Break With The Democrats! For A Workers Party!

Since the Democrats have ignominiously and through no effort of their own, “re-taken” both the Senate and the House, and the AFL-CIO has claimed “a victory for working family friendly candidates (AFL-CIO Press Release, Nov 8 2006)” it seems appropriate to have a comment on the necessity of class independence for the proletariat. Class independence does not mean shunning or refusing to work with other classes, such as poor peasants, the unemployed, the lumpen proletariat, intellectuals, or even liberals struggling to preserve bourgeois democratic freedoms. Class independence does mean that the working class has its own platform and program, classically when workers have created their own parties this platform has been some form of socialism (German Social Democrats, early British Labor, French Syndicalists and Socialists, Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik)etc.). Class independence entails that action and thought be carried out independently of any force other than the workers or intellectuals attached to them, such as Karl Marx. They do not rely on any bourgeois or other ruling class force or party to carry out their program for them. They create their own theory and critique through knowledge of the world class struggle (with the assistance of intellectuals). This means that they do not appeal, plead, call, ask, beseech, or strongly demand that some other class force, such as the Democratic Party carry out reforms on their behalf. If reforms are to be granted, they should be granted because the proletariat demanded and forced the hand of the ruling class to act. This is preserving one’s class independence.

When Marxists present the idea of class independence, breaking labor, Blacks, oppressed women, and other minorities away from the Democratic Party’s deathlike embrace, many people respond in disbelief, reject the idea as impossible, or dismiss the idea saying “the Democrats are not that bad, and anyway they are friends of labor!” Friends of labor indeed! What follows are some talking points, facts, and instances where the Democrat “fiends of labor” have betrayed or stabbed their supporters in the back, enjoy and please add more!

-“Welfare Reform” which threw millions of unemployed, under employed, suffering minorities, working but poor mothers with children, and indigent out on the street and even required many to “pay back” that which they received from the state, a form of debt peonage. This program was fully supported by Democrat President Clinton and most legislators. Insult was added to injury when the use of phrases like “return to dignity” were used to prettify the slashing of welfare benefits. Most egregious, Democrats turned a blind eye to the constant racist attacks and stereotypes such as the “Welfare Queen.”

A common misunderstanding among the working class is that welfare or public assistance somehow negatively affects them. Far from it. By eliminating public assistance programs people are forced into the labor market, contributing to the growing Reserve Army of Labor used for times of acute capitalist labor demand. These job seekers are forced to compete for scarce jobs, especially in the low skill and low wage markets thus driving down wages. By receiving public assistance, workers are better able to stay off the market and keep competition against their compatriots lower.


-Labor bureaucrats and the dems: http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/outfront/theyheard.cfm At this page one can see how the labor bureaucracy that today misleads the American labor movement in both the AFL-CIO and the “Change to Win” coalition put their faith in the Democratic party to carry out the policies of labor. A quick review of what they ask for is minimal indeed!

-Now governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, Democrat, while Attorney General imprisoned Transit Workers Union President Roger Toussaint for several days, imposed millions of dollars in fines on the TWU and the Amalgamated Transport Workers Union through the treacherous use of the injunction-labors ancient foe. He as well as Hillary Clinton supported the anti-labor Taylor Law that forbids public employees from striking.

-Black Democrats often pose as both friends of labor and of Black people but they often are neither. The Democrats have no real interest in helping African-Americans win new gains and protect themselves from racist cop violence:
From Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick has been cutting and threatening to cut thousands of unionized jobs in the city of Detroit. The last thing Detroit needs is fewer jobs! Ray Nagin supported non-union/below union scale wage recognition in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. In the 1970’s a New Jersey teachers strike was baited and attacked as racist by a Black mayor. Black Democrats channel the wholly righteous community rage at the police into meaningless review boards meant as a prop for the police and state machinery. Both Jesse Jackson and Ray Naginhave used anti-Mexican anti-immigrant scapegoating and chauvinism to rally people to their cause around the governments, including Democrats, racist atrocity around Hurricane Katrina.

-But certainly white Democrats are the worst: Clinton, during his first campaign for President, cynically and with racist vengeance flew home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of a retarded black death row inmate. Though posing as a liberal and speaking against “illegal war” now, Senator Byrd of West Virginia used to support segregation in the South. Jimmy Carter spoke about peoples desire for "ethnic purity" during his campaign for president, a nod to the white supremacist and segregationist tendencies. A Democrat has led every major U.S. war of the century, since the bourgeoisie recognizes them as “more credible covers for imperialism”: WWI-Wilson, WWII-Roosevelt/Truman, Korea-Truman, Vietnam-Kennedy/Johnson. But people still try to promote the Democrats as peaceful.

Forge a revolutionary workers party!

There are certainly more examples but this was meant to stimulate debate and thinking. Feel free to add more, I will gladly add them to the text.

The Miswritting of Soviet History

In the advanced capitalist countries the writing of Russian and Soviet history has for some time been possibly the most political and ideologically charged and biased of any historical subject matter. This is not to say that politics and ideology do not belong in history, they do. To deny or reject this is to deny reality, drain history of excitement, and create a false aura of objectivity. Ideology and politics, in history, as in science and society must be tested! Proposals and suppositions must be placed under scientific scrutiny, whether they are proposed by the left or by the right. I wish to promote theorizing about politics and ideology by an engagement with facts and analysis.

I propose here to detail several myths, fallacies, and stopgaps used in the historiography of Russia and the Soviet Union that prevent real analysis and thinking. By stopgaps, I mean words, phrases, or popular short hand that encapsulates an entire argument that is absent, assumed and never presented. The stopgap is a label, such as “totalitarian” that ends all consideration of counter facts, details, and history! It is a dismissive that ends discussion, to the detriment of thought. This brings us to our first fallacy.

