How the Communist Party of China Safeguards Workers’ Interests During Crisis

The following is the contribution of the Marxist Institute – Academy of Social Sciences People’s Republic of China, Prepared by Enfu Cheng and Shuoying Chen, researchers at Marxism Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, P.R. China, to the nineteenth International Communist Seminar on “The consequences of the economic crisis and the intervention of communist parties,” Brussels, 14-16 May 2010.

Since the global financial crisis broke out, the Communist Party of China has let government and trade unions play their full role in safeguarding workers’ interests with regard to employment and social security, etc.

The Chinese Economy in 1978

The following article was submitted to The Marxist-Leninist by the author, Professor Toad:

This is part of an occasional series of articles on China. I started with a theoretical discussion about the word socialism. Now I am turning to history. Any Marxist worth their salt knows that to understand a thing, you have to understand its history and its development. To understand China today and the process of reform and opening up, you have to understand the problems China faced in 1978.

Socialism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The following article was sent to The Marxist-Leninist by Professor Toad, and is the first part of a series of articles on China:

The term socialism and the term dictatorship of the proletariat refer to two different concepts. Socialism describes a particular relation of production in which the means of production are socially owned and the exploitation of man by man is abolished. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a political situation in which the working class — in all known cases, acting in alliance with the peasantry — has seized political power in a country. In the real world the two are very closely linked, and if you find one, the other is not far off. But in analyzing countries very near in time to a revolution, the failure to understand this difference can lead to confusion.

Cubans march against homophobia

The following article is from the Associated Press:

HAVANA – Hundreds of gay and lesbian activists, some dressed in drag and others sporting multicolored flags representing sexual diversity, marched and danced through the streets of Havana on Saturday along with the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro as part of a celebration aimed at eliminating homophobia around the world.

FARC-EP: May 1st, the Workers’ Day!

The following is a translation for The Marxist-Leninist of the statement for International Workers Day, May 1, from the website of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP), where it can be read in its original Spanish:

“Proletarians of all countries, unite!” – Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

It has been 162 years since the greatest thinkers and philosophers of the proletarian class, Marx and Engels, united in an unprecedented friendship in the history of humanity, and invited us to the unity, fraternity, and solidarity between exploited peoples of the world with the Communist Manifesto. These two great thinkers and tireless workers of intelligence armed the proletariat ideologically, and created consciousness in the proletarian class. More importantly, they scientifically described the universal historical mission to transform it, to bury the bourgeoisie as a class, and on its tomb, to build a new society without classes, where man gives up on being its own enemy.

How to Visit a Socialist Country

A woman waves a flag in Havana's Revolution Square during the May Day parade, May 1, 2010

The following article by Richard Levins is from Monthly Review:

Travelers from the United States to Cuba cross more than ninety miles of sea: they cross decades of history. They may be limited to one suitcase, but they carry trunks full of ideological baggage, including biases about Cuba, beliefs about communists, commitments as to what a good society should be like, and a collection of conventional poli-sci formulas about power, government, and human behavior.

One Cuban commentator notes:

Coming from North America or Europe to a typical Cuban urban neighborhood, the visitor’s first impression might be one of poverty: crumbling or poorly maintained buildings, pot-holed streets, ancient cars, homes where there are few “extras” etc. On the other hand, if you arrive from Latin America or another developing country, other aspects of Cuban life might get your attention: no street kids, no malnourished faces, no beggars, and people walking the streets at night with almost no fear.1

Or easily identified as foreign, visitors may be beset by scouts for private, tiny restaurants, offers of guides, ginateras (a Cuban euphemism for prostitutes, usually amateur).

