Part 1 of the Program of the Party for Socialism and Liberation:

The Party for Socialism and Liberation exists to carry out the struggle for socialism inside the United States, the center of world capitalism and imperialism. The PSL stands in solidarity with our sisters and brothers around the world who are resisting capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination.

The need for the socialist reorganization of society becomes more apparent and urgent with each passing day. While a tiny part of the population grows ever richer, tens of millions of workers here in the United States and billions of workers around the world sink deeper into poverty. Monumental advances in science and technology, which could have uplifted the many, instead have mainly enriched the few.

Read the full program here: https://liberationschool.org/program-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation

Program of the Party for Socialism and Liberation Part 1: The struggle for socialism

Written by Richard Becker
Copyright © 2009 by PSL Publications
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009932241

Chapter 21 - The 'irreconcilable conflict' and the future (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Chapter 16 - US-Israeli relations after Bush (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Chapter 14 - Intifada, 'Peace Process,' Intifada (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Chapter 13 - Lebanon: Civil war and occupation (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Chapter 12 - The Palestinian struggle takes center stage (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Chapter 11 - Fortifying the US-Israeli alliance (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Chapter 10 - Watchdog for the West (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Chapter 9 - Born of massacres and ethnic cleansing (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Chapter 8 - Illegal U.N. partition (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Suffused with anti-Semitism themselves, many in the U.S. ruling class in the 1930s viewed Nazi Germany as a weapon against their main enemy of the time—the Soviet Union.

A number of U.S. capitalists regarded Nazi Germany as having an ideal business climate. The Nazis had smashed the powerful German labor unions and had fused German corporations closely with the state.

Among those who shared Nazi sympathies and business connections were Henry Ford, Joseph Kennedy Sr. (father of John, Robert and Ted Kennedy), and Prescott Bush (father and grandfather of U.S. presidents).

"Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire", written by Richard Becker
E-book: www.amazon.com/dp/B094YL965G

Ch. 7 - World War II: Anti-Semitism and genocide (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

The aim of the Zionists to dispossess Palestinians of their land and rights was no mystery to the Palestinian population. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s there were numerous uprisings against British colonialism and Zionist settlements, the most famous and protracted of which was the 1936-1939 revolt.

In 1936, Palestinians launched a general strike that lasted six months—the longest general strike in history. The strike was followed by a guerrilla war that lasted nearly three and a half years. It was mainly based in the countryside among poor peasants. The war tied down a large part of the British army. It was not until September 1939—the same month that World War II began in Europe—that the British finally succeeded in crushing the rebellion by brute force. 

Both the justice of the Palestinian resistance and colonial nature of Zionism had been admitted in the midst of the revolt by none other than the central Zionist leader, Ben-Gurion: 

"In our political argument abroad we minimize Arab opposition to us. But let us not ignore the truth among ourselves. … A people which fights against the usurpation of its land will not tire so easily."

"Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire", written by Richard Becker
E-book: www.amazon.com/dp/B094YL965G

Ch. 6 - The Palestinian revolt of 1936-1939 (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Though it had its own distinct roots, Zionism shared some of the characteristics of the reactionary European movements. It fiercely opposed the anti-colonial and genuine national liberation movements.

The Zionists, while aiming to create a Jewish nation-state, did not seek to acquire territory in Eastern Europe where most of the European Jewish population was concentrated and most violently repressed. Instead, the Zionists offered to make themselves available to be transported as settlers to any number of places in the colonized continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America, before settling on Palestine.

Political Zionism was thus a unique form of narrow nationalism. Lacking its own indigenous land base, it could only hope to succeed as an extension of European colonialism. Unlike any genuine national liberation movement, Zionism was always completely dependent on imperialist sponsorship.

"Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire", written by Richard Becker
E-book: www.amazon.com/dp/B094YL965G

Ch. 5 - Building a settler state American-style (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Zionism represented a small minority among Jewish people. It was mainly a movement of the middle class, with support from a few wealthy sponsors, particularly the Rothschild oil and banking interests. 