Totalitarianism- this label whether used for the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, its two most common uses, is purely ideological, used as a prop for western liberalism. By calling a nation totalitarian, we cut short analysis and research, and bring in elementary or sophomoric assumptions about the all controlling society, “Big Brother” and other literary allusions to the works of Orwell and Arendt. The use of totalitarianism is wrong and false for several reasons. First, totalitarian society does not exist. For example, classic Stalinist terror in the 1930’s was actually a response to not controlling the situation in the realm of the economy. Terror and coercion in this case was the ultimate expression of being out of control of the pace and contradictions of building massive industry, at a fantastical pace, with minimal assistance, and with ever rising and more impossible targets. Terror was the only way the bureaucracy saw that it could attempt to gain control of the situation it partially produced. Second, totalitarianism ignores the ways in which the order it is supposedly referring to is built using methods of cooptation, privileges, and terror, even under U.S. capitalism. Totalitarianism is always used for the other, never for one’s own country. (For a fuller discussion of this, see Slavoj Zizek’s Did Someone Say Totalitarianism? Verso 2001).

A second myth in what we might say in the bourgeois writing of Russian history is the use of the idea of the “golden mean,” closely linked to the totalitarian use above. The “golden mean” refers to the idea that going to the extreme either on the left or on the right leads to evil totalitarianism. Again, this is another crutch and justification for bourgeois democracy (control of politics by capital, occasional elections that determine who will oppress the masses now, a cooptation of workers organizations into the state, etc.) and usually ignores much of western history, inequality, racism, and brutality while extolling the benefits of “pluralist tolerance.” This tactic is employed against any radical program for the remaking of society towards greater equality and socialism by falsely identifying any methods that do not match methods employed in legal parliamentary politics with evil tyranny. At the very least, the golden mean is another ideological tool that that stops thinking, the conclusion is given before the facts. We want to start thinking! Real thinking requires systematic reading and argumentation not simple brainstorming some shreds of facts one has heard in the press or in popular consciousness. The golden mean is employed principally against the Bolsheviks during the revolutionary period to argue against the Bolshevik seizure of power and the dismissal of the Constituent Assembly. That these were necessary and vastly progressive acts in history is shown elsewhere, the point here is that the golden mean automatically gives the conclusion that these are bad practices because they violate parliamentary procedure, never mind that they were necessary to the salvation of the revolution, the ending of the imperialist war, and a step toward world socialist revolution. But,because they are labled as anti-democratic acts, the reader, naturally wants to be democratic and thus concludes that these practices are bad.

A third falsification in Russian history writing is the “magic bullet” of the “Russian Radical Tradition.” In short, the argument is that all Russian radicals share a messianic, anti-capitalist, primitivist, non-democratic, non-liberal, terror-embracing worldview. This is meant to include everyone from Hertzen, Bakunin, the Narodniks, to the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. This magic bullet is supposed to explain every twist and turn of the Russian Marxist and radical movement. Tactics, strategy, the actual conditions on the ground are secondary in this kind of analysis. Why did the Bolsheviks resort to terror? Because of the Russian radical tradition, of course! This is an anti-scientific, non-analysis. This is akin to explaining the recent fundamentalist religious revival in the U.S. by saying the Puritans founded the country! This should strike one as at least unsatisfactory and unscientific. Anti-Marxists to besmirch or belittle Karl Marx with a similar argument. It says his belief in the development of society and revolution is entirely a product of the messianic Jewish Rabbinical tradition, not the result of his years of careful study and argumentation, no.

I have encountered all of these arguments in textbooks, history books, the classroom, and in discussions with all sorts of people. The purpose here was to expose the ideological function of these arguments in putting down the struggle for socialism and supporting bourgeois democracy and often imperialist war. Be on the lookout for these arguments and recognize them as what they are, tools for stopping thinking and consideration and for forcing one to agree with capitalist politics.

Defend Oaxaca Teachers and the APPO!

Greetings friends! Please read about this important class battle in Mexico. Link to the Workers Vanguard article.
I will have new stuff for this site soon!

Anti-War Protest Attacked by Cowardly Soldier. Peaceniks Defended by Revolutionary Marxist

A personal post on activism. I would like to apologize ahead of time if this post is too personal or sounds too self aggrandizing, that is not the intention.


In a day filled with strange happenings, including the loss of my new job, the strangest event was an aggressive attack on a peaceful weekly public protest by a young soldier returned from Iraq and son of a state representative. The protests are small and comprised mainly of religiously oriented peaceniks, “anti-war Democrats” and other liberals. I attend in an attempt to raise a revolutionary opposition to imperialism in the small town where I live and to try to bring a class-struggle perspective to this small group.

On this day as the hour long march was coming to an end a young man walked passed us and proceeded down the street to where our large sign rests on the lawn of a church and proceeded to destroy it. The sign reads something like: “2,571 US dead 30,000> estimated Iraqi dead, the toll of war” these are both underestimates; especially for the Iraqi’s whose deaths probably exceed 100,000. As I saw him do this, I raced to him yelling. I think I said what the hell or fuck are you doing? Standing right in his face I berated him for destroying our sign, and infringing on our free expression and assemblage. The others in the group were all older people well over sixty (I’m thirty). The youth revealed that he was a soldier who had been in Iraq for the past year. He revealed his essentialist contempt for Semitic people has barbarous citing the bible as proof that “they have been fighting over there for ever.” I continued to confront and challenge him on his destruction of our sign t which he replied that we were dishonoring the soldiers over there, and the we should not be running our mouths over here. He said the soldiers, US soldiers, were dying for our freedom. I said they were killing Iraqi’s and oppressing them, to which he replied with a physical threat, “you’re going to get punched in a minute.” I was still inches from his face. No further violence occurred.

I continued to confront him for over half an hour, discovering that he was totally deluded about all of American history. When I said US imperialism massacred two million Vietnamese he replied but we prevented the spread of Communism, to which I responded we were continuing racist French colonial domination of oppressed people. Etc, Etc. I tld him repeatedly that he was wrong, infringing upon free speech, destroying out personal property, and supporting imperialist terror and the murder of innocent people including children.

Finally, the peace activists broke us up and we left.

He confessed that he is the son of a Michigan state representative from Midland. I now know who it is. What made his act cowardly, as I assert in the title, is that if this was a large protest, or there were a bunch of workers, construction workers, steel workers, or even local grocery workers, black, white, Latino, in other words the social strength of the multiracial working class and not just aging but dedicated peaceniks, this coward would have turned his tail and run!

The peace activists there said hey were glad I was there because they would have done nothing. This is the philosophy of the religious anti-war activists, to bear witness and to turn the other cheek. While I probably should have done more, I actively confronted this bandit for the ruling class. He felt entitled to act because of the super–patriotism and chauvinism taught to him by his reactionary family (they are religious Republicans) the reactionary churches, and the reactionary social institutions prevalent here in rural America.

