Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. V.I.Lenin
Economic and Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions (£12 p.a.) and circulation P&P Bulletin Publications. PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL [Post Office Registered.] Phone 0771 2639934  www.epsr.org.uk 
No 1452  4th September 2014                                                                                                   25p fortnightly

Western “horror”  over Islamic violence in Middle East is a gigantic posturing hypocrisy and diversion by a crisis wracked capitalism which has imposed far worse destruction and atrocities on the entire region for decades, continues to do so and is escalating its world warmongering blitzkrieging everywhere to escape its crisis collapse (due to resume its catastrophic financial meltdown at any moment). The real Western panic is that the manipulated insurgencies being used to contain the growing mass revolt against imperialism and destroy “rogue” states are themselves merging into the revolution against imperialism – turning the training and arms they have been given into a new level of sophisticated fight back. They are not Marxism which alone is a solution but not reaction either. 

Capitalism’s warmongering skulduggery in the Middle East continues to pile up more and more unanswerable questions – unanswerable that is without a world revolutionary perspective and grasp of the intractable capitalist crisis now imminently ready to break into financial disaster once more.
Why is Washington-led imperialism now bombing in Iraq the very jihadist insurgency it has previously armed, trained and backed with a carefully orchestrated media deluge about bogus “people’s struggle” in Syria and Libya?
Or conversely, why is it not bombing more of it, (instead of only a few IS patrols and only around the Kurdish areas) if the Islamic State is such a “barbaric” threat to the world “worse than al-Qaeda” as David Cameron’s latest hysterical pronouncements declare?
But then why did the West support and even encourage and develop its ruthless violence in the first place, and still does, indirectly, in Syria, along with half a dozen other groups waging bloody civil war? 
Why is it stirring up such a panic about Western recruits joining the Islamists when only yesterday these same groups were allegedly ‘freedom fighters’ against the allegedly equally “monstrous dictatorship” of Bashar Assad in Syria? 
Why are those young recruits so attracted anyway, and in such numbers, to the Islamic State and its terrorising ruthlessness?
Etc,etc,etc.
Because for all its sectarian emergence in the CIA/Mossad provoked Syrian conflict, it has been spawned by an incipient revolutionary drive against capitalist domination, is surely the answer, constantly threatening the “blowback” which imperialism fears will turn to much more conscious and coherent anti-imperialism (and beyond that to the proletarian revolution the anti-Western hatred will eventually certainly be driven to develop into, by objective capitalist catastrophe and Slump-war).
Lurid propaganda over the “barbaric inhumanity” of movements like ISIS, and the many other “terrorist” rebellions from Boka Haram in Nigeria to Somalia’s Al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Yemen, which are now gathering pace everywhere, will not do anything either except underline the cynicism, hypocrisy and double dealing of capitalism, further building the hatred against it.  
Again, just the opposite. Of course prisoner massacres and slaughter of non-Islam or non-Sunni communities are human tragedies, bloody and appalling, and not always targeting the real capitalist source of oppression and degeneracy in the world.
But firstly in what way do they differ from capitalism’s routine oppression and worldwide atrocities for “disciplining” billions of exploited masses, from the very beginnings of European colonialist expansionism wiping out entire peoples with casual brutality to take their lands and subjugate and enslave them; continuing into World War One and, since World War Two, with over 400 coups, fascist dictatorships, invasions, major wars, large-scale butchery (Indonesia’s 1965 anti-communism alone gruesomely slaughtering, at a minimum estimate, over one million suspected communists including thousands fingered by CIA and British supplied kill-lists); bogus populism (Chile, Solidarnosc in Poland, China’s Tian an Men, currently Venezuela and Bolivia)  turning to violence to de-stabilise and overturn socialist regimes?
And in just in what way is the alleged “primitive savagery” of the ISIS so very “evil” compared to the daily escalating war reality of life in Middle East under capitalist domination as the imperialist system “educates” (or rather re-educates) the entire world into accepting the most grotesque torture and slaughter during a decade-long, “shock and awe” build-up to oncoming world war (the ultimate ruling class “escape plan” to get out of the unavoidable Slump disaster caused alone by capitalism’s endless profiteering)?
Or anywhere else in the Third World and into east Europe too?
Why is a videoed beheading of a US journalist to be singled out for especially sanctimonious condemnation all around by imperialism’s leaders (and echoed by the entire liberal petty bourgeoisie) when the capitalist world exploitation system that this very same ruling class controls, has been rampaging through the world with far worse atrocities than this for the last twenty years of blitzkrieg and invasion on Serbia, Afghanistan and the Middle East, bombarding, and torturing and massacring ever since on a scale the Islamic State does not come near?
Do Obama (and Cameron) make special remarks about the endless atrocities by Western  soldiers and “security” mercenaries, singling them out for horrified special speeches?
