On this day in 1918, revolutionary communist leader Karl Liebknecht declared Germany a Free Socialist Republic, saying “the day of the revolution has come.”
Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution a year earlier, Germany’s uprising encompassed hundreds of thousands of workers, women, and soldiers. Many soldiers deserted the front after being fed up with being used as canon fodder by the rich.
The monarchy was abolished and workers’ councils swept the country. Women voted for the first time in German history.
Within weeks, the Social Democratic Party, which today rules Germany, collaborated with the paramilitary Freikorps to crush the revolution. They even bombed workers who participated in a general strike across Berlin. Leading members of the Freikorps were early Nazi Party members and the Freikorps itself would later be dissolved into the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung.
theredstream
Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution a year earlier, Germany’s uprising encompassed hundreds of thousands of workers, women, and soldiers. Many soldiers deserted the front after being fed up with being used as canon fodder by the rich.
The monarchy was abolished and workers’ councils swept the country. Women voted for the first time in German history.
Within weeks, the Social Democratic Party, which today rules Germany, collaborated with the paramilitary Freikorps to crush the revolution. They even bombed workers who participated in a general strike across Berlin. Leading members of the Freikorps were early Nazi Party members and the Freikorps itself would later be dissolved into the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung.
theredstream
#KarlLiebknecht #WorkersUprising #RedNovember #Germany
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🔴 The Mainstream Western Worldview Pretends The Global South Does Not Exist
✍🏻 Caitlin Johnstone
Mainstream western politics and culture pretend the rest of the world does not exist. The mainstream western worldview shrinks the earth down to US-aligned countries and acts as though the billions of people who live in the global south do not share a planet with us.
You really see this illustrated in US presidential election season, when debates will feature five or six minutes on “foreign policy” with the remaining two hours dedicated to “domestic policy” and culture war wedge issues despite the the White House’s relationship with foreign countries having orders of magnitude more significant real-world consequences. Americans discuss election results as though the whole thing revolves around them and their feelings and how much more convenient or inconvenient the next president might make their lives, while Europeans discuss what the results might mean for NATO expenses and trade agreements. The fact that the next US president will be committing genocide, starving people with economic sanctions and increasing Washington’s stranglehold on earth’s population by any amount of violence and tyranny necessary barely ever enters into the conversation.
Whenever you hear western officials talking about how “the international community” views a particular issue, they’re almost always talking about the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and maybe a few US-aligned Asian countries like Japan and South Korea — while pretending the rest of the world just isn’t there.
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✍🏻 Caitlin Johnstone
Mainstream western politics and culture pretend the rest of the world does not exist. The mainstream western worldview shrinks the earth down to US-aligned countries and acts as though the billions of people who live in the global south do not share a planet with us.
You really see this illustrated in US presidential election season, when debates will feature five or six minutes on “foreign policy” with the remaining two hours dedicated to “domestic policy” and culture war wedge issues despite the the White House’s relationship with foreign countries having orders of magnitude more significant real-world consequences. Americans discuss election results as though the whole thing revolves around them and their feelings and how much more convenient or inconvenient the next president might make their lives, while Europeans discuss what the results might mean for NATO expenses and trade agreements. The fact that the next US president will be committing genocide, starving people with economic sanctions and increasing Washington’s stranglehold on earth’s population by any amount of violence and tyranny necessary barely ever enters into the conversation.
Whenever you hear western officials talking about how “the international community” views a particular issue, they’re almost always talking about the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and maybe a few US-aligned Asian countries like Japan and South Korea — while pretending the rest of the world just isn’t there.
Read more
#Article #Capitalism #Imperialism #Inequality #StateRepression
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Lenin never regarded the Republic of Soviets as an end in itself. He always looked on it as an essential link for strengthening the revolutionary movement in the countries of the West and the East, an essential link for facilitating the victory of the working people of the whole world over capitalism. Lenin knew that this was the only right conception, both from the international standpoint and from the standpoint of preserving the Republic of Soviets itself. Lenin knew that this alone could fire the hearts of the working people of the whole world with determination to fight the decisive battles for their emancipation. That is why, on the very morrow of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, he, the greatest of the geniuses who have led the proletariat, laid the foundation of the workers’ International. That is why he never tired of extending and strengthening the union of: the working people of the whole world — the Communist International.
