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By Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party of Germany) 5 June 2017

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGPSocialist Equality Party) is participating in the Bundestag (federal parliament) elections to be held on September 24. We are standing a slate of candidates in the states of Berlin and North-Rhine Westphalia as well as constituency candidates in Frankfurt and Leipzig.

At the centre of our election campaign is a socialist programme directed against war and capitalism and expressing the interests of the working class and youth all over the world. The SGP election program provides the basis for the working class to intervene in political developments as an independent force.

The Bundestag election takes place in the midst of the deepest international crisis of capitalist society in history. The danger of a nuclear world war has never been as great as it is today. After 25 years of continual wars in the Middle East, the Balkans and North Africa, the US is preparing a direct military confrontation with the nuclear powers China and Russia. Germany and the other European powers are responding to the growth of geopolitical conflicts by increasing their own military capacity. This heightens the danger of another major war in Europe.

The current federal government coalition between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) is committed to increasing the military budget from 35 billion euros to at least 60 billion euros by 2024, while further cutting spending on education and other social needs. This is under conditions where a large portion of the population is already struggling to make ends meet. Forty percent of all workers are employed in precarious jobs and 16 percent of the population lives below the poverty level, including 2.5 million children.

All the establishment parties support this political course. None of them has anything to offer but militarism, political oppression and attacks on living standards. From the conservative CDU/CSU to the Left Party, they are implementing social cuts in both the federal and state budgets. They are all conspiring against the population and using the Bundestag election to bring a government to power that will massively increase military spending, cut social provisions and wages and establish the equivalent of a police state.

The SGP is the only party that advocates a socialist programme. All other parties calling themselves left-wing have written off the working class. They defend the banks, the big corporations, the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) and the secret services. One hundred and fifty years after the publication of Marxs Capital, capitalism is again showing its true face. Everything the great Marxists wrote about the capitalist system is once again confirmed: It is a system that inevitably leads to social inequality, war and dictatorship.

The crisis of capitalism, however, also creates the conditions for overcoming it. The SGP will use the election campaign to discuss a revolutionary programme and fight for a socialist perspective in the working class.

At the centre of the SGPs election campaign are the following demands:

The epicentre of the war danger lies in the US, which is compensating for its economic decline through trade war and military aggression. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Washington has lost all inhibitions. With Donald Trump, the most right-wing president in US history has moved into the White House. He personifies the brutality and criminality of the countrys ruling class.

German imperialism has reacted by appointing itself the hegemon of Europe. Seven decades after the defeat of the Nazi regime, it is once again striving to achieve its global geo-strategic and economic interests by military means.

As early as 2014, then-German President Joachim Gauck and his successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) announced that Germany was too big and too important to remain out of the crises and hot-spots of the world. Now the German ruling class is using the UKs departure from the European Union and the growing conflicts with President Trump to strengthen the German and European military so that it can act independently of the US and, if necessary, against it.

In a Munich beer tent of all placesthe backdrop favoured by HitlerChancellor Angela Merkel declared that we Europeans have to take our fate back into our own hands and fight for our own future.

Nobody should be confused by her efforts to disguise this call with hollow phrases about the defence of Western values and protection of the climate. Dressing up naked imperialist interests with phrases about values and culture has a long tradition in Germany. In 1914, Berlin justified the World War as a struggle against Russian barbarism, and 93 leading cultural and scientific figures published a manifesto directed to all men of culture that defended the German army as it pillaged Belgium. Twenty-five years later, Europe was laid waste by German tanks and aircraft.

War and militarism follow an inescapable logic. The real significance of German militarism was expressed openly by the right-wing historian Jrg Baberowski. Speaking of the fight against terrorist organizations, he said, And if one is not willing to take hostages, burn villages, hang people and spread fear and terror, as the terrorists do, if one is not prepared to do such things, then one can never win such a conflict and it is better to keep out altogether.

In the last century, two attempts by German imperialism to subjugate Europe and become a world power ended in catastrophe. Despite the propaganda that a reunited Germany has learned the lessons of the past and stands for peace and stability, a third German grasp for world power will lead once again to war and mass murder if the working class does not intervene.

