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Im Warren Smith, and today youll be listening in on my conversation with Jefrey Breshears. He is the author of a new book called American Crisis: Cultural Marxism and The Culture War: A Christian Response.

SOUNDBITE: The early church, if you want to describe it, or characterize it as moderately socialistic, to use modern terminology, the early church really practiced voluntary socialism, or voluntary communalism out of a sincere love for others. So, which is totally different, of course from secular political socialism, which is government mandated. It's always invariably coercive and involuntary.

Jefrey Breshears took an interesting path to become one of the most quietly influential thinkers in evangelicalism today. He was raised in the church, a conservative Baptist church, and he never completely left the faith of his youth, but he did have sojourns in what today we sometimes call the religious left or progressive Christianity. Well talk about that in our conversation today.

Jefrey also spent time in the music industry, working for both secular and Christian record labels in the early days of the Jesus Music era. His experiences there have informed his approach to apologetics, and his strategy at the Aeropagus Forum, which is a study center that combines apologetics with history and contemporary cultural issues.

Jefrey Breshears new book is American Crisis: Cultural Marxism and the Culture War: A Christian Response. He spoke to me from his office in Atlanta.

WS: Well, Jefrey, welcome to the program. It is really great to see you and to have this chance to talk. You and I have known each other for a very long time.

JB: Absolutely. Almost in a prior life, I'd say.

WS: Well, in fact, in some ways it was a prior life. And that's partly, the reason I said that is partly because that's why I, that's where I want to start our conversation. You were raised in a Christian home. And you, in your book, devote a couple of chapters to your own personal upbringing in Odyssey. And I think that because your book is so rich with, and so big, nearly 500 pages, 450 pages, that maybe telling your personal story might be the best and easiest way for us to get into that. Talk about your upbringing. Talk about your Christian home, and what that taught you and what the limitations of it were.

JB: Well, thank you, I certainly appreciate the opportunity. I rarely, obviously, I rarely ever get to speak about personal things. And it is a relatively small portion of the book. But I'm always pleased to be able to do that. I appreciate that very much. I grew up in a very devout, very sincere and committed Christian family. My father was a very dominant and expressive personality. He was absolutely one of the most principled and disciplined people I think I've ever known. And when he set his mind to something he absolutely would not be deterred. He was, I would say, a dogmatic moralist. He was rarely puzzled by the kind of vagarities and ambiguities that confound most people. In fact, as one biographer once wrote about Theodore Roosevelt, Dad seemed to be born with his mind already made up. Now what he did possess, among other qualities, was what C.S. Lewis oftentimes referred to in his writings, as the most rare of all the virtues. And that is courage. And so I very much admired that in my father as well. He had three passions really in life: his Christian faith, of course, his wife and family, and also he very much loved America. And so I grew up with those kind of values. In fact, he would oftentimes use our supper time as a teaching opportunity. Now, like most families back then, we would usually eat supper together. And we oftentimes, of course, would chat about what went on at school or work that day, and so on. But he also would use that dinner time to talk about current events and politics and church and the Bible. And one of his great passions was Biblical prophecy. He would also use the time oftentimes on Sunday afternoons to critique the pastor's sermon from that, from that morning.

WS: Well, Jefrey, let me jump in here and interrupt you because as I read in your book, and as you've just described, I mean, there's much admirable, much honorable about what you just said about your dad and about your upbringing. And clearly you share a lot of those values today. I mean, you your passion for Scripture, and the family, and for America are pretty clear in your book. However, there was another side to that upbringing in the 1950s and 60s. You you mentioned for example, the fascination of many conservatives, including your father, with the John Birch Society and with conspiracy theories, and the Trilateral Commission and the Illuminati and all of that kind of stuff. Can you, can you say a little bit more about that and how that how those ideas influenced your dad, and how they influenced you, either in the acceptance or the rejection of them?

JB: Yes, very good question. I grew up from the time I was about 10 or so he would take me to various conservative meetings. We were living in Orange County, California. Anaheim, California at the time. And so I would accompany him. We would see some of the latest films, produced by conservatives. He was very involved in the John Birch Society. So all of that was very much familiar to me as I was growing up. When I went off to junior high school in seventh grade, I joined the Young Americans for Freedom local chapter. So that was very familiar, a very familiar subculture to me. I heard in person at various churches some of the prominent Christian, conservative, right wing evangelists of the day. So yes, I, I was pretty well indoctrinated in that whole orientation by the time I got to high school.

WS: So what then changed in you? And when did it change? Because at some point, you observed that while there were, there was some truth wrapped up in these conspiracy theories, that there was also some significant deficiencies in that worldview. That it was not a truly Christian worldview, and not a full orbed Christian worldview. In fact, one of the things that you said in your book that really captured my imagination and attention was that often your dad and some of these, you know, right wing conservatives of the 1950s, and 60s, got the good, and the true, pretty well. They, you know, they kind of understood that, but they didn't get the beautiful. That, that there was a very limited aesthetic, and that the beautiful, really depend upon each other, that you can't sort of separate them and pull them apart, that it over time really started eroding your confidence in their vision of the good and the true as well as the beautiful.

