From Two Essays on Imperialism, New York 1966 ERNST MANDEL Transcribed by Joseph Auciello.

Introduction Since the spring of 1916 when Lenin wrote his pamphlet Imperialism, that work has been a focal point of discussion by both Marxists and non-Marxist political economists. Many critics have attempted to prove that Lenin’s analysis of contemporary capitalism is essentially incorrect; others that it is partially incorrect, but not outdated. Lenin’s “official” defenders in Moscow have tried to prove that every word written in 1916 is still totally valid today, while Marxists have taken into account the developments and changes of the last 50 years, modifying and adding to Lenin’s theory in the light of these changes. For the students of Lenin’s Imperialism, the two essays contained in this bulletin will serve as an introduction to the contemporary debate, indicating the questions which are being discussed and how they are being answered by both critics and defenders of the Marxist concept of imperialism. The author of the first article, E. Germain, is one of the leading theoreticians of the Fourth International and the author of numerous essays on Marxist economics. The Theory of Imperialism and Its Critics was a lecture originally given more than ten years ago to a group of Marxist students already familiar with Lenin’s Imperialism. After discussing the historical development of the theory, Germain goes on to deal briefly with the most important contemporary critics. Ernest Mandel, editor of the Belgian socialist weekly, La Gauche, and a leader of the Belgian Socialist Workers Confederation, is one of the world’s leading Marxist economists. His two volume Traité d’Economie Marxiste will soon be published in English by Monthly Review Press. The article reprinted here is a review of Michael Barratt Brown’s work After Imperialism, and first appeared in the June 1964 issue of the British periodical New Left Review. Mary-Alice Styron July 1966 To Marxists, “imperialism” is not simply the “trend towards expansion” or the “conquest of foreign lands,” as it is defined by most political scientists and sociologists. The word is used in a much more precise sense to describe the general changes which occurred in the political, economic and social activity of the big bourgeoisie of the advanced capitalist countries, beginning in the last quarter of the 19th century. These changes were closely related to alterations in the basic structure of this bourgeoisie. Marx died too early to be able to analyze these changes. He did not see more than the preliminary signs. Nevertheless, he left some profound remarks in his last writings which later Marxists used as starting points for developing the theory of imperialism. In studying the rapid development of limited liability corporations, Marx underlined, in the Third Volume of Capital (chap.23), that these companies represent a new form of the expropriation of a mass of capitalists by a small handful of capitalists. In this expropriation the legal owner of capital loses his function as entrepreneur and abandons his role in the process of production and his position of command over the productive forces and the labor force. In fact, private property seems to be suppressed, says Marx elsewhere, it is suppressed not in favor of collective ownership but in favor of private ownership by a very small number. Concentration of Capital Marx foresaw the modern structure of capitalism as the final phase of capitalism resulting from the extreme concentration of capital. This was also the starting point taken by most Marxists, especially Hilferding and Lenin. In a paragraph devoted to countertendencies to the trend toward a falling rate of profit (Capital, Volume III, chap.14), Marx also underlined the importance of the export of capital to backward countries. A little further on he generalized this idea by insisting that a capitalist society must continuously extend its base, its area of exploitation. Engels added a more detailed elucidation to Marx’s comments. In his last writings, especially in his famous 1892 introduction to The Condition of the Working Class in England, he underlined other structural phenomena to which the theoreticians of imperialism attached great importance. Engels wrote that from the beginning of the industrial revolution until the 1870’s, England exercised practically an industrial monopoly over the world market. Thanks to that monopoly, in the second half of the 19th century, at the time of the rise of craft unions, English capitalism could grant important concessions to a section of the working class. But, towards the end of the 19th century the German, French, and American competition made inroads into this English monopoly, and inaugurated a period of sharp class struggle in Great Britain. The correctness of Engels’ analysis was borne out as early as the first years of the 20th century. The trade union movement grew not only among the laborers and the masses of the unskilled, but also broke its half-century long alliance with petty-bourgeois radicalism (the Liberal Party) and founded the Labor Party, the mass workers’ party. In two comments on the Third Volume of Capital, edited by Engels in 1894 (comments on the 31st and 32nd chapters), Engels emphasized how difficult it was going to be for capitalism to find a new basis for expansion after the final conquest of the world market. (Elsewhere he says “after the conquest of the Chinese market.”) Competition is limited internally by cartels and trusts, and externally by protectionism. All this he thought represented “the preparations for a general industrial war for the domination of the world market.” Lenin began with these remarks by Engels in developing his theory of the imperialist struggle for the division and re-division of the world market, as well as his theory of the workers’ aristocracy. The Theory of Imperialism by Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg The most “obvious” phenomenon of the new period in the history of capitalism, which opened with the last quarter of the 19th century, was undoubtedly the series of wars and expeditions, the creation or the expansion of colonial empires: the French expeditions to Tonkin (now Vietnam), Tunisia and Morocco; the conquest of the Congo by Leopold II; the British expansion to the boundaries of India, Egypt and the Sudan, East and South Africa; the German and Italian expansions in Africa, etc. This colonial expansion stimulated the first efforts by Marxists to interpret the development of this period of capitalism. Karl Kautsky emphasized the commercial reasons for imperialist expansion. According to him, industrial capital cannot sell the whole of its production within an industrialized country. In order to realize surplus value, it must provide itself with markets made up of non-industrialized countries, essentially agricultural countries. This was the purpose of the colonial wars of expansion and the reason for the creation of colonial empires. Parvus, in the beginning of the 20th century, while underlining this phenomenon emphasized the role of heavy industry (above all the iron industry) in the transformation which was about to take place in the politics of the international capitalist class. He pointed out how iron played a more and more preponderant role in capitalist industry, and demonstrated that government orders, direct (armaments race) and indirect (competition in naval construction, building of railways and harbor installations in colonial countries, etc.), represented the main outlet for this industry. It was Rosa Luxemburg who drew together in a complete theory all these concepts of an imperialism expanding to compensate for inadequate markets for the products of the biggest capitalist industries. Her theory is mainly one of crises, or to express it more correctly, a theory of the conditions of realization surplus value and of accumulation of capital. It is consistent with the theories of under-consumption worked out over the course of a century by numerous opponents of the capitalist system to show the inevitability of economic crises. According to Rosa Luxemburg, the continual expansion of the capitalist mode of production is impossible within the bounds of a purely capitalist society. The expansion of the production of the means of production within capitalist society is only possible if it goes hand in hand with the expansion of the demand for consumer goods. Without this expansion of the latter demand, the capitalists will not buy any new machines, etc. It is not the expansion of the purchasing power of the working class which allows an adequate expansion of the demand for consumer goods. On the contrary, the more the capitalist system progresses, the more does the purchasing power of the workers represent a relatively smaller proportion of the national income. In order for capitalist expansion to continue it is necessary to have non-capitalist classes which, with an income obtained outside the capitalist system, would be endowed with the additional purchasing power to buy industrial consumer goods. These non-capitalist classes originally are the landowners and farmers. In the countries where the industrial revolution first occurred, the capitalist mode of production developed and triumphed in a non-capitalist milieu, conquering the market which consisted above all of the mass of peasants. Rosa Luxemburg concluded that after the conquest of the national non-capitalist markets, and the not yet industrialized markets the European and North American continents, capital had to throw itself into the conquest of a new non-capitalist sphere, that of the agricultural countries of Asia and Africa. She tied this theory of imperialism to the importance of “compensating outlets” for the capitalist system, outlets presented above all by government purchases of armaments. She foresaw the mechanism which did not reveal its full functioning until the eve of the Second World War. Today, without this “compensating outlet,” which is created by the armaments and war economy, the capitalist system would be in danger of falling periodically into economic crises of the same gravity as that of 1929-33. The Flaws in Luxemburg’s Views It is beyond doubt that historically the development of capitalist industry came about in effect in a non-capitalist milieu and that the existence of the great agricultural markets, national and international, represented the essential safety-valve of the capitalist system during the entire 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. However, from the point of view of economic theory, the Luxemburgian conception of imperialism has certain flaws. It is important to underline them because they obscure certain long run trends in the development of capitalism as a whole. For instance, Luxemburg argued that the capitalist class could not enrich itself by passing its own money from one pocket to another. However, this ignores the fact, illuminated by Marx, that the capitalist class taken as a whole represents a useful abstraction to unveil the laws of motion of capital, but that the phenomenon of periodic crises is understandable only in the framework of the competition of antagonistic capitals and the concentration resulting from that competition. In such a framework it is quite logical that “the capitalist class” enriches itself “by itself,” that is, that certain layers of the capitalist class enrich themselves through the impoverishment of other capitalist layers. This is what has occurred for the last forty years in the United States, at first in relation to the American capitalists, then particularly in relation to the international capitalist classes (first of all the European). This will occur more and more as the purely agricultural markets disappear. Within today’s capitalist world, exports are directed to a large extent to other industrialized countries, and only to a small extent to the markets of “non-capitalist” countries. The fundamental weakness of Rosa Luxemburg’s theory is that it is based simply on the capitalist class’s need for markets to realize surplus value, and ignores the basic changes which have taken place in capitalist property and production. These were the structural problems which Rudolf Hilferding and Lenin tackled. The Theory of Imperialism by Hilferding and Lenin Starting with the remarks made on this subject in the later works of Marx and Engels, Hilferding studied the structural changes of capitalism in the last quarter of the 19th century. He began with capitalist concentration, the concentration of banking and the preponderant part played by the banks in the launching of stock companies and the mergers of enterprises. From this Hilferding defined what he called finance capital, that is, banking capital invested in industry and controlling it either directly (by the purchase of shares, the presence of bank representatives on the boards of directors, etc.), or indirectly (by the establishment of holding companies, concerns and “influence groups”). Hilferding discovered the preponderant role played by banks in the development of heavy industry, especially in Germany, France, the United States, Belgium, Italy and Czarist Russia. He showed that these banks represented the most “aggressive” force in political matters, partly because of the risks involved in investments reaching billions of dollars. In a brilliant conclusion to his work on finance capital, Hilferding predicted the rise of fascism, that is, a merciless and absolute political dictatorship, exercised in favor of big capital, corresponding to the new stage of capitalism as political liberalism corresponded to early competitive capitalism. Confronted with the threat of such a dictatorship, Hilferding concluded, the proletariat must engage in the struggle for its own dictatorship. Lenin drew substantially on Hilferding’s work as well as on the works of some liberal economists like Hobson to produce his work on imperialism at the beginning of the First World War. Like Hilferding, he started from capitalist concentration – the establishment of trusts, cartels, holding companies, etc. – banking concentration, and the appearance of finance capital to characterize what is structurally new in this stage of capitalism. Lenin extended and generalized this structural analysis, naming it monopoly capitalism, in contrast to 19th century competitive capitalism. He analyzed monopoly and monopoly profits, expanding a series of thoughts already begun in Hilferding’s idea that the expansionism of monopoly capitalism takes place primarily through the export of capital. In contrast to competitive capitalism, which concentrated on the export of commodities and which was not interested in its clients, monopoly capitalism, exporter of capital, cannot be without interest in its debtors. It must assure “normal” conditions of solvency, without which its loans would transform themselves into losses: hence the tendency toward some form of political-economic control over the countries in which this capital is invested. Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is completed with a very profound essay on the contradictory, dialectical nature of capitalist monopoly, which suppresses competition at one stage to reproduce it again on a higher level. Applying the law of uneven development both to the relations between the imperialist powers, Lenin showed that the division of the world among the imperialist powers can only be a temporary one, and is inevitably followed by struggles – imperialist war – to obtain a new division as the relationship of forces among these powers changes. Lenin also integrated into his theory of imperialism Engels’ concept of the workers’ aristocracy. The colonial super profits, brought in by the capital exported to backward countries, permit the corruption of part of the working class, above all a reformist bureaucracy which cooperates with the bourgeois democratic regime and obtains great benefits from it. The Theory of Imperialism Adapted to the Present Time Combined with Trotsky’s theory of the permanent revolution – especially his analysis of the combined economic and social development of the colonial and semi-colonial countries under the impact of capital export and imperialist domination – Lenin’s theory has brilliantly withstood the test of time. No social and economic analysis of bourgeois or reformist origin dating from before the First World War has retained today any validity whatsoever, while Lenin’s conception of monopoly capitalism, combined with the theory of the permanent revolution, remains the essential key for understanding present-day reality – the succession of world wars, the opening of an epoch of revolutions and counterrevolutions, the appearance of fascism, the triumph of the proletarian revolution in Russia, Yugoslavia and China, the increasing role of the armament and war industry in the capitalist world, and the importance of colonial revolutions, to name the more obvious. This does not mean that every part of Lenin’s theory retains 100 percent validity and that, as in the Stalinist manner, Marxist theoretician and revolutionary leaders should content themselves today with paraphrasing or interpreting Lenin’s Imperialism to explain contemporary reality. Historical experience of the last fifty years has proven that: An epoch of monopoly capitalism has followed the capitalism of free competition. Monopoly capitalism results from technical revolutions (internal combustion engine and electricity replacing steam as the essential motive power) and from structural changes in capitalism (concentration of capital resulting in giant enterprises predominating in heavy industry, establishment of cartels, trusts, holding companies, etc.). Monopoly capitalism does not overcome the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. It does not overcome competition but merely raises it to a higher level encompassing new and bigger competitors. It does not overcome crises but gives them a more convulsive character. Two rates of profit are substituted for the average rate of profit of the previous period: the average rate of monopolist profit; and the average rate of profit of the non-monopolized sectors. The suppression of free competition within certain bounds is essentially a reaction against the threats to monopolist rates of profit. For this reason it is tied up not only with the artificial limitation of production in certain sectors, but also with the frantic search for new fields of capital investment (new industries and new countries). Hence imperialist wars. In this respect Lenin’s remarks on the tendency of monopoly capitalism to arrest technical progress should be slightly modified. It is true that the monopolies strive to monopolize research and suppress or retard the application of many technical discoveries; but it is equally true that monopoly capitalism also calls forth an increase in these technical discoveries. One reason for this is the monopolies themselves need to open new sectors of exploitation in order to have an outlet for their excess capital. Experience has shown, especially in the chemical, iron, electronics and nuclear domains, that the last fifty years have at least been as fertile in technical progress as the preceding fifty years. Beside these fundamental characteristics which remain valid, some secondary characteristics should be modified: Finance capital: The control and domination of industrial capital by finance capital has proved to be a passing phenomenon in numerous countries (United States, Great Britain, Japan, Belgium, Netherlands, etc.). Thanks to the accumulation of enormous super profits, the trusts are expanding more and more by self-financing and are freeing themselves of bank tutelage. Only in the weaker or more backward capitalist countries does finance capital remain predominant. apital export: The export of capital continues to represent a safety valve for the over-capitalized monopolist trusts, but this is no longer the main safety valve, at least in the United States (except in the oil industry). Government orders are the main safety valve. The increasing role of the State as guarantor of monopolist profit, and the increasing fusion of the monopolists with the State are today the main characteristics of declining capitalism. They spring as much from social and political as from economic causes (colonial revolution, industrialization of backward countries, narrowing of operational field of capital in the world, etc.). The layer of coupon-clippers unique to parasitic imperialism has been reduced rather than extended following the structural transformations mentioned above. The big trusts finance their investments more by self-financing than by issuing negotiable shares. There is a bureaucratization of monopolist capital, and the structure rests more and more on a hierarchy of big administrators (executives), who are most often themselves big or medium share-holders. The parasitic character of declining capitalism appears above all in the enormous extent of unproductive expenditures (in the first place armaments, but also the maintenance of the state apparatus), and in the enormous costs of distribution (valued at more than 30 percent of the national income in the United States). Today, political factors – such as the rising colonial revolution – are increasingly combined with fundamental economic characteristics to give capitalism its particular outlines and behavior. The Critics Bourgeois (and reformist) theoreticians have generally been very tardy in contesting the Marxist conception of the new phenomena which appeared in the capitalist world of the 20th century. In fact, they have seemed hardly aware of the existence of these phenomena. To be convinced of this it is sufficient to run through the main subjects with which they were preoccupied and which they discussed in the years preceding the First World War. While Kautsky, Hilferding, Luxemburg, Lenin Trotsky, Parvus, the Dutch Marxists grouped around De Nieuwe Tijd, and the Austro-Marxists around the young Otto Bauer devoted their economic research to the phenomena connected with monopolist imperialism, the bourgeois economists, apart from a few outsiders, were discussing monetary phenomena, prolonging the polemic of the marginal utility school against the labor theory of value school, and concentrating on the development of the theory of market equilibrium under conditions of perfect competition. Twenty years later bourgeois political economy became aware of the “fact” of monopoly, and began to seriously develop a theory of economic crises and cycles. This lag continues to prevail: until about 1935 the capitalist theories of economic crises fed on crumbs falling from the table of the Marxists; the capitalist theories of the Soviet economy are even today exclusively inspired by old Marxists or pseudo-Marxists. All this confirms once again the correctness of the comment made by Marx some 80 years ago: after Ricardo bourgeois thought in economic matters became fundamentally sterile because apologetic. The majority, if not all, the bourgeois conceptions of imperialism and monopoly capitalism possess this pronounced apologetic character. They constitute an ideology in the Marxist sense of the word: they are not theories elaborated to explain reality. They are conceptions formulated to justify (and partly conceal) the existing reality. The Theory of “Super”-Imperialism This apologetic character appeared most clearly in the reformist conceptions of monopoly capitalism as they were developed in the last years before the First World War (particularly by Kautsky) and put forward in the twenties (especially by Kautsky, Hilferding and Vandervelde). The barrenness of these conceptions is the most striking manifestation of the lamentable theoretical breakdown of Kautsky and Hilferding, a breakdown which followed their political betrayal. Starting from the inevitability of a supreme concentration of capital, the reformist theoreticians approve this development and discover in it surprising virtues of economic and social harmony. Just as the cartels and trusts suppress competition to a very large extent, so also the anarchy of production and the crises which it provokes can be abolished by the monopolies. The latter are interested in completely reorganizing economic and social life to avoid needless expenses which costly conflicts incur (crashes, strikes, etc.). Just as the great captains of industry learn to reach an understanding among themselves, so also they learn to reach an understanding with the labor unions. The labor movement should neither oppose the cartelization of industry nor defend small industry against big. On the contrary, they say, the labor movement should support all tendencies towards a maximum concentration of industry, towards the leadership of the trusts, towards the organized economy. Thus, the stage of monopoly capitalism can represent a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism during which the contradictions and conflicts can gradually be lessened. The development of the last forty years has completely contradicted this analysis and these forecasts. Imperialism and Kautsky’s “super”-imperialism (complete predominance of one imperialist power because of the supreme concentration of capital), far from assuring universal peace, have caused the outbreak of two bloody world wars and are preparing a third one. Far from being able to avoid crises, monopolies precipitated the most violent crisis ever known by capitalism, that of 1929-1933. Far from lessening social conflicts, the trusts have opened an almost uninterrupted period of revolutions and counterrevolutions on a world scale. The fundamental methodological error of these reformist conceptions is their blindness to the contradictory, dialectical character of capitalist evolution, to the concentration of capital. They draw completely mechanical conclusions. It is true that modern capitalism’s tendency to set up trusts, cartels, and monopolies cannot be reversed. It would be completely utopian to want to return to the free competition of the 19th century. But there are two methods of fighting trusts: to substitute for them the small, scattered industry of the past; or to substitute for them the socialized industry of the future. On the pretext that the first form of struggle is impossible, the reformists conveniently forget that the second one exists, and they conclude that it is necessary to defend the monopolies. When the European steel cartel was established, Vandervelde published an article celebrating the event as the guarantee of peace in Europe! On the pretext of not wanting to turn back, the reformists accept the existing reality and conceal the deep contradictions which periodically rend this reality asunder, contradictions which impose upon Marxists the duty to support the only forces which can prepare the future. The reformists’ inability to comprehend the contradictory character of monopoly capitalism is above all an ignorance of uneven development. The simplified formula: “The more monopolies there are, the less competition there is, and the less conflict there is,” does not stand up to the test of facts. In reality, the more monopolies there are, the more a new form of competition – competition among monopolies, imperialist wars – replaces the old form of competition. Beginning with the great 1929-1933 crisis, the majority of the reformist parties tacitly abandoned these propositions of mechanical, reformist Marxism. But this “progress” was accompanied by an even more pronounced theoretical retreat: the abandonment – in general equally tacit – of Marxism as a whole, and the adoption of the Keynesian economic theories. Today, in the reformist ranks, one no longer encounters tendencies which are openly apologetic of monopolies. Instead, the reformists now defend the directing role of the capitalist State. Monopolies, “Duopolies” and “Oligopolies” The apologetic character of bourgeois conceptions of contemporary capitalism is equally clear. The majority of economists and sociologists, describing the structure of capitalism, question the very existence of monopolies. However, only the most partial (or the most ignorant), lean on secondary features like the periodic increase in the number of retail shops, service stations and repair shops to defend the thesis that there is no considerable concentration of capital. The more intelligent bourgeois ideologists no longer deny the preponderant part played by trusts, cartels, holding companies, etc., in contemporary capitalism. But they deny that we are dealing with monopolies here, for, so they say, in the majority of the great industrial sectors (steel, chemicals, motor cars, electrical equipment, aircraft, aluminum and non-ferrous metals are the main ones) there is not one company predominating in each country, but several (“duopolies”: predominance of two companies; “oligopolies”: predominance of a small number of companies). First of all, this restrictive proposition is only partly true. There are important sectors in the big capitalist countries where two-thirds of the production, and even more, is carried on by one company which possesses a monopoly position in the literal sense of the word: chemicals in Great Britain; petroleum in Great Britain; aluminum in the United States; motor cars in Italy; before 1945, chemicals and steel in Germany; copper in the Congo; electrical equipment in Holland, etc. Furthermore, this restrictive proposition is only a terminological artifice. In calling the structure of contemporary capitalism monopolist, Marxists have never pretended that there was only one firm producing all (or almost all) products in each industry. They have simply stated that the relationship of forces between the small firms, and one, two or three giant firms is such that the latter impose their law in the industry, that is, eliminate price competition. This analysis conforms scrupulously with reality, and it is comical to see the great opponents of Marxism, the most enthusiastic advocates of “free competition,” state solemnly that competition holds sway in today’s capitalist economy – notwithstanding the absence of price competition. Actually, official statistics published by governmental services (especially the US Federal Trade Commission) confirm not only the absence of price competition, but also the denomination of the majority of the industrial sectors of all capitalist countries by one, two or three companies, concentrating within their hands 66-90 percent of production. “Democratization of Capital” A favorite argument or apologists of monopoly capitalism is that the concentration of capital in the giant enterprises (“natural outcome of technical development” as they say) is more than neutralized by the diffusion of ownership due to the growth of share ownership. They quote the examples of large trusts which have issued hundreds of thousands of shares (General Motors, the most powerful trust in the world, has issued more than one million), only a small number of which are in the hands of one family. Consequently, there must be hundreds of thousands, or at least thousands of “owners” of these trusts, and “everybody is on the road to becoming a capitalist.” Recently this argument has been vigorously renewed in the United States, in Switzerland, in Belgium, in Germany and elsewhere, where the bourgeoisie has campaigned for the distribution of shares among the workers of the large enterprises. Let’s begin by putting things back into place. Many trusts are effectively dominated by one single family: the Standard Oil petroleum trust by the Rockefeller family; the General Motors trust by the DuPont deNemours family; the steel trust of the Lorraine by the Wendel family, etc. It is true that in the majority