A U.S. Imperialist Remembers Philosopher Jürgen Habermas

By Charles Andrews

Jürgen Habermas, the celebrated philosopher and “defender of humane Enlightenment values,” as the Guardian newspaper called him, died this month.

Among the flood of eulogies, one Alex Karp published a reminiscence of Habermas, under whom Karp studied in his late twenties. Karp praises Habermas because he “unsparingly derided ‘idiots’ and ‘half-idiots’ on either the right or the left” for their “inconsistent thought and a lack of intellectual rigor.” Karp’s look back consists mostly of anecdotes like this one:

Which way out of Trump hell? Liberal, Dem-Soc, or Communist?

By Charles Andrews*

The working class knows who Donald Trump is.

Masked ICE goons rip people out of their workplace, school, and home. Police club demonstrators who shout against genocide in Gaza. High schools and colleges fire teachers who let students discuss the history of Zionism. Eight hundred employees of the weather service, NOAA, are fired; when disaster strikes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cannot dispatch enough staff to the flooded or burning land. 

Trump's tariffs analyzed from a class perspective

By Charles Andrews*

The key to a capitalist economy is the state of its capital accumulation. That goes for understanding tariffs in particular.

 — U.S. tariffs were successful in the late 19th century. Capital accumulation was vigorous, and tariff protection helped develop domestic industries.

 — The 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs certainly did not help when the boom of the 1920s had already collapsed into a deep depression. Capitalism cannot evade the law of the falling rate of profit; boom turns into bust.

From Hitler to Trump, two art pieces say the truth about capitalists and the state

Here are two editorial art pieces about capitalists and the state. John Heartfield put together a montage in 1932 dramatizing that big capitalists like Fritz Thyssen, owner of United Steelworks, financed the Nazi party. Heartfield was a prolific artist, a lifelong communist, and an early member of the German Communist Party.

Ann Telnaes drew the other cartoon a week ago. Five media billionaires (Post owner Jeff Bezos, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, artificial intelligence wheeler-dealer Sam Altman, and the Disney Corporation) offer bags of money to Donald Trump. Telnaes had been a Post editorial-page cartoonist since 2008, but when her editor refused to publish this cartoon, she resigned.

Trotsky’s Comintern Conspiracy – The Case of Osip Pyatnitsky

Trotsky’s Comintern Conspiracy – The Case of Osip Pyatnitsky by Grover Furr and Vladimir L. Bobrov (2024, Erythros Press and Media, 389 pp.)

Reviewed by Charles Andrews

Osip Pyatnitsky was the secretary of the executive committee of the Communist International, often called the Comintern, from 1923 to 1935, when he was replaced by Georgi Dimitrov. Pyatnitsky’s tenure thus runs from the middle 1920s, when the Communist Party of the Soviet Union debated socialist industrialization at length and agreed on it, to the first seven years of implementing the policy.

China’s health officials look to U.S. health insurance capitalists

By Charles Andrews

U.S. and Chinese capitalism are heading to war over which power will dominate the exploitation of the world’s working people. But this antagonism does not prevent the capitalists of both countries cooperating to suck the blood of Chinese and U.S. workers.

Take the business of healthcare, for example. The American Chamber of Commerce in China brought a group of China’s health officials to the U.S. The purpose? To sell them on the profits to be made out of the Medicare Advantage ripoff.

A routine report on China's economy

By Charles Andrews

Below are excerpts from a routine report in the Western business press on China's economy. The statistics come from the PRC government.

While many U.S. congresspersons, governors, and so on denounce “communist China,” the Western business press has no problem reporting plain facts just as it does for any other capitalist country.

Multipolaristas’ Dugin maneuvers through BRICS contradiction

By Charles Andrews

Aleksander Dugin, a propagandist for Putin’s great-Russian imperialism, has had to maneuver through one of the contradictions within the BRICS association – the unity and contention between China and Russia.

Supposedly a historian and philosopher, Dugin spews reactionary filth going back to feudal times.

“Russian society is very special and needs a ‘father’ type of leader (such as a Tsar) who must also provide security assurances to the whole society.”

 

China’s Stock Market: A Lesson on What Socialism Is Not

By Charles Andrews*

Late in January, the Chinese government arranged for its state-owned companies to put as much as $282 billion into the falling stock market. The companies were told to buy via Hong Kong accounts.

The government is desperate to halt a big slide in the Shanghai Composite Index, which had fallen nearly to its March 2020 low point at the start of the COVID pandemic.

Why does a “socialist” economy have a stock market?

Joti Brar’s Tantrum About the Imperialist Pyramid

By Charles Andrews

The Institute for the Critical Study of Society (ICSS) has announced its video session for Nov. 5, 2023. Joti Brar will speak on “The Theory of the Imperialist Pyramid.” Fortunately, she has written an article on the same topic.

The ICSS’s advance announcement coyly identifies Brar as a member of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform. That she is. She is also a vice chair of the CPGB M-L and daughter of Harpal Brar, a founder of the group (be sure to include the “G” for Great Britain in order to avoid mistaking it for the CPB M-L).

Who Understands Civilization — Xi's CPC or Working People?

 By Charles Andrews*

Xi Jinping, chairman of the Communist Party of China (CPC), asks, “Without the 5,000-year-long Chinese civilization, how could we have Chinese characteristics?"(i) 

When Donald Trump visited Beijing in 2017, Xi told him, “The only continuous civilization to continue onwards is China.”(ii)

Material Forces that Turn Socialism into Capitalism

Nikita Khrushchev and Deng Xiaoping.

By Charles Andrews.

The Soviet Union and China proved that people can build socialism. They also showed that apparently firm socialist countries can fall to capitalism – from within and from the top of the communist party.

Should we give up on socialism, or shall we solve a problem: how do we keep on the communist road to a society of no rich and no poor, securing common prosperity for everyone, and with full development of our humanity in work?

Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and Xi Jinping's Report to 20th Congress

By Charles Andrews.

Facts count more than words. Xi Jinping says, "China respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries." A couple of days later, the Chinese Consul General in Manchester stepped onto UK territory outside the consulate gate. He grabbed a demonstrator from a noisy but peaceful rally, dragged him into the consulate compound, and had his staff beat the man up.

However, for those persons still wedded to evaluating the PRC by its words, let us look at how Xi Jinping's report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) uses "Marxism" and "Marxism-Leninism." His 25,000-word speech contains exactly one mention of Lenin or Leninism:

Socialism Is a Series of Communist Projects

By Charles Andrews*.

In the 1950s many workers had steady jobs with a health plan, sick leave, and annual paid vacation. They could afford to buy a home, which in parts of the country had mortgage payments as low as rent. It was a dramatic change from the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

What did tomorrow hold? The outlook was vague but good. Neither the capitalist class, its government officials, nor church leaders offered a definite vision of the future. Very few people sought out the left.

Want Democracy? Then You Need a People's Dictatorship

 By Charles Andrews.

A mob was permitted, even helped, to take over the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021. No government can allow that sort of thing and survive.

Officials and public figures ranging from social-democrats like Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez through a broad range of conventional politicians and even continuing into the right wing condemned the action as a threat to democracy.

Not Populism, Not Socialism, but Communism Will Get It Done

By Charles Andrews.

The ruling classes of developed countries get a lot of pushback these days from the masses they hold in contempt. The voters whom U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton insulted as “deplorables” went and put Donald Trump in the Oval office in 2016, daring to elect someone who was not a vetted ruler of capitalism. Then his near opposite, self-identified socialist Bernie Sanders, came back stronger than ever for the 2020 presidential primaries. Socialism has become a recognized political stance that cannot be red-baited off the stage.