Jewish workers and intellectuals of that time played a vital role in the socialist, communist and other progressive movements in Europe and the United States. They fought for equality rather than separation. Prior to World War II, political Zionism was widely regarded as a reactionary nationalist and dangerous ideology in progressive circles, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

"Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire", written by Richard Becker
E-book: www.amazon.com/dp/B094YL965G

Ch. 4 - Zionism: A colonial project (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

While Palestine was still nominally under Ottoman rule, Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, sent a letter to Lord Rothschild, a member of the British House of Lords and one of the world’s richest men.

The infamous Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917, reads:
    Dear Lord Rothschild:

    I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
    “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

    I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

    Yours sincerely
    Arthur James Balfour 

Underlining the colonialist character of the note is the phrase: “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

The “existing non-Jewish communities”—the Palestinian Arabs—went unnamed, despite comprising 92 percent of the population at the time.

While national rights were emphasized for the tiny settler minority, no mention was made of the same rights for the indigenous majority. 

"Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire", written by Richard Becker
E-book: www.amazon.com/dp/B094YL965G

Ch. 3 - Dividing the Middle East (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

But does the pro-Israel lobby—or Israel itself through the lobby—control and direct U.S. policy in the Middle East?

To put it another way, does the tail wag the dog?

Is it really conceivable that a small, dependent country could call the shots for the most powerful empire in the history of the world? 

The answer to all of these questions is no.

Israel is part of the U.S. global empire, not the other way around. 

"Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire", written by Richard Becker.
E-book: www.amazon.com/dp/B094YL965G

Ch. 2 - Does the Israel lobby control U.S. policy? (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

There is, in fact, an irreconcilable conflict in the Middle East, but it is not one between different peoples or faiths. It is instead the struggle between imperialism, Israel and the dependent Arab regimes on the one hand and the oppressed peoples of this oil-rich and strategic region fighting for liberation and progress on the other. 

At the very heart of this conflict is Palestine. The Palestinian struggle is a struggle against Western colonialism. It has been this way from the beginning, more than a century ago.

As is the case with all conflicts and world events, what is going on today in Palestine and the Middle East can only be understood in its historical context. 


"Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire", written by Richard Becker
E-book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094YL965G

Ch. 1 - 'A struggle against Western colonialism' (Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire)

Part 2 of the Program of the Party for Socialism and Liberation

In order to guarantee the interests of working and poor people who make up the vast majority of the United States, a new revolutionary government run by and for the workers and poor will be established. The present capitalist government—the role of which has been to defend the big-business system of exploitation by a web of hundreds of measures, legal and illegal, and has been accessible only to the super-rich elite—will be abolished.

Read the full program here:
https://liberationschool.org/program-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation/

Program of the Party for Socialism and Liberation Part 2: A Revolutionary Socialist Government

The following is an edited version of an internal document initially written in late 2015 and formed part of the basis for party-wide discussions in the Party for Socialism and Liberation in early 2016. The document examines the new possibilities and difficulties posed by the proliferation of social media from the perspective of the Leninist party. Ben Becker evaluates the resulting qualitative shifts in mass communication, obstacles to vertical organization, the individualizing tendencies of social media, and other tensions between social media and democratic centralist organizations. It analyzes this latter question by comparing social media with the original “collective organizer” for Leninists: the party newspaper. The final section of the article articulates the new security issues raised by social media. Because there are few works that address this issue in a systematic and action-oriented way, we publish it here as a resource for newer party comrades and others in the struggle as they grapple with the (often frustrating) realities of organizing in such an online environment.

Read the full article:
https://liberationschool.org/social-media-and-democratic-centralism-opportunities-and-challenges/

Social media and democratic centralism: Opportunities and challenges

Richard Becker speaks at the Party for Socialism and Liberation's forum "Crisis in Ukraine & Anti-war Analysis", discussing the latest events in Europe, and the roots of the crisis.

Richard Becker Discusses the Crisis in Ukraine

The past, as they say, is never truly past. In recent months, Soviet nationality policy, a topic many thought consigned to academic backwaters and communist happy hours, has been thrust into the forefront of public conversation. The war raging in Ukraine has brought to the forefront questions about the borders, languages, and ethnicities of the country. How did they get that way, who is responsible, and how do these questions impact the causes and consequences of the current crisis?