of cases these families do not possess 50 percent of the shares of the companies in question. But this only proves that the flotation of large numbers of shares permits the control of these giant companies by minority shareholdings. Their dispersal effectively prevents the mass of the small shareholders from establishing their rights at the general meetings and in the daily administration of the company. Further, it is false that the ownership of industrial shares is spread over large layers of the population. An enquiry made in the United States in 1951 by the Brookings Institute proved that 0.1 percent of the population possessed 55 percent of all the shares. To the extent that the monopolist trusts become more and more powerful and avoid the possibility of being controlled by a single family, it is characteristic that they progressively become collectively owned by the big capitalists. The interpenetration of the interests of some dozens or hundreds of big capitalist families is such that it becomes impossible to say that such and such family “controls” such and such company. But the whole of these families control the whole of big industry which is directed by a kind of “administrative council of the capitalist class,” on which the representatives of all these families occupy key positions and succeed one another periodically in the positions of command. The Theory of “Countervailing Power” and the State as Equalizer The more intelligent bourgeois economists cannot deny these facts. Nevertheless, in order to justify capitalism they take refuge behind the State, the deus ex machina which is capable of neutralizing the bad effects of this extraordinary concentration of economic power. Among the principal representatives of this theory are the American professors John Kenneth Galbraith and Adolphe A. Berle, and the “Keynesian” group of the London School of Economics. There are numerous variations of this theory; it is sufficient to enumerate and refute some of them. Galbraith and the adepts of the London School of Economics advance the theory that the democratic State of today is not the instrument of the domination of one class but a more or less independent apparatus, subjected to the mutually neutralizing influence of various “pressure groups.” These authors, by the way, never use the work “class” and always prefer to use “pressure group,” “sections of opinion,” “organized influence,” etc. It is true, they say, that the “oligopolist” trusts exercise a very strong influence on economic life. But this influence is “neutralized” (held in check) by the no less formidable power of the mass trade unions, of farmers’ associations, of small and middle capitalists organized in Chambers of Commerce, etc. The interaction of these forces produces an economic equilibrium favorable to the community as a whole, a more or less proportional division of the “economic cake” among the different “pressure groups.” These authors may be simply theorizing on the practice of “lobbying” prevalent in Washington, but their conclusions are absolutely unreal. Even a superficial study of the development of the economic and social policies of the United States makes clear that the “sixty families” exert an influence (even in the absence of particular “lobbies”) quite different from that exerted by the great trade unions with their 16 million members. For nearly twenty years American capitalism has been passing through a period of increased profits and prosperity. From time to time the ruling layers of the bourgeoisie can permit themselves the luxury of dividing a considerably reduced portion of the cake among different social classes and different social layers of the capitalist class itself. In the interests of maintaining economic stability and “social peace,” the big capitalists have learned that it is more effective to avoid the destruction of certain layers which are particularly exposed to competition and the bad effects of the conjunctural swings of economic cycles (farmers and merchants, for example). The government, acting as the “administrative council of the capitalist class” in its entirety, has at its disposal powerful means with which to satisfy, at any given time, this or that particularly dissatisfied layer of society. But all this takes place within the framework of a more and more absolute and open rule of the monopolist trusts within the economy and the State itself. Examination of the figures on the concentration of capital which proceeds more rapidly than ever, on the difference between the rate of profit in the monopolist sector and that in the non-monopolized sectors, and on the greater and greater proportion of the total national income which these profits represent make strikingly clear that validity of Marx and Lenin’s analysis of monopoly capitalism. The “Mixed Economy” A “reformist” variety of the theories of “countervailing power” is the theory of the so-called “mixed economy,” represented by the social democratic followers of the Keynes school, such as Lerner. According to them, today’s economy lost its strictly capitalist character when the State, through huge taxes, concentrated within its hands an important part of the national income (from 25-30 percent in Great Britain and the United States) by its ownership of the public sector of the economy. They consider this the “objective” economic basis for a degree of independence and autonomy by the State apparatus in relation to the monopolist trusts. The American professors Sumner Slichter and Paul Samuelson defend a similar thesis, what they call a “labor” economy. These reformists forget to answer the question, who directs, who controls the State? Who conducts this “public” sector of the economy? A concrete analysis of the question will confirm in each case that the nationalizations of sections of industry carried out in countries like Great Britain and France were nationalizations of basic industries running at a deficit, through which the industries of the key manufacturers have greatly profited, even though many of these had temporarily fought against nationalization for political reasons. The same thing is true of public enterprises in the United States, for example the electrical industry and highway reconstruction. The redistribution of national income by really progressive rates of direct taxation in Western Europe and North America is to a large extent neutralized by no less exorbitant indirect taxation, borne above all by the workers. As already indicated, the State which directs the “public sector” of the economy is a State completely in the hands of the monopolists, and whose personnel is usually composed directly of the monopolists themselves. Under these conditions, the appearance of a powerful “public sector” in the economy does not prove that the economy has lost its capitalist character. It merely confirms that fact that, in the period of accelerated decline, monopoly capitalism cannot survive on the basis of laissez faire, but needs growing intervention of the State in order to guarantee its monopoly profits. There remains finally the more intelligent version of this theory, expounded by A.A. Berle in The American Revolution (a remarkable work on the distribution of shares of the big American companies), and by the publishers of Fortune magazine under the surprising title of The Permanent Revolution. These authors acknowledge that one hundred monopolist trusts directly control almost half the industrial production of the United States, and indirectly determine the conditions of a large part of the other half. But, so they say, these trusts are like the great feudal lords of the Middle Ages. So great is their power, which can decide the fate of so many thousands of people, that the trusts cannot allow themselves to be guided in their decisions exclusively by economic imperatives, by the quest for profit. If they decide to close their factories in one city and condemn a local community of 300,000 inhabitants to mass unemployment, this will have social and political as well as economic consequences. The very power of the trusts thus imposes a limit to their power, and represents the source of a “counter-balance” which is created in the form of a “public responsibility,” a “public right,” a “right to consider the public,” a “growing intervention of the public authorities,” etc. In order to avoid a direct attack upon them, the trusts have transformed themselves into some sort of “benevolent lords,” into “enlightened despots.” Berle himself uses this formulation! Their great discovery is the development of a higher standard of living for the “new American middle class” of tens of millions of technicians, merchants, clerks, and skilled workers whose fate is intimately tied up with that of the trusts for whom they work. This same theory is at present fashionable in Great Britain where the Labor right wing explains, for example, that the demand for the nationalization of the ICI chemical trust has run up against the resistance of the workers at this plant. In West Germany the trusts have created privileged conditions of work for their permanent employees, in comparison with the conditions of work in the small and middle enterprises. But there is nothing surprising in this. It is nothing but a repetition of the phenomenon of a workers’ aristocracy, made possible by temporary super profits. To see in this a structural transformation of the capitalist regime is to mistake the shadow for the substance. The Ageing and Stagnation of Capitalism It is among the supporters of Keynes and his continuers that some of the more serious non-Marxist conceptions of the nature of contemporary capitalism are found. Thus, the main American disciple of Keynes, Professor Alvin Hansen, has developed the notion of “ageing capitalism,” whose maturity is characterized by the fact that the already acquired stock of fixed capital takes on such huge proportions as to become more and more an obstacle to new productive investments. This is simply the Marxist conception of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, caused by the increase in the organic composition of capital. In Great Britain, Joan Robinson, who oscillates between Keynes and Marx, has thrown light on the same phenomenon and has at the same time made sound studies of what she calls “monopolistic competition” (competition among monopolies). However, these bourgeois authors following even this road arrive at reformist and apologetic conclusions: “ageing” capitalism is a capitalism which grows “wiser,” which has greater and greater recourse to (and need of!) a more equal redistribution of the national income to assure the satisfactory functioning of the economy, which permits a more and more efficient running of the economy by the State, etc. Some of these disciples of Keynes state that, thanks to these tendencies, it is possible to eliminate (or to restrain to the utmost) the capitalist crises through the use of government expenditure which could be productive as much as unproductive. In the last analysis, all this represents nothing but a rationalization of the behavior of the American capitalist class in the Roosevelt era, a rationalization of the role of the armaments and war industry in today’s capitalist economy. Because, in the long run, only government expenditure in the armament sector can absorb surplus production that threatens the economy. “Productive” expenditure inevitably absorbs purchasing power that would be used to buy the products of other productive sectors and does not constitute a compensating outlet. The British economist Colin Clark has developed the idea of “ageing” society in a particular sense. According to him, the more capitalist society matures, the more labor power and economic resources are switched from the productive industries, in the true sense of the word, towards the “service” industries (essentially the sector of distribution). There is in this idea a particle of truth. The huge increase in the cost of distribution is in effect a characteristic of declining capitalism. This does not alter the fact that Colin Clark’s “law” has not in the least the absolute value which he wants to give it. The growth of the so-called “tertiary” industries largely reflects the historical delay in the mechanization and automation of the distributive, banking and insurance trades, a delay which could be rapidly overcome, with striking consequences for the structure of the working population. Industrialization of Underdeveloped Countries There remains a last aspect of Marx and Lenin’s theory of imperialism, which is often criticized by capitalist, and particularly reformist economists: this is our conception of the impossibility of a serious industrialization of the colonial and semi-colonial countries under the aegis of imperialism and the “national” capitalist class. As far as the past is concerned, no serious author dares to doubt the validity of this thesis for the facts speak far too eloquently. But, so they say, after 1945, and especially after the victory of the Chinese Revolution, capitalism, in particular American capitalism, has “thought things over.” It has understood that the misery of the underdeveloped countries favors the “growth of Communism.” It is prepared to grant them very great help to build a “barrier against the Reds.” Imperialism is interested from another angle, since capital exports and new outlets thus created furnish it with the famous “compensating outlets” which it lacks. Some go so far as to speak of the possibility of “decades” of peaceful development based on the industrialization of backward countries thanks to foreign investments. Unfortunately for them, the facts paint another picture. Since the end of the Second World War private exports are, to the majority of these countries, lower than they were in the period following the First World War. Particular exceptions (notably as far as the American oil industry is concerned) immediately indicate the limits of the phenomenon. Responsible capitalist associations – notably the world conference of the Chambers of Commerce – have repeatedly explained quite frankly the reason for this state of affairs: the insecurity which reigns in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, and threat of revolutions, of confiscations, of nationalizations without compensation, etc. For the alluring prospects to be realized, it would be necessary to change completely the political and social climate in the backward countries; and as such a transformation is not at all foreseen. Even where very favorable political conditions for imperialism exist, capital investments are concentrated in the extraction of raw materials, trade, transport, and banks, and not in the creation of an indigenous secondary industry. In connection with this subject the economic development of countries like the Philippines, South Korea, Formosa, Thailand, Turkey and the Central American republics in the clutches of Washington should be particularly studied. In order to show the lack of realism of the partisans of these “harmonious” conceptions, let us quote two figures. In the midst of World War II, Colin Clark wrote a book entitled The Economy of 1960 in which he foresaw that the industrialization of India would absorb, between the end of the war and 1960, 60 billion dollars of British and American capital. These are in effect the needs of this huge country if it is to become an industrialized society. Now, since the end of the war, that is, during the ten years 1945-54, India has received in all only 1.5 billion dollars of “Western” capital. Even if everything should proceed “normally” for capitalism, this country will not have received 10 percent of the capital foreseen by the optimistic economist by 1960. This underlines the impotence of bourgeois economic and sociological thought to counterpose to Marxism anything but myths, illusions, or lies. August 1955

