Resist and Build Alternatives to the Trump Regime Now

Part 1/5 — Media, Culture and Information Sovereignty

by Jan Oberg / January 22nd, 2026

This is the first of 4+1 TFF-created idea portfolios designed to curb the global reach of the United States and, in both the short and long term, help catalyse a worldwide nonviolent resistance to what many observers describe as the Trump administration’s uniquely confrontational, destructive and world-threatening policies.

These portfolios outline what governments and citizens across the world can do through dynamic diplomacy, creative initiatives, and strictly nonviolent means.

It seems painfully clear to me that the current political dynamics in Washington increasingly resemble the most dangerous pattern that ended in 1945 and was supposed to never happen again.

If that assessment holds, then passivity is no longer an option. A coordinated, global, nonviolent mobilisation is essential — not least because nonviolence is the one type of power and language a heavily militarised superpower is least prepared to counter.

All power rests on others accepting and carrying out its orders. Even the strongest leader in the world cannot round up criminals or fight wars with his own hands. Power is always dependent – dependent on someone who finds it legitimate, and do the dirty job on the strongman’s order. If young people were not brainwashed to accept warfare, there would be no wars. This is why nonviolence can be extremely effective and make an overarmed country look morally weak. That’s what Gandhi taught the world when using this theory to rid India not of the British as people but of the British Empire’s dominance structure.

The global mobilisation suggested here and in three coming thematic peace idea portfolios would also allow the rest of the world to deprive Trump of setting the international agenda. When Trump says something crazy, geopolitical experts, the media and the rest of the world, it seems, scrutinise his words in minute detail and waste all the time and energy that should be devoted to constructive alternatives and action.

If all this sounds “unrealistic,” consider the alternative: a world in which Trump’s Personal Occidental Empire is allowed to take shape — one that intimidates, coerces, and disregards established norms, continuing unchecked for the next three years as it has begun.

The proposals in this first portfolio are not limited to preventing the attempted acquisition of Greenland, though Greenland naturally occupies a central place here. Many fear that, without meaningful global resistance, such an acquisition could be carried out with little more than verbal protest from the international community — emboldening further unilateral ventures.

Think also of the so-called Gaza Peace Board that does not even mention Gaza. It is a cynical vehicle for establishing a new, personalised global “peace” structure intended to replace the United Nations with Trump himself as lifetime leader and the man who appoints his successor. Further, it is built on money, deals, and favours.

Only fools believe this is anything but Empire-building disguised as peace-making. Beyond any doubt, it is world-threatening.

It should now be evident that the ability to shape global perceptions — to persuade people of the inherent benevolence of U.S. power and of the current administration in particular — relies heavily on information dominance: narratives, propaganda, disinformation, and outright falsehoods. The Greenland argument, framed as a defensive move against China’s and Russia’s intention to take it, is one such example. It is also a psycho-political projection of the US/Trump’s own dark sides.

For these reasons, curbing U.S. information power is essential, as is countering its cultural and intellectual influence platforms. Therefore, this first Nonviolent U.S. Resistance Portfolio focuses on these domains. The succeeding portfolios will address additional forms of power that must be challenged and replaced through peaceful, principled means.

A. Media Transparency & Accountability Measures

These don’t censor anything, they expose dependency and deception and aim at creating an alternative global information and media structure after the US monopoly.

Immediate Measures (within a week)

Mandatory disclosure labels
Every news story must state the origin of its primary source (AP, Reuters, AFP, NYT, etc.). This alone would shock audiences into seeing how much comes from U.S. pipelines.

Publish a “Media Dependency Index”
A weekly ranking of outlets by percentage of U.S.-sourced content.

Announce parliamentary hearings
Transparent, non-accusatory hearings on foreign influence in national media ecosystems.

Longer-Term Measures

European or Global South–Europe newswire alliance
A structural alternative to U.S. news dominance.

Media Sovereignty Observatory
A permanent body tracking narrative dependency and foreign influence.

Open source, federated news distribution systems
Infrastructure that reduces reliance on U.S. platforms and algorithms. Boycott or at least reduce your reliance on US media platforms that censor and de-rank even peace voices and voices critical of the US, NATO, interventionism and genocide. That is – Google, Google-owned YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X and more.

B. Diversification of Global News Inputs

Plurality of sources is the alternative to narrative dominance. Stop following mainstream Western media and follow non-Western media. The Internet is a wonderful invention. Spend 75% of your media time on non-Western media online or you will be fooled about what the world actually looks like.

Immediate Measures (within a week)

Emergency subscription packages to non-U.S. news agencies
AFP, Kyodo, Al Jazeera, African newswires, Chinese and Russian media — instant diversification. Use the internet and see everybody else’s much more open-minded news coverage, editorials and discussions.

Temporary European Arctic Correspondent Network
Reporters in Nuuk, Reykjavik, Tromsø to counter U.S. framing of Greenland.

Partnerships with Greenlandic media
Ensures that Greenlandic voices define Greenland’s story and are heard worldwide.

Longer-Term Measures

Permanent European Arctic Desk
A sustained reporting presence across the Arctic region. It may be more important to have them there in the future than all over the West itself.

Support for Indigenous media networks
Strengthening local voices across the Arctic and beyond.

Cross-regional multilingual reporting hubs
Shared editorial teams linking Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

C. Citizens’ Media Resistance

Citizens can shift the media ecosystem faster than governments.

Immediate Measures (within a week)

Boycott outlets with >40% U.S. newswire dependency
A voluntary, global, nonviolent pressure tool.