I am however, proud that I defended, in front of this bigoted thug, a proletarian internationalist perspective that the main enemy was at home, that US imperialism is the greatest enemy and oppressor of the world working class, and that I support war waged by the working class against the capitalist class!

I am considering pressing formal charges but am weary of using the capitalist injustice system.

Update on Anti-Affirmative Action Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

Today several people including myself spoke on the topic of defending Affirmative Action in Michigan. We spoke at a city council meeting of the city of Mt. Pleasant that later unanamously approved a motion denouncing the racist inspired Michigan Civil Rights Initiative to ban Affirmative Action and the use of racial, ethnic, and other categories in employment, contract awards and school admissions. I mean not to create illusions among workers that pleading with capitalist governments, including liberals, will win gains for workers and the oppressed, it will not! Only mass multiracial, militant, workers struggle will win real and lasting gains. This vote was a very, very small part of a larger struggle to beat back the capitalist assault upon the gains of workers through civil rights and womens struggles. Much more needs to be done and I feel saddened that there is not a larger and more radical fight in the region where I work. Defend Affirmative Action and More! For Free, Quality Educationa For All! For Full Employment Through Multiracial Union Hiring Halls!

Defend Lebanon! Defend Gaza! Defend Palestine! (Update)

Second update.

The above link will take you to the Workers Vanguard leaflet on this issue.

After nearly starving the Palestinian people in Gaza for weeks, cutting their power, threatening their elected leaders and sabotaging all attempts at normal government, Israel came under rocket attack by Hezbollah petty-bourgeois religious nationalists stationed in Southern Lebanon. Using the capture of two Israeli soldiers as a pretext for war, Israel has mobilized massive and bloody retaliation against the whole population of Lebanon!

The Associated Press reports the following:
“At least 548 Lebanese have been killed since the fighting began three weeks ago, including 477 civilians and 25 Lebanese soldiers and at least 46 Hezbollah guerrillas. The health minister says the toll could be as high as 750, including those still buried in rubble or missing.
In all, 56 Israelis have died — 37 soldiers as well as 19 civilians killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.”

Newsweek reports that Israel regards any building where Hezbollah hides is “a legitimate target.” Furthermore, Newsweek tells us, that this policy practically means that any building suspected of housing Hezbollah is a legitimate target. This demonstrates from the mouths of the U.S. bourgeois media that the Israeli bombing will necessarily target civilians as we have abundant proof.


The U.S. for its part has rushed to use the attacks by its sub-imperialist enforcer in the Middle East, Israel, to threaten Syria and Iraq! This all must be viewed in the context of U.S. imperialism's global "war on terror" which is an ideological obfuscation of the real war on potential rivals, minority movements, nationalist movements, and the remaining deformed workers states: China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam.

Western bourgeois Media has taken up the line of the U.S. and Israel without dissent. They minimize the totally asymetrical attack by wealthy and well armed Israel against barley reconstructed Lebanon. Workers, Marxists, Anarchists, and all of the oppressed must see Israel's attacks as part of imperialism. All should Defend Lebanon from these attacks!

Why should workers and Marxists Defend Lebanon, Gaza, and Palestine? Spartacist No. 55 Autumn 1999 states, quoting Lenin’s 1915 ‘Socialism and War’: “A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a reactionary war, and cannot fail to see that the latter’s military reverses must facilitate its overthrow.”

Meaning that “…in the case of an imperialist war against a small nation or semicolonial people, it is the duty of the working class not only to fight for the defeat of one’s “own” government but to defend the victims of imperialist aggression (ibid)”.


Let's consider some more arguments about this conflict:

First, look at the death toll and see how disproportional the Israeli response is: 370 Lebanese killed to 35 Israelis (New York Times, July 23, 2006), which is nearly 10: 1! If Hezbollah and Hamas have attacked civilians in “terrorist” attacks as many point out then Israel must be a state terrorist actor themselves in destroying the homes of “suspects,” deliberate segregation of Arabs, bombardment from tanks and aircraft of civilian areas, huge wall building (remember how the Western imperialists hate walls and denounce those who build them i.e. the Berlin Wall) and widely suspected possession of WMD’s in the form of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. As for kidnapping and torture, we can say the same for Israel, if not on a larger scale. The point is that the targeting of civilians by both Israel and various Arab nationalist militias are criminal acts and must be condemned. However we cannot forget the actual power dynamic in which Israel acts as a proxy for U.S. imperialist repression of Arabs.

Second, what is it that “throws the Middle East into instability?” Is it the involvement of other Middle Eastern countries or is it the involvement of the United States and their imperialist powers? It is the involvement of the U.S., the largest imperialist power in the world that makes the region unstable. It is the areas where Imperialist rule is being enforced that are unstable: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine. In addition, what does ‘stability’ mean? Does it mean that Arabs quietly acquiesce to outside domination and interference into their affairs? Does it mean that the class rule of the property owners is enforced through military states? That is not stability. Real “stability” is when every country and nation is free from the domination by another country or nation. In the current world, this national freedom must also be linked to a fight against imperialism and capitalism, and for socialist emancipation of the working class from its own greatest oppressors, their own ruling classes. National liberation without socialist revolution merely creates the conditions for the domination of workers by capitalists.

Unfortunately, the current leaders of the Palestinians and the Arab resistance are nationalistic misleaders. They use fundamentalist Islam, anti-woman bigotry, and anti-Semitism to marshal their populations, restrain women’s rights, and deter inter-communal, internationalist cooperation. On the Israeli side the workers are mislead by a nationalist Zionist Labor party and bureaucratic union leaders that are more interested in the preservation of the Israeli exclusionary militarist state than they are in international labor solidarity, and self-determination for all peoples. Both sides need internationalist workers parties that will champion the cause of Palestinian independence, the overthrow of capitalism through socialist revolution the creation of a united federation of the Middle East.

Bourgeois Race Baiting: The so-called Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

This post is informational and organizational. It aims to gather information and gain knowledge through discussion and to help organize possible effective action. I will periodically edit this with more information, and events as they appear.