US vs. China: Who Really Stands for Peace?

By Megan Russell

May 6, 2024

Source: Pressenza

Image by Derzsi Elekes Andor, Creative Commons 3.0



Thousands of innocent civilians are dying– men, women, children– being bombed to death as they sit in their homes. Thousands of Ukrainian and Russian men have been unwillingly drafted into the military, torn from their families, forced to kill each other, and forced to die. Images and videos of cold-blooded genocide plague our news in a constant loop, and our government has the audacity to sit in their comfy little chairs and not only deny what is happening, but to also order more money sent to continue these horrors.

The US has a long history of involvement in overseas conflict; this isn’t the first time we’ve had to fight back against militants in power, and it won’t be the last. Now, the US clearly has its sights set on China. Billions of dollars have already been spent militarizing the Asia-Pacific, surrounding China with military bases and conducting threatening war games– the US military’s version of peacocking.

The first step of war, as US military elites are well aware, is information warfare. Currently, the media is spouting hateful rhetoric towards China, contributing to a giant spike in Asian American hate crime. Our political leaders accuse China of everything the US is guilty of: preparing for war, spying, stifling business. The government is so paranoid they’ve even banned the Chinese social media app Tiktok– an unprecedented divergence from our first amendment rights.

We’re at a critical junction point in history. Either we let the US continue to spout narratives of fear and division and drive us towards war, or we sift through the lies, raise the truth, and fight back against the imperialist elite.

It’s time to re-navigate the situation. Let’s step back and debunk some claims.

Statement: China wants war.

Evidence:

China has, throughout its thousands of years of history, long stood for peace and harmony. Modern political ideology is interwoven with ancient Chinese philosophy and the belief that war is a failure of the state.

But let’s look at something nobody can dispute: what are US politicians saying, and how does this compare to what Chinese politicians are saying?

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently published a report detailing five objectives China had for Secretary Blinken’s visit this week, reflecting the ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’, a foundational pillar of Chinese foreign policy. One of those objectives was for “the China-US relationship should be stabilized, improved, and move forward along a path of stability, health, and sustainability.” They also advocated for mutual cooperation, strengthening dialogue, and effectively managing differences.

Meanwhile, numerous US political and military figures have said the opposite, calling for the US to raise arms and surround China with military bases, missiles, and troops. They cite a future war as almost inevitable, declaring that China will “invade” Taiwan by 2027. Just this month, Xi Jinping met with the former president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, to express their mutual consensus to stand for peace, agreeing that war “would be an unbearable burden for the Chinese nation.”

To summarize, China does not want war. Prominent political figures and spokespersons have repeatedly pronounced their adherence to peace, and have implored the US numerous times to work towards mutually beneficial cooperation rather than current antagonistic practices.

Conclusion: FALSE!

Statement: The US stands for peace.

Evidence:

You might be thinking: who has ever made that statement? Quite a few, believe it or not.

We’re going to look at the statement in the context of China, and for a moment, leave behind all the other wars the US has been involved in and actively pushed for.

The United States spends more money on defense spending than the ten following countries combined. That’s around $850 billion dollars per year– and every year, the amount goes up. In 2024, the budget request was for $911 billion dollars.

A good amount of this money has been spent building military bases in the Asia-Pacific, surrounding China with threatening long-range missiles and other defense systems. As it stands, the US has over 750 military bases around the world, with 313 bases in East Asia alone. Meanwhile, China has no military bases in the entire Western hemisphere.

US military strategy in the Asia-Pacific operates along one dominant strategy: militarize, militarize, militarize. Policy experts continue to recommend “porcupining” nearby nations, including Japan, the Philippines, and Guam. In doing so, they have repeatedly harmed the natural environment, destroying protected reefs and dumping harmful chemicals into the ocean. Many locals denounce US military presence and rising militarism, terrified they may be pulled into a conflict they want no part in.

The truth is, the US has a long history of war and imperialism. Including militaristic and covert operations, the US has invaded over 50 countries since its inception. Since WW2, the US has started wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, all of which were unmitigated disasters. Adversely, China has not fought a war in 45 years.

The US pushing for a war with China is not new or surprising, but we have to do everything we can to stop the push before it escalates. Tell Biden administrations that China is Not Our Enemy and sign the petition telling Congress to vote NO on militarizing the Philippines.

Conclusion: FALSE!

Statement: The US needs to protect itself by surrounding China with weapons.

Evidence:

Policy experts and military professionals adhere to the concept of deterrence with a disconcerting level of zeal. Logically, and according to their favorite Game Theory 101 class, it makes sense. One is less likely to attack if they are aware how strong their opponent is– aware they would face severe repercussions that outweigh any potential gain.