J. V. Stalin
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J. V. Stalin
#Stalin #Lenin
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The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.
#Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of #Marxism (1913)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
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#Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of #Marxism (1913)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
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Communism
The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor…
People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. Champions of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realise that every old institution, how ever barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of certain ruling classes. And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can—and, owing to their social position, must—constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organise those forces for the struggle.
Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism.
Independent organisations of the proletariat are multi plying all over the world, from America to Japan and from Sweden to South Africa. The proletariat is becoming enlightened and educated by waging its class struggle; it is ridding itself of the prejudices of bourgeois society; it is rallying its ranks ever more closely and is learning to gauge the measure of its successes; it is steeling its forces and is growing irresistibly.
#Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of #Marxism (1913)
@Communism
Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism.
Independent organisations of the proletariat are multi plying all over the world, from America to Japan and from Sweden to South Africa. The proletariat is becoming enlightened and educated by waging its class struggle; it is ridding itself of the prejudices of bourgeois society; it is rallying its ranks ever more closely and is learning to gauge the measure of its successes; it is steeling its forces and is growing irresistibly.
#Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of #Marxism (1913)
@Communism
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The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.
Frederich Engels
“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”
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Frederich Engels
“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”
#Engels
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As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilised not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries.
Vladimir Lenin
Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism
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Vladimir Lenin
Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism
#Lenin
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✍🏻 wcharabicLearn
On this day, 11 November 1936, the UK's Peel Commission arrived in Palestine in response to the Great Palestinian Revolt. The committee recommended, in its final report, the division of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, and the deportation of more than 200,000 Palestinians from their homes.The British army in Palestine used brutal methods to crush the revolt, including mass arrests, house demolitions, and executions. They also armed and trained Zionist militias to assist with the repression.The chairman and other members of the committee were senior colonial officials who had served in places including India, Tanzania and Kenya.The Arab Higher Committee rejected the idea of a Jewish state and demanded an independent Palestinian state that would protect the rights of Jews and minorities, and demanded an end to immigration and land purchases that were managed by the Zionist movement with the intention of establishing a Jewish state.While the Palestinians gave public testimonies to the commission, the Zionists provided public and secret testimonies. On July 7, 1937, the final report was published, and the recommendation for partition was presented briefly at the end, with an attached map. Zionists were consulted about the borders drawn on the map before issuing the report, which enabled them to persuade the British to include specific areas of great importance within the borders of the Jewish state, which included the Hula Valley, and most of the best, most fertile land.The partition map included in the Peel Report was later used as a basis for the partition map approved by the United Nations in 1947. With the end of British occupation, the plan to partition Palestine was implemented through the 1948 war, and the ethnic cleansing that expelled around 750,000 Palestinians.
Working Class History
On this day, 11 November 1936, the UK's Peel Commission arrived in Palestine in response to the Great Palestinian Revolt. The committee recommended, in its final report, the division of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, and the deportation of more than 200,000 Palestinians from their homes.The British army in Palestine used brutal methods to crush the revolt, including mass arrests, house demolitions, and executions. They also armed and trained Zionist militias to assist with the repression.The chairman and other members of the committee were senior colonial officials who had served in places including India, Tanzania and Kenya.The Arab Higher Committee rejected the idea of a Jewish state and demanded an independent Palestinian state that would protect the rights of Jews and minorities, and demanded an end to immigration and land purchases that were managed by the Zionist movement with the intention of establishing a Jewish state.While the Palestinians gave public testimonies to the commission, the Zionists provided public and secret testimonies. On July 7, 1937, the final report was published, and the recommendation for partition was presented briefly at the end, with an attached map. Zionists were consulted about the borders drawn on the map before issuing the report, which enabled them to persuade the British to include specific areas of great importance within the borders of the Jewish state, which included the Hula Valley, and most of the best, most fertile land.The partition map included in the Peel Report was later used as a basis for the partition map approved by the United Nations in 1947. With the end of British occupation, the plan to partition Palestine was implemented through the 1948 war, and the ethnic cleansing that expelled around 750,000 Palestinians.