“Switch Off America Week”
A symbolic week where citizens consume only non-U.S. news.

Crowdsourced monitoring of U.S. narrative dominance
Publicly track how often outlets rely on U.S. sources (and tell you they are free, diverse and public service…

Longer-Term Measures

Global media literacy networks
Teaching citizens how narratives are constructed and by whom. And use existing non-Western ones.

Public Sphere Charter
A global commitment to pluralistic information flows.

Global public-interest search engine
A non-corporate, non-U.S. alternative for accessing information.

D. Cultural & Academic Sovereignty

Cultural exchange must be mutual, not a one-way projection of power and a de facto grooming of pro-US personalities and murky associations.

Immediate Measures (within a week)

Pause new academic partnerships with U.S. institutions
A cooling-off period to reassess influence.

Suspend U.S.–EU cultural festivals and cultural cooperation
A symbolic but powerful signal of recalibration. Of course, you can enjoy the incredible works of US cultural workers over time, but stop formalised cooperation.

Prioritise Indigenous Greenlandic cultural voices.
Shift the cultural centre of gravity toward those directly affected.

Longer-Term Measures

EU–Global South academic networks
Diversifying knowledge production beyond U.S. institutions. Send your students to up-and-coming countries, not to the declining US. Stop filling you university reading lists with US literature; these books silently convey only a US perspective on the world.

European Arctic Cultural Institute
A hub for Greenlandic and Arctic cultural expression.

Ethical guidelines for cultural diplomacy
Ensuring reciprocity and preventing one-way influence.

E. Public Sphere & Civil Society Mobilisation

Nonviolent resistance begins with public consciousness and challenges military arrogance with countermeasures that set a constructive agenda.

Immediate Measures (within a week)

Global demonstrations at U.S. embassies
A peaceful, visible expression of global resistance: Enough is more than enough, Trump!

“Greenland Solidarity Week”
Events in 100+ cities to raise awareness.

People’s Tribunal on violations of international law
A moral forum documenting actions and giving voice to the affected.

Longer-Term Measures

Documentary series (“Greenland And Arctic Reality Check”)
A sustained narrative counter-campaign.

Global civil society coalitions
Networks linking NGOs, Indigenous groups, and peace organisations, for instanced the global movement against US bases in 130 countries.

World Forum on Nonviolent Power
A permanent platform for developing peaceful resistance strategies. There is a desperate need for solution-oriented thinking and global peace visions, for pro-peace and not just anti-war.

Part 1 Summary

Media and cultural sovereignty are the foundations of nonviolent resistance. Massive, immediate actions worldwide can disrupt narrative dominance within days; long-term measures build a pluralistic global information order in which no single state monopolises the definition of reality for the rest of the world.

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Jan Oberg is a peace researcher, art photographer, and Director of The Transnational (TFF) where this article first appeared. Reach him at: oberg@transnational.org. Read other articles by Jan.

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Sunday, December 01, 2024

The Fascist Counter-revolution



Karl Korsch

 1940

First Published: in Living Marxism, Volume 5, Number 2, Fall 1940, pp. 29-37
Source: Class Against Class;
Transcribed: by Zdravko Saveski, for marxists.org 2009;

What hope have we revolutionary Marxists, remnants of a past epoch, inheritors of its most advanced theories, illusions, ideologies-what hope have we left for a revolutionary turn of the sweeping counterrevolutionary movement of victorious fascism? The fate of France has finally proved that the old Marxist slogan of "world revolution" has in our epoch assumed a new meaning. We find ourselves today in the midst not of a socialist and proletarian but of an ultra-imperialistic and fascist world revolution. Just as in the preceding epoch every major defeat-the defeat of France in 1871, that of Russia, Germany, Hungary in 1905, 1917, 1918-resulted in a genuine revolution, so in our time each defeated country resorts to a fascist counterrevolution. Moreover, present-day war itself has become a revolutionary process, a civil war with an unmistakably predominant counterrevolutionary tendency. Just as in a horse race we do not know which horse will win but we do know that it will be a horse, so in the present war the victory of either party will result in a further gigantic step toward the fascization of Europe, if not of the whole European, American, Asiatic world of tomorrow.

I

There seem to be two easy ways for the "orthodox" Marxist of today to handle this difficult problem. Well-trained in Hegelian philosophical thought, he might say that all that is, is reasonable, and that, by one of those dialectical shifts in which history rejoices, socialism has been fulfilled by the social revolution implied in the victory of fascism. Thus Hegel himself at first followed the rising star of the French Revolution, later embraced the cause of Napoleon, and ended by acclaiming the Prussian state that emerged from the anti-Napoleonic wars of 1812-1815 as the fulfilment of the philosophical "idea" and as the "state of reason" corresponding to the given stage of its historical development.

Or, for that matter, our orthodox Marxist might not be willing, for the present, to go so far as to acknowledge the fascist allies of Stalin as the genuine promoters of socialism in our time. He would then content himself with feeling that the victory of fascism, planned economy, state capitalism, and the weeding out of all ideas and institutions of traditional "bourgeois democracy" will bring us to the very threshold of the genuine social revolution and proletarian dictatorship - just as, according to the teachings of the early church, the ultimate coming of Christ will be immediately preceded by the coming of the Anti-Christ who will be so much like Christ in his appearance and in his actions that the faithful will have considerable difficulty in seeing the difference.