However, the logic goes sour when you recognize a few basic facts:One, China is not an opponent and does not wish to be an opponent.
Two, hyper-militarizing the Asia-Pacific makes war more likely, not less. It’s not deterrence– it’s provocation.
Three, the US is trampling on the desires of local populations and harming the environment while at it.

China does not want war, as we’ve covered, and has expressed its concern that US militarization of the region can lead to increased risk for misunderstanding and misjudgement– which could easily escalate into conflict. The US needs to focus on prevention rather than deterrence, by strengthening dialogue, reaffirming commitments to peace, and fostering a partnership with China on other potentially catastrophic issues, such as environmental protection and nuclear disarmament.

Ultimately, there are no gains to be had by throwing billions of tax dollars into militarizing the Asia-Pacific. What the US fails to realize is that there are people living on the land they are abusing. The environment is protected– and sacred– and the military-industrial complex has no place rearing its ugly head where it does not belong.

Conclusion: FALSE!

Statement: The US needs to “beat” China to maintain power and position.

Evidence:

First, it’s important to acknowledge the origins of such a claim. Why, exactly, does the US need to maintain its hegemonic status over China, and why are our politicians and policy experts so obsessed with the idea?

There are three terrible, powerful factors at play here: colonialism, imperialism, and racism.

Colonialism: The US has a steep history of adhering to colonialist doctrines. Even its inception was a story of colonialism, running Native Americans off their indigenous lands to take over. Over the course of its comparatively short lifetime, the US has seized Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, the Philippines, Hawaii, and more. The US government feels it has the right to continue abusing these ties, building military bases against the desire of local indigenous populations.

Imperialism: US imperialism is essentially the belief in the expansion of American political, economic, military, and cultural influences. It ties into colonialism in many ways, reflecting the belief in racial and cultural superiority.

Racism: Racism is one of the driving factors of US imperialism and colonialism– the glamorization of “the white savior” to lead “others” out of barbarity and into salvation. Sinophobia has run rampant in the US for many years, leaking into American politics and media. Since the 2020 global pandemic, Asian American hate crimes have been on the rise.

All three tie together into a twisted undercurrent of thought running below the surface of US foreign policy. While US politicians push us towards confrontation for the sake of preserving a US hegemony, China reports that, “We firmly believe that great power competition should not be the dominant theme of this era, nor can it solve the problems faced by China, the US, and the world.”

Yikes. That’s a stiff departure from Biden’s “we want competition with China” State of the Union speech, and an even worse departure from former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger and Congressman Mike Gallagher who say, “The United States shouldn’t manage competition with China; it should win it.” In doing so, they also claim that “the US needs to accept that achieving it will require greater friction in US-China relations.” This is nothing short of an admittance: US political leaders are so concerned with winning some power competition that they’ll risk going to war– push for it, even.

RAND policy experts punched the numbers. Even a minor conflict could lead to a 20-35% economic shrinkage of China’s economy. This would devastate the lives of millions of Chinese citizens. Recovery would take years. It’s no wonder the US imperial agenda is pushing for war.

Conclusion: FALSE!

Imagining a better world…

The US has spent billions and billions of dollars preparing for war with China. Imagine what the world would look like if those billions had been spent elsewhere– on infrastructure, poverty alleviation, cultivating a peace economy, environmental sustainability initiatives, pushing for love and mutual respect rather than division, fear, and hate…

There is a world where the US and China are capable of a respectful, cooperative relationship, where differences are set aside in accordance with a bigger picture: how can we make the world better for each and every person? How can we cultivate peace? How can we preserve the natural environment and ward off climate change?

Humans have been on this earth for a long time, and yet, we still don’t know what it would be like to live a life of peace. War infects every community, influencing the ways we live and interact with the world. It’s up to us, as citizens of the most militaristic country in the world, to put an end to our government’s rampage of imperialism and fear.

The Colombian Left Has Every Reason to Condemn Israel

By Luca Decola

May 6, 2024

Source: Jacobin

Image by Sandra Pulido, Creative Commons 4.0


On International Workers’ Day, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, announced that the country would sever diplomatic ties with Israel over its ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza. “Tomorrow we will break diplomatic relations with the state of Israel for having a government, for having a president who is genocidal. . . . If Palestine dies, humanity dies,” Petro said.

Petro has been one of the foremost critics of Israel on the Left in Latin America. On October 16, Israel suspended arms shipments to Colombia after a diplomatic spat between Petro and Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Lior Haiat. In the dispute, Petro condemned Israel’s siege on and sanguinary bombardment of Gaza, as well as the involvement of Israeli mercenaries in the mass murder of members of the Patriotic Union (UP) party in Colombia. “Neither Yair Klein nor Rafael Eitan will be able to describe the history of peace in Colombia. They unleashed massacre and genocide in Colombia,” Petro tweeted.

The involvement of Mossad intelligence operative Rafael Eitan and Israeli lieutenant colonel Yair Klein in the mass extermination of the UP is a buried chapter of Colombian history. In the wake of the government’s unprecedented suspension of diplomatic ties with Israel, it’s a history worth revisiting.

The Patriotic Union

The UP was born out of El Acuerdo de La Uribe, a 1984 peace deal between the FARC guerrillas and then president Belisario Betancur. Its emergence was a serious rupture in Colombian politics, a left-wing alternative to an archaic electoral duopoly among two sects of the country’s ruling elite. The party’s electoral platform promoted agrarian reform, the cancelation of foreign debt and International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs, and the nationalization of Colombian oil, gas, and mineral resources. The UP brought together a coalition of university students, trade unions, members of the Colombian Communist Party, and peasants. For many, the UP represented a potential end to Colombia’s then quarter-century-long internal conflict.

From the inception of the UP, its members, elected officials, and sympathizers were marked for death. For nearly two decades, “not a month passed without a murder or disappearance of a UP member,” leaving 5,733 or more dead by 2002. In February of 2023, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that the Colombian state was responsible for the elimination of the party. Colombia’s Justice and Peace court ruled the extermination a political genocide. However, the role played by Israeli operatives in the extermination of the UP is often suppressed or outright denied by Colombia’s mainstream press.

“They Cut Off Our Wings”

In August of 1986, shortly after his election, President Virgilio Barco Vargas secretly contracted Mossad-agent-turned-mercenary Rafael Eitan as an unofficial national security adviser. Eitan was tasked with laying a blueprint for eradicating the FARC, despite the existing peace deal negotiated by Betancur. As argued by journalist Dan Cohen, Eitan’s expertise in “waging war against the Palestinian peasant population made him the perfect man for the job.”

Following a covert trip across the country financed by Barco, Eitan briefed the President on how to eradicate the guerrillas. His recommendation was simple: “Eliminate members of the Patriotic Union.” The veteran Mossad agent offered to carry out the extermination of the party in exchange for a second contract, the first of which was valued at nearly $1 million (almost $3 million adjusted for inflation.) The Colombian military high command rejected Eitan’s bid for a second deal. It, not a transient mercenary, would carry out the extermination of the UP itself. Even so, as described by investigative journalist Alberto Donadio, who broke the story of Eitan’s involvement in 2021, “in a few minutes, the fate of the leftist militants who had signed the peace deal was decided.”

Over four hundred UP militants were killed by State and paramilitary forces in the first 14 months of Barco’s tenure, constituting 60 percent of all victims of political violence in Colombia from 1986 to 1987. On March 2, 1987, the US ambassador to Colombia, Charles A. Gillespie Jr, cabled Washington an encouraging projection: “If enough UP leaders are murdered (how many would be enough, can only be speculative), the UP will be driven to depart from Congress and the FARC from what remains of the peace process.”

Yaneth Corredor, who told me that she and thousands of trade unionists like her in Colombia’s public sector “plunged headlong into the Patriotic Union,” described this period in the party’s history in vivid and macabre detail. “President Barco and his Mossad friend had a dramatic strategy, didn’t they? One asks oneself why this [extermination] happened. Because we had a vocation for power. We had fourteen congressmen and councilors; that is, we began to govern. But of course, they cut off our wings, no?”
Yair Klein’s Gifted Student

From December 1987 to May 1988, Klein, a retired Israel Defense Forces (IDF) lieutenant colonel, trained fifty men at a “school for assassins” in the Magdalena Medio, just three hours away from Medellín. Operating with an official Israeli government license, Klein trained his students to carry out drive-bys in cars, assassinations by bombs and sniper fire, and door-to-door attacks on entire towns. Klein has since alleged that the CIA recruited him to train the Colombians and that he met with the now dissolved Colombian intelligence agency, the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), upon arriving in the country. “The Americans have the problem of public opinion, international image. We don’t have this problem,” one Israeli working for Klein’s Spearhead mercenary corporation said of the operation.

Five months later, Klein’s trainees Fidel and Carlos Castaño, Alonso de Jesús Baquero, and thirty other men carried out a massacre in the mining town of Segovia. There, Rita Ivon Tobón Areiza, a young woman from UP, had won the 1988 mayoral race by an overwhelming margin. Working with the US-backed Colombian Armed Forces, Jesús Baquero, one of the Castaño’s paramilitary chiefs, headed the massacre. His targets were suspected supporters of the UP.

On November 11, the day of the massacre, the military removed its checkpoints ordinarily positioned at the town’s entrance. According to an Amnesty International report, “regular garrisons of the police and military stood by while the killers moved freely through the town for over an hour.” Jesús Baquero’s forces, armed with a list of targets, carried out door-to-door killings of suspected UP supporters and an assault on the town square, killing forty-three people and wounding more than fifty others. “Yair Klein always considered me a gifted student,” Jesús Baquero would later recall.

The Castaños would eventually form the United Self-Defense Forces (AUC) paramilitary. In 2001, Human Rights Watch determined the AUC was effectively a division of the Colombian military and, according to author John Lindsay-Poland, “the worst violator” in a conflict that claimed 262,197 lives in six decades. In 2002, GIRSA, an Israeli firm in Guatemala tied to the IDF, sent three thousand assault rifles and 2.5 million rounds of ammunition to the AUC — arms they used to massacre leftists and displace thousands.
Colombia: No Longer the “Israel of Latin America”

In the above-mentioned Amnesty International report on the carnage in Segovia is a child’s drawing — a Cassandran presage of a massacre. Ten-year-old Francisco William Gómez Monsalve drew the picture eight days before the bloodshed, after the image came to him in a nightmare. Francisco was one of three children killed by the Israeli-trained death squad in the Segovia massacre.

