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Comrades, you have joined the Young Communist League (YCL) to fight against capitalism, and for socialist revolution. You were looking for a revolutionary party based on the ideas of Marx and Lenin.

The Communist Party was founded over 100 years ago with such ideas at its heart. Its early years were guided by Lenins advice and policy, and saw great successes.

But the seizure of power by Stalin in Russia, and the promotion of the theory of socialism in one country, distorted the work of Communist parties around the world, including in Britain, leading them into a blind alley of reformism and nationalism from which they have never escaped.

Never has this been clearer than today, in the depths of the deepest crisis of capitalism for 300 years. At precisely this moment, the Communist Party leaders shun the fight for revolutionary socialism in favour of mild reformism and a national British Road to Socialism.

The leaders of the Young Communist League (YCL), meanwhile, replace revolutionary education and propaganda with flares and food bank collections. The systematic work of building support for communist ideas among the working class is ignored in favour of stunts. The League prioritises style over substance.

These leaders swear by socialism in every other sentence, while they trample the programme and methods of Marx and Lenin in practice. In doing so, they sweep under the carpet the crimes of Stalinism.

But if you dont learn from history, you will repeat its mistakes. After all, isnt the revolutionary party supposed to be the memory of the working class?

Marxism is based on internationalism, or it is nothing. The interests of the world socialist revolution are our starting point. This is rooted in the international character of capitalism itself.

Capitalism has created a world market, a world division of labour, and a worldwide working class. Capitalism has laid the material basis in terms of industry and technique for the development of world socialism and classless society. World revolution and international socialism were the basis of the teachings of Marx and Engels. This was fully understood by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

From his first involvement in revolutionary politics, Lenin held true to an internationalist line. He tied the fate of the Russian Revolution to the European socialist revolution.

In fact, such was Lenins internationalism that he was even prepared to sacrifice the Russian Revolution for a successful revolution in Germany. He was an internationalist not just in words, but in deeds. And he had no time for petty nationalism within the revolutionary party.

The present policy of the Communist Party leaders has drifted very far from this Leninist approach. In the latest version of the Communist Party programme, Britains Road to Socialism, we find only two short paragraphs on internationalism buried halfway through the document.

In those paragraphs, internationalism is presented as a secondary afterthought, or a byproduct of the struggle for socialism in one country. For the Communist Party leaders, it is nothing more than a nice idea to be promoted, rather than the axis around which all revolutionary policy is based.

For example, the CP document says:

International solidarity often plays an important role in helping workers and peoples fight and win battles for justice, peace, and freedom in their own countries.

Compare this to Lenins writing in April 1918, as the Russian Revolution was consolidating power: We shall achieve victory only together with all the workers of other countries, of the whole world...

For Lenin, internationalism was central. But for todays Communist Party leaders, internationalism is peripheral.

The document continues:

Socialisms values, principles, and aspirations can only be universal rather than purely local or national. In practice, however, this does not negate the primary, essential need to overthrow capitalism at the level where the capitalist class holds state power.

In other words, internationalism is a nice aspiration, but is of little practical consequence in the struggle for socialism.

Marx disagreed. He built the First International in the 1860s, which was an active revolutionary organisation with sections across Europe, which intervened in the English trade unions and the Paris Commune. The statutes of the International were guidelines for practical revolutionary work. In them Marx wrote: The emancipation of the workers is not a local, nor a national, but an international problem.

Todays leaders of the Communist Party directly contradict this when they write that overthrowing capitalism is primarily a national problem.

Given the international character of capitalism in the epoch of imperialism, capitalism as a whole cannot be overthrown purely on a national level. That is why Lenin established the Communist International in 1919, which was dissolved by Stalin in 1943 as a gesture to the Allies. The Communist International held up the banner of world revolution, which was abandoned by Stalin and his reactionary theory of socialism in one country.

History shows us that without the international extension of the socialist revolution, the revolution will be isolated and in danger of degeneration. That is why the Bolsheviks, who never held the idea that socialism could be established in backward Russia, regarded the Russian revolution as part of the world revolution.

Without a conscious and predominant policy of internationalism, any successes on a national scale can only ever be temporary.

The relegation of internationalism to an aspiration which often plays a role in the class struggle has led the Communist Party leaders to abandon the perspective of world revolution, in favour of appeals to the international bourgeoisie (the so-called United Nations, for example) to solve the problems of capitalism and imperialism.

