Lenin: Defence of Neutrality

Defence of Neutrality

Acceptance of the proposition that the present war is imperialist, i.e., a war between two big freebooters for world domination and plunder, does not yet prove that we should reject defence of the Swiss fatherland. We, Swiss, are defending our neutrality; we have stationed troops on our boundaries for the express purpose of avoiding participation in this robber war! 

This is the argument of the social-patriots, the Grütlians, both within the Socialist Party and outside it.

A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work” (2020)

The question of women’s liberation is central to any revolutionary project, and thus so is the question of “sex work.” Esperanza Fonseca’s contribution, although coming from a Maoist political orientation with which we often have differences, [1] makes the stakes of this debate crystal clear, as she combines personal experience, public policy research, and historical materialism to argue that Marxists cannot uphold what she calls “sex-trade-expansionary feminism.”

Content Warning: Descriptions of rape.

The right of the subordinated classes of men to buy access to women’s bodies has been used historically to break class solidarity in order to maintain the dominant social relations of the time. This was true in feudal Europe and remains true today: when proletarian and petit bourgeois men get to buy women too, they develop a false consciousness and build solidarity with bourgeois men of their own gender rather than aligning with women of their own class. And because the overthrow of capitalism is only possible by the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie, prostitution serves two great purposes: (1) allows bourgeois men access to a reserve army of women for their pleasure, and (2) prevent class consciousness and thus helps stop the proletariat from organizing as a class.

A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work” (2020)

President AMLO’s Sixth & Final Informe

Friends:

Today I present to you and to the people and the nation my last government report and I do so more convinced than ever that the best of Mexico is its people, heirs of civilizations that flourished long before the arrival of the European invaders. Thanks to the roots of those pre-Hispanic cultures of that deep Mexico, the Mexicans of today are, in their vast majority, hard-working, supportive and honest. The legacy of good principles that were transmitted from generation to generation and that have not disappeared – despite oppression, classism and racism – is what distinguishes us and places us as a country of virtues and greatness.

President AMLO’s Sixth & Final Informe

From the Uhuru Movement to Samidoun Deutschland: Solidarity is Important

Among some circles, there is the sentiment that activists in America should focus only on what is going on in their own country, as there are enough problems here, why put their energies elsewhere? On the other hand, there is the idea that if an individual has not recently visited Palestine, whether Palestinian or not, that person could not possibly have an informed perspective with which to speak.

From the Uhuru Movement to Samidoun Deutschland: Solidarity is Important

[2018] The Wilson administration’s war on Russian Bolshevism

“The Time You Sent Troops to Quell the Revolution”

The United States invasion of Russia remains a hidden dimension of U.S. policy in the Great War, marking the beginning of a long Cold War. In August 1918, three months prior to the Armistice, the Wilson administration sent several platoons of U.S. soldiers into Russia to aid in the overthrow of the new Bolshevik government, which had come to power in the October Revolution of 1917. The operation was carried out alongside British, French, Canadian and Japanese forces in support of White Army counter-revolutionaries whose generals were implicated in wide-scale atrocities, including pogroms against Jews. This “Midnight War” was carried out illegally, without the consent of Congress. The Commanding General in Siberia, William S. Graves thought that his mission was to protect a delegation of Czech troops and the Trans-Siberian railway and to serve as a mediator. He was disappointed to learn that in fact the United States was enmeshed in another country’s civil war and came to oppose the whole operation. In his memoirs, he expressed “doubt if history will record in the past century a more flagrant case of flouting the well-known and approved practice in states in their international relations, and using instead of the accepted principles of international law, the principle of might makes right.”

The Wilson administration’s war on Russian Bolshevism