Terror drones are used constantly now for “taking out”, with high explosive bombs, alleged “insurgent terrorists” (meaning any desperate attempt to fight back by the exploited masses against Western tyranny), frequently killed along with whole groups of any innocents who happen to be around, families and neighbours gruesomely ripped into body part fragments by Hellfire missiles.
Does Obama denounce this?
No, he signs off weekly on the death warrants that sanction this world remote-control terrorising (with no judicial oversight). 
Currently circulating on the Internet (and suppressed by the “tasteful” Western media), is a heart-wrenching and horrifying picture of a small child’s body in Palestine, sliced into top and bottom halves through her torso by the shrapnel shards from one of the hundreds of F16 Nazi-Zionist bombing runs deliberately targeting schools, housing, hospitals, infrastructure  and streets in Gaza in the latest eruption of their non-stop genocidal tyrannising of the Arab population from whom they stole most of an entire country in 1947-8 and now are continuing to slowly and cynically seize the remainder of.
She is only one of multitudes of hapless innocents, already living desperately besieged and effectively concentration camp lives in Gaza, now butchered and blasted apart by imperialism’s Middle East attack dogs in Tel Aviv. 
Another 2000 men, women and children have been horrifically blown to pieces from a population of 1.8 million Gazans, all deliberately and systematically targeted by the most deadly and inhuman weaponry and equipment for the last month and a half, not to mention tens of thousands more injured, crippled, disfigured and bereaved, terrified and psychologically scarred, with every kind of horrifying weapon being used on them such as the anti-personnel “flechette” bombs, full of hardened steel arrows which fly in all directions to cause maximum injury.
Suicide bombs do not come near such levels of arbitrary indiscriminate killing.   
Did Obama make a special speech to condemn the “primitive colonialism” and unacceptable barbarity of “Israel” the false “state” which occupies Palestine, denouncing its white-phosphorus war-crime ethnic cleansing? 
Obama did not – he sent more ammunition to keep the industrial scale genocidal terror going.
In Ukraine similar numbers are being slaughtered in the working class towns of the east, under attack by a completely illicit government in Kiev installed by a violent Swastika toting coup, using fascist baseball-bat and gun intimidation, backed, advised and funded by Western imperialism.
This illegal Ukraine army and its freelance Nazi thug death-gangs, have been ramping up atrocities and brutality on all the areas that have resisted this Western inspired and provoked coup, with indiscriminate bombing of civilian city centres and the foulest of siege starvation blockades on several major cities, with nary a word about the “barbarism” of these new overt Hitler-worshipers.
Not only has Obama said nothing about this, he calmly watches the humanitarian disaster this bloody siege has created threatening thousands, and supports the Kiev Nazis in blocking a vitally-needed aid convoy from Russia, while the Western media has pumped up every ludicrous Goebbels lie from Kiev, turning this aggression on its head and blaming it on alleged “Russian invasion” etc,. So far gone is the Goebbels lie propaganda in the world now.
But it was the fascist Kiev egg of the slickly organised and utterly bogus “Orange revolution” which came before the separatist resistance chicken, and any support Russian has given it.
Of course the rebellions which have tried to fight against the world oppression are turning out ruthless and violent themselves.
The mainly local young recruits into the movements in the Middle East have spent their entire lives knowing nothing but endless warfare and massacres, the bloodiest and most gruesome of sectarian death-squad slaughter (promulgated and trained by US covert specialists from similar horrors in Latin America), street massacres and car bombs, deprivation and alienation, ruined cities, refugee lives and the slow poisoning of depleted uranium residues, sanitation befouled by devastated drainage and water infrastructure and daily deprivation. 
Iraq alone has suffered a ten-year grinding-slaughter trench war against Iran in the 1980s, instigated by the US pushing CIA stooge Saddam Hussein to target the new Ayatollahocracy in Iran in revenge for humiliating the US: a devastating US and allied blitzing in the first Gulf war when Saddam tried to claim Kuwait as a ‘reward’ for the Iran war, and got ‘disciplined’; ten years of savage subsequent sanctions siege, along with regular bombing runs, which together caused endless suffering, including the deaths of half million children and many adults; the barbarous bombing and massacring in the Iraq war and occupation immediately afterwards, including US white-phosphorus massacres in Fallujah; the deliberately inflamed sectarian death squad war of 2005-7 (trained by US “advisers” in the most depraved methods); and non-stop oppressive occupation until the disastrous US stooge Maliki was installed to impose a new corrupt dictatorship along Saddam lines. 
The constant occupation war in Afghanistan, has continued the oppression and revealed new levels of torture and prisoner abuse; Somalia has suffered decades of blasted ruin agony, Libya is a wrecked and ruined mess of anarchic semi-warlordism still reeling from the NATO blitzkrieg which reduced a prosperous and relatively content civilised country to a hellhole.
The West now turns round and declares there to be a “new source of barbarism and evil in the world”!!!!!!!
And this hypocrisy is doubled and trebled by the fact that is Washington and its primitive backward feudal stooges in the Gulf which have fostered, encouraged and provoked the “jihadists” anyway, with non-stop arms, vast sums of money and covert training, mobilising the lapdog media into a demented campaign of support with hurricane levels of Goebbels unverified “atrocity” stories against Assad and black propaganda stunts (including the “Syria used poison gas” lies to parallel the “WMD” nonsense which set the Iraq war going). 