JB: Well, from my perspective, as a teenager, and then in college, there was so much about conservative evangelicalism that was so out of sync with the times. Now that's not, of course, necessarily negative. Not at all. Because our times are usually very out of sync with Biblical principles. But yes, in in the churches I grew up in there was a lot of emphasis on, on theology, on Biblical history, and so on, what is true and what is good. But as you've pointed out, the element of the beautiful was oftentimes missing. And I've thought about that over the years. And, you know, when you think about the origins of what we would call modern art, it really begins with the Renaissance. And the Renaissance, of course, is oftentimes described as a very humanistic movement. Now, that's not to be confused with secular humanism that's so prevalent today. But the humanism of the Renaissance, of course, was a celebration of human creativity and ingenuity. And there was much about it that, frankly, was very, very inspiring and very compatible with a, with a Christian worldview. Now, centuries later, of course, as the Reformation came about, Protestants, most Protestants, regarded anything that was associated with Catholicism or Catholic tradition, to be tainted and suspicious, due to, for instance, all the very garish and ostentatious art and icons that decorated Catholic churches and cathedrals.

So in general, and I am speaking in broad generalizations here, Protestantism and of course, also Anabaptism, which very much influenced my Christian faith and development, both of those forces Protestantism and Anabaptist sought to return to what they regarded as the simple expressions of the of the Christian faith that they felt characterized the early church. We know, for example, that Martin Luther wanted icons removed from churches and so on. So to update it to my father's time and my younger years, by the turn of the 20th century, of course, a lot of the popular art, the visual arts, the music, the performing arts, and so on, a lot of it was created and performed, of course, by non Christians. And increasingly much of the music, and later, of course, the movies, expressed very secular themes. Now, I wouldn't want to exaggerate the issue, but I think that there was a general tendency on the part of conservative Christians to ignore music and movies and other art forms that, in fact, have certainly been tainted, maybe even outright corrupted by non-Christians, oftentimes propagating a very anti-Christian value system. Popular culture in general, and certainly popular music, as we know is overwhelmingly mediocre at best. But there was always some that's wholesome. There's always some that's inspiring. There's always some that is credible. It may be a very tiny percentage of all the music and the movies and the TV that's produced, but that 2% or 3% can certainly enrich our lives, but we have to be proactive in terms of finding it. And I think there was a tendency on the part of many Christians, adult Christians, not to bother with it at all, because again, they found it overwhelmingly negative.

WS: And your love of music is where you got to be out of step I guess a bit with your upbringing because you love music, right? And ultimately, you ended up working for one of the record labels.

JB: Well, yes. Other than baseball, I'd say music was probably my passion growing up.

WS: By the way, Jefrey, just for the record. As you and I are watching this, the Braves you're playing an afternoon game with the Cubs and I've got them on the television behind us. But that's that's a subject for another day.

JB: Well and life is not fair. Because I understand up there in Chicago today, the weather is nearly perfect. Whereas here in Georgia, it is nearly as hot as hell or Texas, whichever you want to use for the proper analogy.

WS: Right. But anyway, so other than baseball, our shared passion for baseball and our shared passion for music, you know, it was this more music. Music is more relevant to our conversation right now. The that, you know, kind of caused a turning, shall we say in your life?

JB: Well, it was quite influential. Again, I was very much enraptured with a lot of popular music of the 60s and early to mid 70s. A lot of it was just incredibly creative. A lot of the music of Bob Dylan and The Beatles and of course, many others that we could cite. Now, I felt like I had a fairly good grounding, in terms of what is true and good. Evangelical churches were very, very adept at clearly addressing critical moral issues and so on. But there was something that I felt at the time was seriously lacking. And also, when I looked at the total dysfunctionality of American society and culture in the late 60s and into the 70s, I think music became more than anything else, an escape. I did not see a whole lot in America at the time that I would have felt was in sync with the truth and the goodness that we encounter in Scripture. So I think with that being the case, I gravitated toward music, looking for some meaning, some purpose, some beauty and fulfillment in music. So my first job out of college actually was with Capitol Records. Capitol Records had a large distribution center here in Atlanta at the time, as there were five or six of these scattered around the country. And of course, that was the company that had produced some of the most popular recording artists of the previous 10 or 15 years, going all the way back to the Kingston Trio, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and so on. When I was at Capitol, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was released - one of the most popular records of course of the 1970s. So for me, music was, as I said, a therapeutic escape from the realities, the ugly realities of what was so prevalent in American society and culture at the time.

