Tag: marxism

Lenin’s Imperialism: The World Is Socialized, the Loot Stays Private

Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" exposes the dark underbelly of capitalism, where economic forces and political power dance in a shadowy masquerade. He reveals how imperialism is not a mere side-effect of states' ambitions but a complex product of capital's relentless quest for profit, driving nations to export capital rather than just goods. The document reflects the sinister dynamics that create monopolies, establish financial oligarchies, and differentiate classes within the proletariat, suggesting that even workers can become complicit in their subjugation. This analysis remains crucial today, as it compels us to question ownership and control within our increasingly interconnected world.

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Marx and Engels Against Their Own Ghosts: The German Ideology and the Fight to Keep Materialism Inside History

Marx and Engels' The German Ideology brutally uncovers the egregious folly of detaching philosophy from material conditions. They weaponize critiques of German idealists, exposing how revolutionary thought that ignores the tangible, lived experiences of class struggle morphs into mere ideology. Highlighting the perils of alienation, they assert that human powers can unwittingly turn oppressive when subjected to capitalist structures. Moreover, they admonish socialists who, by elevating abstract ideas above real movements, dilute the revolutionary essence of their theories. In a world increasingly interlinked yet profoundly unequal, their insistence on rooting ideas in concrete history remains a clarion call for genuine transformation against ideological hauntings.

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The Revolution Must Keep Making Revolutionaries: Fidel Castro and the Fight Against Becoming a Monument

On the centenary of Fidel Castro's birth, his autobiography, My Life, acts as a provocative lens into the complexities of revolution. It dismantles the myth of the born revolutionary, showcasing instead how context, struggle, and learning forge warriors for change. Despite Cuba's successes, deep-rooted issues like racism and inequality persist, with Fidel warning that Cuba's most significant threat may not come from external forces but from within—its own inability to correct mistakes. As the Revolution ages, the pressing query remains: can it continually foster revolutionary consciousness amidst evolving contradictions or will it succumb to the complacency that often follows victory?

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Surrender as Relief: Rubio’s War on Cuba’s Means of Survival

Marco Rubio’s new sanctions do not merely target Cuban military procurement. They strike the institutions, banking channels, suppliers, repair systems, and foreign relationships through which Cuba survives a blockade designed to manufacture deprivation and political surrender. Washington restricts fuel, finance, technology, and trade, then presents the resulting hardship as proof of socialist failure. As Cuba turns toward China, Russia, and other partners to preserve its sovereignty, those lifelines are recast as threats. Behind the language of security lies the old imperial objective: isolate the island, weaken its defenses, deepen popular suffering, and force the Cuban Revolution to kneel.

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The Divided Empire: Prashad, Buze and the Contradiction Between Hyper-Imperial Unity and Capitalist Rivalry

In a time when U.S.-led imperialism tightens its grip, nuanced debates emerge about the new American Pole—a daunting fusion of military, financial, and technological power that suppresses dissent while promising security. Vijay Prashad argues for a hyper-imperialism consolidating state control and aggressiveness against external defiance, while Özcan Buze highlights lingering national rivalries within the empire’s core. As cities devolve into ghost towns stripped of industry and sovereignty is commodified, the left is urged to unite struggles for worker power, national liberation, and social ownership. The empire’s contradictions must fuel a revolutionary response—a call to dismantle the machinery that perpetuates exploitation, rather than aspiring for a mere return to past privileges.

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The Revolution Will Not Be Managed: Glen Ford, the Black Agenda, and the Missing Vehicle

Glen Ford's incisive critique shatters the myth of American progress, revealing how conquest and exploitation are cloaked as success. He dissects the deceptive practices of the Black misleadership class and the Democratic Party, showing how they perpetuate capitalist interests while masquerading as champions of Black liberation. Ford demands a radical rethinking of power and accountability, advocating for community control and reparations, emphasizing that true self-determination lies in empowering marginalized voices. Amidst the pandemic and civil unrest, Ford’s legacy calls for a revolutionary movement capable of dismantling systemic oppression rather than settling for token representation. The fight is not just for visibility; it’s for genuine power.

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Democracy With a Gun to Your Head: George Jackson and the American Fascist Order

George Jackson wrote from inside the cage and exposed the system beyond it. In Blood in My Eye, prison, property, racial domination, monopoly capital, and imperial war appear not as separate problems but as parts of one American order. Jackson’s theory of secure fascism revealed how counterrevolution can rule through elections, reform, consumerism, surveillance, and controlled opposition as effectively as open terror. His strategic errors matter too: revolutionary potential is not consciousness, and militant initiative cannot substitute for organized mass power. This review recovers Jackson as a living weapon—one to be studied, sharpened, corrected, and returned to the struggle.

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The Market Was Born with a Gun: Colonial Plunder, Neoliberal Rule, and the Worker-Peasant Road Beyond Capital

Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik’s groundbreaking analysis dismantles the myth that capitalism flourished independently within Europe, revealing a system intricately linked to colonial exploitation. They illustrate how colonialism not only financed European industrial growth but also perpetuated poverty and dependency in colonized nations. The authors articulate that capitalism's survival hinged on subjugating external economies. With the unraveling of colonial structures leading to depression and famine, they propose a radical rethinking of revolutionary potential through a worker-peasant alliance, emphasizing organized power as essential to dismantling capital's dominance. Ultimately, their work challenges the notion of capitalism's self-sufficiency, exposing its reliance on imperial mechanisms for survival.

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The Empire Calls Resistance Subversion: Cuba and Washington’s War on Revolutionary Consciousness

The State Department's report conflates documented espionage with a sweeping indictment of social movements, branding students, revolutionaries, and dissenters as part of a conspiracy orchestrated from Cuba. This narrative denies local struggles against oppression, instead framing resistance as a foreign-directed plot, thus erasing historical context and the material origins of dissent. The document's loose connection between Cuba's influence and contemporary activism serves as a McCarthyite tool against American dissent. By equating genuine political engagement with espionage, it aims to squash revolutionary consciousness and reinforce the status quo, revealing the empire's fear that the oppressed might unite and resist independently.

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Un-American by Choice: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Revolution Liberal Memory Could Not Bury

For generations, the American academy celebrated W.E.B. Du Bois while burying the revolutionary conclusions that defined the final decades of his life. In this Weaponized Intellects review of Bill V. Mullen's Un-American, we excavate the real Du Bois: communist, anti-imperialist, Pan-African internationalist and unapologetic ally of socialist revolution. Mullen powerfully restores Du Bois to the global struggle against capitalism and colonialism, yet retreats into familiar anti-Stalinist assumptions when revolution becomes embodied in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. The result is both an indispensable recovery and a revealing ideological battleground over the meaning of socialism, state power and the unfinished project of world revolution.

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