In so reasoning, our orthodox Marxist would not only conform with the church but would also keep well in line with the precedents set by the earlier socialists and "revolutionary" Marxists themselves. It was not only the moderately progressive bourgeois ex-minister Guizot who was deceived by the revolutionary trimmings of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat of 1851 and, when he heard the news burst out into the alarmed cry, "This is the complete and final triumph of socialism." Even the leading representative of French socialism, P. J. Proudhon, was taken in by the violently anti-bourgeois attitude displayed by the revolutionary imperialist, and he devoted a famous pamphlet to the thesis that the coup d'etat of the Second of December did in fact "demonstrate the social revolution."[1]

Indeed, in many ways that counterrevolutionary aftermath of 1848 is comparable to the infinitely more serious and more extended counterrevolutionary movement through which European society is passing today after the experience of the Russian, the German, and the other European revolutions which followed in the wake of the First World War. Every party and every political tendency had to go through a certain period of bewilderment until it had adapted itself to a totally changed situation. Marx himself, although he utterly despised the imperialist adventurer because of his personal inadequacy, was inclined to believe in the revolutionary significance of the counterrevolutionary coup. He described the historical outcome of the two years of revolutionary defeat from 1848 to 1849 by the paradoxical statement that "this time the advance of the revolutionary movement did not effect itself through its immediate tragicomic achievements but, the other way round, through the creation of a united and powerful counterrevolution, through the creation of an antagonist by opposing whom the party of revolt will reach its real revolutionary maturity." And even after the fateful event he most emphatically restated his conviction that "the destruction of the parliamentary republic contains the germs of the triumph of the proletarian revolution." This is exactly what the German Communists and their Russian masters said 80 years later when they welcomed the advent of Nazism in Germany as a "victory of revolutionary communism."

This ambiguous attitude of Proudhon and Marx toward counterrevolution was repeated ten years later by Ferdinand Lassalle, a close theoretical disciple of Marx and at that time the foremost leader of the growing socialist movement in Germany. He was prepared to cooperate with Bismarck at the time when that unscrupulous statesman was toying with the idea of bribing the workers into acceptance of his imperialistic plans by an apparent adoption of the universal franchise and some other ideas borrowed from the 1848 revolution and the Second Empire. Lasalle did not live to see Bismarck at the end of the 70's, when he had subdued the liberals and the ultra-montane Catholic party, revert to his old dream of enforcing a kind of "tory-socialism" based on a ruthless persecution and suppression of all genuine socialist workers' movements.

There is no need to discuss the wholesale conversion of internationalists into nationalists and proletarian Social Democrats into bourgeois democratic parliamentarians during and after the First World War. Even such former Marxists as Paul Lensch accepted the war of the Kaiser as a realistic fulfilment of the dreams of a socialist revolution, and the about-face of the socialists they themselves glorified as a "revolutionization of the revolutionaries." There was a "national-bolshevist" fraction of the German Communist party long before there was a Hitlerian National Socialist Party. Nor does the military alliance that was concluded "seriously and for a long time" between Stalin and Hitler in August 1939, contain any novelty for those who have followed the historical development of the relations between Soviet Russia and imperial, republican, and Hitlerian Germany throughout the last twenty years. The Moscow treaty of 1939 had been preceded by the treaties of Rapallo in 1920 and of Berlin in 1926. Mussolini had already for several years openly proclaimed his new fascist credo when Lenin was scolding the Italian Communists for their failure to enlist that invaluable dynamic personality in the service of their revolutionary cause. As early as 1917, during the peace negotiations in Brest Litovsk, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht had been aware of the dreadful danger that was threatening the proletarian revolution from that side. They had said in so many words that "Russian socialism based on reactionary Prussian bayonets would be the worst that still could happen to the revolutionary workers' movement."

It appears from this historical record that there is indeed something basically wrong with the traditional Marxian theory of the social revolution and with its practical application. There is no doubt, today less than at any former time in history, that the Marxian analysis of the working of the capitalist mode of production and of its historical development is fundamentally correct. Yet it seems that the Marxian theory in its hitherto accepted form is unable to deal with the new problems that arise in the course of a not merely occasional and temporary but deep-rooted, comprehensive, and enduring counterrevolutionary development.

II

The main deficiency of the Marxian concept of the counterrevolution is that Marx did not, and from the viewpoint of his historical experience could not, conceive of the counterrevolution as a normal phase of social development. Like the bourgeois liberals he thought of the counterrevolution as an "abnormal" temporary disturbance of a normally progressive development. (In the same manner, pacifists to the present day think of war as an abnormal interruption of the normal state of peace, and physicians and psychiatrists until recently thought of disease and more especially the diseases of the mind as an abnormal state of the organism.) There is, however, between the Marxian approach and that of the typical bourgeois liberal this important difference: they start from a totally different idea about just what is a normal condition. The bourgeois liberal regards existing conditions or at least their basic features as the normal state of things, and any radical change as its abnormal interruption. It does not matter to him whether that disturbance of existing normal conditions results from a genuinely progressive movement or from a reactionary attempt to borrow revolution's thunder for the purpose of a counterrevolutionary aggression. He is afraid of the counterrevolution just as much as of the revolution and just because of its resemblance to a genuine revolution. That is why Guizot called the coup d'etat "the complete and final triumph of the socialist revolution" and why, for that matter, Hermann Rauschning today describes the advent of Hitlerism as a "revolt of nihilism."

As against the bourgeois concept, the Marxian theory has a distinct superiority. It understands revolution as a completely normal process. Some of the best Marxists, including Marx himself and Lenin, even said on occasion that revolution is the only normal state of society. So it is, indeed, under those objective historical conditions which are soberly stated by Marx in his preface to the "Critique of Political Economy."

