Former leader Raul Castro with Miguel Diaz-Canel, now First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba

USA yearning to re-conquer former island casino

On 21 April, the Washington Post published an opinion: “The Castros are finally gone. The U.S. should end the Cuba embargo and open the gates.” The opinion, penned by Kathleen Parker, fairly drools at the prospect (a prospect that is only an invention of imperialism’s own misguided hopes) of getting US companies and goods into Cuba to ravage the Marxist island state and its people. Continue reading “USA yearning to re-conquer former island casino”

Victory Day Parade on Red Square, May 9th, 2021

Putin pays tribute to Soviet veterans at Victory Day parade

The following speech was given by President Vladimir Putin of the Russia Federation on 9th May, 2021, at the parade marking the 76th Anniversary of the Soviet victory over fascism in Red Square, Moscow.

“Dear friends, this year, we are marking the 80th anniversary since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.  The 22nd June 1941 is one of the most tragic pages in our history.

The enemy attacked our country. That enemy came to our land to kill, sow death and suffering. That enemy wanted to topple the political regime and the Soviet system, and they also wanted to exterminate our state, our nation; to wipe out from the map our different ethnic groups.

But we answered the call of duty. Our nation wanted to do everything to defeat or crush the enemy so that those perpetrators could face justice.

Continue reading “Putin pays tribute to Soviet veterans at Victory Day parade”

Biden the red is at the door of the White House with a manifesto similar to the 1936 Soviet Constitution! The American ruling class is shaking!

The political illiteracy of the US election campaigns

Biden the red is at the door of the White House with a manifesto similar to the 1936 Soviet Constitution! The American ruling class is shaking! 

American political life can easily be summed up by this maxim: to the right, always further to the right. When a politician like Sanders tries to move the cursor slightly to the center to respond to the ever-increasing demands for equality of an American population asphyxiated by an establishment of unparalleled voracity, he is immediately labeled a bloodthirsty communist. Continue reading “The political illiteracy of the US election campaigns”

Happy 99th Birthday To The Communist Party Of China!

In celebration this week of the 99th birthday of the Communist Party of China, we send our warmest comradely greetings to the cadres working hard to drive China forward to a moderately prosperous socialist society, the task entrusted to them through the programme of the party.

Socialist and anti-imperialist states have always been subjected to slanders and accusations by the imperialist press and academia. The endless clamour about ‘human rights abuses’ is a tired old technique for deceiving people. As Malcolm X once said: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Continue reading “Happy 99th Birthday To The Communist Party Of China!”

Everything Turning Point USA Tells You About Cuba Is A Lie

In February of 2020 a video titled ‘Everything You’ve Ever Seen About Cuba Is A Lie’ was posted to YouTube and made the rounds on various social media platforms. Across these platforms, it has been viewed -at the time of writing this article- around 703,625 times in total. The description of the video outlines its basic premise, in which there is no attempt whatsoever of hiding its obvious bias: Continue reading “Everything Turning Point USA Tells You About Cuba Is A Lie”

Sheffield’s Twin City Uses Former Soviet Name.

Denis Pushilin, The Leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has signed a decree issued by the authorities in the region to use Donetsk’s former Soviet name: Stalino.

“I hereby decide to provide the name “the city of Stalino” with a status of Donetsk symbol. It is to be used in Republican and city events to commemorate important dates of Donetsk and WWII history.” — Denis Pushilin

The name Stalino will be used on May 9, the day of the victory in World War II, on June 22, the day of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union and on September 8, which is the day of the liberation of the city from the Nazis.

Donetsk was named Stalin in March 1924, two months after the death of Soviet leader Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin). “The [local] Executive Committee believes the symbol characterizing our great leader, comrade Lenin will be ‘steel’ [or ‘stal’ in Russian] and decided that the city of Yuzovka should be renamed the city of Stalin, and the district and the factory — Stalinsky,” say documents of a plenary meeting of Yuzovka’s District Executive Committee on March 8, 1924, protocol №7. In 1929, its name was modified and became Stalino.