In Michigan, the state where I live, a white racist ballot proposal ( I am white and male so you cannot say I'm biased based on my identity) to end affirmative action has made its way to the voting booths for the November election in Michigan. This is very much the same proposal as California's infamous Prop 209 that passed in 1996 that seems to have ended any kind of state practiced affirmative action in California. The result in California was immediate and enormous declines in minority enrolment. Here I mean to sketch out the proper theory and practice for Marxists and for the working class towards this important question. Second, I encourage people to go to events which are scheduled, even if the platform is not revolutionary, with the goal of moving the movement to defend affirmative action in the direction of gaining new and greater gains for the oppressed and workers.

In short, affirmative action is a small gain made by the struggles of the oppressed and working people. The aim of creating real equality can only be achieved through multiracial socialist revolution that eliminates capitalism and allows the development of the world without racism, exploitation, sexism, and war. However the small gains like affirmative action must be defended if any new gains are ever to be won. The timing of this ballot is at a time of hardship for the working class including mass layoffs and high unemployment in Michigan. This proposal is meant to tap into latent and active resentment in white workers against the false perception that minorities get a “free ride.” Nothing could be further from the truth!
The goal should be to Defend Affirmative Action and More! Fight White Race Baiting! Toward Multiracial Socialist Revolution!

In the course of the last few months there have been several anti-racist and anti-MCRI activities that some friends and I have engaged in. One was a debate held at Central Michigan University between supporters of MCRIa: Jennifer Gratz-the white woman who sued the University of Michigan for discrimination based on race- and William Allen an elite sounding African -American professor from Michigan State University who also sits on the US Civil Rights Commission! The Detractors Were Kate Moss, state director of theACLU (not the model) and another lawyer whos name escapes me. We handed out a leaflet and spoke to people about the issue. Mostly young white students said that they did no want the leaflet because they opposed affirmative action. Here is the tex of the leaflet:

Defend Affirmative Action and More!
Stop white race baiting! Free, quality, integrated education for all!

The so-called Michigan Civil Rights Initiative and its rich backers claim to be for total non-discrimination based on race. This claim, they argue, is based on the very American concepts of equality, equal opportunity, and non-discrimination. They claim to be for universal rights in this regard. But are they? If they truly are in favor of equality and non-discrimination, they would support the abolition of preferences for the children of alumni in higher education that has nothing to do with merit and is actually a dirty excuse for white racial preferences and class preferences - preference at universities based on inherited familial privilege-in other words aristocratic privilege. If they truly favor equality and non-discrimination they would be for the abolition of district/locally based funding for public schools which only entrenches backwardness, deprivation, and inequality in the poor and oppressed minorities through ghettoization and ensures preference, enlightenment, exposure, technology, and care for the rich and overwhelmingly white. They should be in favor of a national education system from which all are educated equally or even to give preference to the poor to help them catch-up. So, by selectively targeting the so called “reverse racism” or “discrimination against whites” and not supporting real and full equality, the opponents of affirmative action are in fact helping to reinforce the privileged status of whites over Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and women-all groups suffering higher poverty rates, unemployment, deprivation, and discrimination than whites and males. By helping to reinforce the privileged status of whites they are performing today the historic task of the slave patrol, the overseer, the Ku Klux Klan, Plessey vs. Fergusson, George Wallace and David Duke. This is white supremacy!

The need to keep the most oppressed peoples in positions of inferiority and poverty stems from the needs of capitalism for cheap cohersed labor and a fear of unified working class insurgency. Therefore, differential treatment of various ethnic groups serves to create a hierachy within the working and lower classes where people compete against each other and not against the ruling capitalist class, the real enemy.

Build a revolutionary, internationalist, inter-racial party of the workers in Michigan! The capitalist ruling class has resorted to the crudest forms of racism in order to gain support for their programs of rolling back the gains of the civil rights struggle, the women’s liberation movement, and the labor movement. Reform will only end up impotently supporting the imperialist state and the ruling class! Revolution will bring lasting real change!

Contact an organizer at: brsocialist@yahoo.com Nick
For a revolutionary perspective visit the International Communist League at :
http://www.icl-fi.org/index.html *
*ICL is in no way responsible for the content of this leaflet. (End of leaflet)

Since the revolutionary party does not exist in Michigan I encourage entryism with liberal and left groups.

Events in Michigan:
(1)On Monday July 10, the Mt. Pleasant city commission will be voting on a resolution in opposition to the MCRI. Please come out and lend your presence to a strong show of community support for them taking this bold action. The meeting begins at 7pm

(2) On Tuesday July 11, the Isabella Chapter of Michigan United will have its next meeting at 5:30pm. The meeting will once again be at The Crossings on Broadway. Please come and bring a friend. We are definitely making progress in educating people about the MCRI but we must continue to reach out.

Update: The first vote was postponed by the memeber who brought it, a secret socialist he later confided. The second event was small, twenty people or so, with some of the standard talking points about such actions as how to educate such a large public in such a short time with such few resources, whether to associate or not with mainstream parties (I spoke on behalf of the negative answer to that question) and how broad or narrow to be. Several people were sympathetic to my socialist orientation however I must remenber that this is a group backed by the ACLU and mainstream trade union and civil rights groups which means that their politics are tied to the Democratic Party. While I certainly do not object to working with these afore mentioned organizations, especially on this issue and given the political environment in which I find myself, I must be careful to realize that this is mainly reformist pressure politics that is the staple of bourgeois politics. The power of labor and the oppressed must be brought to bear hard on this issue or else this fight may be over.

Racist State Assault on Immigrants

I appologize for the tardiness of this post. I wrote it on the suggestion of Comrade Edie. Enjoy, and please comment and discuss.

The recent round of struggles around the rights of immigrants has several components. First, is the state assault upon the rights and lives of immigrants, including the twin racist Congressional bills, the chauvinist-militarist furor over "secure borders" under the pretext of "terrorist threats", and the mobilization of the so-called Minutemen, a new version of Ernst Rohm's Nazi Brownshirts. The second component is the defensive actions and mass protests and strikes by immigrants and their supporters across the country.