Marx did not, however, apply the same objective and historical principle to the process of counterrevolution, which was known to him only in an undeveloped form. Thus, he did not see, and most people do not see today, that such important counterrevolutionary developments as those of present-day fascism and nazism have, in spite of their violent revolutionary methods, much more in common with evolution than they have with a genuine revolutionary process. It is true that in their talk and propaganda both Hitler and Mussolini have directed their attack mostly against revolutionary Marxism and communism. It is also true that before and after their seizure of state power they made a most violent attempt to weed out every Marxist and Communist tendency in the working classes. Yet this was not the main content of the fascist counterrevolution. In its actual results the fascist attempt to renovate and transform the traditional state of society does not offer an alternative to the radical solution aimed at by the revolutionary Communists. The fascist counterrevolution rather tried to replace the reformist socialist parties and trade unions, and in this it succeeded to a great extent.

The underlying historical law, the law of the fully developed fascist counterrevolution of our time, can be formulated in the following manner: After the complete exhaustion and defeat of the revolutionary forces, the fascist counterrevolution attempts to fulfil, by new revolutionary methods and in widely different form, those social and political tasks which the so-called reformistic parties and trade unions had promised to achieve but in which they could no longer succeed under the given historical conditions.

A revolution does not occur at some arbitrary point of social development but only at a definite stage. "At a certain stage of their development the material productive forces of society come into contradiction with the existing production-relations (or property-relations) within which they hitherto moved. From being forms of development, those relations turn into fetters upon the forces of production. Then a period of social revolution sets in." And again Marx emphasized, and even to a certain extent exaggerated, the objectivistic principle of his materialist theory of revolution according to which "a formation of society never perishes until all the forces of production for which it is wide enough have been developed." All this is true enough as far as it goes. We have all seen how evolutionary socialism reached the end of its rope. We have seen how the old capitalistic system based on free competition and the whole of its vast political and ideological superstructure was faced by chronic depression and decay. There seemed no way open except a wholesale transition to another, more highly developed form of society, to be effected by the social revolution of the proletarian class.

The new historical development during the last twenty years showed, however, that there was yet another course open. The transition to a new type of capitalistic society, that could no longer be achieved by the democratic and peaceful means of traditional socialism and trade unionism, was performed by a counterrevolutionary and anti-proletarian yet objectively progressive and ideologically anti-capitalistic and plebeian movement that had learned to apply to its restricted evolutionary aims the unrestricted methods developed during the preceding revolution. (More particularly, both Hitler and Mussolini had learned much in the school of Russian Bolshevism.) Thus, it appeared that the evolution of capitalistic society had not reached its utter historical limit when the ruling classes and the reformistic socialists-those self-appointed "doctors at the sickbed of capitalism" -reached the limits of their evolutionary possibilities. The phase of peaceful democratic reforms was followed by another evolutionary phase of development-that of the fascist transformation, revolutionary in its political form but evolutionary in its objective social contents.

The decisive reason that the capitalistic formation of society did not perish after the collapse of the First World War is that the workers did not make their revolution. "Fascism," said its closest enemy, "is a counterrevolution against a revolution that never took place." Capitalistic society did not perish, but instead entered a new revolutionary phase under the counterrevolutionary regime of fascism, because it was not destroyed by a successful workers' revolution, and because it had not, in fact, developed all the forces of production. The objective and the subjective premises are equally important for the counterrevolutionary conclusion.

From this viewpoint all those comfortable illusions about a hidden revolutionary significance in the temporary victory of the counterrevolution, in which the earlier Marxists so frequently indulged, must be entirely abandoned. If counterrevolution is only extremely and superficially connected with a social revolution by its procedures, but in its actual content is much more closely related to the further evolution of a given social system, and is in fact a particular historical phase of that social evolution, then it can no longer be regarded as a revolution in disguise. There is no reason to hail it either as an immediate prelude to the genuine revolution, or as an intrinsic phase of the revolutionary process itself. It appears as a particular phase of the whole developmental process, not inevitable like revolution yet becoming an inevitable step within the development of a given society under certain historical conditions. It has reached its up-to-now most comprehensive and important form in the present day fascist renovation and transformation of Europe, which in its basic economic aspect appears as a transition from the private and anarchic form of competitive capitalism to a system of planned and organized monopoly capitalism or state capitalism.

III

It would be the greatest folly and, for people even slightly imbued with the great discoveries of Marx in the field of the social sciences, a total relapse into a pre-materialist and pre-scientific manner of thought if one were to expect that the historical progress from competitive capitalism to planned economy and state capitalism could be repealed by any power in the world. Least of all can fascism be defeated by those people who, after a hundred years of shameless acquiescence in the total abandonment of their original ideals, now hasten to conjure up the infancy of the capitalist age with its belief in liberty, equity, fraternity, and free trade, while at the same time they surreptitiously and inefficiently try to imitate as far as possible fascism's abolition of the last remnants of those early capitalist ideas. They feel a sudden and unexpected urge to celebrate the French Revolution's fourteenth of July and at the same time dream of destroying fascism by adopting fascist methods.

In opposition to the artisan and petty-bourgeois spirit of early utopian socialism, the first word of scientific and proletarian socialism stated that big industry and the machine age had come to stay, that modern industrial workers had to find a cure for the evils of the industrial age on the basis of a further development of the new industrial forces themselves. In the same manner the scientific and proletarian socialists of our time must try to find remedies for the wrongs of monopoly capitalism and fascist dictatorship on the basis of monopoly and state capitalism itself. Neither free trade (that was not so free for the workers after all) nor the other aspects of traditional bourgeois democracy - free discussion and free press and free radio - will ever be restored. They have never existed for the suppressed and exploited class. As far as the workers are concerned, they have only exchanged one form of serfdom for another.