The Bundeswehr is already active in 18 foreign conflicts. It has deployed combat troops to the Russian border and been implicated in war crimes in Afghanistan and Syria. Right-wing terrorist networks operate within its ranks and cultivate the traditions of Hitlers Wehrmacht, with the protection of their superiors.

As Marxists, we base ourselves on an understanding of objective social developments in the struggle against militarism and war. The reason for the danger of a Third World War lies in the insoluble antagonisms of capitalism, which is incapable of overcoming the contradiction between the international character of production and the nation-state system.

There is only one way to stop this dangerous development: the establishment of an international anti-war movement based on the working class and fighting for the overthrow of capitalism.

The SGP rejects the capitalist system. While a small, super-rich upper class lives in luxury and dominates politics, the vast majority of the population lives in want and is largely excluded from the political decision-making process.

In every country, the ruling class is seeking to defend its wealth and international status by demanding more and more sacrifices from the working class. Mass unemployment, poverty and the destruction of living standards are the result. An entire generation of young people is being denied a future. Vast resources are squandered on military spending, while vital infrastructure decays, poverty grows and complex environmental problems are neglected.

Germany is already one of the most socially unequal countries in the world. According to a study by Oxfam, 36 German billionaires possess as much wealth (276 billion euros) as the poorest half of the population. According to the latest report by the Parittischer Wohlfahrtsverband, poverty in Germany affected 15.7 percent of the population in 2015, a new record. One in five employees in Germany works for the paltry sum of less than 10 euros per hour.

The SGP fights for a society in which the needs of the many stand higher than the profit interests of big business. The super-rich, the banks and the corporations must be expropriated and placed under the democratic control of the population. Only in this way can the social rights of all be secured. These include the right to an adequately paid job, a first-class education, affordable housing, a secure pension, high quality old-age provisions and access to culture.

The growth of social inequality and the return of militarism are accompanied by a massive growth of state surveillance and the apparatus of oppression. Hardly a month passes without new laws being passed expanding the police and intelligence services, increasing the monitoring of communications and expanding censorship of the Internet. The so-called war on terror, which in reality produces terror, serves as a pretext to intensify attacks on refugees and abolish elementary democratic rights. The heightening of the powers of the state apparatus is aimed at intimidating and suppressing resistance to militarism and other forms of social protest.

The ruling class knows that anger over social inequality and militarism is enormous. It fears the outbreak of open class struggles. According to the recently published study Generation What? 86 percent of young people in Germany believe that inequality is growing. Only 1 percent has complete confidence in the existing political set-up, while 71 percent have none. Forty-two percent would participate in an uprising against the powerful if it were to happen in the near future.

The SGP calls for the dissolution of all secret services and the apparatus of surveillance. We defend fundamental democratic rights and the right to asylum and reject any form of nationalism and xenophobia. The attacks on refugees are directed against all workers. That is why a common struggle against capitalism of all those living in Germany is necessary.

Although official politics meets with overwhelming rejection among working people, this opposition finds no political expression within the establishment parties and institutions.

The SPD is rightly hated. Originally established by workers, today it is their stoutest opponent. SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schrders Agenda 2010 and his Hartz welfare and labour reforms have plunged millions of working class families into misery. As part of the current grand coalition government, the SPD, together with Finance Minister Wolfgang Schuble (CDU), has imposed devastating austerity measures on Greece. When the SPD today speaks of reforms, it does not mean social improvements, but rather social cut-backs, increased state powers and militarism. In the election campaign, the SPDs leading candidate, Martin Schulz, is attacking Chancellor Merkel from the right. He is aggressively promoting the development of a European defence policy and a European army dominated by Germany.

A similar policy is pursued by the Greens, who have always been a party of the affluent upper-middle class. They are now among the most strident advocates of war and display only arrogance and contempt for the working class. Since the Green Party Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer defended the Kosovo War in 1999 with the slogan Never again Auschwitz, the former pacifists have supported every German war effort, even when in opposition.