It is quadrupled hypocrisy in fact since the Gulf regimes allied with the States are themselves about as primitive and backward as it is possible to be in the modern world, their grossly corrupt and indulgent feudal tribalism routinely beheading and amputating the limbs of “criminals” - including political prisoners.  
But despite all that aid and help, the West now finds its plotting and skulduggery going badly wrong, because  its own crisis is the overriding factor driving all history and its contradictions are driving millions into conflict that is far from being simply a Washington master-plan.
The conspiracy theorists, detecting the hand of imperialism to be in everything may not be wrong in the assumption that capitalist intrigue and subversions is constant in the world, attempting to undermine all resistance to its exploitation rule, pumping out anti-communism non-stop, and bringing down every “democratic” movement that starts to get somewhere, or even might open the door to advances for the working class and downtrodden masses, and certainly violently eliminating all revolutionary development when it can.    
Of course there is non-stop subversion and intervention by the Western ruling class, and of course the intelligence agencies, police, special surveillance teams and other secret services receive billions in funds, with networks penetrating at all levels into opposition and labour movements throughout the world.
But they miss the point entirely that such intriguing and plotting by the ruling class goes wrong and the more badly so as its catastrophic crisis deepens, the tearing contradictions of the epochal failure of its system forcing the most unexpected transformations.
Events now unfolding at a dizzying pace of destructive turmoil, and apparent confusion, are not some sinisterly clever manipulation and backroom plotting by Machiavellian puppet masters sitting in Washington and other capitals and just moving helpless international chess pieces around to extend their already overwhelming power, as most of the “lefts” imply with their shallow “its all about oil” and “CIA runs everything” theories, or whatever else is the latest shallow-brained nonsense the fake-“left is punting to avoid talking about revolution. It is the very opposite, the weakness and panic of a system on the edge of an epochal disintegration and failure.
These chops and changes in Western policy, now allying with what was yesterday supposed to be the “world’s greatest threat”, be it Iran (supposedly the number one enemy for thirty years), or even now potentially Assad himself (another “dictator” of a “rogue state”). against an even more “demonic barbarism” which literally only yesterday was “fighting for freedom”, are proof of the point.
The real story of the West’s astonishing and brutal tacking to and fro in the Middle East, one minute arming and funding ruthless “jihadists” to terrorise and destroy most of Syria, and the next bombing and blitzing the very same fighters as they “blowback” against imperialism and tear apart the century old World War One imperialist carve-up of the Ottoman Empire, is surely panicked indecision.
Use of the insurgencies to try and topple the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist stubbornness which the bourgeois nationalist Syria regime has long been obliged to adopt, in order to keep its own masses pacified, was always a desperate and fraught exercise.
Experience from bolstering the Islamists in Afghanistan, tapping their rural backwardness to recruit them to try and topple the 1980s socialist government in Kabul, and entrap the Moscow support it was getting into becoming a “Soviet Vietnam”, already made Washington fearful of “blowback”, and especially after the unexpectedly devastating effect of the al-Qaeda 9/11 attack.
This same insurgency has turned into its opposite as a dogged 12 year national resistance to the 2002 US occupation showed, and spreading widely particularly into crucial Western stooge Pakistan, enough to make the West think twice about trying the same trick again.
The eruptions of the capitalist crisis are overriding everything.
Washington, already facing an ever spreading forest fire of Third World revolt and insurgency to its “blitz the world into submission” plans, and seeing the recruitment to this “terrorist” rebellion increased by every brutal measure it takes to try and suppress it, faced an even more profound shock when the Egyptian “Arab Spring” erupted in 2011.
This gigantic spontaneous upheaval, induced by the unrolling capitalist financial crash and its Pentagon “endless war” world oppression, was on  a new scale, threatening to topple, by overwhelming popular mass revolt, the main regime in the Middle East, with a huge population far bigger than any other (80+million) and a long history of anti-imperialist sentiment.
Its new level of popular rebellion, beyond continuing “terrorism” and “insurgency”, pole-axed Washington with its potential to disrupt imperialism’s its entire control of the Middle East and indicated a qualitative change in the world rebellion against imperialism.
Desperate measures have followed to contain this potentially devastating revolutionary upheaval eventually managing to oust the Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalist but reformist anti-imperialist Morsi presidency which imperialism had been forced to concede to by the events.
The General Sisi military coup now has a tenuous grasp again, at the cost of overtly demonstrating the utter barbarity of its Washington funded dictatorship with street slaughter of thousands and a grotesque judicial repression that would be laughable if not so deadly.  
But it sits on a powder keg of stirred up anti-westernism and anti-Zionism.