The context of the current anti-immigrant furor is largely that of US imperialism's global war against "terror" which includes guerilla movements (FARC, Zapatistas, Southern Philippines, ETA...), workers, ethnic minorities, muslims, and the poor. As many people realize the September 2001 attacks have been used as a pretext to increase the already swelled US imperilaist military, further expand the mammoth police state apparatus, to tie-up the lose ends of US global imperial policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to threaten the existing potential contenders with the US for global or regional hegemony, namely the deformed workers state of China, and the other junior imperial powers Japan and Western Europe. These global level actions of imperialism are mirrored on the national level by the ethnic profiling of Arab-like peoples, the mass monitoring of the population by capitalists and the state, and the racist exclusionary reaction by the right wing, aided by a similarly racist second class citizen program by the Democrats with the President aiding both sides.

The anti-immigrant policies of the Republicans, Democrats and the state in general is meant to stir resentment and hatred toward immigrants among many whites and some non-white groups already hobbled by and subject to capitalist austerity, job and wage degradation, unstable employment prospects and a lack of clear anti-racist internationalist proletarian leadership. The Democrats for their part accept most of the lies about the ill effects of immigration, except in their obscure policy papers by the Economic Policy Institute. The purpose of the so-called Guest Worker Plan is to enshrine the vulnerable and dependent status of immigrnat workers in a new bracero program creating indentured servitude.

As part of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the brain-child of US capitalists, Mexico need to open up its agricultural sector to more competition. This sector was populated by peasant tillers with relatively few means of modern agricultural production. Compared to the large commercial and highly capitalized farms in the US and to some extent Canada, the Mexican peasant tiller could not compete and thus millions have been driven from their lands in the same way that Marx observed that English peasants were encircled, dispossessed and later became proletarians. This has created a mass of new workers to populate the reserve army of labor to be used by capital as a wedge against currently employed workers.

The unions have presented a weak and expectedly tailing response to the curent immigration stuggle. They have not lead but have abdicted mass participation in the protests by immigrants, deciding instead to sit back and passively watch or contribute some time and money rather than forcefully making it their priority. This would be a real internationalist and anti-racist position to take. Why do they not? I propose that the bureaucracies' class collaborationist stance with the capitalist Democrats and their nationalistic stance, makes the misleaders oppose taking the lead in such struggles. A second reason could be that the bureacrats and misleaders take a dim view of the workers they represent, and figure that they would not go for this. I have heard this kind of talk from some union officials and wonder is they are not just undersestimating their own members?

There has even been a strange response from a minor African-American leader in the form of Ted Hayes. I checked this guy out, he is a homeless advocate and head of a futuristic homeless shelter community in L.A. He has openly made common cause with the racist Minutemen who in a minute will be attacking Blacks as soon as that comes arround. I must say though that he is an oddity.

Labor and all those who claim to be progressive, leftists, believers in democracy or even "the American dream" must take up the defence of immigrant from racist attack and reaction. This can be argued from seeral perspectives. First the purely economic. In a competitve labor market the least skilled workers are forced into competition with the skilld and unskilled immigrant workers. This increases labor supply and decreases the wage. However agrigate demand increases which increases the overall demand for labor in the economy. This is all hampered when one group of workers has a different status than other workers such as the "whiteness wage", and the enormous constraints placed on so-called free laborers such as segregation and Jim Crow for Black wage workers, Chinese Coolies (most abducted or forced into debt bondage and hownded by white mobs), and other oppression of non-white labor. Whites did not suffer these special oppressions but had to endure the regular exploitation of capitalism: long hours, hard and dangerous work, etc. By creating different tiers in the working class, treating some with priviledges and others with punishmnet, thereby is created racism. It is these labor market and social engineering preactices whereby the bourgeoisie and their state create the materail basis for racism. In combating this the working class also combats its own oppression. Thus it should be in the economic and the political interests of the working class to fight racism and to embrace immigration.

Thus the labor movement and the left must raise the demand for Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Not only would this be an enormous blow to racist and hyper-xenophobic American ideology and practice but it would give the proper enema to the constipated and sluggish unions to get them going. An injecting of militant foreign workers full of fiber is just what the American working class needs. Defend Immigrants! Full Citizenships Rights Now!

Histoy and Class

The following is from a larger piece I am writing on class consciousness that I have decided to omit but post here for your enjoyment.
History and Class
The fact that human societies are hierarchically organized into groups based upon their relative power, wealth, and prestige has been an aspect of political and social thought since the rise of stratified societies. In The Republic, Plato speaks about the ideal organization of society based upon the existence of three social groups, philosopher elites, warriors, and servant workers (often slaves) each playing a role in the proper functioning of society. Tacitus, in his Annals of Imperial Rome, describes the debauchery and decadence of the emperors and the ruling elite at the beginning of the Roman Empire. In feudal Europe, a small dominant group of titled property and shop owners lived by exploiting the labor of other people (Bloch, Feudal Society 1961: 288). In the modern age of manufacture, legal and hereditary bonds have given way to the free labor contract, private property, and the settling of society's needs through the market relation. In other words, industrial society “has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment' (Marx and Engels, Manifesto... 1978 [1848]: 478) .” To these various relations people have given the name class or social class. To be clear, I do not here mean to say that stratification and the division of society into classes is natural or even inevitable but rather that “...the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production… (Marx to Weydemyer 1978 [1852]: 220).”

The recognition and understanding of a persons place within society's hierarchical arrangement has been quite a different matter. In ancient civilizations the master and slave relationship was based upon the conquest and subjugation of one people by another in warfare. Slavery in these systems was justified on the basis of the power and the purported superiority of the dominant civilizations. Slaves were conscious of systems and lives other than slavery and this can be seen during times of revolt, where in the famous example of Spartacus, a key demand of his slave army was to have ships with which they could return home. Feudal relations between lord and serf were justified on complex religious grounds and doctrines linking the actual property owners to religious institutions which were the representatives of the divine on earth. Thus, superiority over the serfs was naturalized and salvation was promised to the poor in the afterlife which served to moderate the misery of labor. In addition, a complex network of social distinctions, ranks, titles and duties served to mystify and blur the material distinctions between the rulers and the ruled. Under modern industrial capitalism the market relation of the wage laborer and the capitalist is underpinned by the theory and practice of liberalism. Thus, a representative bourgeois democracy, erected by and for the ruling class, claims to represent the “will of the people” and in civil society a cult of the rational individual is constructed. These institutions serve in this period to undermine class solidarity and the individual's recognition of their objective position within the class structure.