There is no essential difference between the way the New York Times and the Nazi press publish daily "all the news that's fit to print"-under existing conditions of privilege and coercion and hypocrisy. There is no difference in principle between the eighty-odd voices of capitalist mammoth corporations-which, over the American radio, recommend to legions of silent listeners the use of Ex-Lax, Camels, and neighbourhood groceries, along with music, war, baseball and domestic news, and dramatic sketches-and one suave voice of Mr. Goebbels who recommends armaments, race-purity, and worship of the Fuehrer. He too is quite willing to let them have music along with it-plenty of music, sporting news, and all the unpolitical stuff they can take.

This criticism of the inept and sentimental methods of present-day anti-fascism does not imply by any means that the workers should do openly what the bourgeoisie does under the disguise of a so-called antifascist fight: acquiesce in the victory of fascism. The point is to fight fascism not by fascist means but on its own ground. This seems to the present writer to be the rational meaning of what was somewhat mystically described by Alpha in the spring issue of Living Marxism as the specific task of "shock-troops" in the anti-fascist fight. Alpha anticipated that even if the localized war-of-siege waged during the first seven months of the present conflict were to extend into a general fascist world war, this would not be a "total war" and an unrestricted release of the existing powers of production for the purpose of destruction. Rather, it would still remain a monopolistic war in which the existing powers of production (destruction) would be fettered in many ways for the benefit of the monopolistic interests of privileged groups and classes. It would remain that kind of war from fear of the emancipatory effect that a total mobilization of the productive forces, even restricted to the purpose of destruction, would be bound to have for the workers or, under the present-day conditions of totally mechanized warfare, for the shocktroopers who perform the real work of that totally mechanized war.

This argument of Alpha’s can be applied more widely and much more convincingly. First of all we can disregard for the moment (although we shall have to return to it at a later stage) the peculiar restriction of the argument to the "shock-troops" and to the conditions of war. The whole traditional distinction between peace and war, production and destruction, has lost in recent times much of that semblance of truth that it had in an earlier period of modern capitalistic society. The history of the last ten years has shown that ever since, in a world drunk with apparent prosperity, the American Kellogg Pact outlawed war, peace has been abolished. From the outset Marxism was comparatively free from that simple-mindedness which believed in an immediate and clear-cut difference between production-for-use and production-for-profit. The only form of production-for-use under existing capitalistic conditions is just the production-for-profit. Productive labor for Marx, as for Smith and Ricardo, is that labor which produces a profit for the capitalist and, incidentally, a thing which may also be useful for human needs. There is no possibility of establishing a further distinction between a "good" and a "bad," a constructive and a destructive usefulness. The Goebbelian defense of the "productivity" of the labor spent on armaments in Germany by referring to the amount of "useful" labor spent in the United States for cosmetics had no novelty for the Marxist. Marx, who described the working class in its revolutionary fight as "the greatest of all productive forces" would not have been afraid to recognize war itself as an act of production, and the destructive forces of modern mechanized warfare as part of the productive forces of modern capitalistic society, such as it is. He, like Alpha, would have recognized the "shock-troops" in their "destructive" activity in war as well as in their productive activity in industry (armament and other industries-war industries all!) as real workers, a revolutionary vanguard of the modern working class. Historically it is a well-established fact that the soldier (the hired mercenary) was the first modern wage-laborer.

Thus, the old Marxian contradiction between the productive forces and the given production relations reappears in the warlike as well as in the peaceful activities of modern fascism. With it there appear again the old contrast between the workers, who as a class are interested in the full application and development of the productive forces, and the privileged classes, the monopolists of the material means of production. More than at any previous time the monopoly of political power reveals itself as the power to rule and control the social process of production. At the same time this means, under present conditions, the power to restrict production-both the production of industry in peace and destructive production in time of war-and to regulate it in the interest of the monopolist class. Even the "national" interest that was supposed to underly the present-day fascist war waged by Hitler and Mussolini is revealed by the war itself and will be revealed much more clearly by the coming peace as being ultimately an interest of the international capitalist and monopolist class. Much more clearly than at the end of the First World War it will appear that this war is waged by both parties-by the attacking fascists as well as by the defending "democrats"-as a united counterrevolutionary struggle against the workers and the soldiers who by their labor in peace and war prepared and fought the truly suicidal war.

What, then, is the hope left for the anti-fascists who are opposing the present European war and who will oppose the coming war of the hemisphere? The answer is that, just as life itself does not stop at the entrance of war, neither does the material work of modern industrial production. Fascists today quite correctly conceive the whole of their economy-that substitute for a genuine socialist economy-in terms of a "war economy" (Wehrwirtschaft). Thus, it is the task of the workers and the soldier to see to it that this job is no longer done within the restrictive rules imposed upon human labor in present-day capitalist, monopolist, and oppressive society. It has to be done in the manner prescribed by the particular instruments used; that is, in the manner prescribed by the productive forces available at the present stage of industrial development. In this manner both the productive and the destructive forces of present-day society-as every worker, every soldier knows-can be used only if they are used against their present monopolistic rulers. Total mobilization of the productive forces presupposes total mobilization of that greatest productive force which is the revolutionary working class itself.

Notes

[1] Oeuvres Completes de Proudhon, vol. VIII, Paris, 1868.