Working Class History
#FreePalestine
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'We'll sweep away the fascist barbarians from the face of the earth!' (Russian #poster by Nikolai Dolgorukov/ Iskusstvo, Moscow. Soviet Union, 1941).
@Communism
@Communism
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✍🏻 Paul Lafargue
🔴 Simple Socialist Truths
1️⃣ Part 1
Worker. But if there were no masters, who would give me work?
Socialist. That’s a question I am often asked; let us examine it. In order to work, three things are required: a workshop, machines, and raw material.
W. Right.
S. Who builds the workshop?
W. Masons.
S. Who made the machines?
W. Engineers.
S. Who grew the cotton you weave, who sheared the wool your wife spins, who dug the mineral your son forges?
W. Husbandmen, shepherds, miners – workers like myself.
S. Consequently, you, your wife, and your son can only work because these various other workers have already supplied you with buildings, machinery, and raw material.
W. That’s so; I could not weave calico without cotton and without a loom.
S. Well then, it is not the capitalist or master who gives you work, but the mason, the engineer, the ploughman. Do you know how your master has procured all that is necessary for your work?
W. He bought it.
S. Who gave him the money?
W. How do I know. His father had left him a little; to-day he is a millionaire.
S. Has he earned his million by working his machines and weaving his cotton?
W. Not very likely; it is by making us work that he gained his million.
S. Then he has grown rich by loafing; that is the only way to make a fortune. Those who work get just enough to live on. But, tell me, if you and your fellow workers did not work, would not your master’s machines rust, and his cotton be eaten by insects?
W. Everything in the workshop would got to wreck and ruin if we did not work.
S. Consequently, by working you are preserving the machines and raw material necessary for your labour.
W. That is true; I had never thought of that.
@Communism
🔴 Simple Socialist Truths
1️⃣ Part 1
Worker. But if there were no masters, who would give me work?
Socialist. That’s a question I am often asked; let us examine it. In order to work, three things are required: a workshop, machines, and raw material.
W. Right.
S. Who builds the workshop?
W. Masons.
S. Who made the machines?
W. Engineers.
S. Who grew the cotton you weave, who sheared the wool your wife spins, who dug the mineral your son forges?
W. Husbandmen, shepherds, miners – workers like myself.
S. Consequently, you, your wife, and your son can only work because these various other workers have already supplied you with buildings, machinery, and raw material.
W. That’s so; I could not weave calico without cotton and without a loom.
S. Well then, it is not the capitalist or master who gives you work, but the mason, the engineer, the ploughman. Do you know how your master has procured all that is necessary for your work?
W. He bought it.
S. Who gave him the money?
W. How do I know. His father had left him a little; to-day he is a millionaire.
S. Has he earned his million by working his machines and weaving his cotton?
W. Not very likely; it is by making us work that he gained his million.
S. Then he has grown rich by loafing; that is the only way to make a fortune. Those who work get just enough to live on. But, tell me, if you and your fellow workers did not work, would not your master’s machines rust, and his cotton be eaten by insects?
W. Everything in the workshop would got to wreck and ruin if we did not work.
S. Consequently, by working you are preserving the machines and raw material necessary for your labour.
W. That is true; I had never thought of that.
@Communism
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✍🏻 Paul Lafargue
🔴 Simple Socialist Truths
2️⃣ Part 2
S. Does your master look after what goes on in his works?
W. Not much; he makes a daily round to see us at our work, but he keeps his hands in his pockets for fear of dirtying them. In the spinning-mill, where my wife and daughter work, the masters are never seen, although there are four of them; still less so in the foundry, where my son works; the masters are never seen nor ever known; not even their shadow is seen¾ it is a Limited Liability Company that owns the works. Suppose you and I had five hundred francs saved up, we could buy a share, and become one of the masters, without ever having put, or without putting, a foot in the place.
S. Who, then, directs and superintends the work in this place belonging to the shareholding masters, and in your own shop of one master, seeing the masters are never there, or so seldom that it doesn’t count?