Klein and Eitan’s presence in Colombia and involvement in the anti-communist violence against the UP was not by chance. Colombia began buying arms from Israel in the 1980s, including twenty Israeli fighter jets in March of 1989, a deal facilitated by Eitan. Israel has since trained Colombian Special Forces in counterterrorism and, until now, provided the country with massive arms shipments. Israel was likewise the “largest weapons distributor” to Chile under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, trained the Contras in Nicaragua, facilitated the Guatemalan genocide, and backed reactionary forces throughout Latin America during the Cold War.

Colombia has long been the United States government’s foremost ally in the region, the “Israel of Latin America,” as the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, once described it. The involvement of Israeli operatives in the systematic extermination of the UP is a crucial part of that story and follows a global pattern of US-backed anti-communist violence during the Cold War. Although different in scale, historically, both the Colombian left and Palestinians have endured the calculated brutality of the United States and a US-backed Israeli state. More broadly, Colombia has the world’s second-largest population of internally displaced people, with over 6.8 million individuals displaced due to internal conflict. The violence of displacement is an experience shared by the 5.9 million Palestinian refugees across the planet and the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza displaced by the IDF in just the last six months.

An argument made by historian Greg Grandin in Empire’s Workshop captures the present situation in Colombia:


And one would think that Latin Americans, after all they’ve suffered, all the tortures and terrors of the Cold War, would have given up on the idea that history is redeemable. It turns out that repression had the opposite effect, searing into the region’s political culture . . . an ability both to recognize the dialectic lurking behind the brutality and to answer every bloody body with ever more adamant affirmations of humanity.

Now an insurgent left, once the target of systematic mass murder carried out by the Colombian army and Israeli-trained paramilitaries, holds the country’s highest office — and, in a novel act of solidarity, has severed diplomatic ties with Israel over its ongoing genocide in Gaza.

We Need “Outside Agitators”

Pro-Palestine student protesters are being smeared as puppets of shadowy “outside agitators.” The presence of community members and experienced activists in the protests is nothing to be ashamed of: we need outside agitators to build a better world.

By Astra Taylor, Leah Hunt-Hendrix 

May 5, 2024

Source: Jacobin

Protests in and around Columbia University in support of Palestine and against Israeli occupation. A side gate by the bookstore where the crowd is—inside and out (Wikimedia Commons)

These days, outside agitators are everywhere. According to politicians, police commissioners, university administrators, and mainstream journalists they lurk on every campus where there has been resistance to the unfolding genocide in Gaza, especially at the solidarity encampments. Emory University president Gregory Fenves complained that “highly organized, outside protesters” were behind the school’s pro-peace demonstrations. The University of Texas at Austin followed suit, releasing a statement expressing “concern that much of the disruption on campus over the past week has been orchestrated by people from outside the University, including groups with ties to escalating protests at other universities around the country.” In a story that ran under the headline “Professional protestors of Texas unmasked,” the Daily Mail salaciously reported that the infiltrators included an elementary school teacher, a Palestinian shopkeeper, an interpreter, and a costume designer.

No one has sounded the alarm louder than New York City’s compulsive liar mayor, Eric Adams, who has complained that “outside agitators” are out to “radicalize our children” — the implication being that young people would be quiescent in the face of mass starvation and bombardment if not for some nefarious external influence. Recently, the city released data that purportedly bolstered his claims: approximately a third of the people arrested during protests at Columbia University and 60 percent of those arrested at City College of New York were not “affiliated” with those schools.

Encampment sympathizers understandably responded to these accusations by arguing that allegedly “unaffiliated” outsiders are, more often than not, actually insiders of a kind. Progressive journalists and online commentators have highlighted how students from other schools, alumni, community members, curious onlookers, veteran activists, and the like all have legitimate ties to local campuses, and thus their presence hardly merits concern, let alone panic (particularly at City College, which is only one of twenty-five colleges in the City University of New York system, and students of the other twenty-four schools could be included in the city’s number of allegedly unaffiliated arrestees).

Without a doubt, there’s truth to such retorts. But they also risk playing into the hands of our opponents. To affirm that the majority of protesters are “insiders” as opposed to “outsiders” only aids those who want to create fissures and foment distrust in order to divide and conquer our movements. It’s a way of denying the rights of activists to share lessons, learn from movement elders, and collaborate across communities — in other words, to properly and effectively organize.

The “outside agitator” charge is a way to isolate individuals and create social separation, when the reality is that injustice of any kind, but especially war, necessarily concerns us all. On the issue of genocide, there should be no outside.
Nobody Is Outside Solidarity

Of course, outsiders of a certain ilk can occasionally be destructive. They might be real infiltrators (e.g., undercover cops or federal agents) or people acting in bad faith and looking to hijack a cause for their own purposes. But these aren’t the outsiders that we are being instructed to worry about by today’s pundits.

Consider the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the fact that some Columbia students had consulted veterans of the Black Panther Party, as though this were scandalous. The fact that protesters share knowledge and expertise with each other or seek out the wisdom of their elders is galling to the authorities, who respond by painting the demonstrations as not only overrun by outsiders but also corrupted by “paid” activists or “chaos professionals.”

The New York Times beat this drum when it ran not one but two articles discussing “professional agitator” Lisa Fithian, the legendary nonviolent direct action trainer, who was filmed outside Columbia’s Hamilton Hall as it was being occupied. Fithian was there providing nonviolent direct action training to the students, as she has done for activists from a range of movements going back decades.

Why are outside agitators so threatening to the powers that be? The answer is that outsiders are a special kind of solidarity builder, even when they remain at a distance and lack any particularly useful skills or insights. Anyone who has been part of a movement knows how much displays of solidarity matter.

For example, we will never forget the hundreds of pizzas people from across the country purchased and delivered to the Occupy Wall Street encampment, each box a reminder that someone, somewhere believed the uprising mattered. Something similar happened in 2014 when Palestinian activists advised Black Lives Matters protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, on how to cope with state violence (“Always make sure to run against the wind / to keep calm when you’re teargassed, the pain will pass, don’t rub your eyes! #Ferguson Solidarity”). Being buoyed by people you don’t know is emboldening and galvanizing, and helps weave local acts of resistance into larger, more powerful narratives and coalitions.

This is something to celebrate, not shy away from. Outside agitators are a necessary part of progressive social transformation. People supporting and joining far-flung movements, acting responsibly and with a good dose of humility, is a wonderful thing — as is younger organizers learning from people who have more experience.

As we detail in Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea, outside agitators have always played a pivotal role in struggles for a more just world. Historically, solidarity has been sabotaged by elites who sow division to maintain their power, including by splintering and segregating people spatially and socially. A lack of regular social contact across differences inhibits solidarity in obvious ways: physical separation abets psychological separation. And yet solidarity can also thrive as a result of the perspective distance brings. This is particularly true when divides are intentionally breached.

Over the centuries, committed outsiders have advanced the cause of solidarity, often at great personal risk, overcoming social barriers and expanding people’s conception of the “us” to which they belong. Roaming visionaries and organizers have served as bridges, uniting far-flung individuals and communities.

In nineteenth-century Britain, itinerant activists promoted Chartist principles, building a national movement that demanded basic democratic rights. In the United States, abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, traveled far and wide promoting a vision of a multiracial society to all who would listen. “Wobblies,” as Industrial Workers of the World organizers were called, hopped freight trains to lend a hand to working people in remote regions, aiming to organize them into one big union. Civil rights Freedom Riders rode buses across state lines, visiting towns across the South to encourage people to challenge Jim Crow and register to vote.

In every instance, the powerful have insisted that, without such meddling by strangers, local people would have remained complacent and content — or, in Eric Adams’s terminology, the children would not be radicalized.

Adams’s hostility echoes a long-standing reactionary refrain. In the twentieth century’s early decades, anarchism and socialism were portrayed as dangerous imports from Eastern and Southern Europe. As Red Scare tactics evolved, movements for peace, labor rights, and racial equality were figured as Soviet plots. Simply holding left-wing ideas made one a subversive, un-American presence — an “outside agitator” subject to forcible separation and removal. The first Red Scare and then McCarthyism trampled basic liberal tenets as a political witch hunt sought to identify and expel radicals. Tens of thousands of people, both foreign and native-born, were threatened with or subjected to imprisonment, deportation, job loss, blacklisting, and sometimes worse.

Along with new laws and institutions to root out “subversives,” Cold War conspiracism painted every progressive ambition, no matter how milquetoast, as alien and unacceptable. Representative John Rankin of Mississippi denounced the civil rights movement as “communistic bunk” — as though black people could not demand equality and liberation without a prompt from the Soviets. The notoriously bigoted Alabama governor George Wallace took a similar tack when civil rights organizers decamped for his state. In 1965, he signed a resolution calling on loyal residents of every “race, color, and creed” to stay home and not participate in “continued agitation and demonstrations, led and directed by outsiders” aiming to “foment local disorder and strife among our citizens.”

The demonstrations in question had intensified after a state trooper killed a twenty-six-year-old activist named Jimmie Lee Jackson and included the now-famous series of marches from Selma to Montgomery that culminated in “Bloody Sunday,” when police attacked protesters with tear gas and truncheons. The resolution implied that local people did not support the protests, which was not true. Yet the fact that some of the activists were outsiders was undeniable: rather than discrediting the demonstrations, the presence of non-Alabamans and non-Southerners spoke to the ways the movement had built effective, and powerful, solidarity. The presence of Communists was undeniable as well, and though Wallace and his ilk made it seem unthinkable, homegrown Communists, born and raised in the American South, had been some of the boldest anti-racist organizers since the 1930s.

In the decades that followed, the phrase “outside agitator” came into common usage as a way to smear the civil rights movement. But outsiders were crucial to the fight.