It is the stunned fear of the ruling class over Egypt which have now led to the eruptions in Iraq, and the new level of well- organised,funded and disciplined insurgency threatening to develop very fast towards a major anti-imperialist threat. 
Of course these were set going by skulduggery and intrigue including the nazi-NATO war on Libya and the utter mayhem induced in Syria, to turn it into a scorched earth nightmare, both aimed at suppressing and containing any potential of the Arab Spring to infect the entire Middle East.
Long laid but speculative and unfinished plans to stir up stooge revolts against the anti-imperialists Gaddafi and Assad were hastily set in train, –their reactionary nature hidden behind the pretence they were “more Arab Spring”.
But these bogus affairs – which unlike the huge spontaneous Cairo revolt against an imperialist stooge dictatorship of  Mubarak,  were against anti- imperialists, – were desperate measures  as the laughably thin racist-reactionary monarchist ‘revolt’ in Benghazi demonstrated by petering out almost immediately, requiring the massive NATO blitzing to sustain the pretence and destroy Gaddafi, and as Syria is now showing too.
That did not stop the Trotskyist swamp hailing the obvious counter revolutions early on, as an allegedly “popular peoples movement”, many so far gone in their anti-communism (now  displaced and projected onto virtually any anti-imperialism – denounced as “totalitarian dictatorships”) that they swallow almost any shallow alleged “street movement” as “the revolution”. 
More vigorous forces, based around Sunni sectarianism  were tapped by the initial  stunted-up demonstrations in Syria (again swallowed hook, line and sinker by the anti-communist Trotskyists) but are now backfiring badly. 
The West was already nervous about what it had set going, trying within months to distance itself from the more extreme movements in the Free Syrian Army and set up yet another quisling leadership umbrella body.
Hence from being used as a tool of imperialism to further its warmongering destruction of “rogue states” like Syria, the “jihadists” have transformed into a highly organised rebelliousness that is tearing to shreds the boundaries and divisions imposed 100 years ago by imperialism.
Some sections of the ruling class are already fearful of the results with Pentagon and British generals calling for the all-out bombing of the ISIS forces, as the bourgeois press reports:  
An influential retired US general has called on Barack Obama to order the destruction the militant group responsible for murdering American journalist James Foley amid conflicting views in the administration on how to respond to the atrocity.
As Obama’s foreign policy team debates expanding its renewed air war in Iraq after the killing of Foley by the Islamic State (Isis), John Allen, a retired marine general who commanded the Afghanistan war from 2011 to 2013, urged Obama to “move quickly to pressure its entire ‘nervous system’, break it up, and destroy its pieces.”
Allen’s argument, presented in an op-ed for the DefenseOne website, echoes remarks by secretary of state John Kerry and comes amid internal dispute in the Obama administration over the future course of its two-week air war in Iraq. Much diplomatic effort is said to be spent broadening and hardening a region-wide effort against Isis, something Allen endorsed, with Turkey and Qatar being a particular near-term focus for Kerry.
The debate is said to be fluid. At present, a US official anticipated more continuity than change in future military operations against Isis, but said: “It may ultimately evolve.”
On Wednesday, six new airstrikes continued to hit Isis positions near the Mosul Dam, 
For the moment however it looks as if yet Washington still hopes to manipulate the insurgents, by continuing to back their destructive rampaging in Syria (indirectly, by backing other Islamists from where the weaponry can leak though) – and the limited US airstrikes against it in Iraq have more the character of  a warning shot to try and contain the Islamic State advances in Iraq from going too far towards threatening Baghdad’s US stooge regime or the oil-rich northern Kurdish areas.
But all this is a highly fraught strategy to continue the Middle East mayhem (part of imperialist warmongering crisis plans) and try to fragment any further revolt. It will almost certainly badly backfire even more on imperialism in some form – and already exposes even more sharply its raging duplicity and cynicism.
This is all the desperation of a ruling class which does not know which way to turn as its crisis relentlessly drags it towards the abyss and the devastating Slump collapse of 2008 teeters on the edge of even greater world credit meltdown catastrophe.
Even the  bourgeois press is now panicking about another Crash as the Stock Markets bubble even more frenziedly than in 1929.
The fake-“left” too is at six and sevens over all this meanwhile because in both Trotskyist and revisionist forms they fail to appreciate the significance of the complete destructive revolutionary turmoil erupting which is threatening to tear apart all the fabric of capitalism colonialist domination and rule in the Middle East.
For all their posing and preening about ‘revolution’ when it actually comes to it, the “lefts” universally stand on the wrong side.
Their shallow impressionism and failure to see the underlying revolutionary crisis nature of the Muslim ideology (for all its shortcomings) has been aiding imperialist confusion.
In Egypt for example the brutal fascism Sisi government was helped into place by riding the back of a western stunted -up middle-class populism pretending to be a development of the 2011 Arab Spring but in reality completely different in class character.
This counter-revolution took advantage of petty bourgeois democracy illusions and western anti-Muslim demonisation aided by anarchist and fake-“left” inability to carry through, and hostility to, any Marxist philosophical understanding of the realities of the growing Third World struggle and its current expression very often in jihadist and “terrorist” form. 
