Classe

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

On Aug. 13, 2011, the 50th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall, this article was the front-page lead in the daily newspaper, Junge Welt; the translator, John Catalinotto, thought it should be shared with non-German readers.

At this time, all we can say is:  

Thank you 

for 28 years of peace in Europe  

for 28 years without any German soldiers participating in wars  

for 28 years without Hartz IV unemployment [Workfare] and 

for 28 years without homelessness, soup kitchens and leftovers 

for 28 years supplying places for all infants and children in nurseries and kindergartens (child care) 

for 28 years without neo-Nazi posters saying ‘give GAS’ in the German capital 

for 28 years of scientific history instead of fairy tales 

for 28 years Club Cola and DKK  

for 28 years without hedge funds and private equity parasites 

for 28 years without a consultation fee and two-tier health care 

for 28 years without Hohenschönhausen Hubertus Knabe [a professional anti-communist] 

for 28 years of good sex without ‘Wetlands’ and photo-shopping bodies 

for 28 years of education for all

determinatenegation:

“The dictatorship of the proletariat [is] an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors,the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.” - Lenin State and Revolution

“Only communism makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobodyto be suppressed - “nobody” in the sense of a class, of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population. We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part ofindividual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. In the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this; this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a struggle or prevent a woman from being assaulted.” - LeninState and Revolution

“So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state.”
-Lenin State and Revolution

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

By Stephen Gowans

From 1928, when the Soviet Union laid the foundations of its socialist economy, until the late 1980s, when Gorbachev began to dismantle them, the Soviet economy grew without pause, except during the period of the Nazi war machine’s scorched-earth invasion. Unemployment and later economic insecurity became ills of the past.

True, growth slowed beginning in the 1970s, but the major culprits were the diversion of budgets and R&D to the military to counter threats of US and NATO aggression, and growing resource extraction costs, not the alleged inefficiencies of public ownership and central planning, as is now widely believed. 

In fact, Soviet socialism—while it existed–worked better than capitalism in producing economic growth. … 

The future—as mass unemployment, worsening economic malaise, and austerity make clear–has arrived.

Surely we can do better than capitalism. The time to put socialism on the agenda is now.

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

By Reinaldo Taladrid Herrero

The University was hosting a discussion on the “50th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs Victory”, but a totally unexpected complication arose: a large audience had gathered at the University’s sports arena that same day for a speech to be delivered by none other than the Dalai Lama.

As I waited for my turn and the Dalai Lama spoke, the main local radio station called to ask whether I would be willing to grant a live interview about Cuba. I said yes, and a few minutes later I was on the air.

My interviewer began with the usual boilerplate topics, namely the “embargo” (that’s right, the well-known 50-year-old blockade), but no sooner had I started to answer than he interrupted me: “Sir, we’re sorry, but we must go to cover the speech the Dalai Lama is giving right here in our University as we speak. But if you don’t mind, please stay on the line. We’ll be back.”

By then the Dalai Lama was preaching “forgiveness, acceptance and serenity”. Suddenly I heard the voice of my presenter saying: “We’re back with Mr. Taladrid, the Cuban journalist, and my question is: Sir, what is Cuba like today, a brutal dictatorship or the picture-perfect paradise we see in your tourist ads?”

My answer: “Cuba is not a paradise; no country on Earth is. We have as many and diverse problems as any other country, although I’m glad to see that you’re familiar with our tourist industry. I suggest to your listeners that they should visit the Island, where they will find a very beautiful, safe, cultured and honorable nation. Whatever made you think that Cuba is a brutal dictatorship? What happens sometimes to honest, albeit misinformed, people is that they overlook the fact that Cuba is constantly examined in minute detail through the Hubble telescope, but those who describe it usually do it after a simple look through a pair of low-strength glasses that give you blurry, mistaken images.” But all of a sudden, as I was about to mention specific examples…

“Sir, I’m sorry, we’re going live again with the Dalai Lama’s speech, but please hold the line, because it seems our listeners are calling to ask questions about Cuba.”