The conversation, however, has been something of a battle of dueling nationalisms. In response to far-right Ukrainian nationalism, Russian President Vladimir Putin has spun his own nationalist views, blaming the Bolsheviks for setting the stage for tensions between Russia and Ukraine today. 

Taking the two sets of critiques, one might be led to believe that the Soviet Union was some sort of venal, brutal empire that held the just aspirations of its various nationalities and ethnicities captive, manipulating “national borders” to generate fake nations and false national consciousness. 

The truth is far from the stories told by both the Ukrainian nationalists and Putin. The Soviet Union was the most advanced attempt at addressing national oppression, racism and discrimination at a country-wide level. Among many other things, the USSR was the first nation to engage in widespread affirmative action at levels no country before or since has reached. 

The Soviets took hundreds of nationalities and brought them under one governmental authority that took on economic backwardness and cultural repression to open up a liberatory future for peoples who had spent centuries under the yoke of the Tsars’ imperial ambitions. 

In fact, the depth of the tragedy afflicting Eastern Europe right now can only be fully understood in light of the decades-long Soviet effort to put an end to national antagonism and forge a future based on the unity of working and poor people for their collective benefit and that of humanity.

Read the full article:
https://www.liberationnews.org/nations-and-soviets-the-national-question-in-the-ussr/

Nations and Soviets: The National Question in the USSR

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and other imperialist countries have repeatedly declared that history is over, meaning that humanity cannot transcend the capitalist system, which is elevated as the pinnacle of human development. As Margaret Thatcher claimed “there is no alternative” to capitalism, and the best we can hope for is a kinder, gentler, and more “humane” form of it. According to the capitalist class, the fall of the Soviet Union demonstrated that “socialism doesn’t work” and socialist revolution is foolhardy, so we shouldn’t preoccupy ourselves with fighting for it.

Despite this prognosis, socialist revolution is very much on the table in the U.S. and all over the world. As we are facing multiple existential crises for humanity and the planet, socialist revolution is not just possible, but an absolute necessity to ensure our collective future.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/what-is-socialist-revolution/

What does it take to make a socialist revolution?

In an article published this year for International Women’s Day, Maddie Dery summarizes the various experiences of the women’s liberation movement since the early 20th century: “The history of International Women’s Day teaches us that when we fight, we win”. This spirit, which threads through the historic struggle for women’s liberation and socialism, is easily identified in the revolutionary origins, legacies, and futures of International Women’s Day. At Liberation School, we want to end March—which, since 1987, the U.S. recognizes as “Women’s History Month”—and pull that red thread by publishing Claudia Jones’ historic 1950 speech at an International Women’s Day rally, which was also published in Political Affairs, the monthly journal of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Jones’ speech rooted the contemporary moment of the class struggle in the long history of the fight for Black liberation, women’s emancipation, peace, and socialism, linking together fighters from Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth to Mother Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, from Lucy Stone and Ida B Wells to Williana Burroughs and Clara Zetkin.

Born in Trinidad in 1915, Claudia Jones moved to New York City eight years later. She is one of the most significant revolutionary theorists and organizers of the 20th century. After joining the Communist Party in 1936 through the struggle to free the Scottsboro Boys, she rapidly developed as an organizer and intellectual and within two years was the associate editor of the CPUSA’s Weekly Review and after another two years was the lead editor.

Pushing the Party to prioritize struggles against male and national chauvinism, in the late 1940s Jones theorized the “super-exploitation” of Black working-class women through their structural location in U.S. society. In one 1949 article, she wrote that “the Negro woman, who combines in her status the worker, the Negro, and the woman, is the vital link to… heightened political consciousness”. For Jones, the heightened oppression of Black women workers and their historic roles as leaders and organizers of their communities made Black women’s participation and leadership essential to the communist and progressive struggle.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/claudia-jones-1950-iwd-speech/

Claudia Jones: “International Women’s Day and the struggle for peace”

The Cuban people voted by supermajority on Sept. 25 to approve the Families Code, a revolutionary law that modernizes, recognizes and legalizes all manifestations of families in Cuba.