The Left Party is preparing to play a similar role to that played by the Greens 18 years ago. It is seeking a so-called red-red-green coalition with the SPD and the Greens and is increasingly becoming an open party of war. Significantly, the partys lead candidate, Dietmar Bartsch, was among the five Left Party Bundestag deputies who, for the first time, voted in April 2015 to deploy the Bundeswehr abroad. Sahra Wagenknecht, the partys second lead candidate, told broadcaster ZDF last summer, Of course, Germany will not leave NATO on the day we join a government. In other words, the Left Party is just as prepared to support the Bundeswehrs foreign operations as it is to impose social cuts in the states and municipalities where it exercises political power.

With their right-wing policies, the SPD, the Left Party and the Greens facilitate the growth of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This right-wing extremist party can pose as an opposition force only because none of the establishment left parties opposes the ruling class with a socialist perspective. The AfD exploits anger and frustration over the anti-social policies of the main parties to push the entire political establishment further to the right. A similar process can be seen with Marine Le Pen in France, Gert Wilders in the Netherlands and Heinz-Christian Strache in Austria.

In order to fight the establishment parties and the extreme right and intervene independently in political events, the working class needs its own party. Exactly 100 years ago, Russian workers demonstrated that it was possible to conquer state power, end the World War and reorganize society according to socialist principles. The later Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union does not detract from the historical significance of the October 1917 Revolution.

The prerequisite for preparing the coming class struggles and realizing a socialist perspective is the construction of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party). Our strength is based on the historical tradition we embody and the principles we represent.

We stand in the tradition of the Left Opposition, which, under the leadership of Leon Trotsky, defended Marxism and socialist internationalism against the betrayals of Stalinism. Our revolutionary role models are Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who fought against capitalism even under the most difficult conditions, defending internationalism in the midst of the nationalist frenzy of the First World War.

It is now over 25 years since the former East Germany (German Democratic RepublicDDR) and the Soviet Union were dissolved. This was due to the role of Stalinism, which politically suppressed the working class and created enormous confusion about the real nature of socialism. The Stalinist bureaucracy itself took the initiative for reintroducing capitalism, with devastating social and political consequences. The Left Party stands in this Stalinist tradition.

The SGP and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) are today the only organizations worldwide fighting for a socialist response to the global crisis of capitalism.

We reject all imperialist alliances and military blocs. We are for the dissolution of NATO and the European Union and fight instead for the United Socialist States of Europe. Our ally in the struggle against German militarism is the European, American and international working class.

We call on all those who are not willing to accept the return of German militarism, the increase in poverty and the rise of the right wing to support the SGP and its election campaign . Support our participation in the election with your signature to ensure we get on the ballot. Share and discuss this election statement with friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Organize election meetings in your region, donate to our election fund and vote for the SGP on September 24. Every vote for the SGP is a vote against war and capitalism.

Read and study the World Socialist Web Site, the daily Internet publication of the ICFI! Become a member of SGP! It is high time to actively participate in the construction of a new mass socialist party!

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Socialist Equality Party stands candidates in German election: Against militarism and war! For socialism! - World Socialist Web Site

A new study by the Media Research Centerfound that the three major networks ABC, NBC, and CBS have dedicated a minuscule amount of coverage to the growing economic and civil rights crises including catastrophic levels of unemployment, hunger, and inflation, and the brutal repression of peaceful protests by the controlling government in Venezuela.

Additionally, MRC found that when the networks actually havecovered the crisis, theyve rarely mentioned the governments socialist system as a factor in the nationstroubles.

MRCbased itstimeline fromMarch 2013 (after socialist Venezuelan President HugoChavez death)through May 29, 2017. Through that time, ABC, NBC, and CBS evening news shows aired a total of25 stories on the Venezuelan crisis, totaling 28 minutes, and 39 seconds of coverage on the socialist country. This amounts to almost 3o seconds a month.

The major networks dedicated no news stories to the advancement of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduros powers within Venezuela, including in November 2013 when then-socialist controlled National Assembly giving Maduro emergency powers, which permitted him to bypass the National Assembly and rule by decree, orin May 2017 when thesocialist-dominated Supreme Court ruled to strip power from the opposition-lead Congress.

