On the 101st anniversary of his death, we celebrate the great contributions of Comrade VI Lenin.

He was the great Marxist thinker who reinstated the revolutionary content into Marxism and updated it for the era of imperialism. His work remains as essential as ever to all those struggling for a better world.

https://thecommunists.org/2024/01/28/news/theory/lenin-remains-guide-for-our-time/

Kiev - An Evevning Scene in 1981.

The increase in the export of capital to the colonies and dependent countries; the expansion of "spheres of influence" and colonial possessions until they cover the whole globe; the transformation of capitalism into a world system of financial enslavement and colonial oppression of the vast majority of the population of the world by a handful of "advanced" countries all this has, on the one hand, converted the separate national economies and national territories into links in a single chain called world economy, and. on the other hand, split the population of the globe into two camps: a handful of "advanced" capitalist countries which exploit and oppress vast colonies and dependencies, and the huge majority consisting of colonial and dependent countries which are compelled to wage a struggle for liberation from the imperialist yoke.

- Vladimir Lenin. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

A couple of cheeky finds.

If you're not already please follow the Class Consciousness Project which I am involved in with my comrades.

https://news.1rj.ru/str/ClassConsciousnessProject

When Sectarian Identity Threatens Survival: The Story of a Woman Who Hides Her Belonging to Preserve Her Life

In Syria, the Zainabiya abaya is no longer just a costume, but a distinguishing mark that can cost the wearer his life. A Syrian woman was forced to change her appearance for fear of sectarian persecution that threatens her and her family.

She says with regret: “The Shiites of Syria are being slaughtered genocidally, and if I wear the abaya it will cost me my life and the life of my family, and I will disappear from the face of the earth, and they burned everything related to the Shiites before our eyes.”

In a country that was once a symbol of coexistence, its future is now engulfed in the darkness of sectarianism and persecution.

When Sectarian Identity Becomes a Life-Threatening Risk: A Woman Hides Her Affiliation to Survive

In Syria, the Zaynabiyya cloak is no longer just attire; it's a deadly mark. Fearing for her life and her family's, a woman alters her appearance to avoid sectarian violence.

She says, devastated: “Syrian Shiites are being massacred, and wearing the cloak could cost us our lives. Everything linked to Shiites has been destroyed.”

Once a symbol of coexistence, Syria's future now lies in the shadows of sectarian persecution.

"Peace to the peoples!", Soviet poster, 1961

🔴 Trotsky’s Support for Fascism


Trotsky was one of the first to put Bolshevism and fascism on a par. This idea was popular in the thirties in reactionary Catholic parties. The Communist Party was their sworn enemy, the fascist party was their most important bourgeois opponent. Once again from Trotsky:

“Fascism is winning victory after victory, and his best ally is the one who makes his way around the world, this is Stalinism.”

“Indeed, nothing distinguishes Stalin’s political methods from Hitler. But the difference in results on an international scale is significant.”

“An important part of the Soviet apparatus, which is becoming more and more important, is formed from the fascists who still have to recognize themselves as such. Comparing the Soviet regime with the fascists would be a great historical mistake … But the symmetry of political superstructures and the similarity of totalitarian methods and psychological profiles are striking …

The agony of Stalinism is the most terrible and most disgusting spectacle on Earth.”

Here, Trotsky presented one of the first versions of the most important issue of propaganda by the CIA and the fascists in the 1950s, namely the topic of ‘Red Fascism’. Using the word fascism, Trotsky tried to direct the hatred that the masses felt towards the terrorist dictatorships of big capital onto Socialism. After 1944-1945, all German, Hungarian, Croatian and Ukrainian fascist leaders, who fled to the West, put on masks of “democrats”; they praised the ‘democracy’ of the USA, the new forces of hegemonism, and the main source of support for the reaction and fascist forces in the world. These ‘old” fascists, faithful to their criminal past, developed the same theme: ‘Bolshevism is the same fascism, but even worse.’

Further, we note that by the time European fascism had already begun its wars (in Ethiopia and Spain, the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia), Trotsky insisted that ‘the worst and most disgusting performance’ on Earth was the ‘agony of socialism’!

Read the full article here:

https://otheraspect.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/trotskys-support-for-fascism/

I hate the indifferent
By Antonio Gramsci

I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the dead weight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power.

The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them. I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan.

That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.

Indifference is actually the mainspring of history. But in a negative sense. What comes to pass, either the evil that afflicts everyone, or the possible good brought about by an act of general valour, is due not so much to the initiative of the active few, as to the indifference, the absenteeism of the many. What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be. They allow the knots to form that in time only a sword will be able to cut through; they let men rise to power whom in time only a mutiny will overthrow. The fatality that seems to dominate history is precisely the illusory appearance of this indifference, of this absenteeism. Events are hatched off-stage in the shadows; unchecked hands weave the fabric of collective life – and the masses know nothing. The destinies of an epoch are manipulated in the interests of narrow horizons, of the immediate ends of small groups of activists – and the mass of citizens know nothing.

But eventually the events that are hatched come out into the open; the fabric woven in the shadows is completed, and then it seems that fatality overwhelms everything and everybody. It seems that history is nothing but an immense natural phenomenon, an eruption, an earthquake, and that we are all its victims, both those who wanted it to happen as well as those who did not, those who knew it would happen and those who did not, those who were active and those who were indifferent. And then it is the indifferent ones who get angry, who wish to dissociate themselves from the consequences, who want it made known that they did not want it so and hence bear no responsibility. And while some whine piteously, and others howl obscenely, few people, if any, ask themselves this question: had I done my duty as a man, had I sought to make my voice heard, to impose my will, would what came to pass have ever happened? But few people, if any, see their indifference as a fault – their skepticism, their failure to give moral and material support to those political and economic groups that were struggling either to avoid a particular evil or to promote a particular good. Instead such people prefer to speak of the failure of ideas, of the definitive collapse of programmes, and other like niceties. They continue in their in-indifference and their skepticism.

August 1916.

Capitalism’s gluttony knows no bounds. It churns out mountains of goods, not to meet our needs, but to line the pockets of the few. Yet, while warehouses overflow, millions go without. This is overproduction. A system that creates excess for profit while leaving people hungry, homeless, and in debt.

At the same time, wages are driven down to maximise these profits, leaving the workers unable to afford the very goods they produce. Capitalism cannot be reformed; it must be overthrown. Only revolution can install the ruling class in waiting: the workers.

Class Consciousness Project

Soviet poster “Youth of the city of Lenin! Volunteer to the front! Defend your freedom, your honor, your homeland!”, 1941

A street in the newly constructed district of Pitesti in Romania, 1968