The previous 1975 Family Code was revolutionary for its time, but needed a major updating with almost 50 years of growth in social consciousness worldwide and in Cuba. The new Families Code broadens the family model to be fully inclusive. It includes the right to same sex marriage, expanded rights of adoption, allows surrogacy births, more protection for seniors and grandparents’ rights, stronger protections against domestic violence and explicit expansion of the rights of children.

Composed of 471 articles and 117 pages, the hefty code details the fullest inclusion of every Cuban’s family as one sees fit, and “defends equality, non-discrimination, dignity and respect for diversity.”

Of 6,251,786 eligible voters, 74.01% turned out to vote. Of these, a supermajority of 66.89% approved
the Families Code.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationnews.org/supermajority-of-cubans-vote-for-revolutionary-families-code/

Supermajority of Cubans vote for revolutionary ‘Families Code’

Our understanding of the state lies at the heart of our struggle to create a new society and fundamentally eliminate the oppression, exploitation, war, and environmental destruction characteristic of capitalism. In a socialist state, people collectively manage society, including what we produce, how much we produce, and the conditions of our work, to meet the needs of the people and the planet. Under capitalism, the state is organized to maintain the capitalist system and the dictatorship of a tiny group of capitalists over the rest of us through the use (or threat) of violent force and a range of institutions that present capitalism as “common sense.” The primary function of the capitalist state is to protect itself, which means it manages contradictions within the capitalist class and between their class and the working class.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/marxist-state-theory-intro/

The Marxist theory of the state: An introduction

In early 1956, construction was almost complete on what the Japanese authorities and general public thought was going to be a battery factory in what is now known as West Tokyo, but what at the time was farmland. When the “factory” was finished on April 10 of that year, however, a banner outside the perimeters announced that it was the new home of Korea University, which was previously a series of shacks attached to Tokyo First Korean High School.

This episode is part of the much longer and widely unknown anti-colonial struggle of Koreans in Japan, a struggle with implications and lessons for the whole world. It’s a struggle that, just like the Korean struggle more broadly, has been systematically isolated. As such, it’s a struggle that needs more international solidarity, particularly from those of us in the U.S. Yet it’s also a struggle that can provide hope and inspiration for all people fighting against colonialism and imperialism.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/the-chongryon-movement-the-struggle-of-koreans-in-japan/

Chongryon: The struggle of Koreans in Japan

In commemorating Black August, we commemorate the struggle of those who have fought before us and faced violent repercussions from the state. We uplift the revolutionary history of the Black working class and its fundamental position in forging and leading the struggle for liberation for all. And we recommit ourselves to the struggle for Black Liberation and for the freedom of all political prisoners.

When I think of political prisoners, and when I think of those who have relentlessly committed themselves to Black Liberation, I always think of Assata Shakur.

From Assata’s story, we are able to learn what it means to be motivated by a deep love for the people and the struggle for freedom—and what it means to embody a determined and unbreakable spirit in the face of crackdowns and government repression designed to stifle and destroy the movement. Account after account from Assata’s comrades and fellow revolutionaries describe Assata as a light, a positive spirit who remained disciplined and committed to the struggle despite incredible hardships.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/assata-shakur-the-making-of-a-revolutionary-woman/

Assata Shakur: The making of a revolutionary woman

Liu Liangmo (1909-1988) was a prominent Chinese anti-imperialist, religious leader and, from 1942-1945, columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier—at that time the nation’s widest circulating Black newspaper. Liu’s columns (and actions as an organizer) were a significant part of efforts by progressive Chinese people, on the mainland and in the diaspora, to build alliances with the Black Liberation movement as part of a broader effort to shape the post-war world.

His words linked the causes of ending colonialism, imperialism, and race discrimination—from the Yangtze to the Ganges to the Mississippi—mirroring the words and actions of millions of others involved in similarly-minded struggles around the world, including Liu’s favorite U.S. singer: Paul Robeson.

Liu’s columns represent the efforts of Communist and aligned currents to turn the allied effort in the favor of the exploited and the oppressed. This was counteracted in the so-called “Cold War,” as imperialist forces worked to make the world “safe for capitalism” in the wake of the World War II.