In 1961, Nikita Krushchev, as part of his ‘de-Stalinisation’ attempts to discredit and revise the reputation of former general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and the Bolsheviks, he gave the city a new name — Donetsk. The city was originally named Yuzovka in recognition of Welsh businessman John Hughes who in 1869 founded a steel plant and several coal mines in the region. The city today remains a center for coal mining and for the steel industry.

Why does this matter to the people of Sheffield? During the 1980s the city of Sheffield had a municipal council administration nicknamed People’s Republic of South Yorkshire or the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire. The council pursued a social policy radically different from that of Margaret Thatcher’s national government, following more closely along the lines of the Trotskyist Militant tendency dominated Liverpool City Council and the Greater London Council led by Ken Livingstone. Sheffield City Council constructed large council estates with large numbers of communal blocks of flats based on the streets in the sky philosophy, including the Park Hill complex, and the borough councils of South Yorkshire set up an extensive network of subsidised transport under the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive.

The councils also took more confrontational steps against the Conservative Westminster government. Sheffield refused to set a budget in the rate-capping rebellion, while South Yorkshire declared itself a nuclear-free zone and a demilitarized zone. Even flying the red flag from the council buildings on May Day. During this period of government, the city signed a peace treaty with the city of Donetsk in the Ukrainian SSR and made Donetsk a twin city of Sheffield because of each city’s shared history in the Coal & Steel industry, And to send a message to the government in Westminster: Sheffield Stands with the USSR!

The National Union of Mineworkers moved to headquarters in Sheffield in 1983 in the run-up to the decisive 1984–85 miners’ strike and the area subsequently became one of the main centers of the strike.

Donetsk adopting its former soviet name, even if just for a few days a year shows just how important the legacy of the USSR, Lenin & Stalin is to worker’s liberation and self-determination. We support the DPR in its fight against Fascism, Nato, and Western Imperialism — Much like the Peoples Republic and city of Sheffield did in the 1980s. We are committed to real socialist politics in Britain!

RED SALUTE!

Condemn the coup in Bolivia!

Red Youth and the CPGB-ML strongly condemn the coup that took place yesterday, 10 November, in Bolivia, where army chiefs forced the elected President Evo Morales to resign, with a warrant for his arrest being issued a few hours afterwards.  The apparent leader of the coup is a prominent representative of wealthy Santa Cruz capitalists, bible thumper Luis Fernando Camacho, and its organisers have during the past few days been sending fascist gangs around the country to terrorise members of the government and of the party of government, the Movimiento al Socialismo and their families, while the army and police have sided with the perpetrators of the coup as they did in 1975 in Chile when the popular elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown under the direction of US imperialism.

We send greetings to President Evo Morales of Bolivia and wish to express our Party’s support for him as President of his country and for his right to occupy that position, earned through tireless and intelligent labour to improve the living conditions of the Bolivian masses over the last 13 years.  In our Party’s view he remains the legitimate elected President of his country notwithstanding his forced resignation, and certainly has every right to stand to be re-elected in the re-run of the presidential elections which he has called at the request of the treacherous US-controlled Organisation of American States which without producing a shred of evidence questioned the validity of the results of the 20 October presidential election won by President Morales by a wide margin.  However, it is now clear he will be prevented from standing, if indeed the elections are held at all.

With the backing of his Party, the Movimiento al Socialismo, Evo Morales has been exceptionally successful in achieving his aims, as even his enemies are forced to acknowledge.  This, for instance, is what the Washington Post has written:

“… 13 years after his Movement for Socialism won at the ballot box, it’s indisputable that Bolivians , are healthier, wealthier, better educated, living longer and more equal than at any time in this South American nation’s history.…

“Using cash from the natural gas industry wrung from foreign investors — most of whom nevertheless remained profitable and have stayed in Bolivia — Morales’s government lifted up neighborhoods such as Huancané, an enclave of more than 3,000 working-class indigenous people transformed by government investment.

“With new stone roads, the neighborhood is now accessible by minibus, connecting residents to the world’s highest mass transit system — the aerial cable cars.”