WS: Well as you got more deeply into music and started seeing some of the limitations of your upbringing, your fundamentalist or evangelical upbringing, you didn't renounce your faith, but you did branch out a bit - you tested other waters. Jefrey, from where you and I sit today, I think you and I are both pretty familiar with the narrative of progressive Christianity or exvangelicals or the movement that some people call the deconstructing of faith. Some of them still want to hold on to the label of Christian, they want to still say they're Christians, while they reject core Christian doctrines. You didn't exactly reject core Christian doctrines during this era, but you were questioning the evangelical subculture and some of the conservative American political climate as well, especially those elements that seemed to go hand in glove with the evangelical subculture. Can you say a little about that, that flirtation with progressive Christianity and the deconstructing of your faith?

JB: Well, I worked for Capitol Records for a couple of years. I, it was a very hedonistic environment, of course. So during that period of time, I I really recommitted my life to Christ. And I wanted to go to work for the company that produced most of the popular Jesus music of the early to mid 1970s. And that was Word Incorporated. They had a large book division, as well as a music division. And they had some of the most talented Christian artists of the day. Artists such as Larry Norman, distributed his music through them, Phil Keaggy, Second Chapter of Acts, Barry McGuire, and others as well. So I, I worked with Word in the music division for four years. And I found that to be satisfying in some respects, but in others not so much.

Now, I was traveling all over the south at the time interacting with a very, very wide range of Christians, professing Christians, some of whom were very impressive. Others, not so much. But it did very much expand my horizons, as far as the Christian demographics, you might say, in America. So I never, of course, became an ex, exvangelical, to use the term that you used a minute or so ago. But I did spend several years searching for what I thought were more credible expressions of true Christianity. I certainly was never a liberal, or a progressive, either in my faith or in my politics. I always knew that what we call liberalism today, in other words, modern liberalism, was really just the political ideology of a secular humanistic philosophy. And that was, that was totally unappealing to me. But for several years, I was involved in several groups that had a left wing orientation. Many would have described themselves probably as Christian socialists. Now, I probably would have characterized myself at the time as a socialist Christian, keeping the proper noun being Christian and socialist only as an adjective. But only because I believe that the early church, at least the Jerusalem church, that we read about in the book of Acts, practiced communitarian values. But the early church if you want to describe it, or characterize it as moderately socialistic, to use modern terminology, the early church really practiced voluntary socialism, or voluntary communalism out of a sincere love for others, which is totally different, of course from secular political socialism, which is government mandated. It's always invariably coercive and involuntary. So, political socialism inevitably leads to authoritarianism, in which the government attempts to control virtually every aspect of our lives. It also limits our free expression, including the free expression of our Christian faith. And socialism is certainly antithetical to religious liberty. So I felt at the time that I did need to broaden my perspective on Christian discipleship. And more liberal, or left wing, Christian groups, and enterprises, I felt like was something that I seriously needed to check out.

WS: So you started reading and communicating with people like Ron Sider, who wrote a very influential book called Rich Christians In An Age of Hunger, who, by the way, I've had on this podcast, by the way. An also, the Sojourners movement, which was fairly new at that point. They published a magazine, Sojourners Magazine, and you had your own Christian publication in Atlanta for a while.

JB: Yes, it was in the early 1980s. Actually, I had just returned to graduate school to study history at Georgia State University. But I founded a publication called Crossroads: an Atlanta Christian Forum. And we took a position that might be described as perhaps mildly Christian left wing in that regard. And I did have the opportunity during those years to interact with a lot of the, a lot of the more public faces and leaders in the Christian left. I was offered a job actually with Ron Siders organization, Evangelicalism for Social Action, they were based in Germantown, Pennsylvania, just a little north of downtown Philadelphia. And I admired Ron and believed that he was sincere and a credible Christian. There were others, however, in the Christian left that very quickly I had suspicions about. So many of these people seem to me to be considerably more socialistic than they were Christianistic, if I can use that term.

WS: Sure.

JB: And so I felt like over the years, I came to see a lot of the fallacies in that whole movement. And eventually, I was drawn back into a more conservative orientation in most every regards. As I thought about these things, over time thought about them more deeply and also taught on political science as well as history in my career as a, as a history professor.

WS: Hold on a second. Jefrey, I'm have a something happened here to my recorder. And I just don't know what happened. But it stopped recording. Fortunately, this is a backup that and not the main thing. So okay. Let me

JB: Now, should I also mention that I would have totally lost my faith if had I not met you in Sunday school?

WS: Yeah, no, yeah. Do not say that. No, I do. Do I do want to. Okay, but by the way, Johnny, we're off. We're off the record now that you can cut all this out. But I'm about to go back on. Are you ready? Jeffrey, can I go back on this?

WS: Well, Jeffrey, I do want to sort of close our conversation with what you are doing now. But before we do that, there are a couple of little anecdotes that I'd like to hit you with. One is, you describe in your book, and I may have heard you describe this in person at some point, I don't remember now. An encounter you had with Keith Green that while you were working for, I think it was while you're working for Sparrow Records. It may have been while you were still at Capitol, where you when you left Capitol to go to work for Sparrow. You were kind of hoping that you were, you know, leaving Egypt for the promised land. And you found out.

