I have begun reading Wang Huning's America Against America and there's one section where he talks about the intial colonization of the Americas and the difference between settler colonies and enslavement colonies. He cites Li Qiren's argument that the native americans were expelled and exterminated because they had not reached a high enough stage of development to be worth enslaving rather than just stealing their land. Meanwhile in Asia and africa and such the societies had reached a high enough stage of development to be worth enslaving.

I hadn't really thought about it, but it is odd to me. I don't fully buy Li's argument here because of the existence of Israel. To my knowledge palestine wasnt much different materially from other Arab areas like Jordan, Iraq, etc. Obviously zionism was a genuine ideology and movement (I don't think there were many advocates for settlement of Saudi Arabia) but beyond that it feels like it should have probably followed the same playback as the othe

So, I was finishing up Lyudmilla Pavlochenko's autobiography (which I strongly reccomend), and there was one section where she met then prime Minister Winston churchill and his wife. Something I found surprising was one of her reasons as to why she was surprised to be meeting with him.

"On hearing this, we were at first bewildered. What had Soviet newspapers not written about Mr.Churchill during the pre war years! He was referred to as an inveterate enemy of the socialist order and the young workers and peasant state...He was blamed for the so called Munich Agreement with hitler and Mussolini in 1938 (although it was not churchill at all who signed it)."

It's that last sentence that confuses me. Obviously churchill was a fairly notable supporter of early Italian fascism and such, but I thought churchill was fairly famous for opposing the aforementioned Agreement (which is also what google shows, although obviously that wasn't a throughough investigation). Am I missing something or

So, in discussions about Gaddafi era Libya, people usually say it was state capitalism, from what I've seen anyway. Thats fair and I think I agree (although if you pointed a gun at me and forced me to define it, the best I could think of would be anti-colonial bonapartism, but idk). However, it does make many wonder what splits socialism from state capitalism. For instance, the soviet union under the NEP is fairly regularly called a period of "state capitalism." Bukharin is also usually labeled a right oppurtunist who was open to the Bourgeois elements of the NEP men. Conversely, China and Vietnam today are said to be "market socialist."

In terms of Gaddafi's Libya, what does make it state capitalist versus socialist? Profit motive? Commodity production?

What about post Krushchev soviet union? Was it state capitalist and social imperialist like maoists say?

I know theres not one concrete answer to this. It's not like there's a communism button you can press to confirm communis

So, I'm currently reading On Contradiction, just got done with Chapter 3

And I came across this banger "The dogmatists do not observe this principle; they do not understand that conditions differ in different kinds of revolution and so do not understand that different methods should be used to resolve different contradictions; on the contrary, they invariably adopt what they imagine to be an unalterable formula and arbitrarily apply it everywhere, which only causes setbacks to the revolution or makes a sorry mess of what was originally well done."

Mao Zedong in On Contradiction, Ch. 3, par. 8

Mao Zedong would have completely been against modern-day MLMs and saying stuff like "China is capitalist because they don't do XYZ"

So, obviously books denying the Nanjing Massacre, promoting fascism and other things are banned, but where's the general line. For instance, the book Beijing comrades is banned (although it wasn't published by an actual publishing house, rather it was distributed online), and Peacock cries was banned before the author won in court and was allowed to publish it (after removing the references to real life things like the three gorges dam).

So basically is there a concensus on what you're able to get away with or is it inconsistent with general throughlines of don't try to create disruption or interfere with irl things?

Good pamphlet, similar to "on protracted war" by Mao. Quick short except for motivation.

Concerning Defeat of “One’s Own” Government in the Imperialist War

Both the advocates of victory for their governments in the present war and the advocates of the slogan “neither victory not defeat”, equally take the standpoint of social-chauvinism. A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a reactionary war, cannot fail to see that its military reverses facilitate its overthrow. Only a bourgeois who believes that a war started by the governments must necessarily end as a war between governments and wants it to end as such, can regard as “ridiculous” and “absurd” the idea that the Socialists of all the belligerent countries should wish for the defeat of all “their” governments and express this wish. On the contrary, it is precisely a statement of this kind that would conform to the cherished thoughts of every class-conscious worker, and would be in line w

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6839496

stolen collectivized from @[email protected] on mastodon/akkoma.

