall monitors and tattletales. Obama’s friendship—acquaintance?—with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn is about to get extended play as the Republicans contrast Obama’s Weatherfriends with their nominee’s stint in the Hanoi Hilton.
When the Left Was Right
First published in the journal Kommunist in 1915.
Read for free online: Imperialism and Socialism in Italy
Vladimir Lenin – Imperialism and Socialism in Italy, 1915
“The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.”
Left Anti-Communism: a Trojan Horse That Weakens the Working Class – MLToday
“We don’t forget, we don’t forgive,” crowds chanted as they denounced the shooting death of a 17-year-old from the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
In Nahel M., a Stranger Killed by Police, French Protesters See Friend and Kin
Related:
Nahel M.: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
France: ‘La rage, partout’ Responses after the umpteenth police execution
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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