To fight the oppression of Palestinians, for example, genuine revolutionaries need a programme of class struggle methods, like the Palestinian general strike seen in May 2021. That means also arming the masses, and linking their struggle to overthrow capitalism with that of workers and youth across the region including in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, and even within Israel itself.

This would be the basis for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, which alone can guarantee the rights of all workers and youth throughout the region. On a capitalist basis, there can be no Palestinian liberation, because the Israeli capitalist class will never allow the existence of an independent sovereign Palestine.

The Communist Party leaders disagree. During the social explosion in Palestine last year, John Foster, the CPs International Secretary, said:

A two-state solution based on pre-1967 borders, establishing a sovereign state of Palestine alongside a secure Israel, remains the only realistic solution to the ongoing conflict and the oppression of the Palestinians.

With this the CP leaders abandon any idea that the revolutionary struggle of the workers and youth of the Middle East can solve the Palestinian problem. Instead they put their faith in international diplomacy, presumably brokered by the bourgeoisie of other nations, to create sovereign states under capitalism.

This proposal suggests that its possible to reconcile the interests of the Israeli capitalists with those of the Palestinian masses, on whose oppression the Israeli rulers base their power. In what way this is a realistic solution is anyones guess.

The Communist Party policy, which has abandoned socialist revolution, is to demand that the capitalist class find a solution to the oppression of Palestine. A genuine socialist policy would work towards a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, the architect of which can only be the working class of the entire region.

CP policy in China also ditches international proletarian solidarity in favour of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. They defend the idea that socialism is being built in China, when capitalism has been clearly re-established, under the tutelage of the so-called Communist Party.

Under Deng, the CP popularised catchphrases like it is glorious to get rich and assured the aspiring capitalists that it was acceptable for some people to get rich first. Under Jiang Zemin, capitalists were formally invited to join the party.

As the Evergrande crisis displayed last year, the Chinese economy is now capitalist to the core, backed by a strong state. Its fluctuations are determined by market forces and its policies are dictated by the needs of big business. Chinese economic growth is today based on the accumulation of more and more debt, which is a drag on further growth, and which is fuelling the crisis of overproduction that is wracking the Chinese economy.

To escape these contradictions, China must export more and more, and expand its own imperialist sphere of influence. This is the meaning behind its Belt and Road initiative.

The growing class contradictions in China threaten outbreaks of social unrest, including in the important Xinjiang province, which is of great strategic importance to the Chinese ruling class, and where the Uyghur population is concentrated.

It is this, more than anything else, which explains why the Chinese ruling elite has ramped up oppression of the Uyghurs, including the use of re-education camps, the existence of which is not disputed by the Chinese state.

A Marxist policy towards China requires international solidarity with the Chinese workers and youth, who are increasingly struggling against Chinese capitalism and the vicious exploitation of the new ruling class.

The leadership of the CP and the YCL take the opposite view, aligning themselves with the Chinese ruling elite, instead of the workers and peasants.

Last year, during the centenary celebrations of the Chinese Communist Party, the general secretary of the CP, Robert Griffiths, said:

[Chinas development] has been made possible by the planned nature of economic and social development, with key industries and services under public ownership or control, directed and led by the Communist Party of China through its mass organisations and the established institutions of state.

According to the CP, the Chinese economy is actually subject to planning and control by the Chinese masses. But if this is the case, what is the explanation for the Evergrande debt crisis?

How did it happen that, last year, Chinese energy companies turned peoples lights and heating off to force the government to remove the cap on energy prices so that they could make more profit?

China now has almost as many billionaires as the USA, while the working class faces brutal exploitation. This is especially the case for the nearly three million migrant workers in China, who have no rights.

How can such crises, big business diktats, and inequality be the product of planning and control by the masses?

In the same speech Griffiths said:

In the finest internationalist tradition of the communist movement, China is also assisting other countries and peoples to accelerate their own economic and social development through the Belt and Road initiative.

The Belt and Road initiative is primarily aimed, not at enriching other countries, but at strengthening China, both economically and strategically.

For example, China currently controls Sri Lankas Hambantota deepwater port through a 99-year lease, and has lent heavily to the $4bn railway linking Kenyas port of Mombasa with Nairobi. These strategic assets are to secure Chinas control over imports and exports to these countries.

One part of the Belt and Road initiative is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. This involves a loan from China to Pakistan of almost $50bn, which will be paid back with interest at rates up to 6%.