The “lefts” only tail-end capitalism, with denunciations of “jihadists” as “reactionary Islam” or simply as “backward scum” as they have been doing ever since the 9/11 attacks, condemning “terrorism” and leaving themselves effectively capitulating to the West’s “war on terror”, with all their “no to war” protest thereby rendered useless.
They punt out the same shallow idealist theories that capitalism offers about “ideological brainwashing” as if an enormous eruption of the most relentless fighting, often at great self-sacrificing cost, is to be explained away as the result of a few Svengali figures mysteriously “stirring up trouble”.
This is the eternal blame target of ruling class’s throughout history to explain revolts and rebellions, a purely idealist notion, built around the ruling class conceit that the world it as it is because of the genius of a few humans (themselves naturally) who push world historical and technological developments by sheer willpower (and are therefor “entitled“ to take as a reward all the wealth produced by the exploitation of others).
They cannot understand or see the great class movements as an objective reality of complex contradictions and unfolding material events, which are reflected in humanity’s consciousness (where the true genius lies in articulating and understanding the objective necessities – as Lenin did for example).
So rebellion against the crisis? It would go away if only a few “troublemaker preachers” were eliminated. 
The fake-“lefts” suffer from exactly the same idealism in a petty bourgeois form and their denouncing of “jihadism” shows it, suggesting it is something different to the class struggle in the world, produced solely by Islamic “ideas”. 
They separate off these movements as produced by some “other” ideology with no explanation of its basis in the objective world, reflecting (inadequately it may be) the growing mass necessity to fight the crisis and capitalism’s historic disaster. 
Some of the “lefts” tangle themselves in ever more elaborate conspiracy theories declaring the jihadists everywhere to be “run by the CIA” or Mossad, part of some extraordinary complex and detailed plan of capitalism to foster gigantic revolutionary upheavals against itself, for some reason wanting to make life massively more difficult for its Third World domination seemingly.
This contemptuous nonsense, with its racist undertones writing off the Third World peoples as either incapable of originating such fights, or as total dupes, gets some of the fake- “lefts” off the hook of condemning the Third World struggles directly, by pretending they are opposing “Western agencies” instead of rebels.  
But they still get tied in knots of contradictions.
Either way, none can explain why sometimes they too support Islamist “terrorists” as they do in Palestine for example (because they dare not ride against overwhelming world sympathy for the Gazans), backing the Hamas struggle, or as the Stalinist Lalkarites do supporting Iran and the Hezbollah, fighting against the IS and other Islamists on the side of Assad.
Total posturing confusion reigns in other words.
What they are all afraid of is the very destructiveness and violence now being manifest in the Middle East, Nigeria, Somalia, Egypt’s Sinai desert area, and more. In various ways they “condemn” all of it. 
But destruction of the old order is precisely what revolution means, smashing the bourgeois control and ruling structures and state forces, the only way its tyrannical class rule will be ended and socialism can be built. 
The “left” assorted denunciations reflect their essential petty bourgeois reformist souls which fear such upheaval and want only to see slow steady change, in which their own middle class existence continues unruffled while some “improvements” are achieved.
Of course these insurgencies are not Marxist movements and their methods are not those of Marxism, nor their solutions, far from it. 
Their sectarian fighting and barmy religious ideas are a long way from a scientific socialist revolutionary view which alone can sort out the catastrophe that capitalism has brought on the world. 
But they are the reality of a massively rising and spreading struggle which for all its flaws, bizarre ideological limitations and sectarian confusion, is rejecting all the old domination and control imposed by capitalism.   
It is their ruthless fighting efficiency  and deliberate terror-inducing methods which have increased the appeal to great numbers of alienated and despairing youths throughout the capitalist world and certainly to the local population in the Middle East, because they are seen as striking blows against increasingly barbarous imperialism.
No amount of Tory state “thought control” measures to “stamp out extremists and radicalising clerics” are going to prevent the attraction of movements like Islamic State in Iraq to some rebellious and discontented youth in Britain or anywhere else.
Such clamp downs can only underline the repressive and dictatorial nature of capitalist domination, and the fascist brainwashing reality of the “Western values” which are to be forcibly inculcated in schools and communities allegedly, increasing their hostility.
It  will add to the growing hatred everywhere of the “Western values” repression, torture, war, slump poverty, and alienation which has already recruited tens of thousands in the Third World into these various insurgencies and anti-Western movements, precisely because they are so destructive of past “civilisation” control and tyrannising rule by arrogant Western colonialist exploitation, now dragging the entire world towards a Third World war to escape its Slump crisis.
But the only way out of such turmoil is a world revolution focussed on ending capitalism itself, made conscious by a Leninist leadership struggle.
Build Leninism
Don Hoskins 