W. Managers and foremen.
S. But if it is workers who have built the workshop, made the machines, and produced the raw materials; if it is workers who keep the machines going, and managers and foremen who direct the work,¾ what does the master do, then?
W. Nothing but twiddle his thumbs.
S. If there were a railway from here to the moon, we could send the masters there, without a return ticket, and your weaving, your wife’s spinning, your son’s moulding, would go on as before.. Do you know what the profit was realised by your master last year?
W. We calculate that he must have got a hundred thousand francs.
S. How many workers does he employ¾ men, women and children, all included?
W. A hundred.
S. What wages do they get?
W. On an average, about a thousand francs, counting in the salaries of managers and foremen.
S. So that the hundred workers in the work receive altogether a hundred thousand francs in wages, just enough to keep them from dying of hunger, while your master pocketed a hundred thousand francs¾ for doing nothing. Where did these two hundred thousand francs come from?
W. Not from the sky; I never saw it rain francs.
S. It is the workers in his works who have produced the hundred thousand francs they received in wages, and, besides, the hundred thousand francs profit of the master, who has employed part of that in buying new machines.
W. There is no denying that.
S. Then it is the workers who produce the money which the master devotes to buying new machines to make them work; it is the managers and foremen, wage slaves like yourself, who direct the production; where, then, does the master come in? What’s he good for?
W. For exploiting labour.
S. Say rather, for robbing the labourer; that is clearer and more exact.
@Communism
🔴 Simple Socialist Truths
2️⃣ Part 2
S. Does your master look after what goes on in his works?
W. Not much; he makes a daily round to see us at our work, but he keeps his hands in his pockets for fear of dirtying them. In the spinning-mill, where my wife and daughter work, the masters are never seen, although there are four of them; still less so in the foundry, where my son works; the masters are never seen nor ever known; not even their shadow is seen¾ it is a Limited Liability Company that owns the works. Suppose you and I had five hundred francs saved up, we could buy a share, and become one of the masters, without ever having put, or without putting, a foot in the place.
S. Who, then, directs and superintends the work in this place belonging to the shareholding masters, and in your own shop of one master, seeing the masters are never there, or so seldom that it doesn’t count?
W. Managers and foremen.
S. But if it is workers who have built the workshop, made the machines, and produced the raw materials; if it is workers who keep the machines going, and managers and foremen who direct the work,¾ what does the master do, then?
W. Nothing but twiddle his thumbs.
S. If there were a railway from here to the moon, we could send the masters there, without a return ticket, and your weaving, your wife’s spinning, your son’s moulding, would go on as before.. Do you know what the profit was realised by your master last year?
W. We calculate that he must have got a hundred thousand francs.
S. How many workers does he employ¾ men, women and children, all included?
W. A hundred.
S. What wages do they get?
W. On an average, about a thousand francs, counting in the salaries of managers and foremen.
S. So that the hundred workers in the work receive altogether a hundred thousand francs in wages, just enough to keep them from dying of hunger, while your master pocketed a hundred thousand francs¾ for doing nothing. Where did these two hundred thousand francs come from?
W. Not from the sky; I never saw it rain francs.
S. It is the workers in his works who have produced the hundred thousand francs they received in wages, and, besides, the hundred thousand francs profit of the master, who has employed part of that in buying new machines.
W. There is no denying that.
S. Then it is the workers who produce the money which the master devotes to buying new machines to make them work; it is the managers and foremen, wage slaves like yourself, who direct the production; where, then, does the master come in? What’s he good for?
W. For exploiting labour.
S. Say rather, for robbing the labourer; that is clearer and more exact.
@Communism
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On this day, 13 November 1909, suffragette Theresa Garnett attacked then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill with a horsewhip in Bristol, shouting "Take that in the name of the insulted women of England!" Garnett was arrested for assault, but as Churchill did not want to appear in court he did not press charges. So instead she was jailed for one month for "disturbing the peace". In prison, Garnett joined other suffragettes on hunger strike and was then force-fed. She set fire to her cell in protest, and was then moved to a solitary confinement punishment cell.
Working Class History
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Working Class History
#TheresaGarnett #Churchill #History
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