Last October, a crisis erupted in Uganda when it became apparent that a $200 million loan from Chinese banks for the development of the airport in Kampala could grant the Chinese ruling class the right to seize the airport if repayments are not made.

The Belt and Road initiative is patently not a product of the finest internationalist traditions of the communist movement, but is rather a product of Chinese imperialism trying to strengthen its position.

Finally, Griffiths added:

I have also learned not to trust any reports in the West about Xinjiang and its Uyghur people, having witnessed for myself how the Uyghur language can be seen and heard everywhere and how most of the top state and Party personnel there are themselves Uyghur-speaking Uyghurs.

It is true that we should be deeply suspicious of the Wests crocodile tears for the Uyghur people. Western imperialism has cynically exploited and oppressed national minorities for centuries, and it is hypocrisy of the worst kind for them to condemn Chinas treatment of the Uyghurs.

However, to deny that such oppression exists and is simply made up by the Western media is false. This flat denial of what the Chinese state itself doesnt dispute requires closing ones eyes to the facts. Similarly, the leaders of the British Communist Party for decades swallowed the line that Stalin was building socialism in Russia, which was shown to be false.

The mistakes of CP policy on China stem from the treatment of internationalism as a vague aspiration instead of a concrete task. Real internationalism requires a serious understanding of the regimes, economies, and class nature of different countries. On that basis, a programme for action can be developed.

The leaders of the CP and the YCL have replaced that with support for the Chinese capitalist regime, on the superficial basis that it uses the language and symbols of communism.

The nationalism of the Communist Party leaders is repeated even more crudely by the leaders of the Young Communist League.

One of the recent campaigns listed on the YCLs website is online meetings about progressive patriotism. In April this year, the YCL posted an image of the St Georges Cross on social media with the assertion that the task of socialists is to reclaim national identity.

This focus on giving a left colouration to English nationalism will only sow confusion and play into the hands of reactionaries.

Ideas of patriotism and nationalism are not inherent to working-class consciousness. They are deliberately promoted by the ruling class using every means at their disposal, to divide workers and strengthen national cliques of capitalists.

Communists should have nothing to do with this nationalist poison. Faced with relentless nationalistic and patriotic bourgeois propaganda, we must stand firm on a principled internationalist programme which remorselessly exposes the hollow lies of patriotism and nationalism.

If we capitulate to this propaganda even one inch, or try to combine socialism with bourgeois patriotism in some way, we will find that instead of turning nationalists into socialists, we will have turned socialists into narrow nationalists.

This is what Lenin explained: there is no middle ground between nationalism and internationalism. They are irreconcilably opposed camps. He wrote:

Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism such are the two irreconcilably hostile slogans that correspond to the two great class camps throughout the capitalist world and express two policies on the national question. (Critical remarks on the national question, 1913)

The leaders of the YCL should reflect carefully on Lenins writings on nationalism and internationalism. The task of socialists is not to reclaim national identity but to be ruthless in our criticism of all ideas that divide workers and hold back the working class movement, including so-called left patriotism.

Every genuine communist wants to see power in the hands of the working class, in Britain and in every other country. How is this to be achieved?

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explain that the workers cannot overthrow the capitalist class without first winning political power, thats to say without transforming the state into the proletariat organised as the ruling class.

As Lenin explained:

The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. Unless this question is understood, there can be no intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution.

In State and Revolution, Lenin explains that the chief and fundamental point in the Marxist theory of the state is that all previous revolutions perfected the state machine, whereas it must be broken, smashed. This is the lesson that Marx drew directly from the experience of the Paris Commune.

In other words, for the working class to take power, the existing bourgeois state machinery of parliament, courts, police, army, prisons, etc. cannot be taken over and refined, polished or perfected to suit the interests of the working class. It must be smashed to pieces, to be replaced by newly created working-class state institutions, such as workers councils.

This, Lenin says, is a fundamental point of Marxist theory. Its what distinguishes revolutionaries from reformists.

Unfortunately, this fundamental point of Marxist theory upon which Lenin based his most famous theoretical work has been jettisoned from todays Communist Party programme.

In Britain's Road to Socialism, the CP leaders provide us with a rigid blueprint of a revolutionary process, which develops through stages, and which hinges on capturing the existing bourgeois state machinery and wielding it in the interests of the working class.

The opening stage in Britains socialist revolution will therefore have to culminate in the election of a left-wing government at Westminster, based on a socialist, Labour, communist and progressive majority at the polls, says the document.