For example, as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), young people from across the country, many of whom had experience supporting sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, set up shop in rural Southern towns, where they registered residents to vote — a dangerous task given the constant threat of vigilantism and police violence. As sociologist Francesca Polletta shows in an analysis of their efforts, these young people brought more than courage and organizing know-how. They also brought a sense of connection to the wider world that punctured locals’ sense of isolation and vulnerability. The presence of activists from other parts of the country was a visceral sign that local people were not alone in their struggle against white supremacy.

As a result, new self-conceptions, associations, and possibilities emerged. SNCC youth “created obligations to a movement with which residents had little contact, and they created obligation to a nation whose promises lay, always, in the distant future.” Linked to the broader movement, locals were emboldened and empowered; their “we” was widened thanks to the presence of outsiders.

As Polletta details, outsiders have various attributes that can make them effective cultivators of solidarity and catalysts for change. Being removed from the social and familial commitments and petty conflicts and rivalries that characterize daily life can help activists open space for people to see themselves and engage in new ways. While some scholars of social change emphasize the importance of deep bonds and a sense of collective identity, Polletta points out that what she calls “dense ties” and a “mobilizing identity” can be at odds with each other.

“Participating in disruptive action requires seeing oneself as different than one was. And that is difficult to do, perhaps most difficult to do, in our closest relationships,” she explains. “Our families and friends want us to be the person we were. This is surely the case when they know that participating will jeopardize our safety, and, for the families and friends of black people in the Deep South, their safety as well.”
Agitators for Racial Justice

Today the term “outside agitator” remains a potent insult, one regularly lobbed at anyone seeking to bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice. In 2020, when millions of people took to the streets in grief and outrage over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, political leaders dusted off the old bromide.

“Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate and violent agenda,” Attorney General Bill Barr said in a statement, conjuring shadowy anarchist evildoers. As is the case today, it wasn’t just Republicans who cast aspersions.

“They are coming in largely from outside of the city, from outside of the region, to prey on everything we have built over the last several decades,” Democratic Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey declared. The state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, gave a “best estimate” that 80 percent of the rioters had arrived from out of town.

Patently absurd, both assertions would quickly be walked back. USA Today did an analysis of protesters’ social media data and arrest records and found the overwhelming majority of them were, in fact, from the region. As for those other 20 percent, good for them. In the immortal words of Bernie Sanders, they traveled to fight for someone they did not know.

That’s what Martin Luther King Jr did before he was assassinated for trying to build a multiracial working-class movement that could effectively challenge the evils of poverty, racism, and war — the same problems we must tackle and overcome today.

King, too, was reviled as an outside agitator as he traveled to the front lines of the struggle for racial and economic equality. It was a charge he reflected on in his celebrated “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” composed in 1963, offering words of wisdom that can still guide us.

“I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King mused. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

Let Israel’s Leaders Get Arrested for War Crimes

All decent Israelis must ask themselves the following questions: Is their country committing war crimes in Gaza? If so, how should they be stopped? How should the culprits be punished? Who can punish them? Is it reasonable for crimes to go unprosecuted and criminals to be exculpated?

By Gideon Levy

May 5, 2024

Source: Haaretz


One may, of course, reply in the negative to the first question – Israel is not committing any war crimes in Gaza – thereby rendering the rest of the questions superfluous.

But how can one answer in the negative in the face of the facts and the situation in Gaza: about 35,000 people killed and another 10,000 missing, about two-thirds of them innocent civilians, according to the Israel Defense Forces; among the dead are around 13,000 children, nearly 400 medical workers and more than 200 journalists; 70 percent of homes have been destroyed or damaged; 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition; two people in 10,000 die each day from starvation and disease. (All figures are from the United Nations and international organizations.)

Is it possible that these horrific figures came to be without the commission of war crimes? There are wars whose cause is just and whose means are criminal; the justice of the war does not justify its crimes. Killing and destruction, starvation and displacement on this scale could not have occurred without the commission of war crimes. Individuals are responsible for them, and they must be brought to justice.

Israeli hasbara, or public diplomacy, does not try to deny the reality in Gaza. It only makes the claim of antisemitism: Why pick on us? What about Sudan and Yemen? The logic doesn’t hold: A driver who is stopped for speeding won’t get off by arguing that he’s not the only one. The crimes and the criminals remain. Israel will never prosecute anyone for these offenses. It never has, neither for its wars nor its occupation. On a good day, it will prosecute a soldier who stole some Palestinian’s credit card.

But the human sense of justice wants to see criminals brought to justice and prevented from committing crimes in the future. By this logic, we can only hope that the International Criminal Court in The Hague will do its job.

Palestinian receive food aid, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, in November.Credit: Hatem Ali / AP

Every Israeli patriot and everyone who cares about the good of the state should wish for this. This is the only way that Israel’s moral standard, according to which it is permitted everything, will change. It is not easy to hope for the arrest of the heads of your state and your army, and even more difficult to admit it publicly, but is there any other way to stop them?

The killing and destruction in Gaza has gotten Israel in way over its head. It is the worst catastrophe the state has ever faced. Someone led it there – no, not antisemitism, but rather its leaders and military officers. If not for them, it wouldn’t have turned so quickly after October 7 from a cherished country that inspired compassion into a pariah state.

Someone must stand trial for this. Just as many Israelis want Benjamin Netanyahu to be punished for the corruption of which he is accused, so should they wish for him and the perpetrators subordinate to him to be punished for much more serious crimes, the crimes of Gaza.

They cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Nor is it possible to blame only Hamas, even if it has a part in the crimes. We are the ones who killed, starved, displaced, and destroyed on such a massive scale. Someone must be brought to justice for this. Netanyahu is the head, of course. The picture of him imprisoned in The Hague together with the defense minister and the IDF chief of staff is the stuff of nightmares to every Israeli. And yet, it is probably warranted.

It is highly unlikely, however. The pressure being exerted on the court by Israel and the United States are enormous (and wrong). But scare tactics can be important. If the officials actually refrain from traveling abroad in the next few years, if they actually live in fear of what may come, we can be sure that in the next war, they’ll think twice before sending the military on campaigns of death and destruction of such insane proportions. We can find a little comfort in that, at least.




Gideon Levy
Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. Levy joined Haaretz in 1982, and spent four years as the newspaper's deputy editor. He is the author of the weekly Twilight Zone feature, which covers the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza over the last 25 years, as well as the writer of political editorials for the newspaper. Levy was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist Prize for 2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in 2001; the Israeli Journalists’ Union Prize in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights in Israel Award for 1996. His new book, The Punishment of Gaza, has just been published by Verso Publishing House in London and New York.

Book launch: The Fall and Rise of American Finance

By Scott Aquanno, Stephen Maher

 May 5, 2024

Source: The Bullet

With authors Scott Aquanno and Steve Maher. Moderated by Lenart Nici. 

Recorded in Toronto, 27 April, 2024.

The Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education is proud to present the launch of the new book from Scott Aquanno and Steve Maher: The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock (Verso, 2024).

Today, it is all but taken for granted that finance is parasitic on industry. Financialization, in this view, amounts to financial institutions capturing the state, hollowing out the ‘real’ economy, and hastening the decline of capitalism. Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno challenge these arguments in their new book. They insist that, despite the costs to workers and the middle class over the last decades, financialization has boosted competitiveness and strengthened capital – all with the support of an ever stronger and more authoritarian state.

 

Students and Workers Take to the Streets on May Day for Palestine

By Peoples DispatchMay 6, 2024

Source: People's Dispatch

On May Day, workers around the world mobilized for the liberation of Palestine. “This May Day, workers of the world are called to declare their solidarity with Palestine, to denounce the Israeli Genocide, and to call for an end to all aggressions in the region and to all wars,” wrote the International People’s Assembly.

In New York City, unions such as the United Auto Workers and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance expressed explicit support for the Palestinian cause in a march of 20,000, which ended at the New York University Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

 

Bernie Sanders Issues Bad News for Trump Ahead of Election

By Bernie Sanders

May 5, 2024

Source: Brian Tyler Cohen

Brian Tyler Cohen interviews Senator Bernie Sanders about his message to young people and progressives who may be moving away from Biden, his thoughts on the Republican slate of millionaire out-of-state candidates running for the Senate, and whether he thinks MTG is losing influence in the GOP.

Armenians in NYC Are Organizing for Palestinian Liberation

By Erik VanBezooijen

May 6, 2024

Source: Jacobin


Image by SWinxy, Creative Commons 4.0



On April 18, as the death toll of Palestinians killed in Israel’s genocide surged to nearly thirty-four thousand, Columbia students, peacefully protesting the use of their grossly inflated tuition to fund the bombing of children and the devastation of civilian infrastructure, faced mass arrests and false accusations of antisemitism. Just a few days later, on April 24, Armenian Remembrance Day, US president Joe Biden commemorated the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide yet remained silent about the plight of Armenian refugees struggling to rebuild their lives after being displaced from their homes in the Nagorno-Karabakh region by Azerbaijan.

For his part, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of NATO-allied Turkey continued to deny the Armenian genocide altogether. His hypocrisy in this matter was made doubly grotesque by his continued ethnic cleansing of Kurds and his bluster about cutting trade ties with Israel over Palestine — while still allowing Azerbaijan to export oil to Israel through Ankara.

The mainstream media typically treats these conflicts — between Israel and Palestine, Azerbaijan and Armenians, Turkey and Kurds — as isolated. But Armenian Organized Resistance (ARMOR) Coalition, a grassroots activist group based in New York City, sees them as deeply interconnected.

“While our oppressors are working together, minorities like Armenians, like Palestinians, are all fighting this fight separately,” said Sara, who asked to use a pseudonym and is one of ARMOR’s founding organizers, in an interview ahead of a march organized in collaboration with another activist group, City Kurds. “Having the power to get together will help us to fight this. Together . . . we will be able to survive.”
Linking Palestinian, Armenian, and Kurdish Struggles

Sara and her co-organizer, Nadia, who also requested anonymity, were discontented with their experiences working with mainstream Armenian activist organizations. In response, they decided to form their own collective in order to more effectively meet their goals of fighting global injustice through local action, art, and education. They want to emphasize intersectional collaboration over internal dynamics, and action over stifling bureaucracy.