His columns and activities offer interesting insight into the struggle within the “Second United Front” in China between the Nationalist Kuomintang and the Communists during the Second World War and their differing approaches to the post-war world: whether China should be an anti-colonial vanguard or seek inclusion in the imperialist “great power” club. The “Nationalist” Chinese government’s chose the latter, heavily impacting their approach to racism in the US.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/liu-liangmo-pt-1/

Liu Liangmo: China’s anti-imperialist, anti-racist, Christian revolutionary (pt. 1)

Liu Liangmo’s story is as remarkable as it is unknown. An anti-imperialist, pro-Communist Christian, with a significant relationship to the Black Liberation Movement and the Indian Freedom Struggle, Liu lived in the U.S. as a diplomat after participating in the ongoing Chinese revolution. He wrote a column for the prominent Black newspaper. The Pittsburgh Courier, before returning to his home country and attaining a fairly high-ranking position there. His story offers notable insight into the history of pre- and post-revolutionary China and its approach to the Black freedom movement in the U.S. It also reveals much about the turbulent “Second Popular Front” era in China, during which time Communist forces obtained broader legitimacy. This has largely been erased from U.S. political and historical consciousness, which helps explain Liu’s relative marginality.

Most radical movements since the late 1960s have rightly critiqued the legacy of the Popular Front for blurring the lines between reform and revolution and, by extension, capitalism and communism. They see the Popular Front as an opportunist approach to building unity where radical ideas and the independent working-class program were subordinated to maintain legitimacy among left-liberal reform currents.

What is lost in such sweeping generalizations are the unusual concrete circumstances and strategic conundrums that Communist forces faced worldwide in this moment, especially among the struggles of oppressed peoples against colonialism and fascism. Liu Liangmo’s story provides an opportunity to critically examine this period anew. His Courier columns covered a wide breadth of “popular front” political activities and the relationships expressed in those writings speak to both the strengths and the weakness of Communist political activity during World War II. On the one hand, there was unprecedented vitality and significance to Communist-led interventions while, on the other hand, there was a lack of strategic clarity that forestalled a larger political breakthrough. Using Liu’s columns as a foundation, we can address this moment and draw important international parallels.

Read the full story here: https://www.liberationschool.org/liu-liangmo-pt-2/

Liu Liangmo: China’s anti-imperialist, anti-racist, Christian revolutionary (pt. 2)

Despite its association with sovereign nations involved in wartime alliances, the term “ally” has become influential in activist circles on the US left. Attention to debates over what it means to be an ally reveal the limits of the politics of allyship. They also provide an opportunity to reflect on the difference between allies and comrades. Allyship is anchored in liberal politics. People committed to revolutionary politics need to be comrades.

Over the last decade, there have been intense discussions on social media and among community organizers who can be an ally. Generally, allies are understood to be privileged people who want to do something about oppression. They may not consider themselves survivors or victims, but they want to help. So allies can be straight people who stand up for LGBTQ people, white people who support Black and brown people, men who defend women, and so on. I have yet to see the term used for rich people involved in working-class struggle. Allies don’t want to imagine themselves as homophobic, racist, or sexist. They see themselves as the good guys, part of the solution.

As is frequently emphasized in debates around allyship, claiming to be an ally does not make one an ally. Allyship requires time and effort. People have to work at it. Much of the written and video work on allyship is thus instructional, often appearing as a how-to guide or a list of pointers—how to be an ally, the dos and don’ts of allyship, and so on.  The instructions for being a good ally are mini lifestyle manuals, techniques for navigating (but not demolishing) settings of privilege and oppression. Individuals can learn what not to say and what not to do. They can feel engaged without any organized political struggle at all. The “politics” in these allyship how-tos consists of interpersonal interactions, individual feelings, and mediated affects.