JB: Oh, when I left Capital, I actually went to work for Word. Okay. And then, two years later with Sparrow Okay, here we go, sorry to interrupt.

WS: Yeah, no, that's good. Okay, Johnny, we're here we go. We're starting all over again.

WS: Jeffrey, I do want to sort of land this plane and bring our conversation to a conclusion by, you know, talking about what you're doing now. But before we leave this era of your life, I want to, I can't resist asking you about a couple of anecdotes that are alluded to in your book. I may have heard you talk about them face to face at some point. With Capitol Records, you were kind of hoping to go into a Christian label, first Word and then Sparrow, might kind of give you the best of both worlds. It would give you, you know, kind of what you loved about the music business, and, you know, the creativity and all of that, but doing it in a Christian environment. Over time, my understanding from reading you and from talking to you is that you became, I guess, a little bit disillusioned with the, you know, the commercialism of even Christian music. And that may have led to your, some of your forays into Christian socialism, just kind of testing out what else might be an option. But you had an encounter with Keith Green, who I think a lot of our listeners are going to know. And a lot of listeners are going to know that he also had some really serious concerns about the Christian music industry. Can you say a little more about that?

JB: Well, I interacted with Keith on on just a few occasions. I didn't know him real well, but we corresponded. Keith, as you said, was very concerned about the commercialization of Christian music and going back to the early 1970s, when Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill, and people like that emerged, singing folk rock style music that had Christian lyrics, biblical lyrics. That was quite unusual at the time. Now later, that Jesus music, of course, will morph into what became known as contemporary Christian music. It became an industry unto itself. This was troublesome to Keith. He didn't believe that the gospel should be so aggressively marketed. Nor did I, for that matter. So I was always a little out of sync even with the company that I was representing. But when I finally resigned from Sparrow Records to return to graduate school and study history, I remember sharing my thoughts with Keith and he sent me a very nice letter, encouraging me to do just that. He was very concerned about some of those tendencies in the Christian book and music industry itself.

WS: Yeah. Well, of course, that's been a concern of mine as well. I remember, I wrote I wrote a book back in 2009, called The Lover's Quarrel With The Evangelical Church that you read and were generous enough to invite me to Atlanta to speak to the Areopagus Forum at that time, and I guess that would be nearly 15 years ago now. By the way, I'm working on a revised version of that book. So that sort of segues me though, Jeffrey, a bit into what you're doing now. I mentioned the Areopagus Forum. Many of our listeners who are Christians will know of course that the Areopagus was also known as Mars Hill. It was where Paul made his famous Acts 17 speech, from which you derive the name of the Areopagus Form, of course. What are you trying to accomplish with the Areopagus Forum? What are your kind of day to day activities and by what are you trying to accomplish? I mean, sort of the big picture, what's your vision or mission? And then what do you do? How do you accomplish that vision on a sort of day to day boots on the ground kind of way?

JB: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that question in particular. Yeah, for 20 years, I was a history professor mostly at Georgia State University. My, by the way, my doctoral studies concentrated on two areas of history. One was modern U.S. history, so as to try and make sense of the 60s. And the other area was actually ancient history, philosophy, and religion due to my interest in early church history. And I also, of course, taught church history at Atlanta Christian College and Reformed Theological Seminary. But I left the university and began the Areopagus in 2003. And, as you mentioned, the Areopagus is a term that's pretty familiar to most people who are familiar with the book of Acts. Acts chapter 17, in particular. And of course, the apostle Paul visited the Areopagus, where he testified his faith in Christ and really planted the seed of Christianity there in Athens. Now, throughout Christian history that name Areopagus has oftentimes represented the intersection of Christian faith and culture. And that's why I chose that particular name for our particular ministry. Ours is basically a forum for the exchange of ideas. Now, today in America, of course, we realize that we are in the midst of a culture, of a culture that's increasingly skeptical, if not outright hostile toward Christian faith and values. And the erosion of Christian influence in our society is apparent in in virtually every area of of life today, from law and politics to business, education, the media, certainly the arts and entertainment, certainly in public and private morality, as well. So the Areopagus is essentially a Christian education ministry. We're based in the Greater Atlanta area. We offer seminars and forums on issues relevant to contemporary Christian life. We always say that our mission fundamentally is this - and that's to help Christians effectively engage our society and culture with the life transforming truth and love of Jesus Christ. And so, to that end, we offer substantive seminar courses and topical forums that would challenge Christians to live in accord with the principles and the practices of a holistic, comprehensive, Biblical worldview. So we, we have a website at http://www.theareopagus.org. We also have a Facebook page. And by the way, we also have a newsletter that we send out periodically that's devoted to significant issues and events. We call it The Watchman. And oftentimes, we will reference some of the articles that you featured in MinistryWatch.

WS: Wo you can't you can't get out of the publication business can you?

JB: Well, it's, it's not only a passion, it's, it's truly a calling. Yeah. And I, I've written several books. Probably...