Like many Armenians, they felt abandoned by the international community when the United Nations (UN) mysteriously failed to find evidence of Azerbaijan’s well-documented ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Artsakh. This failure occurred shortly after UN-Habitat accepted a $1 million USD donation from Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, for its Human Settlements Program. This sense of abandonment reinforced their connection to the Palestinian cause, leading them to organize their first event together, an “Armenians for Palestine” rally.

“We know how it feels when oil and money triumph over our lives,” Sara explained. “So, supporting the Palestinian cause is not just a matter of nationality or political view. It’s a commitment to standing on what is right.” Yet the connection is also material: “All these attacks that were committed by Azerbaijan were done with the weapons provided by the Israeli government, like white phosphorous, like munitions.”

Understanding this material context allows ARMOR to trace the oppression of Armenians and Palestinians to an international network of alliances. These alliances involve authoritarian governments and powerful oil companies and defense contractors. ARMOR believes that defeating this systemic oppression requires oppressed minorities to form their own international alliances to better articulate their demands and to link their struggles to left mass politics.

“Israel, Turkey, and Azerbaijan are all colonizers,” Nadia explained during our interview. She continued:


I’ve always hoped that maybe if people knew about the Armenian struggle, they would do something about it. But we see the Palestinian struggle play out on international news — all the protests in the street — and still, nothing is done. We have to call out that these different ideologies — Zionism, pan-Turkism, white supremacy — are really the same. They’re all nationalist ideologies and calling out one means calling out all of them. Since no human race is better than another, if you’re opposed to this action being done to Armenians, you must be opposed to what’s being done to Palestinians.
Solidarity and Struggle

Some prominent leftists have critiqued the concept of intersectionality, seeing it as an overly academic and theoretical framework that obscures material analysis, reifies ascriptive identities, and hinders the building of mass movements. But ARMOR’s intersectionality focuses less on how intersecting identities create unique experiences of privilege and oppression for individuals, and more on how intersecting material struggles provide opportunities for solidarity. As such, it is a powerful tool for organizing.

This was evident at their April 6 Solidarity March for Palestine, organized in collaboration with City Kurds. Starting at the UN Headquarters, the march brought together dozens of protestors from various diaspora-based activist groups, including Feminists for Jina NYC, SWANA NYC, and Neturei Karta International, to rally in solidarity with Palestinians and demand a cease-fire in Gaza. They marched from the UN Headquarters to the Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Israeli consulates, carrying Palestinian and Armenian flags and homemade signs linking the Palestinian struggle to anti-colonial struggles across the world: Congo, Sudan, Puerto Rico, Tibet.

In a speech before the march, Nadia explained how the United States, Israel, Azerbaijan, and Turkey pursue their shared material interests at the expense of human life:


Azerbaijan under Aliyev is providing the Zionist entity with nearly 40 percent of its entire oil supply while bombs are being dropped on Gaza. Because in turn, the Zionist entity has provided Azerbaijan with almost 70 percent of its military arsenal over the past several years. The effect of Zionist military support, along, of course, with the support of the US, directly made possible the recent ethnic cleansing of almost 100,000 indigenous Armenians of Artsakh. . . . And let’s not forget, Erdogan’s regime in Turkey is enabling the transport of oil from Azerbaijan to the Zionist entity while actively bombing civilian infrastructure in Rojava in an attempt to erase our Kurdish siblings.

One activist, Carlos, explained how his Puerto Rican background motivated his solidarity with Palestine: “I’m Puerto Rican. This is about the struggle against colonialism. In Puerto Rico, we know colonialism, and we’ve been fighting for over a hundred years, and obviously we’re against the genocide, and we’re here to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine, and Gaza in particular.”

Carlos also highlighted Israel’s status as the tenth-largest weapons exporter in the world, a position grossly disproportionate to its population. He underscored its history of sending arms to some of the most reactionary governments in Latin America, including those of Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and the Duvaliers in Haiti. He pointed out that the current “gang violence” disrupting Haiti is in fact enabled by a flood of Israeli arms, wielded by militias in the service of Haitian oligarchs. “What’s happening in Gaza is happening in Armenia, in East Jerusalem, in Haiti,” he concluded.
Voices of Solidarity

Protesters were also keenly aware of the ways in which Zionist violence targets communities other than Palestinians. “Armenians have lived in Palestine since the fourth century,” said Aram, an activist with ARMOR Coalition. “Zionist violence doesn’t just extend to Palestinians. It extends to all people who they don’t believe belong in the land. Even today, they’re trying to push Armenians out of the Armenian Quarter of the old city in East Jerusalem.”

As the entirely peaceful march, which had been trailed by dozens of NYPD officers, reached its end, a drone appeared in the sky, hovering high above the crowd. Its presence was a reminder that our surveillance state was keeping tabs on the protesters chanting “Free Palestine” and demanding an end to their tax dollars being used to fund the slaughter of children.

The intersectional organizing practiced by ARMOR has the potential to build the mass movements needed to liberate both exploited workers at home and colonized peoples abroad. The military technology that is used by Israel against Palestinians, Armenians, and other subjugated peoples is the same technology that will be used to crush movements by American workers to better their lives. The fight for Palestinian liberation is a fight against authoritarianism everywhere.

In her speech before the march, Nadia articulated how these “entities collaborate to perpetrate genocide, facilitate Zionist apartheid, build massive carceral systems that arbitrarily jail Palestinians, and develop surveillance technology which is weaponized by oppressors around the world.” She underscored the imperative for the dispossessed and colonized to unite, fight back, and reject divisive identity politics. Concluding her speech, she emphasized, “We must support one another in our struggles toward liberation. Only then can we all be free.”

UK

RED TORY Starmer Smashed in Blackburn

By Craig Murray

May 6, 2024

Source: Craig Murray


Image by Evelyn Simak, Creative Commons 2.0

The leadership of genocide enthusiast Keir Starmer – who is still supporting arms sales to Israel and the “Israeli right to self-defence”, who still refuses to acknowledge one single Israeli war crime – cost the Labour Party dear in Blackburn in the local elections.

The result means I am very likely to win the parliamentary seat.

The Blackburn Independent Councillors, who resigned from Labour over Gaza and invited me to stand as their parliamentary candidate, were re-elected and took new seats. They did not gain control of the council only because this was an election for just one third of Blackburn with Darwen’s council seats. The council has annual elections by thirds.

The parliamentary seat is no longer contiguous with the council area, with Darwen now excluded. The result inside my parliamentary seat was an even more convincing win for the Independents.

I put Muntazir Patel’s stunning result in Shear Brow and Corporation Park first, because this is where the cover photo of my book “Zionism is Bullshit” was shot.

When I stood against the war criminal Jack Straw in Blackburn in 2005, his Labour/BAE fixer Lord Ahmed Patel ensured I was excluded from the mosques and community events there, so I stood outside in the street on a Friday canvassing. That is the cover shot. Muntazir has now swept the area against Labour.

I am sure we can win. I am going to be very honest. When I accepted the joint offer from the Independent Councillors and the Workers Party of Great Britain to fight the seat, I did not then think we could really win. I accepted on the basis that, if we gave Labour a hard fight in Blackburn, they would be forced to divert resources they could otherwise concentrate on attacking George Galloway in nearby Rochdale.

So my strategy was to help George get re-elected by tying up Labour and by adding to the feeling of a real new working class movement across the North West and elsewhere in England.

I say this without shame.

Under the first past the post system, on average less than 100 seats change hands at a UK parliamentary election. That means in only at most 150 seats are there two candidates who might realistically win. In the other 500 seats there is normally only one candidate likely to win, and the six or so other candidates know they are fighting a losing battle.

So out of about 5,000 candidates in a British parliamentary election, only 800 normally are going to win or to come a close second. Others are standing to advance their arguments and to give voters a choice. Of course few candidates ever admit they do not expect to win.

I now do expect to win. We now know that the revolt against Starmer – accelerated by Gaza, but also by his leading the Labour Party so far to the right they are in all crucial policies indistinguishable from the Tories – is very real.

Starmer is the chosen one of the Establishment, and the media are bigging up his mild gains in the local council elections. But in fact Labour achieved only 35% of the vote nationally in England and Wales, which is one of their worst results and below the average result Labour obtained in national local government and general elections under Corbyn.

I shall be one of a number of candidates standing to give voters a genuine choice of more left wing policies at home and an end to perpetual war and support for Zionism abroad. Those candidates will include Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway, Andrew Feinstein, Peter Ford, Monty Panesar and others. The informal alliance is growing and bonds are being knit. I hope by election day all voters in England will be offered a left wing, anti-war choice for their vote.

The media and political parties are doing their best to hide the desire for such a choice. But at the English local elections 37% of those who voted, did not vote either Labour or Tory. That is huge. The narrative being spun that those who did not bother to vote are actually enthusiastic Labour or Tory supporters and this will change in a general election with a higher turnout, does not stand up to ten seconds’ serious consideration.

I look forward to having the chance to tell a number of very hard truths in the House of Commons, and to help offer real opposition to the Blue and Red conservative parties. But I need now to take very seriously indeed the role of representing, supporting and improving the lives of all the people of Blackburn. I shall therefore shortly be moving to live full time in the constituency.

I have a lot to give, but also a very great deal to learn from Blackburn people. I approach that with determination and humility.

I judge that the public revulsion at the genocide in Gaza has now made it very difficult for the police to continue to hound me over my support for Palestine, and of course mad Suella Braverman is no longer Home Secretary. Two very brief test visits did not see me arrested again, so I shall now return from exile to run for Parliament. It is a risk I need to take.

When I stood in Blackburn in 2005 against Jack Straw, against the Iraq War and the excesses of the “War on Terror”, many scores of readers of this blog turned up in the town to campaign for me.

We will need you all again, now alongside solid and enthusiastic local support – and this time we are going to win!