Fidel Castro beneath the iconic Guerrillero Heroico photographic portrait of Che taken by Alberto Korda in 1960

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Fidel Castro on the revolutionary importance of the USSR 1970

Today there are, as we know, theoretical super-revolutionaries, super-Leftists, veritable "supermen" if you will, who can destroy imperialism in a jiffy with their tongues. There are many super-revolutionaries lacking all notions of reality about the problems and difficulties of a revolution. They are prompted by sentiments carefully fostered by imperialism and are full of fierce hatred. It is as if they refused to forgive the Soviet Union its existence, and this from "Left"-wing positions. They would like a Soviet Union shaped according to their strange model, according to their ridiculous ideals. Yet a country is primarily a reality, one made up of numerous other realities.

The exponents of these trends' forget the incredible initial difficulties of the revolutionary process in the Soviet Union, the incredible problems arising from the blockade, isolation and fascist aggression. They pretend not to know anything about all this and regard the existence of the Soviet Union as almost a crime, and this from "Left"-wing positions, which is an act of absolute dishonesty.

They forget the problems of Cuba, of Vietnam, of the Arab world. They forget that wherever imperialism is striking its blows it comes up against a country which sends the people the arms they need to defend themselves.

We recall Playa Giron these days. We well remember the anti-aircraft artillery, the tanks and guns and mortars and other weapons that enabled us to smash the mercenaries.

This means that the existence of the Soviet state is objectively one of the most extraordinary privileges of the revolutionary movement.

Fidel Castro, Granma, May 3, 1970

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"The Arrival of V. I. #Lenin in Petrograd on April 3, 1917.", #painting by Anatoly Kazantsev, 1967

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Media
On the day that most likely translates to October 13, 1157 BCE in our current calendar, the earliest recorded strike in history was first reported. The dispute is recounted in a papyrus written by a scribe named Amennakht in the ancient Egyptian town that is now called Deir el-Medina.Gangs of skilled construction workers in the employ of Pharaoh Ramses III stopped work when, 18 days after their payday, they had still not received their wages, which would have been paid in food and other goods.The workers shouted that they were hungry and sat down by a temple. Officials gave them some pastries, and they returned home, but the following day they protested once more, demanding their pay at the central grain storehouse in Thebes.Eventually they received their back pay, but the pattern of workers needing to go on strike to be paid what they were owed was repeated multiple times.workers needing to go on strike to be paid what they were owed was repeated multiple times.

Working Class History

#AncientEgypt #LaborStrike #Workers #DeirElMedina #RamsesIII #Protest #History

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Today marks the anniversary of the coup against Maurice Bishop, the socialist leader of Grenada. On this day in 1983 he was arrested by the coup’s leaders. In a speech before the coup, he laid out why the United States was conspiring against Grenada’s revolution.

theredstream

#Grenada #MauriceBishop #Coup #Socialism #Revolution #Anniversary #1983 #History

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"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."

— Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)

Read more:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

#KarlMarx #FriedrichEngels #CommunistManifesto #ClassStruggle #Marxism #HistoricalMaterialism #RevolutionaryChange #Proletariat #Bourgeoisie #SocialChange #PoliticalPhilosophy #EconomicTheory #OppressorAndOppressed

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Mixed denomination coins in various currencies

🔴 Imperialism’s striving for expansion
✍🏻 Prabhat Patnaik

THE “inevitable striving of finance capital”, Lenin had written in Imperialism, (is) “to enlarge its spheres of influence and even its actual territory”. He was writing of course in a world marked by inter-imperialist rivalry, where this striving took the form of a competitive struggle between rival finance capitals that speedily completed the partitioning of the world, leaving no “empty spaces”; only a repartitioning of the world was thenceforth possible, through wars among rival financial oligarchies. The wars that were actually unleashed however led to a weakening of imperialism and the splitting off of parts of the world from its hegemony, through socialist revolutions and the process of decolonisation that socialism helped to usher in.
Read more

#Imperialism #Inequality #Movements #StateRepression #Artcile

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machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 15 (1867)

Marx believes that machinery and mechanization should be used to reduce labor and improve the well-being of society as a whole, not to create a class of well-off individuals who benefit from the labor of workers without engaging in any real work themselves. These "well-to-do idlers" typically represent capitalists or those who derive their comfort from owning the means of production and accumulating capital rather than through their own labor.