WS: Well, you know, it's interesting to me, and I'm sure you know, this, Jefrey, that the Areopagus figures prominently in Acts 17. And, obviously, the word from which you derive your name. But the, also John Milton wrote a famous essay, I think I'm gonna pronounce it right, the Areopagittica, I think, I think that's the way it's pronounced. It was a kind of a Reformation era document. And it was a defense of free speech. It was really one of the first modern documents defending free speech. It's interesting to me that he called it the Areopagittica, because he made the observation in that document that Paul was not only preaching the gospel, but he was also appealing to the authorities for religious liberty and freedom of speech. He was basically, you know, saying, I have the right to stand here and proclaim this God in whom I believe, this unnamed God. So it's kind of interesting how the confluence of these, religious liberty and freedom of speech, and the proclamation of the gospel are so closely intertwined in that one word, Areopagus kind of, encapsulates all of that.

JB: Yes, it's been a very useful term, basically taking the gospel message in the public, dealing with serious issues, be they religious, spiritual issues, moral, cultural issues, and basically just the fulfilling our mission to to adopt a comprehensive understanding of Christian discipleship. This fall, I'll be doing a course that will be focused on the life and works of Francis Schaeffer. And of course, Francis Schaeffer was one of those who kept calling us back to a comprehensive understanding of Christian discipleship in contrast of what he called pietism, which is this very narrow, limited understanding or view of Christian discipleship. And so we try to incorporate those kinds of themes and that kind of a broad based approach in our ministry.

WS: Yeah. Well, Jeffrey, we've got to bring our time to a close. And we've we really haven't talked specifically much about your book, even though your story is in chapter seven and eight of your book. And the ideas that we talked about are what energize your book, what innervate, your book, you might say. But what do you want people to get out of the book? Why should people read this book?

JB: Well, I think it's an extremely relevant book for our time. It's an analysis basically, of the origins and the manifestations and the consequences of America's culture war that's raging today, and what Christians can and what Christians should be doing in response. So I'd say that basically, the purpose of the book is to reveal and analyze the great spiritual, moral, and cultural challenges that we face today as American Christians. It also explores the historical and philosophical origins for our culture war, exposes the the consequences of the erosion of Christian influences in our society. And in addition to that, we also challenge Christians to become better informed, more actively engaged in these great issues of our time, so that we can truly fulfill our mission to be a source of light and love and hope and truth in the midst of a society and a culture that's rapidly disintegrating and descending into more and more spiritual darkness.

Youve been listening in on my conversation with Dr. Jefrey Breshears. His new book is American Crisis: Cultural Marxism and the Culture War: A Christian Response. He spoke to me from his office in Atlanta.

Listening In comes to you from WORLD News Group, and this program is just one of the many benefits that comes with a WORLD subscription. To find out more visit WNG.org/subscribe.

Tune in next week to hear my conversation with Roland Warren. Hes the president of CareNet, one of the largest networks of pregnancy resource centers in the nation, with more than 1,200 affiliates. When the Dobbs decision was announced, the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Roland Warren was one of the first calls I made. His insights about the future of the prolife movement will both encourage and challenge you. I hope youll tune in.

The producer for todays program is Leigh Jones. Johnny Franklin is the technical producer. And Paul Butler is executive producer for WORLD Radio. Im your host, Warren Smith. And youve been Listening In.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.

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Listening In - A conversation with Jefrey Breshears - WORLD News Group

ensitivity to the claims of the people is in fact the only way we have of contributing to the solution of the great human problems - for no universal value is worth the name if it cannot be applied on a national or regional scale and to the local living conditions of each family. Allende

Patrice Lumumba made history in Congo by confronting the colonial regime with its brutalities and paid for the audacity with his life. That saga was repeated in South America. This time the victim was Salvador Allende, Chiles first socialist president.

His full name was Salvador Allende Gossens. He was born on June 26, 1908, in Valparaso. After leading an eventful life, he died on September 11, 1973 in Santiago.

Like several other South American countries, Chile had been a colony of Spain for nearly 300 years until Napoleon Bonapartes conquest of Spain weakened the countrys imperial grip on its South American colonial possessions.

Under the Spanish colonial rule, northern and central Chile were part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Allende was born into an upper-middle-class family when Chiles destiny was in doldrums. In a situation of extreme uncertainty, Allende took a degree in medicine but instead of practising medicine opted for a career in politics. In 1933, he helped found Chiles Socialist Party, which had a Marxist ideology.

Success didnt come to Allende instantaneously. He had to strive long and he strived assiduously. America was already finding it hard to contend with Fidel Castro in Cuba after he came to power in 1959. Another socialist-led polity could not be countenanced.

Plots hatched from within and from outside to bring the government down had started surfacing immediately after Allende assumed power. After election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1937, he served (193942) as minister of health in the liberal leftist coalition of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda. Allende won the first of his four elections to the Senate in 1945. He ran for the presidency for the first time in 1952 but was temporarily expelled from the Socialist Party for accepting the support of the outlawed Communists; he placed last in a four-man race.