Members of delegations usually have planned itineraries, visiting various institutions and cultural events. They will learn about health care, education, cultural and sport resources, commitment to an ecological pathway of development, urban agriculture, equitable distribution through the rationing system, full employment, formal aspects of the political and judicial systems, achievements in gender and racial equality. These are all real, and demonstrate how far a poor country can go with so little. But it is obviously not the full story. There is nothing sinister in this. These are the things in which Cuba has pioneered, and of which Cuba is most proud and eager to show the world

Celebrate the Life of Comrade Ho Chi Minh

The following is from the British anti-imperialist and Marxist-Leninist journal, Lalkar:

On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of Comrade Ho Chi Minh we publish a summary of the heroic struggle he led against Japanese, French and US imperialism.

The culmination of Ho Chi Minh’s life work is wonderfully encapsulated in the words of General Vo Nguyen: “Time will pass by, but the Vietnamese people’s victory in the war of resistance against the US will forever enter history as one of the most brilliant exploits, a shining symbol of the triumph of revolutionary heroism and the human mind. It has gone into the world’s history as a great feat-of-arms of the 20th century, an event of international importance and of profound epochal character … Vietnam became the focal point of the fierce struggle between revolutionaries and reactionaries in the world, a place where there was a [battle] between progress and reaction, between justice and injustice in the struggle of humanity for peace, national independence, democracy and social progress.” (‘The anti-US war for national salvation – a great victory of ability and intelligence’, 2005)

Jose Maria Sison on May Day: Intensify the Struggles of the Proletariat

Jose Maria Sison presiding over the International Seminar on Mao Zedong Thought in 1993

The following statement by Prof. Jose Maria Sison, Chairperson of the International League of People’s Struggle, is being reposted here from the website of the Kilusang Mayo Uno, the militant and anti-imperialist labor center in the Philippines:

 Intensify the Struggles of the Proletariat Against Imperialism and Reaction

On this glorious day of the international proletariat, we, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, join the workers and peoples of the world in celebrating their struggles, sacrifices and victories. It is of the greatest importance to raise the banner of proletarian unity and struggle against exploitation and oppression by imperialism and all reaction. Once again, we renew our resolve to dismantle the monopoly capitalist system and replace it with a just, democratic and peaceful new world in which socialism prevails.

May First: High Noon in Nepal

This eyewitness reporting by Jed Brandt  first appeared on Jed Brandt’s blog:

“You must come to Kathmandu with shroud cloth wrapped around your heads and flour in your bags. It will be our last battle. If we succeed, we survive, else it will be the end of our party.”

— General Secretary Badal of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

APRIL 21 — There are moments when Kathmandu does not feel like a city on the edge of revolution.

People go about all the normal business of life. Venders sell vegetables, nail-clippers and bootleg Bollywood from the dirt, cramping the already crowded streets. Uniformed school kids tumble out of schools with neat ties in the hot weather. Municipal police loiter at the intersections while traffic ignores them, their armed counter-parts patrol in platoons through the city with wood-stocked rifles and dust-masks as they have for years. New slogans are painted over the old, almost all in Maoist red. Daily blackouts and dry-season water shortages are the normal daily of Nepal’s primitive infrastructure, not the sign of crisis. Revolutions don’t happen outside of life, like an asteroid from space – but from right up the middle, out of the people themselves. 

CP of Cuba: We will defend the truth with our ethics and our principles

The following article was the lead editorial in Granma on April 8th.  Granma is the official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. It is being reposted here from ML Today.

The empire and its allies have launched a new crusade in an attempt to demonize Cuba. Its powerful political and media machinery has set in motion a colossal operation of deception with the object of discrediting the revolutionary process, destabilizing the country and provoking the conditions for the destruction of our social system.

In this heated campaign they are using their mercenaries at their whim. In order to obtain shameful political dividends they are tossing them to their deaths without the most minimal concern for those human beings; just as they have never cared about the death of more than 3,000 Cubans as a result of acts of terrorism organized and financed from the United States, or the fate of the 2,000-plus compatriots mutilated by those abominable acts, or citizens who have perished in the Strait of Florida having launched themselves on ill-fated adventures after the siren calls of the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act.