It continues:

From the outset, the left government will have to introduce extensive changes in recruitment, staffing and management policies within the civil and diplomatic services, the judiciary, the police, the secret services and armed forces in order to replace key personnel with supporters of the revolutionary process.

Members of the YCL may be thinking that changes to management techniques in the civil service is not the kind of communist policy they signed up for. There is nothing Marxist or Leninist about this approach to the state, which aims to capture the bourgeois state apparatus and, bit by bit, refashion it into a tool for the workers.

The problem is that this is like trying to turn a dangerous tiger into a playful kitten by pulling its teeth out one by one. As soon as you pull the first tooth, youll likely lose your arm. The capitalist class is not simply going to sit by and watch its state apparatus be dismantled piece by piece.

Back in 2015, an unnamed serving general of the British army told the press that Corbyn would face a mutiny and a coup if he tried to scrap Trident, pull out of NATO, or shrink the armed forces in any way. Corbyn had only been leader of the Labour Party for a few months at the time, let alone leader of the country.

The idea that a left government would be able to introduce extensive changes to staffing policies in the armed forces without provoking a rebellion is a far-fetched and dangerous illusion to be peddling.

Our task is not to win positions in the bourgeois state apparatus. The key to socialist revolutions in the past has instead been the emergence of alternative forms of state power, built and operated by the working class. This is a phenomenon known as dual power.

In six pages setting out exactly how the revolutionary process is to unfold, there are just two sentences in the CPs programme about these institutions which have formed the embryo of workers power in every proletarian revolutionary movement throughout history:

New bodies of working-class and popular power are likely to be necessary to monitor or take over state functions and ensure implementation of the LWP [Left Wing Programme]. These are likely to emerge from the class struggle itself as trades unions, community organisations and other forms of popular action engage in the contest for power at local, regional, national and state level.

What the CP leaders say is likely to be necessary (as if it is simply an option) as a supplement to reforming the bourgeois state apparatus, has, in fact, been instrumental in all past revolutions.

During the Russian Revolution, the organs of workers power were precisely the soviets. Elsewhere they have been workers and soldiers councils, factory committees, strike committees, or even neighbourhood committees. These embryos of workers power are key in any revolutionary overturn, as opposed to the illusory formal democracy we have under capitalism.

The revolutionary process has in each case consisted of a struggle between the opposing organs of state power one representing the bourgeoisie, and the other the proletariat. The task of communists, in this situation of dual power, is to explain the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the working class. This is the essence of Lenins famous slogan: All power to the soviets.

It is certainly true that there are no soviets or workers councils in Britain today. If communists were to advance a slogan of all power to the soviets at the present time, they would be rightly looked upon as absurd.

However, in the revolutionary period opening up, councils of action or extended strike committees, as in the 1926 General Strike, will be thrown up.

To sow illusions in a programme of reform of the bourgeois state apparatus is inexcusable for real communists.

Instead of reformist sloganeering, the leaders of the Communist Party and the YCL should be educating a new generation of revolutionaries in the history of past revolutions and the Marxist theory of the state. This would be serious preparation for the future revolutionary developments in Britain.

Abandoning the Leninist approach has led the CP leaders to make serious mistakes. For example, during Jeremy Corbyns leadership of the Labour Party, they saw him as the best chance for years of a left politician capturing a position in the bourgeois state machine, and so cheered his reformist policies uncritically.

See the original post:
An open letter to the YCL - What did Lenin really stand for? - Socialist Appeal

OPINION:

There is a real likelihood that the Republicans will win a big victory this fall.

However, defeating the Democrats because of their terrible performance will not be powerful or lasting. Republicans must defeat the Democrats because their values are wrong, and their policies simply cant work.

Defeating the Democrats on a strictly performance-based campaign allows the next cycle of Democrats to come along and claim the ideas and policies were right, but the personalities were incompetent.

This has happened before.

President Lyndon B. Johnsons Great Society was a failure. The next round of Democrats repudiated it, and in a few years, they nominated George McGovern, who was even further to the left.

President Jimmy Carters failure in 1980 taught Democrats nothing. Four years later, Walter Mondale ran promising to raise taxes.

President Barack Obamas divisive, radical policies set the stage for Donald Trumps election in reaction. Then Biden came along as Obamas vice president and moved even further to the left toward even more destructive and radical policies.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher taught us that first you win the argument, and then you win the vote.