MRC noted that human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch made condemnations of human rights violations in places such as Syria, and Venezuela. Of the 17 times the Human Rights Watch, and 14 times Amnesty International were mentioned by the networks over the four-year period,the condemnations of Venezuela by the human rights groups have gone completely untouched by the media, said the MRC.

Furthermore, of the 25 stories dedicated to Venezuela by the three networks, onlyseven of the stories mentioned socialisms involvement. ABC World News never mentioned socialismat all, CBS Evening News mentioned it once, and NBC Nightly News mentioned it six times.

ABC did mention socialism on Nightline whenMatt Gutman said inFebruary 2014 said, When the price of oil crashed, the economy went with it, exposing the failures of Hugo Chavezs socialist government.

The MRC gave examples of how socialism was addressed by the major networks, and neither seem to highlight socialisms effects on the country, mentioning it only in passing.

From the MRC:

One of the exceptions: On the April 20 NBC Nightly News, correspondent Jacob Rascon noted that The Venezuelan economy has been in freefall for yearsProtesters blamed President Nicolas Maduro and his socialist government.

On May 4, CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley finally used the term for the first time since Chavezs death, when reporting on the worsening situation. Running battles continue in Venezuelas capital. They broke out a month ago when the socialist president tried to grab more power. At least 37have been killed.

Maduros socialist government has controls, or has part ownership in over 500 companies, 70 percent of which are bleeding money. This in turn has caused many to lose their jobs, leading to 25 percent unemployment. To combat the growing problem, Maduro hiked minimum wage for the third time in a year to over 65,000 bolivars a month.

Inflation is expected to surge to over 750 percent, making the bolivar virtually worthless.

Venezuelas major economic, and food shortagecrises have put the socialist country on the brink of civil war as thousands of rioters burn property, loot stores, and engage in violence with Venezuelan authorities. Venezuelan security forces have in turn engaged in brutal violence against the protesters and rioters.

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Major networks ignore socialism's impact on Venezuelan crisis ... - TheBlaze.com

John Stossel 10:02 a.m. ET June 2, 2017

20/20 - JOHN STOSSEL(Photo: STEVE FENN, ABC)

Venezuela descends into chaos. Its people, once the wealthiest in Latin America, starve. Even The New York Times runs headlines like Dying Infants and No Medicine.

My Venezuelan-born friend Kenny says his relatives are speaking differently. Cousins who once answered Fine or Good when asked, How are you? now say, Were eating.

Eating is a big deal in the country thats given birth to jokes about a Venezuelan diet. A survey by three universities found 75 percent of Venezuelans lost an average 19 pounds this year.

So are American celebrities who championed Venezuelas peoples revolution embarrassed? Will they admit they were wrong?

No, says linguist and political writer Noam Chomsky. I was right.

Sigh.

Actor Sean Penn met with Hugo Chavez several times and claimed Chavez did incredible things for the 80 percent of the people that are very poor.

Oliver Stone made a film that fawned over Chavez and Latin American socialism. Chavez joined Stone in Venice for the films premiere.

Michael Moore praised Chavez for eliminating 75 percent of extreme poverty.

Hello?! In Venezuela, Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, created extreme poverty.

Chomsky, whose anti-capitalist teachings have inspired millions of American college students, praised Chavezs sharp poverty reduction, probably the greatest in the Americas. Chavez returned the compliment by holding up Chomskys book during a speech at the U.N., making it a best-seller.

Is Chomsky embarrassed by that today? No, he wrote me. He praised Chavez in 2006. Heres the situation as of two years later. He linked to a 2008 article by a writer of Oliver Stones movie who said, Venezuela has seen a remarkable reduction in poverty.

I asked him, Should you now say to the students whove learned from you, Socialism, in practice, often wrecks peoples lives? Chomsky replied, I never described Chavezs state capitalist government as socialist or even hinted at such an absurdity. It was quite remote from socialism. Private capitalism remained Capitalists were free to undermine the economy in all sorts of ways, like massive export of capital.