Until Morales came to power vast amounts of Bolivia’s wealth was channelled towards imperialist multinationals by well-rewarded local magnates.  Under Morales’ leadership the Bolivian people were able to put a stop to this daylight robbery so that a far greater proportion of the country’s wealth could be directed towards benefiting the masses of the people.  Social spending by the government has reduced extreme poverty by more than half. Roads, schools and hospitals have been built throughout the country and welfare funds are distributed to help the most vulnerable. Per capita income has increased three-fold, and social inequality has diminished dramatically.  At the same time the economy has grown at twice the rate of the Latin American average.

It is no wonder then that the Morales government is highly popular with the people of Bolivia, especially the indigenous population who had previously never had the opportunities they have now to lift themselves out of poverty and backwardness.

Of course, the Morales government has never been popular with the imperialists at whose expense the Bolivian people have been thriving. US imperialism has tirelessly throughout Morales’s tenure of office sought to mobilise disaffected sections of Bolivian society – the compradors and their hangers-on who have of course lost out under the new dispensation – to try to bring about regime change, so far with no success.

However, as a capitalist economy, that of Bolivia is not exempt from the ravages of the world economic crisis, and it is a fact that demand has been falling for Bolivia’s main exports, especially gas, resulting in price reductions on the world market and reduced government income.  Imperialism has seized upon those aggrieved by the necessary consequences of this to renew its efforts at regime change.  Although the compradors and the aggrieved  together are only a minority of the population, they are, with the covert backing of imperialist NGOs, able to threaten the country’s normal functioning with violent demonstrations, involving the destruction of government property and acts of extreme violence against government supporters, including the burning of their homes.

In response to this, millions of Bolivian people have come out on the streets to demonstrate their support for their government and for their President, which needless to say receives little attention from the imperialist media who prefer to focus on the mayhem caused by the counter-revolutionary forces.

There is no doubt that were imperialism able to re-impose on Bolivia a government servile to imperialist interests the Bolivian people will stand to lose all or most of what they have gained in the last 13 years.  For this reason we say: Hands of Bolivia!  Respect the result of the October 20 election.  No interference in the re-run election. Let the Bolivian masses be their own election monitors!  Bolivian wealth for the Bolivian people!

 

Venezuela condemned the coup in the strongest possible terms:

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela categorically repudiates and denounces before the international community grotesque coup d’etat perpetrated in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, against their constitutional president, Evo Morales Ayma, his government and the vast majority of the humble, noble and hardworking Bolivian people.

Throughout three weeks since the electoral day of last Sunday, October 20, a sophisticated operation carried out by radical racist sectors of the political opposition, private media, the US embassy and the Organization of American States (OAS), has sought to cast Bolivian society back into times of dictatorships and neoliberal policies, to privatize the natural resources of the Bolivian people and submit it to the designs of the White House and transnational corporations.

The international community must not remain impassive in the face of this outrage against democracy and the institutions of a country, whose government for almost fourteen years has guaranteed social peace, driven by remarkable economic growth, which is the result of the rescue of national sovereignty over natural resources, which has made it possible to guarantee the cohesion and social inclusion of its population, historically discriminated and fractured.

President Nicolás Maduro, the Bolivarian Government and the Venezuelan People, accompany the sister people of Bolivia in the current struggles for the defence of their sovereignty, their democracy and their right to live in peace, demanding that the coup sectors depose their violent behaviour and the forced seizure of institutions, respect the physical integrity and life of the public servants who are being harassed, including President Evo Morales and his government team, as well as citizens who demonstrate in support of the constitutional government.

Venezuela will always accompany the people of Bolivia, land of heroic resistance of Tupac Katari; favourite daughter of El Libertador Simón Bolívar, created and founded by Marshal of Ayacucho, Antonio José de Sucre; free and independent homeland of Our America.

Bolton barks, Trump bites: Venezuela under total US embargo

Red Youth adds our signature to the following statement in support of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela and President Nicolás Maduro:

On Monday 5 August US President Trump signed an executive order placing an embargo on the government of Venezuela, in effect placing an embargo on the whole of Venezuela. After the failed attempted coup of Juan Guaidó earlier this year, which was backed by the US, Venezuela now joins the likes of Cuba, Iran, Korea, and Syria as a recipient of the most extreme and damaging economic warfare.