The pieces on how to be a good ally that circulate online (as blog posts, videos, editorials, and course handouts) address the viewer or reader as an individual with a privileged identity who wants to operate in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed. This potential ally is positioned as wanting to know what they can do right now, on their own, and in their everyday lives to combat racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression. The ally’s field of operation is often imagined as social media (in knowing the right way to respond to racist or homophobic remarks on Twitter, for example); as charitable contribution (in donating to and setting up GoFundMe campaigns); as professional interaction (in hiring the marginalized and promoting the oppressed); as conversations at one’s school or university (in knowing what not to say); and, sometimes, as street-level protests (in not dominating someone else’s event). Even more often, the ally’s own individual attitude and behavior is what is targeted. The how-to guide instructs allies on how to feel, think, and act if they want to consider themselves as people who are on the side of the oppressed. Their awareness is what needs to change.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/from-allies-to-comrades/

From allies to comrades

Note: Following the original publication of this article, Alex Saab was extradited to Miami on October 16th 2021, and remains in prison awaiting an appeal.

On March 18, The Cape Verde Supreme Court approved the extradition of Venezuelan government envoy Alex Saab to the United States. Saab was en route to Iran to secure food and medicine deals for Venezuelan public programs last year when he was arrested in Cape Verde, at the request of the U.S. government under Donald Trump. He has been imprisoned in Cape Verde since June 2020. Saab is appealing the extradition.

The arrest of Saab is part of the U.S. government’s larger attack on Venezuela’s CLAP (Local Committees for Supply and Production) food distribution program. It is also a blatant violation of national sovereignty spanning several continents as the U.S. demands the right to arrest anyone, anywhere, for pursuing economic development free of U.S. dictates.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationnews.org/extradition-of-alex-saab-u-s-takes-effort-to-starve-venezuelans-to-new-lows/

Extradition of Alex Saab: U.S. takes effort to starve Venezuelans to new lows

According to the United Nations Population Fund’s 2009 report, 2008 was the first time in history that over 50 percent of the world’s population resided in cities instead of rural areas. Because of the different ways countries define cities, others date the qualitative shift to as recently as 2021. Regardless, across the spectrum it’s undisputed we now live in an “urban age” and, as such, transforming the relationship between cities and the natural world is essential for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The international capitalist institutions like the World Bank that are increasingly taking up the issue of cities and climate change can’t explain the various factors behind urbanization nor can they pose real solutions to its impact on or relationship to climate catastrophes. Cities consume 78 percent of the world’s energy resources and produce 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2022 UN Habitat report. Under the capitalist model, urban planning lacks a holistic approach, leaving human well being and ecological needs as an afterthought, which will continue to have a degenerative effect on the environment and global climate.

Marx and Engels lived during a time in which capitalist urbanization was a nascent phenomenon concentrated mostly in some European cities, like Manchester, the English city about which Friedrich Engels wrote his first and classic book, The Condition of the Working Class in England. Engels demonstrates how the “great town” of Manchester, the first major manufacturing center in England, was great only for capitalist profits. The concentration of capital required for the invention and adoption of machinery outproduced independent handicraft and agricultural production, forcing both into the industrial proletariat of the city. There, they had to work for the capitalists, whose wages were so low they could, if they were lucky, live in overcrowded houses and neighborhoods just outside the city limits. Because the city was produced chaotically for capitalist profits, no attention was given to accompanying environmental impacts. As the masses were driven from their land into the urban factories, the ancestral ties to the land and ecological knowledge of how to live sustainably on that land was lost.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/capitalist-urbanization-sponge-cities/

Capitalist urbanization, climate change, and the need for sponge cities

Hearing or reading about the “contradictions of capitalism” in an article or at a rally might be intimidating, like a foreign language or a term only a certain group can understand. While the contradictions of capitalism are complicated, working and oppressed people can easily understand them for the simple reason that we all live with and negotiate any number of contradictions every day. The contradictions we deal with that are the most confining, that most constrain our capacities and that keep us oppressed are specifically the contradictions of capitalism.

On any given day, we find abundant evidence that makes it clear that the capitalist system doesn’t work in practice. Examining the contradictions of capitalism and demonstrating how they are inherent in the system, proves that capitalism doesn’t even work in theory. Understanding capitalist contradictions heightens our agitation and accelerates political consciousness by cutting through capitalist ideology and the various excuses of capitalists, politicians, and their media. Knowing capitalist contradictions better informs our tactics and strategies in any given struggle and serves as a bridge to socialist reconstruction in the U.S.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/capitalist-contradictions-and-revolutionary-struggle-an-introduction/

Capitalist contradictions and revolutionary struggle: An introduction

Liberation News is republishing the following article originally posted in 2014 to answer the lies spread by the U.S. government and its loyal corporate media outlets about China on the anniversary of the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square.

