"The party’s successes against security forces and its redistribution of land, coupled with its fierce resistance to big mining companies, has won support among deprived and alienated sections of society." Unfortunately the Maoists have an antagonistic contradiction with our comrades in the CPI-M when it should be the case that all parties fighting under the banners of Marxism-Leninism at most should have only non-antagonistic contradictions and be able to resolve them and to cooperate in the overthrow of capitalism. Just such antagonistic contradictions in the past between the USSR and PRC destroyed the unity of the world Communist and Workers Parties and allowed US Imperialism and it allies to become, for the time being, the dominant hegemonic world power. The two Communist Parties in Nepal, originally hostile, resolved their contradictions in a comradely fashion, merged, and now rule in that country. I hope this is a lesson learned by others: unity of the revolutionary forces and their allies, not sectarian bickering and hostility, is the road to victory victory.
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Friday, June 12, 2020
Why General Milley Apologizes for Role in Trump Photo Op.
During his speech on Thursday, General Milley, after expressing his disgust over the video of the killing of Mr. Floyd, spoke at length about the issue of race, both in the military and in civilian society. “The protests that have ensued not only speak to his killing, but also to the centuries of injustice toward African-Americans. What we are seeing is the long shadow of our original sin in Jamestown 401 years ago, liberated by the Civil War, but not equal in the eyes of the law until 100 years later in 1965.”
Such a statement from the head of the greatest imperialist military force in history needs to be seen in context. It shows that Trump's incompetence and idiocy has alienated the armed forces and exposed, to even the most thick headed of his supporters, his absolute unfitness to be president. It also shows the anti-racist and progressive demands of the the current people's movement for fundamental changes to abolish institutional racism has registered in the consciousness of the highest levels of the ruling class.
This ruling class controls a vast imperialist economic empire that bestrides the globe and extracts the wealth of the planet from sucking out the financial and natural resources of lesser developed countries in the global south and in dominating the economies of the most economically advanced capitalist regimes with whom it is allied.
It faces three challenges to its world domination: 1) growing resistance of Third World peoples who still pose a threat of revolutionary resistance; 2) the rising power of socialist China posing an alternative model to the capitalist domination of the world's economy; 3) the mishandling of its relations with semi-democratic capitalist Russia which has pushed that country to ally with China and give support to progressive Third World opposition to the US - thus unintentionally reviving progressive aspects of the former foreign policies of the Soviet Union.
US foreign policy is basically founded on the threat of military intervention in the last analysis if other methods to impose its will fail, and maintaining the expenses of the military industrial complex, which drains the wealth of the country away from social programs benefiting the American people, can only be sustained as long as the American people are unaware of the US role in the world and basically accept through their passivity, in one way or another, the status quo imposed by the ruling class. Trump is upsetting this status quo and the military's future is dependent on its being seen by the people as being able to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, and provide for the common defence. It's real use is to be a tool of imperialism for the conquest and domination of foreign peoples and to hide this is the real objective meaning of General Milley's speech, whatever sincere subjective feelings he may or may not entertain. No justice, no peace, no status quo, no imperialist interventions or wars.
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
People's Uprising Against Police Fascism
The ruling class has funded this national police culture of violence and racism and now the people must reclaim the streets from the fascist thugs who have taken over police departments through the nation. The police must be defunded, demilitarized, and where necessary demobilized and the neo-fascist political machine run by Trump and the Republican Party along with his Democratic allies driven from office. The future of democracy in this country depends on this growing natio
nal people's movement to abolish the current fascist and racist policing system and replace it by community policing under the control of local neighborhoods and communities and not controlled by politicians beholden to the imperialist monopoly capitalist ruling class 1% which controls the financial and industrial resources of the USA. The news story below reveals the extent to which the fascist political virus has corrupted our society and the police. This is a do or die moment for democracy.