#Capitalism #Marxism #ClassStruggle #WealthInequality #WorkersRights #EconomicJustice #LaborExploitation #KarlMarx #Marx

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"We Destroyed Our Enemy With Weapons, We Will Earn Our Bread With Labor - Everyone To Work, Comrades!"
by Nikolai Kogout, 1920.

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'Collective farm worker on a bicycle' (Russian oil on canvas #painting by Alexander Deyneka/ Deineka. State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg. Soviet Union, 1935).

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'Vegetable gardens on St. Isaac's Square #Leningrad in 1942' (Russian postcard by Iakov Rubanchik/ Iskusstvo. Soviet Union, 1944).

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Media
Today in the United States, the second Monday of October, is a holiday, but one which is hotly disputed. To some, it is Columbus Day, celebrating the anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. But to others, especially Native Americans, it is Indigenous Peoples' Day – celebrating the people who lived in the Americas for thousands of years beforehand (content note: genocide, sexual violence, suicide). Rather than "discover" America, as is the popular myth, Columbus merely arrived in what is now the Bahamas, and began over five centuries of genocide against the Indigenous inhabitants. As soon as Columbus landed, he and his crew began enslaving, murdering, torturing and raping the Taíno people who lived there. Travelling to Haiti, Columbus then began forcing the Indigenous people to mine gold, and chopping off the hands of any who did not collect enough. But it was an impossible task as there was almost no gold in the area. In just two years, half of the 250,000 Taínos on Haiti had died: either by murder or suicide in desperation. Within just a few decades, only 500 remained. However, Indigenous people in the Caribbean and elsewhere did resist both Columbus and the other colonisers who came subsequently, and continue to do so today. Indigenous Peoples' Day celebrates this resistance, and was first proposed in 1977. South Dakota became the first US state to celebrate it in 1990, and every year more states, cities and institutions make the switch from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day. Due to continued pressure from Indigenous resistance, in 2021 the US federal government acknowledged Indigenous Peoples' Day for the first time, although at the same time they still officially celebrate Columbus Day as well.

Working Class History

#IndigenousDay #ColumbusDay #Taino #Resistance #Genocide #Heritage #Decolonize #Truth #History

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Germany “won’t shy away” from helping Israel attack Palestinian civilians, declared Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in the Berlin Parliament. Germany is doubling down on its unwavering support for Israel’s brutal war of extermination. Just recently, Chancellor Olaf Scholz reaffirmed that Germany has, and will continue, to send weapons into the hands of the Israeli occupation forces.

theredstream

#WarCrimes #Genocide #FreePalestine

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The American trusts are the supreme expression of the economics of imperialism or monopoly capitalism. They do not confine themselves to economic means of eliminating rivals, but constantly resort to political, even criminal, methods. It would be the greatest mistake, however, to believe that the trusts cannot establish their monopoly by purely economic methods. Reality provides ample proof that this is “achievable”: the trusts undermine their rivals’ credit through the banks (the owners of the trusts become the owners of the banks: buying up shares); their supply of materials (the owners of the trusts become the owners of the railways: buying up shares); for a certain time the trusts sell below cost, spending millions on this in order to ruin a competitor and then buy up his enterprises, his sources of raw materials (mines, land, etc.).

V. I. Lenin
A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism

#Lenin #Imerialism #America

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In capitalist society individuals are controlled by a pitiless law usually beyond their comprehension. The alienated human specimen is tied to society as a whole by an invisible umbilical cord: the law of value. This law acts upon all aspects of one's life, shaping its course and destiny. The laws of capitalism, which are blind and are invisible to ordinary people, act upon the individual without he or she being aware of it. One sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon ahead. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller — whether or not it is true — about the possibilities of individual success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly. (A discussion of how the workers in the imperialist countries gradually lose the spirit of working-class internationalism due to a certain degree of complicity in the exploitation of the dependent countries, and how this at the same time weakens the combativity of the masses in the imperialist countries, would be appropriate here, but that is a theme that goes beyond the scope of these notes.)

In any case, the road to success is portrayed as beset with perils — perils that, it would seem, an individual with the proper qualities can overcome to attain the goal. The reward is seen in the distance; the way is lonely. Furthermore, it is a contest among wolves. One can win only at the cost of the failure of others.

Che Guevara
Socialism and man in Cuba

#CheGuevara #Socialism #Capitalism

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