E P S R   BOX

Leaving the world to be run by the greed of the capitalist monopolies can never stop resulting in periodic crises where trade-war destruction MUST rule, and to which the only antidote is Revolution and a strong workers state, --- as these essentials of Marxist-Leninist SCIENCE explain.

Only the crisis events of collapsing imperialist rule interpreted in this Marxist-Leninist light will educate a mass workers party of leadership to do the necessary tasks.

The Revisionist retreat from the Soviet workers state because of crawling to shallow Western glitz and shame at their own past bureaucratic mistakes has only proved the soundness of Lenin's 'State & Revolution' science about a very long period of proletarian dictatorship being the only way for the world to see-off monopoly imperialist warmongering, now back with a vengeance.

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It is often said and written that the main point in Marx's teachings is the class struggle; but this is not true. And  from this untruth very often springs the opportunist distortion of Marxism, its falsification in such a way as to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. For the doctrine of the class struggle was created not by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie before Marx, and generally speaking it is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Those who recognise only the class struggle are not yet Marxists;  they may be found to be still within the boundaries of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the doctrine of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. And it is not surprising that when the history of Europe brought the working class face to face with this question as a practical issue, not only all the opportunists and reformists, but all the "Kautskyites" (people who vacillate between reformism and Marxism) proved to be miserable philistines and petty-bourgeois democrats who repudiate the dictatorship of the proletariat. V.I.Lenin

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"The last cause of all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as compared to the tendency of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as if only the absolute power of consumption of the entire society would be their limit." (Capital. Vol III. P568.)

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" For many a decade past", wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, "the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crisis a great part, not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary...they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them."

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The conditions of bourgeois democracy very often compel us to take a certain stand on a multitude of small and petty reforms, but we must be able, or learn, to take such a position on these reforms. (in such a manner) that - to oversimplify the matter for the sake of clarity - five minutes of every half-hour speech are devoted to reforms and twenty-five minutes to the coming revolution.

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World Socialist Review
edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles
Focus on the future -  educating the blind in Cuba
With 100 students enrolled, the Abel Santamaría Special School for Blind and Visually Impaired Children is a prime example of social inclusion for this kind of disability. 
By Sundred Suzarte Medina 

 Although his pace is deliberate, he “looks” forward as someone defying circumstance, and seeing this makes me smile. He is so sure of himself, facing the future, believing in his potential. He holds in his hands the necessary tools of certain triumph, because more important than a human condition, is the aptitude which allows him to improve, and observe that which ordinary eyes can not see.
Reiniel Guzmán Frólmeta is 15 years of age and in 10th grade at Jesus Suárez Gayol Pre-university High School, in Havana. It is a typical school, like any other in the city. His relationship with his peers is good; his academic record, excellent; and his social development, exceptional. For some teachers he is their best student. For the majority, he is the most well-rounded in the school.
Despite this, Reiniel is an example of what can be achieved with adequate educational cooperation -essential to the successful inclusion of people with this type of disability in society. After attending the Abel Santamaría Special School for Blind and Visually , Impaired Children, in Havana’s Ciudad Escolar Libertad, from preschool through 9th Grade, Reiniel was ready to move to the general education system, having mastered orientation techniques and the Braille system of reading and writing. His accomplishments are encouraging.
  “At this school, I learned the first steps that enabled me to make the transition to a regular school. The quality of teachers is excellent and the change wasn’t very difficult. I have always been able to rely on the support of everyone, everywhere; and although I don’t know what I want to study, I know that I definitely want to go to university,” Reiniel said.
  According to José Manuel Pérez Lopez, director of Abel Santamaría, the imperative is to provide children with skills which will enable them to be fully integrated into society, despite their limitations, in such a way that their disability does not hinder success in their personal or professional lives.
  The school is large, well ventilated and has open spaces for recreation and mobility. It has a staff of 56 teachers and 97 students, 30 of  whom are completely blind and the remainder with 29 different types of visual impairment, in particular cataracts and severe myopia. There are also 13 students with mental disabilities, some blind-deaf and others with autism.
  “We work with general education curricula, only changing the techniques, procedures and teaching methods. A child here receives the same education, in the same time, as one in general education. This means that, when they are integrated, they are at a similar level.
  As soon as they master orientation techniques and learn how to use a cane, we can talk about the possibility of transferring them to another school. We teach visually impaired children to utilize their visual capacity with greater efficiency, putting their learning into practice in daily life.
  “Once they transfer to the other system, we become a source of support and advice. We take steps to ensure that the child is completely successful in the other school. We also support the teachers. Until now, none of the 79 children transferred has had to return to our institution, and next semester we are considering transferring 14 students to general education. There are currently 18 blind students enrolled in university in the capital, achieving very good results,” stated the director.
  With the intention of reaching the greatest level of inclusion, the school has four rooms where students who don’t attend the pre-university high school develop vocational skills. Despite this being the school’s main objective, López explained that the principal obstacles to transferring a student to general education come from parents, who believe that their child will be better served, if they continue on at Abel Santamaría.
  However, teachers at Abel Santamarí agree that the process of socialization is best achieved through interaction with people who don’t have these conditions. Therefore, teachers work closely with families to teach them the best techniques, so that their children learn to cope independently.
Special education in Cuba is one of the education system’s principal challenges, as teacher training and the use of specialized materials and equipment can be expensive. Despite this, Abel Santamaría maintains its initiative, creating teaching methods with the resources available and encouraging students themselves to search for alternatives. For example, they construct lecterns from cardboard, make their own graph paper or use other variants.
  For more than 50 years the Cuban state has successfully supported social inclusion of the disabled, and insisted on the need for society to accept their limitations and perceive in them an opportunity for the country’s development. According to psychologist, Geraldina Mercedes González, born blind, people who believe that a disability limits the contribution one can make to society are mistaken. These ideas are “psychological barriers, which do more harm than physical barriers. When we have the opportunity to contribute socially we do so in a successful way. We try to do it in the best possible way.”
  “I would like to end with this message to anyone who undervalues us at any time: We are human beings, the same as everyone else, with a different way of processing information, through hearing and touch, but we have the same intellectual potential. We also deserve to share a little in the joy of supporting and contributing to society,” emphasized Geraldina, with a hazy look which contrasts with the accuracy of her point of view, as someone who can see far beyond the horizon.

