Dolores Ibárruri with Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh
The following article from 1940, “Stalin, Leader of Peoples, Man of the Masses“ is by Dolores Ibárruri, also known as “La Pasionaria”, Communist militant and political leader of the Republican forces during the anti-fascist Spanish Civil War. The article is particularly interesting in its exploration of the method of leadership that the Chinese Communists would call “the mass line“.
Stalin, Leader of Peoples, Man of the Masses
To speak of the triumph of socialism on one-sixth of the earth; to write about the luxuriant development of agriculture in the Soviet Union, a development unequalled by any other country; to admire the astounding growth of socialist industry and the tempestuous advance of the workers; to marvel at the unprecedented achievements of the mighty Soviet air fleet, at the powerful reinforcements of the Soviet navy; to describe the glorious deeds of the Red Army, liberator of peoples; to study the wonderful mechanism of the gigantic socialist state with its manifold nationalities united by indissoluble bonds of fraternal friendship; to observe the progress of science, art, the culture of all Soviet peoples, the joyous life of their children, their women, the workers, the peasants and the intellectuals, the permanent security of all of them and their confidence in the future; to know the daily life of socialism and the heroic deeds of the Soviet people—means to see Stalin, to speak of Stalin, to experience Stalin.
For Stalin—means people, work, struggle; Stalin—means unswerving loyalty to the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism; Stalin—means unyielding hardness towards the opportunists, towards the betrayers and enemies of the toiling people; means tireless vigilance against all enemies of socialism.
Claudia Jones was born in Trinidad in1915 but migrated to Harlem in 1924. She became active in the Scottsboro struggle. She became a leader of the Comunist Party in the 1940’s, until she was indicted under the Smith Act (under which teaching Marxism was illegal) and imprisoned in 1955. She was then deported to London, where she lived and worked until her death 1965. She was buried beside of Karl Marx.
To get an idea of her importance, read her article, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Women” (PDF), which analyzed the situation of black women from a Marxist viewpoint, and which was her major contribution to feminist thought.
Theory: Mao’s ‘On contradiction’ A masterly exposition of how to use dialectics to change the world by the leader of the Chinese revolution.
Mao wrote the article ‘On contradiction’ in 1937 to explain the dialectical method of analysis. He did this to counter the development of dogmatic approaches to study and practice that had developed within the Chinese Communist Party.
He also sought to explain international events, particularly the struggle between Marxist-Leninist leadership and the right and, later, left opportunism within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The objective of the beginners in the study of Marxism-Leninism was to seek solutions to what they perceived as the fundamental problems of the Filipino people, use Marxism-Leninism to shed light on the history and concrete circumstances of the Filipino people and find ways to resume the Philippine revolution and carry it out until victory. In the study of Marxism-Leninism, with special reference to the Philippine revolution, they sought to grasp the three components of Marxism, which are materialist philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism as laid down by Marx and Engels, developed by Lenin and Stalin and further developed by Mao Zedong.
Marxist- Leninists Must Uphold Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Liberation and the Fight Against All Forms of Homophobia and Heterosexism
The struggle for the rights of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgender people is a struggle for basic human rights. It includes the struggle to extend all democratic rights to LGBT people including immigration, parenting, and the right to be free from violence in society and for the opportunity to participate equally in all aspects of society.
The Right wing has mounted a full-scale assault on the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people seeking to dehumanize in order to justify persecution and the denial of basic human rights. Rather than buying into narrow definitions of family, we must support full legal and social acceptance of all forms of family. We know that this benefits not only queers but also takes in social and economic reality of the working class as a whole. Furthermore, we recognize the majority of queers are working class. We must actively oppose homophobia and heterosexism in all of their forms, in society and within our organization. We must also stand with Bisexual and Transgender people against attempts to submerge their struggles within the Lesbian and Gay rights movement. We work for the construction of a socialist society that will continue to fight for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender liberation in all of its institutions.
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender movement has effectively challenged social oppression and, by winning the freedom to come out, expanded the possibilities of human sexuality in this society. This movement has led the way in fighting AIDS, one of the most devastating health crises of our time. Throughout history, queers have also been front line fighters in both the workers and national liberation movements. It has inspired the entire progressive movement with its courage and militancy; this movement has fought for and won real gains and freedoms for all people. It is a progressive movement, and revolutionaries should encourage and help lead it. As in all the mass movements where we organize, we strive for the leadership and empowerment of oppressed nationalities and working class people within the Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, and Transgender liberation movement. Just as Lenin was the first to strike down anti-queer laws, so too will we fight to land a crushing blow to anti-queer oppression.
Take the fundamental laws of modern states, take their administration, take freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, or “equality of all citizens before the law,” and you will see at every turn evidence of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy with which every honest and class-conscious worker is familiar. There is not a single state, however democratic, which has no loopholes or reservations in its constitution guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the possibility of dispatching troops against the workers, of proclaiming martial law, and so forth, in case of a “violation of public order,” and actually in case the exploited class “violates” its position of slavery and tries to behave in a non-slavish manner.