He ran again in 1958with Socialist backing as well as the support of the then-legal Communistsand was a close second to the Conservative-Liberal candidate, Jorge Alessandri. With the same support, he was decisively defeated in 1964 by the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei.

For his successful 1970 campaign, Allende ran as the candidate of Popular Unity, a bloc of socialists, communists, radicals and some dissident Christian Democrats, leading in a three-sided race with 36.3 percent of the vote.

Thus, he ran for president unsuccessfully three times before winning narrowly in 1970. Despite the slim margin to sustain him in power he attempted to restructure the Chilean society along socialist lines while retaining democracy, civil liberties and due process of law. He reformed the education system and provided free milk for children. He also arranged distribution of land among landless farmers. Allende was opposed to foreign companies that were taking away natural resources, like copper, from the country.

Despite his good intentions and well-meaning efforts to create an egalitarian society by redistributing wealth, he had to contend with stagnant production, food shortages, rising inflation and widespread strikes. The American media and Chicago school of economists under the tutelage of Milton Friedman highlighted the rising inflation and labour strikes with extraordinary zeal.

Some of his problems can be put down to his coalition partners, who didnt allow Allende to carry out reforms the way he wanted. In neo-colonial states, the colonial structures and the forces lending them support trenchantly resist any measure taken to reform society or the state. In some cases, the leaders vying to undertake reforms are summarily deposed. Some are physically obliterated like Lumumba and Allende and demonised through false narratives.

The US government believed with a great deal of consternation that Allende would move closer to socialist countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union. They feared that he would push Chile into socialism and that all American investments in the copper-rich Chile would be lost.

A document released by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000, titled, CIA Activities in Chile, revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it recruited many of Pinochets officers as paid contacts of the CIA or US military.

Having said that, one must not lose sight of the fact that Allendes coalition, Unidad Popular, faced the problem of being a minority in the congress and was beset with factionalism. On September 11, 1973, a successful coup led by Gen Augusto Pinochet overthrew the government. It is argued that Allende too had a part in the process having himself appointed Augusto Pinochet to replace Gen Carlos Prats, although the appointment of Pinochet was strictly in compliance with the rules, procedures and according to military ranks. Pinochet had been, until then, a constitutionalist and a defender of the Allende government. Allende was an unfortunate victim of the circumstances. He fought, failed and died.

During a concerted attack on the presidential palace, Allende died, and the manner of his death became a subject of controversy. Military officials claimed that he had committed suicide. Others believed that he had been killed and that the evidence of an apparent suicide had been planted.

Long years of atrocious rule by Gen Pinochet followed.

Allende had the support of many workers and peasants; his electoral coalition had won 44 percent of the vote in the March 1973 congressional elections.

The writer is Professor in the faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore

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Salvador Allende, who fought and failed - The News International

In the weeks after six unelected Supreme Court justices abolished the right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade, a nightmarish reality is coming into focus.

In state after state, Republican states are enacting extreme measures, rolling back the clock by many decades. State legislatures are restricting residents from traveling to obtain abortions or pills like Plan B, including by penalizing doctors who prescribe such pills to patients who live across state lines. Several states are introducing legislation that will jail individuals who travel to other states for necessary medical procedures. Texas Republicans have introduced a bill that financially incentivizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against individuals who drive family and friends to seek abortions out of state, essentially setting a bounty on them.

On Wednesday, a large section of the Republican Party in Congress endorsed the Heartbeat Protection Act, which would ban abortion in states where it remains legal. Arkansas Republican State Senator Jason Rapert, who is president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, said, Many of us have supported legislation to stop human trafficking. So why is there a pass on people trafficking women in order to make money off of aborting their babies?

The most chilling indication of the new reality is the vicious and reactionary campaign against Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indiana University obstetrician-gynecologist who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old girl who was impregnated after being raped. This case is a sign of what is to come.

On June 27, just three days after the Supreme Courts ruling, a child abuse doctor in neighboring Ohio contacted Dr. Bernard to notify her that a 10-year-old patient was six weeks and three days pregnant and could not receive necessary medical treatment in Ohio. In 2019, Ohios Republican state legislature and Republican governor, Mike DeWine, signed a law banning abortions after six weeks. The law does not include an exception for rape or child rape. It could not be enforced so long as Roe v. Wade was good law, but the restrictions went into effect hours after the Supreme Court overturned it.

As a result, the 10-year-old was forced to drive several hours to Indiana, where she received treatment from Dr. Bernard, who reported the incident to police and Indiana authorities. Dr. Bernard informed the Indianapolis Star about the 10-year-olds abortion in a manner that did not violate any patient privacy laws. The newspaper published a story on July 1, and after Biden mentioned it at a press conference on July 8, the far right launched an offensive. At this point, no arrest had been made, but on July 14, a 27-year-old man was arrested in Columbus, Ohio and police claim he confessed to having raped the girl at least twice.

The Republican Party, however, has claimed that the incident was made up. Fox News declared that the story was B.S. Former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway appeared on the network to declare that the story was false and too rich to verify.

