state socialism
Articles about forms of statist socialism, such as social democracy, Trotskyism, Marxism Leninism, Maoism and Stalinism.
War all the time: the differences between the internal and external aggressor in Venezuela
As President Hugo Chávez beats the war drum with Colombia over the presence of US military bases near the Venezuelan border, violent crime and scarcity in the República Bolivariana continue to soar to almost bewildering levels.
”Therefore, señores and señoras, my military comrades, let’s not waste one day in the completion of our primary mission: preparing ourselves for war.”
Hugo Chávez, ”İAló, Presidente!”, 09/11/2009
[i]”PREPARE OURSELVES?
Notes on the Real Domination of Capital and State Capitalism
Wage slave X. on capitalism and state capitalism.
The problem: to understand how the transition from the formal to the real domination of capital leads to: totalitarian state capitalism, which swallows/absorbs the whole of bourgeois 'civil society', reduces democracy to facade, a form of ideological control over society, prevents the possibility of 'permanent' class struggle by the proletariat through 'permanent' struggle organizations -- such as
As soon as this pub closes... - John Sullivan
Pamphlet from the 1980s giving a detailed but tongue in cheek overview and history of the British left.
Contents
Preface
Fourth International
Militant
Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Organiser
Spartacist League
Socialist Action/International Group
Tearsites and Yaffeites
The Discussion Group
Revolutionary Communist Group
Revolutionary Communist Party
Workers Power
Red Action (the Squaddists)
Revolutionary Democratic Group
Anarchists who turned to the Bolsheviks - Nick Heath
In these biographies, Nick Heath charts the trajectory of several leading anarchists in the Russian revolution into the service of the Bolshevik counterrevolution.
Kalandarishvili, Nestor Alexandrevitch, 1876-1922
Nick Heath's short biography of Nestor Kalandarishvili, a high profile anarchist who defected to the Bolsheviks.
[b] 3. The other Nestor
Geytsman, Ilya, 1874/1879-1938
A short biography of former anarchist Ilya Geytsman who defected to the Bolsheviks, and then was later executed in Stalin's purges.
2. Chaim The Londoner – from anarchist to Lenin sycophant
GEYTSMAN Ilya M. (Itsko-Isaac Moyshev Fayvishev) aka P. Geytsman, Haim London or Chaim the Londoner 1874/1879-1938
Address to revolutionaries in the USSR - The Red Menace
Discussion of the political and economic reforms in the USSR of the late 80s, and the real meaning of communism.
Ever since the Bolshevik counterrevolution the struggle against capitalism has been flung into confusion. It came five years after the collapse of the belief in social democracy as an expression of international solidarity of the working class, five years after the various national social democratic parties supported their respective nation-states against the working class.
Criticism of internationalist anti-war statement by the International Bolshevik Tendancy
Criticism of this anti-war statement distributed at an anti-Iraq war demo in January 2003 by the International Bolshevik Tendancy. A reply by Red and Black Notes can be found here.
Reprinted below are excerpts from a statement distributed at an anti-war protest in Toronto on 18 January from "an informal group of people in Toronto of varying perspectives (anarchist, communist and others)" associated with a local leftist bookstore. Followed by the IBT reply.
Against Capitalist War! Against Capitalist Peace!
Class Struggle Against the Work/War Machine!
Brother, Can You Spare A Ukrainian Section? - Red and Black Notes
Article by Red and Black Notes on the fraudulent "Ukrainian section" of several Trotskyist internationals, which obtained much money from several competing tendancies by mouthing the correct slogans to the right people.
The little world in which the left ekes out its meagre existence recently saw a minor scandal emerge, when a Ukrainian Trotskyist organization affiliated to the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) simultaneously represented itself to several other left-wing and Trotskyist organizations as "their" sections.
Is the East still red? - Notes on China - Red and Black Notes
Red and Black Notes look at the nature of modern Chinese society.
From the racist Charlie Chan caricatures of the "inscrutable Chinese" to the influence of Mao Zedong thought, China has always been a source of fascination in the west. But what sort of influence does it have? For one thing, many people seem unsure as to what sort of society China actually is?
