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A mound of bricks and twisted steel are all that remains of the Harriet Tubman House. The historic community hub for Black and working-class Bostonians in the South End neighborhood was demolished in November to make way for luxury condos.

The Harriet Tubman House was a fixture in Black Boston since 1908 and in its most recent location since 1975. In 1904, six Black women — including one of Tubman’s friends Julia O. Henson — rented the first Harriet Tubman House at 37 Holyoke Street in the South End to provide shelter to other Black women who recently moved from the South.

Since then the Tubman House served as a refuge for its community by offering services such as job training programs, adult education, senior programs, child care, art exhibitions and much more. Every day, neighbors gathered in the lobby to socialize, read the news and relax in a safe, welcoming environment. The Harriet Tubman House also housed six nonprofits that served the local community — all of which are now displaced from the neighborhood due to the sale and demolition.

Read the full article:

https://www.liberationnews.org/historic-harriet-tubman-house-demolished-in-bostons-south-end-to-make-way-for-luxury-condos/

On Sunday, Dec. 6, the Venezuelan people will vote to elect the new deputies of the National Assembly. This election is enormously important for the Bolivarian Revolution. The progressive forces are mobilizing nationwide to win back the assembly from right-wing politicians who won the majority in December 2015.

It is not a contest between one political party and another. It is the struggle for the very survival of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution against a brutal U.S. economic war and coup plots. U.S. imperialism has captured the nation’s enormous resources and wealth and severely blockaded the country for years now.

Regaining the National Assembly is one immediate goal for the revolutionary government, to restore control of the country’s resources, reestablish legislative legitimacy, and help to overcome the economic hardships the U.S. blockade has caused in the population.

To combat the U.S. economic war, a new strategy was unveiled on Sept. 29 by President Nicolás Maduro, called the “Anti-Blockade Constitutional Law for National Development and Guarantee of Human Rights,” or anti-blockade law for short.

It was approved in a session of the National Constituent Assembly (ANC by its Spanish initials) on Oct. 8. The ANC has served as an interim legislative body after the right-wing-led National Assembly was declared in contempt for illegal election practices and other violations.

The siege by the U.S., Canada and its European allies against Venezuela includes the U.S. seizure of CITGO and other Venezuelan properties, the withholding of the country’s gold and money reserves by Britain and Portugal, and a severe sanctions regime.

They have cut off its ability to import spare parts and critical chemicals for the oil and mining industries, particularly imports from the U.S., with its dominance in oil technology.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/venezuelas-anti-blockade-law-and-the-dec-6-elections/

On December 6, Venezuela will hold parliamentary elections to choose new deputies for the National Assembly, the country’s legislature. With heightened U.S. attacks in Venezuela, including a tightening economic blockade, the elections are of great consequence to the future of the country.

In the last legislative election held in 2015, the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) lost a majority of seats in the National Assembly to a coalition of right-wing parties called the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD). This shift allowed the opposition to heighten its efforts to destabilize Venezuela and promote U.S. intervention.

Central to this destabilization campaign has been the claim that the country’s democratic processes are fraudulent, and that the elected president Nicolás Maduro is a “dictator”. However, ever since the Bolivarian Revolution began, after the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998, Venezuela has strictly adhered to constitutional principles and a fair and transparent electoral process.

Venezuela’s electoral authority — the National Electoral Council (CNE) — is one of five co-equal branches of the country’s government. It presides over one of the most technologically advanced and transparent electoral systems in the world. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter famously remarked “[…] of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

Venezuela has an electronic voting system where an individual’s ID card and fingerprints are used to determine their identity to prevent double voting. The system then prints a paper ballot confirmation that can be verified by the voter and placed in the ballot box. The voter then signs and leaves a physical fingerprint in a record book at the center they are voting at. This makes any attempt of fraud during elections extremely difficult.

Read the full article here:

https://www.liberationnews.org/why-venezuelas-dec-6-election-is-legitimate/

The Party for Socialism and Liberation expresses our deepest solidarity in response to the Greek state’s violent and extreme repression of the peaceful protest organized by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) on the 47th anniversary of the historic Athens Polytechnic Student’s Uprising that took place on Nov. 17, 1973, against the military dictatorship established in June of the same year.

The uprising began as a strike and protest on Nov. 14, but it soon drew masses of workers and disaffected elements of society. On Nov. 17, the uprising was drowned in blood as tanks crushed through the protests and as police were killed dozens of protesters — including a five year-old boy — and arrested hundreds more. Despite the repression and initial defeat, the uprising contributed to the struggle against the dictatorship.

Nov. 17 is now an officially recognized educational holiday in Greece during which schools and universities are closed except to accommodate commemorations of the martyrs. Nonetheless, this year the KKE’s peaceful demonstration was met by intimidation, repression, and the arrest of dozens of protesters.

Read the full statement here:

https://www.liberationnews.org/statement-by-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation-in-solidarity-with-the-cp-of-greece-kke/

Leninism became fully recognized as an extension of Marxism after the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Throughout the world, the mass socialist parties and working class anarchist trends went through major political convulsions. New revolutionary parties, seeking to base themselves on the political and organizational lessons learned from the Bolshevik victory, were created in country after country as the left-wing socialists and anarchists split from established socialist parties and organizations to form communist parties.

But the arrival of Leninism or Bolshevism as a distinctive international extension of Marxism, in direct opposition to the accepted Marxism of the Second International, actually took shape not at the time of revolutionary victory in 1917. Rather, it happened in a period of deepest reaction: at the very start of World War I. In 1914, V.I. Lenin broke openly with “official” socialism and Marxism, declaring that the leaders of the mass socialist parties who supported their own governments at the outbreak of the war were traitors to the working class and agents of the bourgeoisie inside the working-class movement.