What? Capitalists undermine the economy by fleeing?

I showed Chomskys email to Marian Tupy, editor of HumanProgress.org. I like his response: If lack of private capitalism I assume he means total abolition of private enterprise and most private property is his definition of socialism, then only North Korea and Kampuchea qualify.

Tupy also asks how Chomsky thinks capitalists sabotaged the economy by taking money out if capitalists are superfluous to a functioning economy.

Good questions. Chomskys arguments are absurd.

As Tupy wrote elsewhere about another socialist fool, As much as I would like to enjoy rubbing (his) nose in his own mind-bending stupidity, I cannot rejoice, for I know that Venezuelas descent into chaos hyperinflation, empty shops, out-of-control violence and the collapse of basic public services will not be the last time we hear of a collapsing socialist economy. More countries will refuse to learn from history and give socialism a go. Useful idiots, to use Lenins words will sing socialisms praises until the last light goes out.

I fear hes right. This love for state planning is especially outrageous today because anyone who pays attention knows what does work: market capitalism.

Socialism failed in Angola, Benin, Cambodia, China, Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Laos, Mongolia, Mozambique, North Korea, Poland, Somalia, the Soviet Union, Vietnam and now Venezuela. We are yet to experience the blessed event of seeing one socialist country succeed.

Yet during the same years, capitalism brought prosperity to Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, most of Western Europe, and years ago, to a mostly poor and undeveloped country we now call America.

In 1973, when Chile abandoned its short-lived experiment with socialism and embraced capitalism, Chilean income was 36 percent that of Venezuela. Today, Chileans are 51 percent richer than Venezuelans. Chilean incomes rose by 228 percent. Venezuelans became 21 percent poorer.

Venezuela has greater oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. But because some people believe socialism is the answer to inequality, Venezuelans starve.

What should Venezuela do once the tyrant falls?

It should do what Dubai and Hong Kong did, and what America should do next with Guantanamo Bay and Puerto Rico: create prosperity zones. Ill explain in my next column.

You can contact John Stossel at info@creators.com.

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Socialism has starved Venezuela - Press & Sun-Bulletin

Out of approximately 50,000 total evening news stories on ABC, CBS and NBC combined in the last four years, just 25 have covered the ongoing crisisin socialist Venezuela, according to a Media Research Center study published Tuesday.

After Venezuelas former socialist president, Hugo Chvez, passed away in March 2013, the country has spiraled into economic disaster and civil chaos. So far in 2017, more than 50 Venezuelans have been killed during protests againstcurrent Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro and his socialist policies. Many Venezuelansare starving due toshortages of food and other essentials. The countrys inflation rate is set to surpass 700 percent and 25 percent of Venezuelans will be unemployed.

The few times they have managed to cover the widespread poverty, starvation, and government oppression they somehow find ways to do that without [saying]the word socialism.'

Yet the Big Three evening newscasts have tried to pretend this crisis does not exist, offering virtually no coverage as the situation has deteriorated over the past four years, MRC Research Analyst Mike Ciandella wrote.

The networks have also been reluctant to attach the socialist label to Venezuelas government, and have utterly failed to criticize liberal politicians and celebrities who have praised the Chvez and Maduro regimes, Ciandella added.

Indeed, out of the 50,000 total evening news stories on the three networks, just 25 covered Venezuela, and only seven mentioned socialism. In addition, NBC Nightly News only broadcast 13 stories spanning 16 minutes and 54 seconds, ABCs World News only covered 8minutes and 34 seconds over sevenstories, and CBS Evening News only offered 3 minutes and 11 seconds over five stories.

The network evening news programs seem allergic to reporting on the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, Ciandella told LifeZette in an email. Even worse, the few times they have managed to cover the widespread poverty, starvation and government oppression in that country, they somehow find ways to do that withoutmentioning the word socialism.'

Ciandella noted that the three networks aired no stories when Maduro took advantage of a countrywide power outage to stamp out as much opposition as he could in September 2013. When Maduro used the powers he gave himself to rule the country in a state of emergency that superseded the National Assemblys voice, the media networks were silent.