World Socialist Review
edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles
European Union deputies demand condemnation of Zunzuneo

THE Spanish United Left (IU) has requested that the European Union condemn the U.S. ‘Cuban Twitter’ operation Zunzuneo, intended to promote destabilization in Cuba, according to Willy Meyer, a EU deputy associated with this bloc.
  Meyer explained, April 22, that questions about the recently revealed anti-Cuban project should be included, as part of EU demands that U.S. authorities be held accountable politically and legally for their actions.
  In a note sent to EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, he called attention to the creation of the mobile phone social network, with the illegal use of Spanish platforms.
  Meyer referred to information revealed by the AP news agency, which confirmed the validity of Cuban condemnations of this type of activity, expressed for years.
  There is clear evidence, the note said, that the U.S. Aid for International Development (usaid) is one more instrument used to defend U.S, interests and carry out interventionist political and ideological activities.
  The Spanish UE deputies asked Ashton if she intended to publicly state her opposition to these operations, and denounce the United States’ violation of international law and the United Nations Charter.
  At the same time, they requested her opinion on the use of an agency allegedly devoted to cooperation, such as usaid, for this type of intervention.
  Given the revelations of illegal spying by the United States in Europe, the deputies asked if the EU leader intended to hold the responsible parties accountable before the law and demand their adherence to regulations established by the International Telecommunications Union.
  According to Meyer, the Spanish bloc believes that Ms. Ashston, the official responsible for European Union foreign policy, should respond to the recently revealed attacks, indicative of the continuing hostile U.S. policy toward Cuba.
  Asked about the procedure, Meyer explained that Ashton should respond to the deputies’ letter in writing, although he expressed little confidence in the seriousness of such a response, since European foreign policy is subordinated to U.S. interests.
  He recalled that when systematic U.S. spying on Europe was revealed by former cia analyst Eric Snowden, one would have expected negotiations underway on the Transatlantic Free Trade Treaty to be suspended.
  Meyer emphasized that it would have been logical for Europe to assert its sovereignty given this intervention, but that deputies who suggested such a position were told that, no, the talks would continue.
  He added that U.S authorities responsible for this illegal spying have yet to be held accountable before the law.
usaid: not interested in development
  Since its creation, usaid has demonstrated that it is no development agency. Its true function is to implement U.S. foreign policy, intervening in local affairs and carrying out intelligence activities.
  Examples abound in Latin America. The agency has promoted destabilization not only in Cuba, but in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, as well. In May, 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced his decision to expel usaid from the country, saying, “Never again, to usaid which has manipulated and used our brother leaders, which has used some compañeros at the grassroots level, offering charity,” and gave Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca the task of communicating to the U.S. embassy the expulsion of the organization “which maintains a mentality of domination.”
  In Stella Calloni’s book Evo en la mira (Evo in the crosshairs), the Argentine journalist states, “In Bolivia there is documentary evidence that demands for departmental autonomy were promoted and financed by the economic elite of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija, which is the sector chosen to receive funding by the U.S. National Democracy Foundation (ned) and usaid.”
  In the case of Ecuador, President Rafael Correa suspended several usaid projects underway in his country and threatened to expel the agency for interfering in internal politics, supporting opposition groups and nongovernmental organizations which attacked the government.
  Adriana Rossi, Ph.D. Philosophy professor and researcher, specializing in Foreign Policy, explained to Revista 2016 that one of the ways in which usaid operates is by financing development projects in some communitjes.
  To win approval of these projects, a diagnostic study of the community must be completed, providing the means by which an enormous amount of information can be gathered.
  This data serves the agency very well, allowing decisions to be made about potential conflicts in which they can become, involved, and manipulate the community. usaid does intelligence work for the State Department through these projects, she said.
  Meanwhile in Argentina, foundations and non-governmental organizations, such as the Center for Opening and Development of Latin American (cadal), the Nueva Generación foundation, Crecer y Crecer (Grow and Grow), the Libertad Foundation and the Center for Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth (cipec), all linked to usaid, harass the national government with constant attacks via media aligned with them.
 Those who ignore the fact that south of the Rio Bravo, springs are made to flower by peoples’ movements and their governments, must learn that no bird of prey, no condor, no eagle, will ever.sink its claws into the region again. (With information from PL) 
April 24 2014 Granma Intrntnl