Despite the abject failure of the coup, thanks to the steadfast determination of the Venezuelan people and their military to resist US imperialism, the US regime is still desperate to find some alleviation from the global crisis of capitalism, whether through economic or military methods.

Although temporarily set back by the disruptive nature of the Trump administration, US imperialists have nevertheless ploughed on with their machinations across the globe, provoking Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, supporting the beginnings of a colour revolution in Hong Kongscrapping the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, and of course the ongoing assault on Venezuela.

John Bolton, the US’s national security advisor and one of the key war hawks of the Trump administration, also took the opportunity to threaten Russia and China when speaking in Lima, telling them that supporting Venezuela “could affect repayment of their debt after Maduro falls.”

Unable to learn a lesson from their bloody nose in Syria, where US-backed terrorists have been largely defeated by the Syrian Arab Army and their allies (including Russia and Iran), the US is continuing to support the farcical claim that Juan Guaidó is the president of Venezuela, the flimsiest of pretences under which to turn the economic screws and threaten military action.

Even the UN Human Rights office, which is no friend of Venezuela, has released a statement expressing deep concern that the sanctions could exacerbate the crisis Venezuela is already experiencing due to sanctions and sabotage, leading to life-threatening shortages of food and medicine.

The US is determined to make Venezuelans suffer. Their crime? Using their natural resources to better the lives of their people, building homes and schools, redistributing land, expanding healthcare, reducing extreme poverty, ensuring jobs are available, and reducing dependency on imports for food and other necessities.

Venezuela is a clear example of the threat posed to the ruling class by simply trying to provide for the working class rather than the ultra-wealthy.

It is the billionaires who have companies spanning the globe, who sail on multi-million pound yachts to their multi-million pound houses on multi-million pound private islands, who demand that the Venezuelan working class (and the American, and the British, and the rest of the world) live in poverty and squalor, and, if needs be, are shot and bombed to remind them of their place in the world.

The global economic crisis, however, draws them into more and more precarious positions. Needing to constantly increase their profits to remain on top they rampage across the world: looting, extorting, polluting, and killing. However, they now find resistance to their global hegemony not seen since the destruction of the Soviet Union, and are as such are seriously flirting with war against China and Russia.

Venezuela will not be an easy stepping stone on the path to WWIII though. Her people are loyal, armed, organised, and educated through years of struggle, and she is supported by many nations, large and small, across the world.

The undersigned call upon all progressive people and organisations to stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people and their government, led by President Maduro and the PSUV, against imperialist aggression, and to demand an end to the embargo and the sanctions!

Venezuela’s defeat will be our defeat, Venezuela’s victory will be our victory! Venceremos!

We invite organisations and individuals who support a free and independent Venezuela to sign this statement of solidarity by emailing info@cpgb-ml.org.

We invite organisations and individuals who support a free and independent Venezuela to sign this statement of solidarity by emailing info@cpgb-ml.org.

Signed:

Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
Indian Workers Association (GB)
Red Youth
Stalin Society
Ethera Api UK – Hendry G Wickramaratne (secretary)

 

Below we reproduce a statement from the government of Venezuela regarding the blockade:

The Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounces to the international community a new and serious aggression by the Trump administration through arbitrary actions of economic terrorism against the people of Venezuela. Washington has issued another Executive Order that seeks to formalize the criminal economic, financial and commercial blockade already under way, which has caused severe injuries within Venezuelan society in recent years, and whose sole objective is to asphyxiate the Venezuelan people and to force an unconstitutional change of government in the country, in open violation of the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations.

This decision by the ruling elite in the United States intends to grant legal form to the blockade of all the assets and properties of the Venezuelan State, thus constituting the most grotesque and brazen looting of which there is a record in the contemporary history of international relations. As if the illegal robbery of Citgo and the Venezuelan diplomatic headquarters were not enough, the White House and its allies seek new opportunities and resources to usurp and loot what belongs to the more than 30 million Venezuelans.