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

An important part of the work of revolutionaries and the working class movement is the defence of fellow radicals and other victims of state terror. The fight to defend and free class struggle prisoners serves several important purposes in the proletarian movement. Class struggle prisoners are heroic fighters for the workers or the oppressed who have been railroaded or framed by the criminal injustice system for the purpose of a state and class war on revolutionaries, labor, oppressed minorities, and women. The working class itself must be organized for the defence of these fighters.

The first purpose of the defence of class struggle prisoners is the intrinsic value, the "moral" imperitive to defend your own co-thinkers and actors. To not allow the state bourgeois terrorists to take one inch of ground or one fighter for the cause without struggle. This should be elementary, for to abandon the class struggle at the prison gates or at the court house steps means a great capitulation to the capitalist legal system, oppressors of Blacks, workers, and the poor. One very simple logical justifications for this is that if one wants to encourage solidarity among radicals and the oppressed, then radicals and the oppressed must band together for mutal self defence. If revolutionaries cannot defend themselves against small attacks by the system how can they expect to be able to act to overthrow this same system.

A second important reason to take up class struggle defence is the opportunity which the imprisonment of a "people's tribune" or "voice of the oppressed" creates to spread their word and the word of the socialist movement to the people. When "normal" means of propaganda do not reach or motivate enough people, the victimization of a leader of the oppressed can bring many people into open militant action. When socialism and revolution are scarry or too abstract for the masses, the issue of defending a single class struggle prisoner like Mumia Abu-Jamal or Leonard Peltier can animate youth and the uncommitted through the valor of their stories and struggles.

One might object that this is opportunisticly using one persons suffering to futher your own cause. Yes in a way it is taking advantage of the situation to further the struggle. However it needs to be done in such a way as to further the broad emancipatory goals of the class struggle prisoner.

This struggle must be a united front, and no capitulations from other grous should be asked in order for another groups support. The urgency of this fight must be carried on in a non-sectarian way. This struggle must be entirely for the prisoners benefits and for the benefit of those for whom they have spoken and fought.

Class struggle defence has a long history. Perhapse the best known case was the outpouring of International support for the Anarchists Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti falsely accused of armed robbery. However other great traditions include the abolitionist defence and aiding of fugitive slaves, the international outcry over the framing of the Haymarket workers for which May Day is celebrated, the defence of the Passaic Strikers of 1926, the defence of Trotskyists and Communists arrested under the Smith Act, the defence of numerous Black Panthers attacked by the U.S. governments Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) including Abu-Jamal (See, Women and Revolution
no. 45, 1996, p. 24-36).

Currently, the Partisan Defence Committeee, initiated by the Spartacist League, is conducting a campaign to renew and revitalize the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, former Black Panther, MOVE supporter and fighter for Black freedom, falsely convicted of the killing of a Philidelphia cop in 1981. In addition this mobilization is an extention of the fight to end the racist death penalty in this country, a form of legal lynching which rouses race hatred among many whites. The link on this page is to a flier on Mumia. For more information see . Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!

Hello, my name is Gustus

This is our dog Gustus, like the name Augustus without the "Au" and and a "goo" sound to begin with. I like to tell myself he was named after the socialist August Bebel or the philosopher and first socioloist August Comte but in reality my stepdaughter made up the name. I posted this so I could link it to my profile.

Hello from Nick's step daughter!

Hello to everyone! I'm an 11 year old socialist! It's becauase he's evil and he made me a socialist. Well that's really not why, I just agree with him politicly because I've read some of Capital and know enough to agree. Did you know that I call little nicky Hello Trosky? Well....I do!!! I also call him Pickle. I poke him a lot (all the time), I just poked him!!! He's the best. Did you know that Nicholas is super fat?! Actually he is pretty thin. But I like to tease him. Nicholas likes Sponge Bob Square Pants!! HEE, HEEE, HEEEEEEEE! His former boss at the BAR he worked at called him his, "little dumpling boy", but we all called him Sponge Bob because he cooked burgers and kissed the boss's butt. He is mad at me because I wasn't serious on his serious Revolutionary Marxist blog.


Hello Troskys' little one says bye,bye!

Internationalism and the U.S. Occupation of Iraq

This article is an attempt to apply some of the ideas briefly developed in the posting "Nationalism and Internationalism" to the U.S, occupation of Iraq. What is the nature of the U.S. war on and occupation of Iraq? What should workers in the U.S. do?

On the first question, "What is the nature of the U.S. invasion and occupation?" The answer is, it is an imperialist war and occupation. First, the U.S. claim that it is toppling an undemocratic murderous dictator is false. One cannot at one time give political, economic, and military support to a regime to make an aggressive and murderous war on its neighbor Iran, sheepishly condemn its acts of murder against the Kurds (which the U.S. did do and then continued to ignore and do nothing about until it was convenient to ooportunisticly bring up the episodes years laterin order to justify war) and then make any credible claim to being in opposition to its policies. Second, the U.S. is the sole global power, the only country with the power to project its military anywhere in the world it wishes. Even when the Soviet Union existed it did not have this capablity, and the one time it attempted anything close to what the U.S. practices on a regular basis, putting missiles in Cuba, it met staunch opposition from the U.S.. Third, the aim of the war, at least the primary aim, was not the quest for the control of oil though this is important as an ever present context. Natural resource control can be accomplished in multiple ways, and more cheaply than hundreds of billions of dollars in military costs. The real aim, as Immanuel Wallerstein points out, is fear. Following from the logic of the U.S. being the sole global hegemon, without the Soviet Union to constrain it, the U.S. has decided to reign in so-called rogue states in a global get tough campaign to show its potential competitors in Europe, Japan, and possibly China who is running this show just in case they get any ideas about getting out of line and returning to the imperialist game outside of American control.

