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.

Crosspost: Empire in the Mirror

It was a dream, a gilded fire,
built on whispers, woven higher,
streets of silk, a golden crest,
the hands that took, the hearts oppressed.

They smiled—soft, sweet, serene,
a kingdom carved from borrowed dreams,
but mirrors do not lie for long,
the empire’s face was sharp and strong.

A shatter—silver shards that gleam,
truth cut deeper than the dream,
and in the dust, the voices rose,
the stolen lands, the fractured throne.

No banners left, no songs remain,
the wrong, the right, the ash, the rain.
Time will teach what power hides—
the face of conquest, stripped of pride.

T.A.

Trump and foolish old men who redraw maps

Trump and foolish old men who redraw maps

Donald Trump

In defiance of UN resolutions and international law, he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognised the Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel, and now wants to turn Gaza into a US real estate development, reconquer Panama, turn Canada into the 51st State of the USA, rename the Gulf of Mexico and seize Greenland, if necessary by force. And it’s only February.  The US spent blood, treasure and decades building the Rules-Based International Order.  Biden and Trump have left it in tatters. 

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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)

On the Record with Hamas

The past nine months of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza have spurred an unprecedented global awakening to the plight of the Palestinian people. At no point in the 76 years since the formation of the state of Israel and the unleashing of the Nakba has there been such sustained and open anger at Israel and such widespread solidarity with the Palestinians. The massive demonstrations in cities across the globe, the severing of diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv, the recalling of ambassadors, rulings from world courts against Israel, and mounting demands for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state—none of this would have taken place without the impetus of Hamas’s armed insurrection on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent war of annihilation in Gaza. 

On the Record with Hamas