The international community must take into consideration that it takes much more than a supremacist tycoon who is in the midst of an election campaign, or an out- dated warmongering hawk, obsessed and desperate not to lose his job, to undo the libertarian work initiated by the Liberator Simón Bolívar and resumed in the 21st century by Commander Hugo Chávez.

With its renewed interventionist actions, it is clearly evident that the United States government and its allies are committed to the failure of political dialogue in Venezuela. They fear its results and benefits. In this sense, the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela will not allow this biased escalation of aggressions to affect the processes of political dialogue in the country, and confirms its unwavering will to reach national agreements in different dimensions, to further strengthen our democracy and guarantee the people’s right to live in peace.

Before the imperialist attack, President Nicolás Maduro ratifies his call to unity of all Venezuelans, to confront economic and political terrorism in this new phase. The national civic military unity is essential to firmly and patriotically walk the road that irrevocably upholds the independent character of Venezuela, overcoming together any obstacle that stands in the way of defending the country and its sacred national sovereignty.

Caracas, August 6 2019.

 

Read more: Red Youth solidarity with Venezuela

Friedrich Engels: founder of scientific socialism

Today is the anniversary of the death of Friedrich Engels, who, along with his comrade Karl Marx, was one of the fathers of scientific socialism.

Engels dedicated his life to the communist cause, and contributed immensely to the development of scientific socialism with invaluable works such as Anti-Dühring, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Dialectics of Nature, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

He also participated in the revolutionary uprisings against the Prussian state in 1848-49, writing incendiary articles and supplying arms.

Although an intellectual giant in his own right, Engels is best known for his lifelong support of and collaboration with Marx, co-authoring the Communist Manifesto, editing Capital, and promoting communism in the First International.

Despite the best efforts of the bourgeoisie to misinterpret and manipulate his work, one simply has to read Engel’s own words to understand his ideas:

“A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois?”
– On Authority, 1872

Do yourself and the working class a favour: read Engels!

Qoute from Engels: "Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends."

100th Anniversary of the October Revolution: Join us in Southall on Saturday 4th November!

On the 100th anniversary of the great Socialist October Revolution, join us to celebrate the victorious struggles of the mass working class. We will come together to celebrate this working-class revolution, which literally shook the world, and still indicates the path we must take to shatter all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation! We will be holding THE centenary celebration of this festival of progressive humanity in Southall, west London, on Saturday 4th November, at 4.30pm.

Venue: The Dominion Centre, 112 The Green, Southall UB2 4BQ

Map

Get your ticket here

Read more about the October Revolution here

At this meeting, we will bring together members and supporters from around the country and mark the continued development and growth of our organisation, while reminding ourselves of just what it is we are working towards.

Lenin and 1917: a new era

Over the years, the speakers at our meetings have examined in great detail all the most important aspects of the October Revolution. They have paid tribute to the men and women workers who carried out the revolution, and to the leading role of the Bolshevik party – the revolutionary organisation in whose footsteps we hope to follow, which enabled the workers to understand their enemy and to organise themselves to defeat it.

Importantly, in the present climate, our speakers have repeatedly stressed the vital role played by revolutionary theory – especially the immense theoretical contribution of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who advanced Marxist science by adding to it a precise definition of imperialism (the final stage of decaying capitalism) and who detailed the ways in which imperialism affects the struggle of workers and peasants of all countries for their liberation and social emancipation.

It was Comrade Lenin who created the template for a revolutionary party, working out in the furnace of intense class struggle the essential elements of communist organisation that enabled workers to make their efforts effective. All parties that are serious about overthrowing capitalism and building socialism still follow these organisational tenets today.

Lenin was also a master of strategy and tactics. He solved many important questions, such as the peasant question and the national question, by clearly and precisely explaining their relationship to the socialist revolution. He demonstrated the need for the proletariat to maximise its forces by galvanising as many allies for each phase of the struggle as possible, and showed how it was both possible and necessary to take on the various enemies of socialism one at a time rather than all together.

Unlike Trotsky and his modern-day followers, Lenin did not play at revolution, and was not at all interested in heroic failures. He understood that what was at stake was nothing less than the future of humanity, and he taught the working class how to think and act so it could win.

Read more!