After the anti-socialists elected a majority to the National Assembly in December 2015 and Maduros loyalist Supreme Court decided to strip the Assembly of its power on May 18, the media yawned.

On occasion, one of the three major news networks will drop a rare mention of the word socialism in connection with the Venezuela crisis in its coverage. As MRC noted, one of those exceptions wascorrespondent Jacob Rascon on April 20s NBC Nightly News.

The Venezuelan economy has been in freefall for years protesters blamed President Nicolas Maduro and his socialist government, Rascon said.

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley offered another exception on May 4, when he said, Running battles continue in Venezuelas capital. They broke out a month ago when the socialist president tried to grab more power. At least 37have been killed.

But all too often, the media turn a blind eye to the atrocities and tragedies that fester in Venezuela, along with the root causes underlyingthem.

"In fact, ABC's 'World News Tonight' hasn't mentioned the words 'socialism' or 'socialist' in connection with Venezuela even once since Chvez's death in 2013," Ciandella told LifeZette. "This is completely inexcusable. The networks seem intent on distancing the socialism of the Chvez and Maduro regimes with the idealistic socialism of Bernie Sanders and liberal academia."

The socialism that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and many Hollywood celebrities champion appeals in theory to many U.S. college students and struggling young adults.

"I often say only half-jokingly to students on college campuses who are all in with Bernie Sanders that if they think socialism is such a wonderful economic model: How about a one-way ticket to Caracas?" Stephen Moore, an economic policy analyst and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, wrote of Venezuela's capitol in a Washington Times op-ed published May 21.

"You'd be a fool to go there today. Venezuela is a human-rights crisis of epic proportions, with mass hunger, mass poverty, despair, ghetto upon ghetto, and a mass exodus of private businesses and anyone with money," Moore added.

"The burgeoning resistance throws Molotov cocktails, rocks, and even human feces at the security forces during the nonstop rioting. 'I don't fear death because this life is crap,' one protester told the WSJ," Moore added. "It turns out that 'share the wealth' eventually means there is no wealth, and the egalitarian dream means everyone becomes equally poor. Venezuela is on its way to becoming the next North Korea."

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Media Yawn at Venezuela's Spiraling, Socialist Nightmare | LifeZette - LifeZette

Even 133 years after his death, the teachings of philosopher Karl Marx seem more relevant today than ever before. They've also gained in popularity. In a recent survey, 43% of young Americans under the age of 30 voiced favorable leanings to the notion of socialism. Is this a sign of a new anti-capitalism trend taking over in the United States? The new documentary titled How Capitalism is Killing Itself, produced by the acclaimed series The Empire Files, seeks to find answers.

The film dissects the tenants of Marx's economic principles, which were largely born out of a humanist philosophy. As recounted by Dr. Richard Wolf, the film's chief interview subject, Marxist economist and Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of Massachusetts - Amherst, the philosopher set out to uncover the root of social inequality, and identified a purely capitalistic system as its major culprit. In his view, capitalism could only thrive by imposing various social ills upon society such as impoverishment, inequality and exploitation. Therefore, the Marxist-led socialist movement is characterized by a need to redefine the very foundations of what he viewed as a deeply flawed and immoral system.

There are many indications that the long reign of capitalism may be on the ropes, especially when observed through the prism of this year's United States presidential election. Self-confirmed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders has proven enormously successful in spreading the gospel that Marx first preached well over a century ago. The youth, in particular, has flocked in support of Sander's candidacy and his message in record numbers. As members of this new generation eventually assume the mantle of leadership in their country, could their firmly held beliefs facilitate the end of capitalism as we know it?

How Capitalism is Killing Itself is a fast-paced and informative expose, but it makes no illusions to an even handed treatment of its subject; its agenda is implicit in its title. But even for the most fervent skeptics or the uninitiated, the film proves illuminating in its attempts to dispel much of the misgivings, fear and misinterpretations of the Marxist philosophy.

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How Capitalism is Killing Itself - Top Documentary Films