Link to original post: https://social.marxist.network/@TheDialecticalCommunist/113892128990028728

The assassination of the arch-hangman Stolypin occurred at a time when a number of symptoms indicated that the first period in the history of the Russian counter-revolution was coming to an end. That is why the event of September 1, quite insignificant in itself, again raises the extremely important question of the content and meaning of the counter-revolution in Russia. One discerns notes of a really serious and principled attitude amid the chorus of reactionaries who are servilely singing the praises of Stolypin, or are rummaging in the history of the intrigues of the Black-Hundred gang which is lording it over Russia, and amid the chorus of the liberals who are shaking their heads over the “wild and insane” shot (it goes without saying that included among the liberals are the former Social-Democrats of Dyelo Zhizni who used the hackneyed expression quoted above). Attempts are being made to view “the Stolypin period” of Russian history as a definite entity.

@SovietReporter asked a really good question on c/askLemmygrad, and later on I stumbled on a text by Huey Newton that synthesises well the need for a vanguard party, so I decided to share it here for more visibility.

Choice quote from the text:

The relationship between the vanguard party and the masses is a secondary relationship. The relationship between the members of the vanguard party is a primary relationship. It is important that the members of the vanguard group maintain a face-to-face relationship with each other. This is important if the party machinery is to be effective. It is impossible to put together functional party machinery or programs without this direct relationship. The members of the vanguard group should be tested revolutionaries. This will minimize the danger of Uncle Tom informers and opportunists.

The main purpose of a vanguard group should be to raise the consciousness of t

Does anyone have it, or any similar resources for that matter? Thank you in advance.

Happy 204th birthday to Friedrich Engels, co-founder of scientific socialism and the international workers’ movement! Over 100 years of class struggle are built on Engels’ works and legacy.

Born into a bourgeois family, he committed class treason by working with his closest comrade, Karl Marx, to build the scientific foundation for a revolution that would put the workers at the top of the ruling order. Engels’ legacy is not only composed of his work at his desk but also of being a trained soldier who participated in numerous armed workers’ uprisings and survived several battles.

After the death of Marx in 1883, Engels completed the last two volumes of the flagship work “Das Kapital.” At the funeral, Engels said of Marx, “His name will live on through the centuries, and so will his work!” A few years after Engels’ death, his and Marx’s writings became the blueprint for the communist revolution in Russia that would change the world forever.

![](https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/imag

I’m currently writing an article for a newspaper and one of the subsections revolves around a societal responsibility towards propaganda; especially racial or ideologically Nazi propaganda as in the example of Jud Suß.

For this, I wanted to discuss the Soviet reaction to Protocols as the book was a product of the Russian Empire and served as a driving justification for Nazi racial propaganda, making the Soviet reaction towards the book potentially very useful to my article.

I’ve found very little information regarding this, and thought it would makes sense to ask if anyone here has any sources as to the Soviet reaction to the book or if it was banned? English or Russian would do as I can read both.

I'm looking for a good book on Chinese civics. I know the very basics of how the government's structured, but I want to go more in-depth.

So far I've found ebooks for The Government of China (Yu Bin), Chinese Politics and Government (Sujian Guo), and Understanding Chinese Politics (Neil Collins). I'm also looking to find a copy of Modern Chinese Government (Qianyou Zhang) but I'm not optimistic.

Is anyone familiar with any of these? Any recommendations?

You can read the text here. This week, we're covering everything up to but not including "War and politics". Post questions/analysis here and/or join our Matrix space.

A short set of rules that lays down in a pretty clear fashion some fundamentals of democratic centralism.

You can read the text here. Post questions/analysis here and/or join our Matrix space

A review of Banerjee's "Fighting Imperialism and Authoritarian Regimes: Between the Devil and the Deep Sea" (2003) and Salamey's "Hezbollah, Communitarianism, and Anti-Imperialism" (2019).

Highly recommend reading this one as it addresses a ton of bad faith arguments we still see to this day when it comes to actors like Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. Basically a takedown of the western pseudo-left "anti-authoritarian" argument that leftists shouldn't stand in solidarity with global south anti-imperialist forces because they are insufficiently morally pure in some way or another. They do this same shtick when it comes to Russia, Iran, DPRK, and to a certain extent China as well, always conveniently finding some leftist sounding reason to demonize precisely those forces which happen to be the Empire's greatest foes, whether it's that they're insufficiently advanced in social justice causes, or insufficiently secular, or whatever else they need to say to get naive baby leftists to align themse