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

By Leslie Feinberg

Articles appeared in many newspapers advocating the elimination of Paragraph 175. In Saxony, which later became a part of East Germany, the legislature endorsed repeal of the Paragraph.

One communist in particular deserves credit for these efforts: Dr. Rudolf Klimmer.

As a medical student in Dresden during the Weimar Republic, Klimmer, a gay man, had traveled to Berlin many times to follow developments within the homosexual emancipation movement. He particularly developed an association with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Human itarian Committee.

Klimmer was a member of the Communist Party. So was the committee’s secretary and later chairperson, Richard Linsert.

During 12 long years of fascism, Klimmer kept his political views and sexuality under wraps, marrying a lesbian for mutual protection. After the Nazis were defeated, he chose to live in the Soviet Occupied Zone and joined the Communist Party once again.

Steakley noted, “He launched a one-man campaign which aimed at repealing all laws against homosexuality, re-establishing Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, and agitating with Soviet and local authorities for the full equality of gay people.”

More by Leslie Feinberg on LGBT rights in East Germany:

Same-sex rights in East Germany: Legal and material progress

East Germany in the 1970s: Lesbian & gay movement blossoms

East Germany: Forming of gay groups ignites church struggle  

Lesbians and gay men: Great gains in 1980s East Germany

Late 1980s East Germany: Gay/lesbian clubs in Party, state

Gains cut short by 1989 counter-revolution

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Wang Hongbin, a 60-year-old man with deep creases lining his face, took a break from his duties as village chief this month to show me around Nanjiecun, in the wheat-heavy center of the country. It was unlike any place I’d seen in my years in China. No commercial advertisements cluttered the streets, just billboards screaming proletariat platitudes and memorializing Communist icons. “Long Live the Invincible Mao Zedong Thought,” read the inscription on an archway near the main government building. In the town’s three convenience stores, female clerks wore olive uniforms meant to evoke the People’s Liberation Army. And in the village square, surrounding the gigantic statue of Mao, stood four 30-foot portraits — one of Marx, one of Lenin, one of Engels and one of Stalin.

classe: fuck yeah. Anzi leggendolo fuck no. E’ un articolo del New York Times, per cui prendetelo con le pinze. Anyway interesting.

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

By Deirdre Griswold, Workers World

Not one U.S. newspaper, television or radio outlet has reported or commented on these cables released by WikiLeaks, nor on the Telegraph story about them. It is as though they fell into a bottomless chasm.

Is it because the media here don’t believe the report is credible? Hardly.

The New York Times knows it’s credible. Their own Beijing bureau chief at the time, Nicholas Kristof, confirmed it in an extensive article entitled “China Update: How the Hardliners Won,” published in the Sunday Times magazine on Nov. 12, 1989, five months after the supposed massacre in the square.

At the very end of this long article, which purported to give an inside view of a debate within the Chinese Communist Party leadership, Kristof stated categorically: “Based on my observations in the streets, neither the official account nor many of the foreign versions are quite correct. There is no massacre in Tiananmen Square, for example, although there is plenty of killing elsewhere.”

Had there been fighting in Beijing? Absolutely. But there was no massacre of unarmed students in the square. That was an invention by the West, intended to demonize the Chinese government and win public sympathy for a counter-revolution.

 The turn toward a market economy under Deng Xiaoping had alienated many workers. There was also a counter-revolutionary element trying to take advantage of popular grievances to completely restore capitalism.

The imperialists were hoping the struggles in Beijing would bring down the Chinese Communist Party and destroy the planned economy — similar to what was to happen two years later in the Soviet Union. They wanted to “open up” China, not to truth, but to the looting of the people’s property by imperialist banks and corporations.

After much wavering at the top, the army was called out and the uprising crushed. China was not broken up like the Soviet Union; its economy has not imploded nor has the standard of living declined. Quite the opposite. Wages and social conditions have been improving at a time when workers elsewhere are being forced backward by a severe capitalist economic crisis.

Despite deep concessions to capitalism, foreign and domestic, China continues to have a planned economy based on a strong state-owned infrastructure.