[2] First article on Class Struggles in France, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, January, 1850.

[3] The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, February, 1852.

[4] Ignazio Silone, School of Dictators, 1938.

[5] Living Marxism, vol. V, no. I, pp. 44-58.

Karl Korsch Archive

Trump admin orders federal employees to investigate USDA researchers

Lisa Song, Sharon Lerner

Pro Publica

January 19, 2026 

ALTERNET

The Trump administration is directing employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate foreign scientists who collaborate with the agency on research papers for evidence of “subversive or criminal activity.”

The new directive, part of a broader effort to increase scrutiny of research done with foreign partners, asks workers in the agency’s research arm to use Google to check the backgrounds of all foreign nationals collaborating with its scientists. The names of flagged scientists are being sent to national security experts at the agency, according to records reviewed by ProPublica

At a meeting last month, USDA supervisors pushed back against the instructions, with one calling it “dystopic” and others expressing shock and confusion, according to an audio recording reviewed by ProPublica.

The USDA frequently collaborates with scientists based at universities in the U.S. and abroad. Some agency workers told ProPublica they were uncomfortable with the new requirement because they felt it could put those scientists in the crosshairs of the administration. Students and postdocs are particularly vulnerable as many are in the U.S. on temporary visas and green cards, the employees said.

Jennifer Jones, director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the directive a “throwback to McCarthyism” that could encourage scientists to avoid working with the “best and brightest” researchers from around the world.

“Asking scientists to spy on and report on their fellow co-authors” is a “classic hallmark of authoritarianism,” Jones said. The Union of Concerned Scientists is an organization that advocates for scientific integrity.

Jones, who hadn’t heard of the instructions until contacted by ProPublica, said she had never witnessed policies so extreme during prior administrations or in her former career as an academic scientist.

The new policy applies to pending scientific publications co-authored by employees in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which conducts research on crop yields, invasive species, plant genetics and other agricultural issues.

The USDA instructed employees to stop agency researchers from collaborating on or publishing papers with scientists from “countries of concern,” including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.

But the agency is also vetting scientists from nations not considered “countries of concern” before deciding whether USDA researchers can publish papers with them. Employees are including the names of foreign co-authors from nations such as Canada and Germany on lists shared with the department’s Office of Homeland Security, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. That office leads the USDA’s security initiatives and includes a division that works with federal intelligence agencies. The records don’t say what the office plans to do with the lists of names.

Asked about the changes, the USDA sent a statement noting that in his first term, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum designed to strengthen protections of U.S.-funded research across the federal government against foreign government interference. “USDA under the Biden Administration spent four years failing to implement this directive,” the statement said. The agency said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last year rolled out “long-needed changes within USDA’s research enterprise, including a prohibition on authoring a publication with a foreign national from a country of concern.”

International research has been essential to the Agricultural Research Service’s work, according to a page of the USDA website last updated in 2024: “From learning how to mitigate diseases before they reach the United States, to testing models and crops in diverse growing conditions, to accessing resources not available in the United States, cooperation with international partners provides solutions to current and future agricultural challenges.”

Still, the U.S. government has long been worried about agricultural researchers acting as spies, sometimes with good reason. In 2016, the Chinese scientist Mo Hailong was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiring to steal patented corn seeds. And in 2022, Xiang Haitao, admitted to stealing a trade secret from Monsanto.

National security questions have also been raised about recent increases in foreign ownership of agricultural land. In 2022, Congress allocated money for a center to educate U.S. researchers about how to safeguard their data in international collaborations.

Since Trump took office last year, foreign researchers have faced increased obstacles. In March, a French researcher traveling to a conference was denied entry to the U.S. after a search of his phone at the airport turned up messages critical of Trump. The National Institutes of Health blocked researchers from China, Russia and other “countries of concern” from accessing various biomedical databases last spring. And in August, the Department of Homeland Security proposed shortening the length of time foreign students could remain in the country.

But the latest USDA instructions represent a significant escalation, casting suspicion on all researchers from outside the U.S. and asking agency staff to vet the foreign nationals they collaborate with. It’s unclear if employees at other federal agencies have been given similar directions.

The new USDA policy was announced internally in November and followed a July memo from Rollins that highlighted the national security risks of working with scientists who are not U.S. citizens.

“Foreign competitors benefit from USDA-funded projects, receiving loans that support overseas businesses, and grants that enable foreign competitors to undermine U.S. economic and strategic interests,” Rollins wrote in the memo. “Preventing this is the responsibility of every USDA employee.” The memo called for the department to “place America First” by taking a number of steps, including scrutinizing and making lists of the agency’s arrangements to work with foreign researchers and prohibiting USDA employees from participating in foreign programs to recruit scientists, “malign or otherwise.”

Rollins, a lawyer who studied agricultural development, co-founded the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute before being tapped to head the agency.

There have long been restrictions on collaborating with researchers from certain countries, such as Iran and China. But these new instructions create blanket bans on working with scientists from “countries of concern.”

In a late November email to staff members of the Agricultural Research Service at one area office, a research leader instructed managers to immediately stop all research with scientists who come from — or collaborate with institutions in — “countries of concern.”

The email also instructed employees to reject papers with foreign authors if they deal with “sensitive subjects” such as “diversity” or “climate change.” National security concerns were listed as another cause for rejection, with USDA research service employees instructed to ask if a foreigner could use the research against American farmers.

In the audio recording of the December meeting, some employees expressed alarm about the instructions to investigate their fellow scientists. The “part of figuring out if they are foreign … by Googling is very dystopic,” said one person at the meeting, which involved leadership from the Agricultural Research Service.