Listen to this PSL forum in which comrade Monica talks about legendary Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebrón as well as the struggles for Puerto Rican independence, movements in the Puerto Rican diaspora, and women's liberation.

In the last few decades, technological developments–particularly concerning automation–have transformed the economy in such a profound way that many are comparing this era to the Industrial Revolution. Some capitalist economists downplay the resulting loss of jobs, while others predict that such job loss is only temporary and will work itself out through the marketplace over time, similar to previous technological revolutions. In both cases, they seem to forget the permanent unemployed produced by the Industrial Revolution, underestimate the potential impact of modern automation technology, and disregard the irrationality and anarchic nature of capitalist development. In many ways, the current “automation revolution” is similar to the introduction of machines in the Industrial Revolution, which radically changed capitalist societies by amplifying inequality, creating a permanent unemployed class that Marxists call the industrial reserve army, and intensified colonialism. Today’s automation revolution will similarly transform the landscape of labor, as robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning make the automation of vast swaths of complex jobs possible.

What we want to do is provide comrades with some background on Marx’s analysis of technological changes within capitalism and use these to contextualize some of today’s transformations.

Read the full article:

https://liberationschool.org/a-marxist-approach-to-technology/

Donald Trump will not be president as of 12:00 p.m. January 20 and he knows it. All the centers of ruling class institutional power know that Trump’s assertions that he still has a path to victory are complete nonsense. The Republican Party establishment also knows this to be the case but none of the leaders of the party want to directly contradict Trump because he is profoundly popular with Republican voters. Trump does not have a strategy or a plan. Each day brings another effort by him to dominate the news cycle. Trump asserted that a voting machine system had “deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide” but within hours his own Department of Homeland Security distributed a statement declaring that claim to be false although they did not mention Trump by name.

Trump is playing games. He’s also raising a lot of money. Trump is a con man and he is engaged in another con. He’s asking his supporters to donate money for the “legal defense” of the election process under the moniker “Stop the Steal.” In the fine print though, the part that almost no one reads, it turns out that the first $5,000 of any donation goes to Trump’s personal leadership PAC which is nothing other than a private slush fund. Millions of dollars have already been raised from the unsuspecting hordes of Trump fans.

On the other side, pro-Democratic Party non-profit organizations are also raising millions of dollars to “protect the election results” and sending alarming messages about Trump’s “coup d’etat.” Of course, Trump would be perfectly happy to carry out a coup to remain in office. Otherwise, he and his children will face multiple criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits for their financial crimes once he returns to civilian life. Many of these prosecutions and civil actions will be carried out at the state level by Democratic Party District Attorneys and state Attorneys General. Once a civilian, Trump will lose all immunities if and when he is prosecuted for financial crimes at the state level. Trump is certainly not above an illegal seizure of power to maintain his position but he lacks the support from within the capitalist establishment necessary to engage in such a far-reaching gambit. Thus, Trump is engaged in a giant farce.

Read the full article:

https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-statement-trump-and-biden-whats-actually-happening/

This article was originally published on Liberation News in Oct 2019.

There is a new race for resources: the ocean floor.

Seabed exploration, a precursor to mining, is underway in remote parts of the Pacific Ocean as corporations and nation-states attempt to catalog the underwater resources.

Highly sought-after metals such as cobalt and nickel are used to manufacture electric cars, drones, and other electronics. As land-based supplies dwindle, corporations fervently seek ways to exploit the vast untapped reserves of the oceans. The Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean is one area that could soon be transformed by mining. About twice the size of Alaska, this region holds an estimated 1.8 times more nickel and 3.4 times more cobalt than all land-based reserves combined.

Changes could happen quickly. The International Seabed Authority plans to release the terms of exploitation by 2020 for this entirely new industry. Yet, precious little is known about the largest ecosystem on Earth. Less than 0.05 percent of the ocean has been mapped at a detailed level.

Read the full article, published in 2019:

https://www.liberationnews.org/deep-sea-mining/

More than 70 million people voted to oust Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 election. This was not a vote for Joe Biden, a truly uninspiring candidate who only became the nominee when the Democratic Party ruling class establishment united to stop Bernie Sanders from getting the nomination in early March. Nor did the historic voter turnout for Biden signify support for his pro-Wall Street, pro-war positions and his role as an architect of the current system of policing and mass incarceration.

In the last few minutes, the major corporate-owned media networks all announced that Joe Biden had sufficient electoral college votes to become the next president of the United States.

It is noteworthy that Fox News, which has been so vociferously cheerleading for Donald Trump during the last four years, also called the election for Biden and dramatically changed the tone of its coverage to be very supportive of Biden and the campaign he ran.

Donald Trump insists that he will fight on. He argues that he is the true winner of the election and the only reason that he might not be president is because of widespread election fraud. This is not true and as more and more of the mail-in vote arrived in Pennsylvania, Georgia and other states it became crystal clear that Trump in fact had lost the electoral college vote in a very narrow contest that almost exactly replicates the narrow outcome in 2016 but with the margins reversed.

Trump broke the cardinal rule of U.S. capitalist politics when he denounced the election system as a fraud. Maintaining the image of a peaceful transfer of power between the two ruling class parties for more than a century has been considered a core element of American capitalist governance. The peaceful transfer of power bestows legitimacy upon the system. Every system requires either undiluted brute violence that is routinely dispensed on oppressed classes, or it relies on its legitimacy with a sector of the population which is then, of course, supplemented by the threat of violence and state coercion. “Democracy” is the preferred form of class rule because achieving legitimacy with a significant sector of the working class and intermediate strata makes the system easier to maintain. It avoids the tension and conflict which makes class rule more complicated and unstable.