Liberation Audio

Devastation in Iraq exposes U.S. imperialism's lies.

https://www.breakingthechainsmag.org/

In his first speech to a joint session of Congress on April 28, Joe Biden made the calculation that he needed to directly address the needs of the working class. “20 million Americans lost their jobs in the pandemic – working- and middle-class Americans. At the same time, the roughly 650 billionaires in America saw their net worth increase by more than $1 trillion,” Biden noted, “[T]rickle-down economics has never worked. It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle-out”. Biden went on to highlight several specific reforms he supported that would have far-reaching implications for the lives of countless millions of working people.

Reminiscent of Cold War-era Democratic presidents, he couched this program in explicitly imperialist terms, cynically attempting to win favor for his policy of confrontation with China — a potentially catastrophic course of action that is already doing great harm to workers in the United States, China and the rest of the world. But what is unique about this speech is that the most powerful bourgeois politician used this most prominent of platforms to speak directly to the interests of workers as a class and propose a raft of progressive measures with real substance to address the issues of class and racial inequality. Understanding why this happened is of crucial importance to those who want to win these immediate reforms and socialists who envision an entirely new type of society.

This decision was not made out of the kindness of Joe Biden’s heart. Biden has been a loyal servant of big business his entire career — supporting anti-worker “free” trade agreements, deregulating the big banks and financial institutions, and helping eviscerate the social safety net.

Read the full article:

https://www.liberationnews.org/biden-uses-first-major-address-to-lay-out-program-for-the-working-class/

May 4 marks the anniversary of a seminal moment in modern Chinese history. In 1919, the “May 4 movement” broke out — a youth-led uprising against the country’s domination by foreign colonial powers. In the following piece written in 2008, Fidel Castro reflects on this and other milestones in China’s long struggle for independence. The following reflection was published over a two-day period in the Cuban newspaper Granma.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, China joined the allies. As recompense, China was promised that the German concessions in the province of Shandong would be returned at war’s end. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which President Woodrow Wilson imposed on friends and foes alike, the German colonies were transferred to Japan, a more powerful allied than China.

Thousands of students gathered in Tiananmen Square on May 4, 1919 to protest this move. The first triumphant nationalist movement in China was born there. Called the “May 4th Movement”, it brought the petite and national bourgeoisie and the workers and peasants under one coalition.

The founding of the Kuomintang or National People’s Party had consolidated the nationalist currents that emerged at the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It was headed by Dr. Sun Yatsen, a progressive intellectual and revolutionary heavily influenced by the October Revolution, with which he strengthened his party’s ties.

The Chinese Communist Party was founded at a congress held from July 23 to August 5, 1921. Lenin sent representatives of the International to that Congress.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/08-03-31-reflections-fidel-chinese-victo-html/

We are excited to announce ‘Reading Capital With Comrades’—a new 12-part podcast series teaching volume 1 of Karl Marx's Capital. Listen now on Spotify, Soundcloud & more!

Marx published the first volume of Capital in 1867 after pouring over a decade of his life into writing it and another decade researching political economy. The book is more than an endurance challenge or a purely intellectual milestone. As "Reading Capital with Comrades" demonstrates, understanding the theoretical basis of Marxism is a crucial component for organizers and revolutionaries who want to move beyond isolated struggles. Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolution.

PSL organizer Sasha Murphy speaks on Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict, a result only thanks to mass uprising, and what's next for the movement against police terror!

One thing is unambiguously clear: Derek Chauvin being found guilty is the result of a historic popular uprising. Chauvin’s brutal murder of George Floyd ignited a massive resistance from Minneapolis’ Third Precinct into the smallest towns and biggest cities in the United States.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation was proud to participate in this historic movement that brought millions into the streets, many for the first time. New leaders emerged and are now in the struggle for the long haul.

“Justice for George!” was screamed in Trafalgar Square and painted on walls in Port-au-Prince. One Senator was alarmed enough to call for the Army to be sent into the streets and the Mayor of Chicago pulled up the drawbridges to save Trump Tower. The verdict was an offering from a shaken establishment.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationnews.org/guilty-peoples-uprising-wins-justice-for-george-floyd/

To General of the Army and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Raúl Castro Ruz;

To President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and to all delegates of the Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba:

On behalf of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in the United States, we send you revolutionary greetings and solidarity on the occasion of the VIII Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. We salute your congress as you begin your deliberations on the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of the Socialist Character of the Cuban Revolution, April 16. The words Fidel Castro pronounced on April 16 will never cease to inspire us and all revolutionaries, when he declared, “That is what they cannot pardon of us, that we are here under their noses and that we have made a Socialist Revolution under the very nose of the United States!”

Read the full text here: https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-greetings-to-pcc-viii-congress/

History is always political – many of us here are familiar with this concept. However, the lessons taught in school leave out the important context, reducing history to just a mere list of dates, people, and isolated events.

As Marx once said “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Understanding the progression of society and the social forces at play situates these seemingly isolated points into synchronization. This is the very tool that connected my experience as a second generation Chinese American to the communist struggle. It is this that taught me that racism against Chinese people from the moment the first Chinese worker stepped foot on this country is a story familiar to all of us today. Analyzing this history is critical as we continue the fight for immigrant and worker rights. I, myself, come from a family of migrant workers: My great-great grandfather was a migrant worker in Australia until he died on the boat on his fourth trip back to China; my great grandfather immigrated to Peru to find work, and my parents immigrated here to the U.S.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/the-legacy-of-the-chinese-exclusion-act-of-1882/

After the deaths of Marx and Engels, socialists began taking up the important task of summarizing their work for popularization. In 1919, for example, Georg Lukács, the Hungarian Marxist, argued that the essence of Marx’s project is not the correctness or incorrectness of his many theses, but rather, his dialectical method. Stressing the significance of Marx’s method Lukács notes that it is a “weapon” of the proletariat and “an instrument of war” (1919/1971, 224). Marx never wrote a text on dialectics or even used the term “dialectical materialism,” and so articulating Marx’s dialectic was left to Engels and those who followed. There are, as a result, a great many debates about what exactly dialectical materialism is. There has also been a tendency to oversimplify dialectical materialism into a mechanical and deterministic dogma.

This article outlines Marx’s method, dialectical materialism, a theory and manner of understanding change. It is a theory that grasps how many of the competing social forces driving the movement of society are often hidden or mystified, and that gives us a way of uncovering them. It is a method that understands that unveiling social forces must be done in such a way as to foster class-for-self-consciousness within the working class as a revolutionary force. Toward these ends this article introduces the major components of dialectical materialism, including the negation of the negation, sublation, the unity of opposites, and the transformation of quantity into quality.

Read the full article: https://liberationschool.org/what-is-dialectical-materialism-an-introduction/

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General and renowned international human rights attorney who stood against U.S. military aggression worldwide, died peacefully April 9 at his home in New York City, surrounded by close family. He was 93 years old.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/ramsey-clark/