So what specifically makes this war imperialist? First Lenin defines imperialism as the division and redivision of the world by the imperialist powers. This means that wars carried out by the capitalist powers in the interests of their own bourgeoisie for the greater reaping of profits (either directly through immidiate access to resources or indirectly by improving the command and control of resources) are all imperialist wars. No war carried out by the capitalist powers in the era of monoploy capitalism can be supported by workers. The line of workers must be to smash imperialism utterly as it is the machine which has constantly and consistently smashed the strivings of workers and the oppressed for decades and centuries.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq as well as the entire "war on terror" has created a great dilemma for the American working class. The dilemma is that of national chauvinism and support for imperialism or internationalism and revolution. The tailing of the Democratic Party imperialists by the labor bureaucrats that hold leadership positions within the unions have historically hobbled the ablity of American workers to assume internationalist positions in support of workers world wide. During the entire Cold War the AFL-CIO (AFL-CIA to some) has supported virtually every U.S. intervention against national liberation movements of the oppressed and towed the chauvinist line of backing imperialist aggression in the name of "democracy." By offering alternative strategies of how best to use the U.S. military the Democrats are selling the illusion that labor can influence or even control the actions of a capitalist state. It is elementary for Marxists that the state is ruled by and for the capitalist class and politicians in their service. In buying in to this illusion labor misleaders sell out the internationalist perspective of revolutionary worker solidarity and opposition to capitalism by embracing the activity of its own exploiters in exploiting the rest of the world. In other words the U.S. working class is coopted in various ways into becoming the instruments of other workers oppression. The exception one might make is that urban workers and their families are not a large perportion of the military rather the rural and the petit bourgeois make up the majority of those who enter and are enthusiastic about it.

What does this brieff analysis mean as far as strategy for workers and revolutionaries? First, it should be obvious that no support whatsoever can be given to the imperialists or any of their new strategies at putting a good face on imperialist war, either in the guise of the dissident generals criticism which is really a lament that the U.S. did not hit Iraq harder with more troops and bombs, this is like criticizing Hitler for having held back against the Soviet Union in operation Barbarosa, the lagest military offensive of all time. Another guise is the Democrats "better imperialism" which states that Iraq is a distraction from the "real" threats of Iran, or the deformed workers states of North Korea or China. Please rest assured that these states as targets of U.S. aggression are never far from the minds of military planners.

Second, no support can be given to social pacifist "stop war" campaigns. If generalized war stopped tomorrow we would still have the results of centuries of colonial plunder, the exploitation of slaves and workers, and hundreds of years of "the diplomacy of imperialism" to use the words of W. S. Langer. What social pacifism, the stop war campaigns of many mainstream liberal petit bourgeois anti-war groups, does is to dissappear the class nature of war. Lenin says "...the struggle must consist... not simply in replacing war by peace, but in replacing capitalism by socialism, The essential thing is not merely to prevent war, but to utilize the crisis created by war in order to hasten the overthrow of the bourgeoisie (Agaisnt Imperialist War, 1966, p. 9)." What Lenin shows is the great failing of orgainized labor, the anti-war peaceniks, and even the leading organizations of the oppressed minorities (Arican-Americans, Latino/as, and Native Americans) to use the war to break with the Democrats and break with strident patriotism and flag waving and to raise the class demand of creating a multiracial working class war on U.S. imperialism, a war on the state, and a war on the capitalist class!

Nationalism and Internationalism (revised)

Part of the essense of Marxist theory and practice is the notion of Internationalism. I will attempt to present a brief and useful definition and explication of internationalism and ways of applying it.

The roots of internationalism are in French Revolutionary notions of human brotherhood or sisterhood and universal political rights. This bourgeois notion is given a revolutionary class character in the last sentence of the Manifesto of the Communist Party: "Proletarians of all countries, Unite!" Meaning that the working people involved in production all over the world have a common bond and interest in overthrowing the capitalist system and thier own national capitalists to create something like a world revolutionary state that would eventually wither away during a stateless mature communist era.

If one questiones wheather Marxists should want a world state, ask yourself about the alternative. Individual national states existing for the purpose of controlling the natural resources and labor within its borders? Of course not. Borders must be destroyed, the states that exist for the control of the workers by parasitic rulers (not just a polemic, they really exist at the expense of their hosts) must be smashed and replaced with democratic, popular, directly elected, immidiately revokable, provisional assemblies whose prime task is to break down the resistance of the propertied classes.

But what does this have to do with nationalism and internationalism? One reason why workers are not smashing the state apparatus is precisely the question of nationalism. The way toward revolution is precisely the question of internationalism. Just this evening a friend of mine remarked that the problem with Marxism is internationalism, that the workers are the most nationalistic people. Is this a problem with Marxism or a problem with the labor movement which has shown national chauvinist policies and often supports the anti-labor activities of its own imperialist government?

The proletariat's patriotism stems from their experience of loyalty to family and community. These concrete social relations are extended to encompass compassion for the whole nation. This is accomplished through learning patriotism from the family, schools, media, friends, work, in short most of society and its institutions reinforce, to varying degrees, patriotism to the nation. Thus, the source of national chauvinism, for the working class is rooted in their own sense of altruism and care for their family and community. The sources of internationalism, or the common ties of the world working class, spring from differnt sources. These must usually be either purposfully sought out or they must be arrived at through experience and struggle in the workplace or in other realms that bring humans together in nationally trancendent ways.

Patriotism for the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, stems from very differnt roots. Their patriotism stems from rational (value maximizing) self-interest. The logic is that the state exists and was constructed by and for the capitalists. It is in thier interest to support the mechanism of the state, foster its national institutions, traditions, and practices.This fostering and support contributes to the national feelings on the part of the workers. National feeling is further cultivated through state patronage of public goods and welfare projects meant to win the support of workers and the poor. National capitalists are in competition with other national capitalists for control of different markets, labor, resources, and power. The rulers do not die in wars but they are war's biggest planners and boosters. They must get the workers motivated to fight other workers in wars.

In an 1870 letter, reflecting on national division in Europe, Karl Marx wrote: “Every industrial and commercial center in England now possesses a working-class population divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians.” .” In the same paragraph Marx outlines the racial and national structures erected that divide the proletarians against themselves. English workers see the Irish as competitors that undercut them; they see themselves as part of the “ruling nation” and become allied with the bourgeoisie “…thus strengthening their dominion over himself. ( “Marx to Meyer and Vogt” in Letters to Americans, NewYork, 1953, p. 78).” Marx then extends his argument and compares this situation to the attitude of “poor whites” toward blacks in the postbellum American South.