Worst of all, the Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial board statement on July 13 titled, An Abortion Story Too Good to Confirm, which attacked Biden for promoting fanciful tales, stating: The tale is a potent post-Roe tale of woe for those who want to make abortion a voting issue this fall. One problem: Theres no evidence the girl exists. The Journal then attacked Dr. Bernard by name, saying she lied for personal political gain: You may not be surprised to learn that Dr. Bernard has a long history of abortion activism in the media.

The Democratic Party-aligned press accommodated this far-right campaign and cast doubt on Dr. Bernard before the alleged perpetrators arrest was known. On July 9, the Washington Post published an article by reporter Glenn Kessler attacking the Indianapolis Star for publishing the story on the grounds that it relied on only one source, Dr. Bernard. The Post implied that Dr. Bernard was less than forthright, stating that she declined to identify to the [Washington Post] Fact Checker her colleague or the city where the child was located. The Post wrote, The story has acquired the status of a fact no matter its provenance.

Indiana State Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican Trump supporter, says he is investigating Dr. Bernard and may criminally prosecute her. Rokita called her this abortion activist acting as a doctor and falsely claimed she failed to report the incident as required under Indiana law. When it became clear that she did report the incident, Rokita continued to demonize Dr. Bernard and said he was looking into revoking her medical license, even though he has no basis for doing so.

As a result of this campaign, Dr. Bernard has faced threats of physical violence from the far right. The New York Times published an op-ed by a colleague of Dr. Bernard that asserts, This saga has had real-world repercussions for Dr. Bernard. The local police have been alerted to concerns for her physical safety.

Dr. Bernards life is in danger as a result of this reactionary and violent climate. In May 2009, Dr. George Tiller, a physician who performed abortions, was murdered by a far-right anti-abortion extremist at Dr. Tillers church in Wichita, Kansas.

The methods of right-wing terrorists have more and more become the official strategy of the Republican Party. This was expressed most clearly on January 6, 2021, when the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, carried out a coup and attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election by physical violence. Trump personally voiced support for protesters who intended to assassinate Vice President Mike Pence and demanded that metal detectors be removed from the rally on the Ellipse so that his supporters would be armed when they assaulted the Capitol.

The Democratic Party has refused to take action to stop the ongoing assault on democratic rights. On January 6, its congressional leaders made no appeal to the population to stop the coup from taking place, while Biden spoke and asked Trump to address the nation on television. The Democratic Party has not lifted a finger to defend the right to abortion, with Biden and Vice President Harris repeatedly telling the population that the only solution is to vote to elect Democrats in the midterm elections, even though Democrats already control both houses of Congress.

In recent days, the Democratic Party has begun to attack proponents of abortion rights for being too critical of the Biden administrations unwillingness to defend abortion. Biden Communications Director Kate Bedingfield told the Washington Post last week that Joe Bidens goal in responding to Dobbs [the name of the decision overturning Roe] is not to satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

Other leading Democrats in Congress have made similar comments attacking left-wing defenders of abortion while defending the Biden administration and demanding that voters support the Democrats in November. Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) praised Bidens superficial assertion that Democrats should pass legislation defending the right to abortion regardless of the filibuster, a proposal which was dead on arrival due to opposition from within the Democratic Party itself. Now were talking, Ocasio-Cortez declared, lending political legitimacy to the right-wing Biden administration.

The decrepit state of American democracy is such that a tiny right-wing minority of religious zealots is dictating social policy in a country where 70 percent of the population supports the right to abortion. No progressive change will come from working within this rotten system. The defense of all basic democratic rights, including the defense of Dr. Bernard, requires the political mobilization of the working class against the entire capitalist political establishment. Such a movement must be bound up with the fight against the rising cost-of-living and the devastating impact of inflation, and must be developed outside of and in opposition to both parties of capitalist reaction.

Join the Socialist Equality Party!

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The nightmarish reality of post-Roe America - WSWS

In 1994, after 40 years in the wilderness, a Republican party led by Newt Gingrich recaptured the House of Representatives. Eventually, scandals of his own making, the impeachment of Bill Clinton and a drubbing in the 1998 midterms forced Gingrich to step down. But he did not leave public life.

The former Georgia congressman ran for the presidential nomination in 2012, seamlessly adapted to the rise of Donald Trump in 2016, and kept on publishing all the while. His latest book, the catchily titled Defeating Big Government Socialism, comes as his party anticipates another congressional takeover in November.

Tim Miller is another long-term Republican operative, if not a frontline politician. He served in a number of GOP campaigns, demonstrating media savvy and a knack for opposition research. After Jeb Bush left the presidential race in 2016, Miller emerged as vocal Trump critic. Now, in the footsteps of Never Trumpers Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens, he has penned a political memoir. His subtitle A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell refers to a route many would say was partly paved by Gingrich.

The former speakers new book is heavy on familiar bombast and predictably short on introspection. Its opening pages deliver a familiar beat-down of China and its financial allies.