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Twenty-five years ago today, every U.S. media outlet, along with then President Bush and the U.S. Congress were whipping up a full scale frenzied hysteria and attack against the Chinese government for what was described as the cold-blooded massacre of many thousands of non-violent “pro-democracy” students who had occupied Tiananmen Square for seven weeks.

The hysteria generated about the Tiananmen Square “massacre” was based on a fictitious narrative about what actually happened when the Chinese government finally cleared the square of protestors on June 4, 1989.

The demonization of China was highly effective. Nearly all sectors of U.S. society, including most of the “left,” accepted the imperialist presentation of what happened.

At the time the Chinese government’s official account of the events was immediately dismissed out of hand as false propaganda. China reported that about 300 people had died in clashes on June 4 and that many of the dead were soldiers of the Peoples Liberation Army. China insisted that there was no massacre of students in Tiananmen Square and in fact the soldiers cleared Tiananmen Square of demonstrators without any shooting.i

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/

Tiananmen Square: the massacre that wasn't

The current period is the most favorable for socialists in the United States in decades. Against the backdrop of the Great Recession, waves of activity around the Occupy Movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Bernie Sanders campaign have produced a profound radicalization in political attitudes across society. Socialism is viewed favorably by close to half of the population and a substantial section of young people are sympathetic towards communism and Marxism.

The key challenge facing revolutionaries in this moment is how to convert this explosion in pro-socialist consciousness into an organized force in society. While this includes the rapidly-expanding ranks of new cadre who are dedicating their lives to the cause of socialist revolution, a real organized force in society will draw its strength from the tens of millions of people who suffer the profound injustices of the capitalist system and are searching for an alternative. This base, or potential base, for the socialist movement can be found primarily amongst the 140 million poor people in this country.

As communists and other radicals across the country grapple with this question, the concept of dual power has rightfully become a topic of considerable interest and debate. However, the working definition of dual power used by organizations and individuals is often so broad and general that it renders the term practically useless. As such, it is important to disentangle the concepts and history bound up in these discussions in order to think clearly about the way forward for those fighting for revolutionary change.

Read the full article: https://liberationschool.org/dual-power-and-revolution/

Dual power, base building, and serving the people in the U.S. Revolutionary Movement

Marxist theory cannot sustain itself. If relegated to academia, it will lose its revolutionary vitality. Elementary Marxist conceptions, elementary in the sense that they were accepted by advanced working-class forces throughout the world for many decades, are now virtually unknown. The link or legacy of Marxist theory has been snapped, broken, and a new generation of activists and fighters are unfamiliar with the core features of the theory.

According to Lenin, the success of Bolshevism was premised on two features: (1) the assimilation of Marxist theory as the “granite foundation” and (2) that the party and its cadres “went through fifteen years of practical history (1903-17) unequalled anywhere in the world in its wealth of experience.” (from “Left-Wing” Communist, an Infantile Disorder, quoted more extensively below)

We cannot snap our fingers and create the varied succession of different forms of the movement, such as was experienced by the Bolsheviks during those 15 years. The stages and circumstances of struggle are created not by a vanguard organization, but by objective conditions outside of the control of any political organization. Our comrades are going through different experiences. They are learning. They are not simply involved in agitation or propaganda, but are in fact accumulating critically necessary organizational experiences and skills. But the period we have been living through inside the United States does not approximate the intensity that the Bolsheviks experienced between 1903 and 1917. Again, that is outside the control of any organization.

What is in our control is our capacity to review, learn, and comprehensively understand and promote Marxist theory as it applies to the struggles that are taking place inside the United States and around the world. Many people underestimate the central significance of theory or think that the questions of theory should be left in the hands of a small number of people, but in the Leninist conception, and according to the organizational principles of Leninism, the role played by theory is central.

Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolution.

Read the full article: https://liberationschool.org/theory-and-revolution-addressing-the-break-of-ideological-continuity/

Theory and revolution: Addressing the break of ideological continuity

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