Internationalism argues that workers of all countries are being exploited by capitalists, and should have no enmity between each other, only the common bonds of being human and being exploited. Thus, racial and national antagonisms only serve to deepen and secure the exploitation of workers. Those workers who receive preferential treatment should struggle against it and for the equal treatment of thier fellow workers in oppressed or disfavored national or racial categories. This logic also brings Marxists, especially after Lenin's interpretations, to struggle for national self-determination, for nations free from domination by other nations as part of the course for the goal of proletarian revolution. Of course all of these elements must be assesed by the facts on the ground, the true democratic desires of nations and peoples, through scientific enquiry, and not simple application of theory to the world, without analysis.

The task of Marxists is to represent an internationalist stance to the working class. To point out and to criticize the gross misdeeds of reformist left parties that believe that imperialist aggression carried out in the name of a humanitarian mission can be anything but a form of nationalism and the attempt to oppress another people. Under this logic Marxists can under no circumstances promote or defend wars undertaken by imperialist powers, such as the U.S., even in the name of humanitarianism. Behind the false assertions of human rights, lurks imperial aggression.

This is still a work in progress. Feel free to add input in the comments section.

Marxism and Authoritarianism

In discussing Marxism, communism and revolution at this point in history, and in the U.S. especially, the question of authority, violence, and the accusation of authoritarianism is a major question to be resolved. I bring this issue up because of two recent happenings. First, at a recent gathering I was harshly criticized by several anarchist friends of mine for wearing a pin with the image of Lenin on it that I bought in Russia. A long conversation ensued on so-called authoritarian regimes and their defense by leftists. Second was an email from a reader of this site, stating "I think Marxism is a good philosophy but becomes totalitarian and abusive in practice." These are valid questions given the history of the twentieth century with regard to proletarian revolutions. These are not simple accusations easily dismissed as CIA propaganda. They must be answered with an examination of the evidence. Who did what? What were the conditions that contributed to the events in question? This is an enormous topic brought up here for the purpose of stimulating debate, not meaning to be exhaustive. I believe that my bias will be evident without being too explicit.

Ideally, we would want to be totally scientific about this issue and have a familiarity with all of the events that we are talking about. For a good overview and analysis read: Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes and The Age of Empire-two fairly long books on 19th and 20th century history. Unfortunately, many people are not familiar with the details and when they are these can be incomplete or out of context.

Why is this discussion important? What is at stake here? For people already adept in this discussion it may be review. What is at stake is the degree to which humans have progressed by workers and the oppressed taking power into their own hands. If you argue that no revolution has ever done any good you are basically saying that progress does not come about through struggle. This position is anti-Marxist. On the other extreme, if you argue that every revolution, including ones that really are not revolutions, have achieved human progress then the world is really close to leaping into socialism or all that is needed is a few more third world uprisings to tilt the balance. In addition if every revolution or everything a revolution does is progressive then one ends up having to excuse mass terror. A person’s position on revolution and change affects the way in which they interpret all other political events

To begin let me sketch out some of the arguments. First, the liberal democratic argument says that working class revolution and violence is not necessary, even when objective conditions for the poor and the workers are horrible, because liberal democracy and capitalism, if left to their own devices will develop society and maximize happiness and freedom for its citizens. From this perspective the only revolutions that need to happen were the bourgeois-democratic ones establishing democracy, like in France and the American colonies. For these critics the Paris Commune, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, Cuban Revolution etc. are unfortunate instances when democracy failed and dictators came to power. The outcome of this argument is that human progress is tied to the development of “nice” imperialist powers such as the United States or Britain. Examples of this argument can be found daily in the New York Times.

The anarchist critique is similar to the liberal democratic critique only in that it draws the line of what was necessary and authentic revolution and what was authoritarian overthrow of that revolution in a different place. The anarchist critique often recognizes the working class as an important (sometimes the only) agent for social change. They recognize Workers and Soldiers Soviets, the February Revolution, communes and other worker organizations, peasant uprisings, and other "spontaneous" organization of the exploited as the authentic revolutionary actions. They reject as subversions of revolution, and authoritarian takeover, things such as the Bolshevik Revolution. (See TEXT for of this argument) In their defense there is an historical record of violence and repression that at least needs to be explained and learned from, not rationalized or dismissed. However, the anarchist critique often misses the actual facts on the ground, the real situation, offers utopian or impossible solutions to very bad situations, and wants revolution without a revolution as Robespierre said. In other words they want all of the benefits without making all of the unfortunate but necessary sacrifices.

The Marxist-Leninist critique splits into several different camps. They agree that the Bolshevik Revolution was a necessary next step in the Russian Revolution, abolishing private property and giving power to the soviets. They differ however on what has happened since. The Soviets during and after Stalin and Chinese Maoists, all supportive of Stalinism, argue that revolution was preserved in the USSR and extended to every country that subsequently became communist. This means that the entire old "communist bloc" was an extension of the Bolshevik Revolution, and thus a progressive step. Murders and the oppression of workers by revolutionaries is often denied or rationalized.

Other Marxist-Leninists, in the opposition Trotskyist tradition hold different views on what happened in the Russian Revolution. Most, following Trotsky, argue that Stalin lead a bureaucratic take-over of the revolutionary state in the mid 1920's and it "degenerated” under Stalin's leadership away from revolutionary aims to seek accommodation with capitalism and imperialism. This state was then a "degenerated workers state" without private property, without capitalism, but with a treacherous and self-interested leadership. Thus it served the interests of the bureaucracy and not the workers, subverted revolution, murdered loyal citizens and good Bolsheviks, and did not achieve socialism and freedom. This position is exonerated from having to defend Stalin or Mao but is open to attack on the ground that the tactics they support lay the foundation for authoritarianism. SeeThe Revolution Betrayed by Trotsky at TEXT.

These four broad positions have very different views upon what kind of revolution, if any, is necessary for the progressive transformation of society into socialism or whatever next step is theorized, if indeed there is one. Each position argues for a different level of acceptable and necessary violence in accomplishing the revolution. I suggest that those interested should investigate for themselves the various positions; keeping in mind the various pitfalls outlined above, and compare these positions to what evidence and data suggest. I encourage discussion and criticism.

Marxist Internet Archive

By clicking on this link you should be directed to the Marxist Internet Archive with thousands of articles, books, and pamphlets to read.