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Philosophy, Open Borders, and Ethics
So, every human in the Western Hemisphere today is an immigrant or a descendent of immigrants and this bond of common humanity and origins should not be trounced by the narrow minded racism and ignorance of those trying to divide and separate our commonality by the cultural and linguistic differences between us that have arisen through the accidents of history. This article shows that humans have moved around the world continuously since our origins in Africa and these movements are the natural outcomes of our common human struggles with nature in adversity or prosperity.
The implication is that those who have prospered should always help and aid those who have not since both conditions are the results of the existential fortuitousness of human life and this recognition is the highest achievement of philosophical ethics and consequent moral obligation. It is manifested politically, at this time in our country, in the current program of the CPUSA and in the call for open borders internationally and the end of all forms of intra human oppression.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Russian Constitutional Reforms
"Mr. Putin emphasized that the legislation allowing him to run again would have to be approved by Russia’s Constitutional Court. The legislation would also be part of the package of constitutional amendments to be voted on in a previously scheduled nationwide plebiscite on April 22." The collapse of the Soviet Union was an absolute disaster for the ordinary citizens of that country as the economic upheavals and anarchy of the 90s and incompetent Yeltsin government attests. Putin's government did in fact bring about stability and economic betterment to the vast majority of Russians and is still the basis of his widespread popularity despite a vibrant if small opposition movement including a
Communist Party in the Duma. The attempt by the new Russian ruling class to create a parliamentary capitalist democracy based on western European models has proven to be extremely problematic given the history of the Soviet Union and Putin is correct to stress that evolutionary developments in this direction are a continued necessity and probably require a stable temporary continuity of the present mixture of a strong presidential regime restrained by a semblance of popular control through parliament and by means of the Constitutional Court. The fact that the Russian people must approve of Putin's reforms by means of a national election is proof that the ideals of bourgeois democratic government are alive and well in Russia despite whatever historical constraints they still face. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation will, hopefully, continue to play a positive role in representing the working class and laying the foundations for a revival of socialism in Russia in the coming years.
Monday, March 9, 2020
Krugman & Piketty versus Marx
A good review for activists which will save us from having to go through a slough of 1000 pages of undigested speculation. As far as Marx versus Piketty is concerned Piketty admitted re his first book that he never read Marx! Krugman's review also indicates problems with understanding Marx: “In Marxian dogma, a society’s class structure is determined by underlying, impersonal forces, technology and the modes of production that technology dictates. Piketty, however, sees inequality as a social phenomenon, driven by human institutions.”— Sorry Dr Krugman, but Marx says that class structure is conditioned by human social institutions and is a product of historical development not determined by impersonal forces but by a dialectical interaction between material forces and human responses the most important of which is, with regard to the modes (means) of production the historically constituted social relations of production i.e., class relations involving who owns and controls the means of production. Piketty’s view “Inequality is neither economic nor technological; it is ideological and political.”- is only half right and represents the idealistic non materialistic flaws of bourgeois economics. The truth is Marx’s view that the inequality intrinsic to capitalism is a product of the interaction between economic and technological forces and the ideological and political forces engendered by this interaction.
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Philosophy of Life: We are all one (and hungry)
What makes a person a person is a sense of self (self-consciousness) i.e., a feeling of identity and having memories and an internal narrative and all this is conditioned by, or a function of, the hippocampus, when we find that the proteins and chemicals associated with self-consciousness show up in other forms of life we cannot rule out the possibility these life forms are similar to us —i.e., they are self-consciousness personalities in their own right. These chemicals show up in the brains of crabs, shrimp, lobsters, insects and “other arthropods, including centipedes, millipedes and some arachnids. Even vertebrates, including humans, have them in a brain structure called the hippocampus, a known center for memory and learning.” According to the lead scientist in this study: "Corresponding brain centers -- the mushroom body in arthropods, marine worms, flatworms and, possibly, the hippocampus of vertebrates -- appear to have a very ancient origin in the evolution of animal life.” We are all living unique personal selves, and we eat each other.
"All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all."
Bon appétit !
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all."
Bon appétit !
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