She set out in 1975 to win the argument that socialism was immoral, was impossible in the real world and produced terrible results. She won that argument so decisively that no openly left-wing Labour leader has been elected prime minister in 40 years.

Like Thatcher, Republicans must develop a campaign that wins the argument about core values and philosophies. The Democrats performance failures must be linked to their policy and values failures. As President Ronald Reagan said, the trouble with our Liberal friends is not that theyre ignorant; its just that they know so much that isnt so.

On the performance front, the opportunity is going to be enormous to defeat the Democrats as incompetent (which is not the same as being wrong).

President Biden continues to decline cognitively and is more and more embarrassing. The latest presidential job approval poll was at 33 percent approval, which is a dangerous warning sign for Democrat prospects this fall.

Jill Bidens Taco Democrats gaffe may be a sign she is joining her husband in not being able to remember what she should be saying.

Record high gasoline prices, rising food prices, and rising murder and crime rates are affecting every American. The borders are open and insecure (with no tests for COVID-19 or criminal records). Meanwhile, people in the country illegally are being given free cell phones and flown around America for free. Schools teach 7-year-old children that they are guilty of white privilege and ask third graders to discuss sexual orientation. At the same time, the schools are failing to teach reading, writing or arithmetic. The failures are seemingly endless and compounding.

Then, there is potentially the greatest corruption crisis ever to envelop a White House. No reasonable person can doubt that President Biden has regularly and routinely lied about Hunter Bidens corruption (and the presidents knowledge of it). Evidence continues to come out about just how sick Hunters behavior has been and how impossible it was for President Biden not to know about it.

The recent revelation that the American Strategic Oil Reserve sent a million barrels of oil to a Chinese oil firm Hunter Biden has business ties with is just one more example of how blatantly and arrogantly corrupt the Biden administration is.

So, there will be plenty of performance failures on which to focus. But the failures must be tied to the underlying truth: The philosophy and values at the heart of Big Government socialism simply can never work.

These terrible outcomes are not the result of randomly incompetent behavior. They are the natural indeed the inevitable results of unworkable values and unrealistic, destructive models.

I wrote my new book, Defeating Big Government Socialism: Saving Americas Future, because defeating the philosophy and not just repudiating the current performance is so important.

Sean Hannity said this is the most important book Ive written in the more than 30 years we have known one another.

In fact, Mr. Hannity thought Defeating Big Government Socialism was so important, that he agreed to tape an entire podcast discussing it.

We are at a crucial decision point in our nations history. As Americans, we can choose the destructive, failed values and policies of Big Government socialism. Or we can choose to restore the America that works with the values and policies which made us the strongest, freest, most prosperous county on Earth.

Which path will you choose?

For more commentary from Newt, visit Gingrich360.com.

Read more:
Defeating the Democrats is not enough - Washington Times

For ordinary people, seeing is believing but for intellectuals believing is seeing

There are two kinds of people in the world: normal human beings and intellectuals. The critical difference between the two is that while for normal people seeing is believing, for intellectuals it is the other way around. This difference makes intellectuals different from ordinary people.

It is palpable at any gathering of

intellectuals, whether it is a Not-In-My-Name protest or a meeting to denounce the Narendra Modi government over some issue or another. The look, the feel, the atmosphericseverything about an

intellectuals meet is surreal. Having

attended quite a few such meetings in recent times, I can make a few observations about them.

First the look. Normal people wear, or want to wear, good clothes. Men go for Raymond, Reid & Taylor, J. Hamstead, Arrow, Louise Phillippe, Van Huesen; women love Nalli, Satyapaul, Manish Malhotra. Intellectuals, however, prefer khadi and Fabindia. The duller the color, the coarser the fabric, the more depressing the look, the better.

When a normal couple is alone, they make love; when an intellectual couple is alone, they discuss sexual politics.

When normal people attend a marriage party, they rejoice in good tidings. Intellectuals, on the contrary, dont approve of any marriage unless both partners are of the same sex. The normal marriage they view with suspicion, often as a fodder for the perpetuation of patriarchy and hetero-normativity.

If you ask normal people, who are their favorite film actors and actresses, they would say Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Shah Rukh Khan, Madhubala, Suraiya, Hema Malini, Madhuri Dixit, Kangana Ranaut, and so on. If you ask an intellectual the same question, the answer would be Balraj Sahni, Smita Patil, et al.