Many of our elites refuse to even recognize the threat from Beijing, Gingrich writes. For many, it is because they make so much money from China.

He would have done better to check his own financial disclosures.

By 2018, Newt and Callista Gingrich ambassador to the Vatican under Trump had invested at least $100,000 and possibly as much as $250,000 in certificates of deposit issued by the Bank of China.

For what its worth, Trump maintained a bank account in China. Further, in such spirit of US-Sino amity, the late Sheldon Adelson funded Gingrichs 2012 presidential run with $20m, courtesy of the blackjack tables and roulette wheels of his casino in Macau.

In other words, Gingrich was cool with China until he wasnt. Government records also show a $368,334 advance for a book with a simple working title: Trump vs China.

Gingrich has long known that reality need not be a constraint. He has compared himself to William Pitt the Younger, the British prime minister who was in office for nearly 19 years, rather than Gingrichs four as speaker. Gingrich has also suggested Brad Pitt should play him onscreen.

A little more substantively, Gingrich uses his new book to demand fiscal responsibility, hammering Joe Biden and the Democrats for budgetary profligacy. The first chapter is titled Big Government Socialism Isnt Working and Cant. Once again, Gingrich should have thought twice.

Gingrichs presidential run to nowhere doubled as a poor mans Trump University the scheme by which Trump pulled in money for a product somewhere between shoddy and non-existent. According to the Federal Elections Commission, the Gingrich 2012 campaign remains more than $4.6m in debt. As Business Insider put it, No presidential campaign from any election cycle owes creditors more money.

As for extravagance, in 2011 Gingrich maintained a credit line of between $250,001 and $500,000 at Tiffanys, the Fifth Avenue jeweler.

On the page, Gingrich also blames the left for Americas high Covid death rate despite significantly lower post-vaccine mortality in Democratic states. So it goes: at a recent rally in Alaska, Trump declined to use the word vaccine, lest he anger the crowd.

In Congress, Gingrich wrapped himself in gun rights, opposing the assault weapons ban in Clintons 1994 anti-crime bill and subsequently sending a written promise to the National Rifle Association that no gun control legislation would be considered as long as he was speaker.

The assault weapons ban expired almost 20 years ago. As Gingrichs latest book comes out, mass shootings fill the headlines. To the author, no matter: The Founding Fathers insisted on the second amendment so that armed citizens would make a dictatorship impossible.

Amid all this, Gingrich calls for civility. In case folks forgot, he was the speaker who shut down the government in a snit after he was seated in the back of Air Force One en route to the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, and also called Hillary Clinton a bitch. How will his speakership be remembered? The late Robert Teeter, pollster to George HW Bush, accurately observed: Gingrich makes a great backbencher.

So to Tim Miller. Like Lots wife, he cannot resist looking back. At the same time, he is overly repentant. But his attempt to explain why he stuck with the Republican party for as long as he did is revealing.

Miller lets us know that he is gay, married and a dad. His rationales for rejecting his party are understandable but not necessarily satisfying. For him and other Republican operatives, the game was fun until it wasnt. The metamorphosis of the party of Lincoln into the party of Trump occurred in broad daylight, a train wreck a long time coming. The Never Trumpers could have spoken out sooner.

As long ago as 1968, clashes between demonstrators and Chicago police during the 1968 Democratic convention offered a glimpse of simmering cultural tensions. At the same time, the discontent and racism voiced by the Alabama governor George Wallace found a home with a Republican party following Richard Nixons southern strategy. Fast forward three decades and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and Pat Buchanans quests for the presidency revealed the darker impulses of the pre-Trump right.

Working-class resentment and pitchfork populism appeared long before the Iraq war and the great recession. The rise of Trumpism seems entirely predictable.

Miller does deliver a searing indictment of officials and appointees who became Trumps enablers, listing no less than 11 categories. His portraits of Lindsey Graham, South Carolinas senior senator, and Sean Spicer, Trumps first press secretary, are devastating.

More than anything, he writes, Graham just wanted to be on the golf cart next to Trump. To be on the right hand of the father. Whether or not Trump did as Graham asked was merely icing on the cake.

As reward for doubling as a human doormat, Graham now battles a subpoena from prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia, concerning his part in Trumps attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The senator cloaks himself in congressional immunity and invokes the constitution. It turns out he was fine with attempting to subvert an election but doesnt like the idea of appearing before a grand jury. Funny, that.

As Miller puts it, the same obsequious spirit made Spicer a peddler of lies for the ages, happy to put up with Trumps lunacy as long as he became a star. He didnt see anything wrong with shining a poison apple And youd better believe hed do it all over again.

Both Gingrich and Spicer may get another chance to ride the Trump rodeo. The 45th president is gearing up for 2024. By then, Biden and Gingrich will be octogenarians, Trump 78. Who says America is no country for old men?

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Newt and the Never Trumpers: Gingrich, Tim Miller and the fate of the Republican party - The Guardian

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.

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