Faced with questions about how to ascertain the citizenship of a co-author, another person at the meeting said researchers should do their best with a Google search, then put the name on the list “and let Homeland Security do their behind the scenes search.”

Rollins’ July memo specifies that, within 60 days of receiving a list of “current arrangements” that involve foreign people or entities, the USDA’s Office of Homeland Security along with its offices of Chief Scientist and General Counsel should decide which arrangements to terminate. The USDA laid off 70 employees from “countries of concern” last summer as a result of the policy change laid out in the memo, NPR reported.

The USDA and Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about what happens to the foreign researchers flagged by the staff beyond potentially having their research papers rejected.

The documents also suggested new guidance would be issued on Jan. 1, but the USDA employees ProPublica interviewed said that the vetting work was continuing and that they had not received any written updates. The staff spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly.

Scientists are often evaluated based on their output of new scientific research. Delaying or denying publication of pending papers could derail a researcher’s career. Over the past 40 years, the number of international collaborations among scientists has increased across the board, according to Caroline Wagner, an emeritus professor of public policy at the Ohio State University. “The more elite the researcher, the more likely they’re working at the international level,” said Wagner, who has spent more than 25 years researching international collaboration in science and technology.

The changes in how the USDA is approaching collaboration with foreign researchers, she said, “will certainly reduce the novelty, the innovative nature of science and decrease these flows of knowledge that have been extremely productive for science over the last years.”

Kyiv in crisis: how wild capitalism is exacerbating the devastation

Monday 19 January 2026, by Vitaliy Dudin

The year 2026 began with devastating Russian shelling of Kyiv’s infrastructure, which, in freezing conditions, brought the population to the brink of survival. The city, home to 3 million people, is experiencing an acute shortage of heat and water, and electricity is being supplied on a short-term basis. It has become clear that the authorities had no plan B in case of a catastrophic deterioration in the security and weather situation. However, the Putin gang’s insidious plan would not have been so painful if it weren’t for the vulnerability of the municipal infrastructure caused by Kyiv’s leaders. Mayor Vitali Klitschko has already called on all those who can to leave Kyiv. This leads to the conclusion that the authorities are unable to solve the problems of a city that is far from the front line.

Such statements place the responsibility for salvation on the people and do nothing but increase panic. In contrast, the response should be to introduce measures that increase social support and, as a result, strengthen solidarity. Giving people the feeling that they are in control of the situation and can make a difference is what would strengthen their belief in Ukraine’s victory.

Criticism of the situation focuses on the personalities of Kyiv’s leaders, but ignores the broader political context. The government’s inability to solve the pressing problems of the population stems from the fact that it is focused on serving the business elite. Therefore, it is extremely important to discuss the essence of the changes that will allow for the integration of urban services, the humanization of the work of municipal workers, and the maximization of benefits for the community.
Under the rule of business

It would be naive to deny the connection between the critical situation and the spontaneously capitalist course of the Kyiv authorities. For years, pieces of municipal property have been handed over to private owners, and there has been no development planning at the city level. Where the authorities proved to be systematic was in selling land to developers and protecting the interests of corporations. The capital had the flaws described by researcher David Harvey in his critique of modern cities: private capital focuses on selective development, while everything around it deteriorates. Developers overload urban communications, ignoring the destructive consequences of chaotic urban development. And then all Kyiv residents pay for it with their comfort due to the deterioration of utilities (heating temperature, water pressure, frequent accidents, etc.). The urban model, based on commerce and corruption, has never been sustainable and is now experiencing its deepest crisis in history. According to Forbes, before the invasion, Kyiv was the best city for business development, although the level of satisfaction with its development was critically low (38%).

During the war, a situation arose where emergency services were able to quickly overcome the consequences of shelling and save people, but people had to rely on their own resources to solve the related social challenges. We have a paradox: a city with a budget of UAH 100 billion cannot afford temporary social housing for resettlement, and utilities are provided intermittently.

A separate issue is the deplorable working conditions of critical infrastructure workers, on whose daily heroism many lives depend. For years, the authorities have been unable to set wages at a level commensurate with the existing risks, and only now have they started talking about bonuses for those involved in emergency work (we are talking about allocating 50 million hryvnias). Without effective worker control, such measures may be selective and sporadic. It is known that in 2023, the trade union of Kyivteploenergo had to go to court to force the employer to increase staff salaries.

Dissatisfaction with the state of wages even resulted in a petition demanding additional pay for operational personnel who perform their duties during air raid alerts. We should not forget about the situation with non-payment of compensation for injuries caused by Russian shelling, which is a measure of the authorities’ attitude towards such workers.

The problem is fuelled by mistrust due to the lack of real information about the state of housing and communal services: the accountability of both municipal and private enterprises is highly questionable, and the headquarters that are being set up bring together a limited circle of officials.
Who owns all the utilities?

There is no coordinated system for managing Kyiv and responding to challenges, which reflects the situation with control over property. The ownership structure in the capital’s housing and utilities sector is complex, with elements of communal and private (oligarchic) forms of ownership intertwined.

The largest companies in this sector are as follows:
Kyivteploenergo (100% municipal ownership);
DTEK Kyiv Electric Grids (100% private ownership);
Kyivgaz JSC (60% owned by Kyivenergo Holding PJSC);
Kyivvodokanal PJSC (67% owned by Kyivenergo Holding PJSC).