Now Sahni and Patil were great actors, but I wonder what kind of man would

like to take his girlfriend to watch Do Bigha Zameen.

This brings us to the question: What makes intellectuals so different? A quick Google search will give you delectable quotes: an intellectual is a person whos found one thing thats more interesting than sex (Aldous Huxley); an intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows (Dwight D. Eisenhower).

Instead of defining intellectuals, however, I would describe them in the following way: If Karl Marx tells a normal man, Look, that dog has bitten off your ear, he would touch his own ear to find out if his ear is missing. But if Marx says the same thing to an intellectual, the latter would begin chasing the dog without bothering to check the veracity of the claim.

As mentioned earlier, the distinguishing feature of intellectuals is: believing is

seeing. We perceive phenomena and then come to some conclusion; mostly, experience guides us. But intellectuals know the Truth; they are convinced that they are divinely-ordained or dialectically-blessed to know the Truth. So what they do is just cherry-pick facts to embellish it.

In schools and colleges, they are taught that capitalism is bad and socialism and communism are good. These are the tendentious teachings of pinkish professors and theoreticians; they wrote textbooks and dominated Indian academics after Independencethe teachings which got accepted as gospel truth by our thought leaders.

Rarely, if ever, the ideas of anti-communist thinkers like Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Fredrick Hayek were introduced to Indian students at any level.

Intellectuals claim to be liberal in their outlook, open to all ideas, and critical of received wisdom. But, in reality, they are most illiberal when it comes to anything conflicting with their own dogmasand socialism and communism are just dogmas, and dangerous ones at that.

For them, socialism and communism are good, period. Dogmatically, they are most unwilling to discard this belief that was formed when they were in schools and colleges. Like the first love, they cherish it all their lives, notwithstanding the mountain of evidence suggesting the opposite.

The truth is that over 100 million people perished under socialist and communist regimes? For decades, intellectuals all over the world disputed that, rubbishing it as Western or bourgeois propaganda. We, the people of India, escaped the worst depredations of socialism and communismprimarily because the British had built robust institutions and also because there were a number of leaders (e.g., former prime minister Charan Singh) to resist complete descent into collectivisation and other horrors. But socialism did hurt us badly; it is still a bane, as evident from the fact that we are still a poor country, with per capita income is below $2,300.

The mendacity of Leftist intellectuals and liberals was unbounded. Paul Johnson wrote in The Modern Times: The famine of 1932, the worst in Russian history, was virtually unreported. At the height of it, the visiting biologist Julian Huxley found a level of physique and general health rather above that to be seen in England. Shaw threw his food supplies out of the train window just before crossing the Russian frontier convinced that there were no shortages in Russia

Further, Johnson wrote, Self-delusion was obviously the biggest single factor in the presentation of an unsuccessful despotism as a Utopia in the making [in Russia]. But there was also conscious

deception by men and women who thought of themselves as idealists and who, at the time, honestly believed they were serving a higher human purpose by systematic misrepresentation and lying... The Thirties was the age of the heroic lie. Saintly mendacity became its more prized virtue. Stalins tortured Russia was the prime beneficiary of this sanctified falsification.

Saintly mendacity and heroic lies are the warp and woof of the narrative that intellectuals peddle all the time. They claimed to be the champions of individual liberty and privacy, thus opposing, for instance, the Modi governments efforts to link Aadhaar with welfare measures, administrative mechanisms, and money movement. But it was many of these people, big state enthusiasts as they are, conjured up targeted welfarism; this is how Aadhaar got conceived in the first place. This happened when Sonia Gandhi ruled the country by proxy and had filled her National Advisory Council with all manner of intellectuals.

Anything wrong in the economy is because of liberalisation. In their scheme of things, what they perceive and conceptualise is knowledge; the opposite is a malevolent construct of false consciousness. Intellectuals claim that they are the champions of human rights and civil liberties; and they sometimes practically act as the over-ground activists of Maoists, the sworn enemies of not just human rights and civil liberties but all that is good and glorious in human civilization.

Intellectuals claim that they want the uplift of the poor, yet the economic philosophy that they favor, socialism, has been discredited all over the world (If the Modi regime is troubled today, it is primarily because it has been unwilling or incapable of dispensing with the vestiges of socialist structures, but thats another story). No intellectual wishes to acknowledge the reality that socialism perpetuates poverty.