The following video shows police kicking and pepper-spraying protesters as they evict Rosemary Williams for GMAC. The people’s occupation of Rosemary Williams’ home has lasted for more than a month, following a long struggle to keep her home. It has been one of the most important and advanced struggles of this economic crisis.
This is a collection of scanned images of Bruce Franklin’s introduction to The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Writings, 1905-1952, published by Anchor Books, New York, in 1972. This introduction by Professor Franklin was the first defence of Stalin I read. I am mirroring it from the website at http://www.btinternet.com/~fountain/stalin/index.html because to my knowledge this is the only digital version of this long out of print text availible.
As Professor Franklin says,
“Any historical figure must be evaluated from the interests of one class or another. Take J. Edgar Hoover, for example. Anti-communists may disagree about his performance, but they start from the assumption that the better he did his job of perserving ‘law and order’ as defined by our present rulers, the better he was. We Communists, on the other hand, certainly would not think Hoover ‘better’ if he had been more efficient in running the secret police and protecting capitalism. And so the opposite with Stalin, whose job was not to preserve capitalism but to destroy it, not to suppress communism but to advance it. The better he did his job, the worse he is likely to seem to all those who profit from this economic system and the more he will be appreciated by the victims of that system.”
Freedom Road Socialist Organization has a rich history of work among youth and students. Many of the veteran cadres of our organization were active with the youth of the Black Panther Party, Brown Berets and the Students for a Democratic Society of the 1960s, the Revolutionary Student Brigades in the 1970s, or the Progressive Student Network in the 1980s. Others worked on campuses to organize against South African Apartheid, in the historic Jesse Jackson campaign, or in solidarity with the Central American revolutionary movements. Many also organized Asian American and Pilipino (1) students, or worked in mostly oppressed nationality student formations like the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM) in New York. Today, students and youth in Freedom Road continue to do mass student organizing, mainly in the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed in 2006.
Speech to the 25th International Solidarity Affair
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, ILPS International Coordinating Committee
On behalf of the International Coordinating Coordinating Committee and member-organizations of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), I convey warmest greetings of solidarity to the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and to all the delegations to the 25th KMU International Solidarity Affair (ISA).
The following commentary by Kosta Harlan is from Fight Back! News:
Students at University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill made national headlines last week when they confronted the racist ex-congressman Tom Tancredo. 200 students marched, shouted down, or silently protested Tancredo. When 60 students chanted in the lobby of the building where he was to speak, police attacked the demonstration with pepper spray. Two women were thrown to the floor, another protester had her hair pulled by a cop and several people were pushed into the walls. The police drove the students out by threatening them with tasers. Shortly after we were pushed out, a window was broken and the event was shut down.
Thousands of articles, commentaries, and editorials have been written on this event. Most of it is a waste of everyone’s time. In typical mainstream media fashion, most of the coverage has completely turned reality on its head. Like Malcolm X would have said, they make the victim look like the villain and the oppressors look like the oppressed.
In 2006 there was a huge upsurge in the Immigrant Rights movement, peaking on May 1, when some two million people marched across the country. At the core of this movement is the struggle of Chicanos, Mexicanos, and Central Americans for self-determination and full equality. This paper presents the views of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) on the current immigrant rights movement and the struggle for Chicano, Mexicano, and Central American liberation.
1. Immigration, Imperialism, and National Oppression
In our “Statement on National Oppression, National Liberation and Socialist Revolution” (FRSO, 2004), we say that “It is imperialism that still dominates the countries of the Third World, forcing more immigrants to come to the United States to escape poverty and repression.” This is certainly true for immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has opened up the Mexican economy to even greater penetration by U.S. multinational corporation and agribusiness, driving millions from their hometowns to seek work in the cities and the United States. U.S.-backed governments and counter-revolutionaries in Central American have violently attacked popular movements and governments, leaving economic devastation in their wake, driving hundreds of thousands more to the United States.
Once here in the United States, immigrants from Mexico and Central America face intense national oppression, rooted in the U.S. conquest and seizure of Northern Mexico. Mexicans in the this territory, which today make up the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, were dispossessed of their lands, their language suppressed in schools, and the culture denigrated, and forced to work in the mines, fields, and homes of the capitalists. Thus the Mexican people of the southwest were forged into an oppressed nation, the Chicano Nation, with a common territory, economy, and culture and the right to self-determination, up to and including secession from the United States.
Generations of immigrants from Mexico who have settled in the southwest have been assimilated into the Chicano Nation. Mexican immigrants and their children are changing the demographics of the southwest, as more and more majority Chicano counties emerge, strengthening the demand for self-determination. This so-called “Browning of America” is striking fear into the racist monopoly capitalist class that rules America, but is welcomed by revolutionaries and communists who seek to weaken and ultimately overthrow this class.
March 26th was the one year anniversary of the passing away of Manuel Marulanda, founder of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP). In honor of the occassion, I’d like to post here a brief collection of readings on the organization he founded and the revolution that he led, which continues today.
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