Given the pre-collapse state of the housing and utilities sector, the profitability of these companies is surprising. At the same time, Kyivenergo Holding, which has shares in a number of leading enterprises, is municipally and offshore owned, with a majority stake held by the city authorities (61%), which, as is well known, consist of friends of big business.

It is too early to say that Kyivteploenergo is a model of responsible management, as the company has shown itself to be extremely ruthless towards consumers of utility services. Through the efforts of its lawyers, this municipal enterprise has filed up to 26,000 lawsuits to collect debts; some of the claims in current cases date back 10 years. Pensioners, whose accounts are blocked during martial law, are forced to make their ‘contribution’ to the company’s profitability. The company itself does not hesitate to use martial law as a cover to ignore requests regarding its finances. The logic of ‘corporations are more valuable than people’ in action!
Disintegration and irresponsibility

Kyiv’s master plan for 2000, planned in the past.

Urban economy is a single complex system that covers all areas of the city’s life support (engineering networks, transport, amenities, social infrastructure) as interrelated elements that work for the functioning and welfare of the urban community. The fragmentation of this sphere by various entities leads to a lack of responsibility for its maintenance. It is nonsensical for these companies to be privately owned or to exploit the population for profit. Maintaining this chaos in times of war is a crime against the welfare of the community.

Freeing the housing and communal services sector from private influence and narrow market logic will help to align the interests of the community and consumers. And vulgar clichés about everything budgetary automatically becoming corrupt should be resolutely rejected. Firstly, in the absence of effective anti-corruption control over private companies, we do not know the extent of waste and abuse by their managers. Secondly, we cannot even imagine how effective municipal property with open accounting and under worker control can be in meeting needs. Thirdly, the net profit of 5 billion in Kyiv from the activities of municipal enterprises in 2024 refutes the thesis about the chronic unprofitability of this sector (another question is at what social cost this profitability is achieved). Fourthly, it is virtually impossible to ensure competition in the municipal sector, which means that private companies will act as monopolies.

The situation requires a change in approach to ownership of property used by all city residents. In order to provide the population with affordable goods and services, as well as to increase the city’s revenues, the possibility of municipalizing other public facilities, including catering establishments, should be considered. Only on this basis can the amount of available resources be determined and the priorities for production and distribution of goods be set correctly. This could curb the growth of inequality, as we are approaching a point where hundreds of thousands of people will not be able to cook for themselves at home, while shopping centres and restaurants will operate for their own benefit.
It is not too late to municipalize

So, the current crisis in the capital is a crisis of governance, caused by the disintegration of the economy and misguided anti-social priorities. However, at the same time, it may lead to an awareness of the need for radical changes, as a result of which the community will feel like a full-fledged owner. If we want to transform municipal companies from someone’s feeding trough into a means of salvation, we will have to take responsibility, resisting the myths about the magic of the free market and the omnipotence of corrupt bosses.

1. Socialisation of infrastructure as the basis for transparency. During wartime, nothing can be private or exist on its own — the entire system must work towards a single goal and for the good of the country. Monopolies must serve the community.

2. Effective worker control. Creation of rescue headquarters with the mandatory involvement of critical infrastructure workers. This body should have complete information about the state of the energy system and make decisions on the shutdown of enterprises that are not critical to the economy due to force majeure.

3. Cancellation of utility debts. Citizens should not suffer from accumulating utility debts when services are provided intermittently. It is unacceptable for utility companies to operate profitably by collecting funds from pensioners and people with disabilities.

4. Fairness for critical infrastructure workers. During the hardest years of the war, the heroes of the infrastructure worked almost for free, putting themselves at risk. The state must fulfil its debt to them and listen to the demands of the trade unions.

5. Support for the suffering population of the city. Instead of calling on people to leave, there should be benefits for those who stay. Heating in budgetary institutions and meals in catering establishments, compensation for the cost of installing solar panels at home. For remote workers, communal centres should be properly functioning so that they can work regardless of disruptions.
In addition, these measures should be combined with steps in the field of employment, such as counting the time spent in the city during blackouts towards insurance experience, voluntary involvement in socially useful work with decent pay, and the provision of paid leave for volunteering in the interests of the city.

If the logic of governance is not reoriented towards support, cities will face depopulation, inequality and stagnation.

Selfishness and the market have run their course; it is time to think municipally and collectively!

16 January 2026

Translated by International Viewpoint from Соціальний рух.

Attached documentskyiv-in-crisis-how-wild-capitalism-is-exacerbating-the_a9372.pdf (PDF - 1 MiB)
Extraction PDF [->article9372]

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Vitaliy Dudin is a member of Sotsialniy Rukh, Ukraine.

 Nestormakhno.info

www.nestormakhno.info/

The Nestor Makhno Archive

An Archive of material relating to Nestor Makhno and the Makhnovshchina.

Marxists.orgwww.marxists.org/reference/archive/makhno-nestor/index.htm

Nestor Makhno: Archive of the Ukrainian Anarchist Leader

Makhno was a Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary and the commander of an independent anarchist army in Ukraine from 1917–21.

Theanarchistlibrary.orgtheanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/nestor-makhno

Nestor Makhno - The Anarchist Library

A Few Words on the National Question in the Ukraine — Nestor Makhno Apr 10, 2021 6 pp. An Historic Injustice — Nestor Makhno May 19, 2021 5 pp.

Libcom.orglibcom.org/article/video-footage-nestor-makhno-1919

Video footage of Nestor Makhno, 1919 - Libcom.org

Fortunately the Hungarians sent the newsreel back before their revolution collapsed and it was eventually retrieved from the Soviet archives. Arbeiten. 14 ...