Indian intellectuals are comfortable in their own cocoons and echo chambers. They are blind to and they fear to see the reality as it is. They rarely, to use Irving Krystals phraseology, get mugged by reality.

The author is Director, Public Policy Research Centre

Read more from the original source:
Indian intellectuals are blind to reality, facts - Daily Pioneer

Today the newspaper shares the cure for a worsening economy . . . The idea is complex . . . But it's basically socialism in a Summer dress, without many deets and by way of trusting local corproate rulers.

Here's a bit of their screed . . .

"In America today, almost 30% of all accumulated wealth is owned by 1% of Americans. Worse, CNBC and the last census suggest that 50% of all Americans have no savings at all. And I mean nothing zip, zilch, nada. Many solutions offered to fix this problem are only short-term Band-Aids and do not solve the root problem.

"Charitable help, government safety nets and Medicaid are all critical. Likewise, Social Security, pensions and 401(k)s, while great programs, only create non-poor retirements. Some believe the solution is a higher minimum wage. I support a higher minimum wage, but all of these initiatives do little to nothing in terms of long-term, sustainable wealth creation.

"Equal-but-poor is not the end goal. Extreme wealth disparity may just be the natural conclusion of all-out capitalism, but it is not in the best fiscal interest of our nation. Thats not a left or a right conclusion it is a fiscally conservative requirement for the continuation of economic greatness."

A couple of funnies . . .

The goal of the newspaper was to praise some of the big local corporations who dominate city hall and government contracts.

Also . . .

No idea how a newspaper owned by a hedge fund is arguing for "economic democracy" with a straight face.

Read more via http://www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

OPINION AND COMMENTARY Can the solution for economic justice be best found in the heart of America? We know that Kansas City has been experiencing exciting momentum the last several years. In fact, some of the most successful companies with the happiest employees here in the metropolitan area are employee-owned.

You decide . . .

See the article here:
Kansas City Star Rediscovers Socialism

The popular uprising of workers, youth and rural toilers in Sri Lanka against the Rajapakse government over unbearable conditionsincluding scarcity, daily power outages, and skyrocketing prices for essentials goodsis now reaching a new stage.

The high price of food items is leading to conditions of mass starvation. The Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe government has placed the country on a virtual lockdown because fuel has run out. Schools have been closed, and public sector institutions have been instructed to call only essential staff for work. The lack of fuel has led to the collapse of public transport. These conditions have brought popular anger against the government to a boiling point.

Under these conditions, the social media activists who are leading the protest at Galle Face Green in Colombo, also known as Gota Gogama, have announced a massive peoples protest for July 9, claiming that it will be the greatest uprising in the history of Sri Lanka. This date will mark three months since the protest started at Galle Face Green.

However, the Action Plan for the Future of Struggle, issued by protest leaders on July 5, does not provide any program to address the burning issues confronting the masses. Rather, it would trap workers, youth and rural toilers within bourgeois rule and capitalist profit system, which is the root cause of the crisis.

Their program calls for an interim government, i.e., an alternative bourgeois government, which has been promoted by opposition parties in parliament, including the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), supported by pseudo-left groups like Frontline Socialist Party (FSP). A leading organiser of protests, Anuruddha Bandara, told Economynext that the opposition partiesthe SJB, JVP and othersare almost onboard.

The main tenets of the Action Plan include the demand for resignation of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Cabinet of Ministers and all the government appointees to high posts. Their alternative is an Interim Governance but with no indication as to who will make up this regime. It is implied, however, that all the parliamentary political parties are to be included in this interim government, as proposed by the opposition parties themselves.

This Interim Governance is supposed to subscribe to the economic, social and political aims and aspirations of the peoples struggle. While they have included securing the supply of essentials, like fuel and food, in their long list of aims and aspirations, they have not advanced any concrete program on how to provide them. They just hope that the Interim Governance will provide them if pressured to do so.

A Peoples Council is also proposed, in which representatives of the Peoples Struggle, will be able to effectively engage and mediate with the Interim Governance. That is, the task of the Peoples Council will be to exert pressure on new government. This is the same program advocated by pseudo-left FSP. The Action Plan proposes within a year to establish a new constitution through a referendum, which would abolish the executive presidency and create an appropriate process for a fair election.

In opposition to the program of the Galle Face protest leaders for formation of an alternative bourgeois government, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) advocates a revolutionary socialist program for the working class. We call for the independent mobilisation of the working class on a clear program of action to fulfill their basic needs against the Rajapakse government and bourgeois rule.

The SEP insists that there will no solution to the burning issues confronting the masses within bourgeois rule and the capitalist profit system. There is no national solution. No amount of pressure exerted on this government or any future bourgeois government will make the ruling class provide the basic needs of the masses.

While supporting the main demand of the struggling masses for the resignation of President Rajapakse and his government, the SEP insists that it should not be replaced with another bourgeois government, but with a government of workers and peasants committed to socialist policies.

As explained in our statement issued on April 7, at the very beginning of mass uprising and also reiterated in subsequent statements, the SEP calls for the immediate abolition of the executive autocratic presidency along with repressive laws such as the Essential Services Act, the Public Security Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which give police state powers to the security forces. Over the past month, Rajapakse invoked essential service laws against electricity and health workers. He used his emergency powers to deploy the military to the streets to repress workers languishing in queues for days to obtain fuel.

Irrespective of the bourgeois government that may replace the Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe regime, it will continue the same harsh austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It will seek to force working people and rural toilers to bear the full burden of the economic crisis.

All the opposition parties, including the SJB, JVP and Tamil National Alliance, have expressed their open or tacit support for IMF policies. Therefore, the so-called interim governance proposed in the Action Plan will become an instrument of the capitalist ruling elite to brutally implement those policies and crush all opposition from the working class and rural toilers.

The brutality of the IMF program was indicated in Prime Minister Wickremesinghes speech to parliament on Tuesday. Referring to the coming period, which will be stamped by IMF dictates, he said: This will be a difficult and bitter journey if things do not change, the whole country will collapse.

The changes include massively downsizing the public sector, privatising state-owned enterprises, and broadening the tax base with increased taxes. They will lead to cuts in jobs, wages, and other benefits of workers in public sector, increases in water and electricity prices, and a further slashing of subsidies.

The working class must reject this brutal class-war policy and all interim government traps. Workers must develop their own independent political intervention based on a program that addresses their needs and unleashes immense social power, which was demonstrated during general strikes on April 28, May 6 and May 10. This program must be based on the social needs of workers and the rural toilers, not the profit demands of big business.

The first step in fighting for this program is to form democratically-elected independent action committees of the working class in factories, workplaces, plantations and working-class neighborhoods throughout the country. The action committees must be independent of the capitalist parties and the trade unions, which act as stooges and apologists of the capitalist ruling establishment.

The SEP encourages and will assist workers in forming these action committees, which will advance a working-class solution to the socio-economic crisis created by the capitalist class. The struggle of the working class must be internationally integrated through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, initiated by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

The SEP advances the following demands as the fighting program for the Action Committees to overcome the mass suffering created by capitalism:

* For workers democratic control over the production and distribution of all essential items and other resources critical for the lives of people! Nationalise the banks, big corporations, plantations and other major economic nerve centres!

* Repudiate all foreign debts! No to the austerity demands of the IMF and World Bank that represent the international bankers and financial institutions!

* Establish a state monopoly of foreign trade to eradicate corruption in export and import processes and also ensure the supply of all essentials!

* Seize the colossal wealth of the billionaires and corporations!

* Cancel all debts of poor and marginal farmers and small business holders! Reinstate all subsidies, including fertiliser subsidies for farmers!

* Guarantee jobs for all with decent and safe working conditions! Index wages to the cost of living!

An independent movement of the working class organised through action committees based on the above demands will rally the rural poor and other oppressed masses. It will create the foundation for a mass movement aimed at establishing a government of workers and peasants, committed to socialist policies.

The fight for this program is part of a broader struggle for socialism in South Asia and internationally, which must be waged through a united movement of the working class globally.

The potential for such an independent movement of the working class has been clearly demonstrated in the powerful intervention of the working class in popular uprising in Sri Lanka. This includes the massive general strikes on April 28, May 6 and May 10, in which millions participated.

The struggle of workers in Sri Lanka is part of an upsurge of the working class throughout the world. The international airline industry has been affected by strikes in recent weeks, following the strike of 50,000 British rail workers struck. From Latin America to Asia, and from Europe to the United States, educators, auto workers, transportation workers, health care workers and all sections of the working class are entering into struggle against soaring prices, exploitation and inequality.

We urge workers and youth to join the SEP to and take up this struggle for a socialist program and perspective.

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The July 9 protest in Sri Lanka: A socialist program for workers and youth - WSWS