World Socialist Review
edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles
Europe and the assault of neoliberal policies
Vicenç Navarro
IT is evident that neoliberal public policies - including the deregulation of labor and financial markets, wage cuts, and the reduction, elimination or privatization of social services and public entities supporting the population’s wellbeing - are being implemented by conservative, liberal and a growing number of social democratic governments, leading the European Union to economic and social disaster.
  These policies, promoted and imposed by the European Commission in Brussels, Angela Merkel’s coalition in Berlin, and the Central European Bank in Frankfurt, are eroding the population’s wellbeing and ruining the economy, in addition to dismantling social progress. Convincing evidence abounds.
  The most recent report on these developments is one prepared by the Catholic organization Caritas, analyzing the situation in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. The report documents how cutbacks in public spending have negatively affected low-income groups and increased unemployment, especially among youth, and led to increasing rates of suicide, poverty, social exclusion, stress and homelessness.
  As the report indicates, the crisis is affecting the most vulnerable groups most, those who bear the least responsibility for the crisis, precisely in the least developed countries with the most limited social safety nets, such as Spain. The report thus concludes, “What is occurring is profoundly unjust.”
  Among the most affected social services, according to the report, are public health care systems, in which quality and access have deteriorated.
  These studies confirm what has been reported in other more academic research projects, such as the well-known work by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, entitled The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, which estimates that more than 10,000 suicides can be attributed to cutbacks in Europe and the United States. The medical journals Lancet and British Medical Journal have warned of the negative impact of austerity on health. All credible academic studies on the issue support the conclusions drawn by Caritas, “Policies of austerity are not working.”
  Other studies have documented the negative impact which unemployment and reduced wages are producing, clearly responsible for growing, poverty and social exclusion. The International Labor Organization (ilo) reports that neoliberal policies have led to a 24% unemployment rate, with 116 million people losing their jobs. There are now 800,000 more children living in poverty, in the EU, than was the case five years ago. The ilo indicates that, if these policies are maintained, Europe will shortly have 15 to 20 million more poor than it does now.
  Another report by the European Commission itself emphasizes that this social disaster is hurting the UE’s economic development.
  Why is implementation of these policies continuing?
  One response to this question is that decision-making within the European Union, the European Council and the European Central Bank is controlled by those ideologically committed to neo-liberalism, with a vision far removed from reality. Documents emerging from these entities are full of optimism, emphasizing the positive impact of austerity in economic development and recovery in countries where such policies have been implemented, including countries on the periphery of the Eurozone.
  One major spokesperson for “austerity” is Olli Rehn, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Issues and member of the European liberal group, which includes such parties as the Spanish cdc and upd, and is promoting these policies in conjunction with conservative parties like the PP and Union Democratica. This ideology predominates in the Central Bank and in Merkel’s administration. All of their documents present a Europe which does not exist, and erroneously assert that austerity is  working, that Europe is emerging from the crisis.
  What is needed is a general mobilization to confront this “axis of austerity” and demand the closure of these institutions as undemocratic and illegal. I am aware that such a proposal is immediately discarded by many as idealist and unachievable, a common response when the structure of power is questioned.
  In reality, a growing number of European organizations are citing the systematic violation of laws approved by the European Parliament and national legislatures by these .institutions. The approval of financial pacts was achieved in several countries, including Spain, using under-handed obfuscation and misrepresentation. Various European trade unions have pointed out repeated violations of the European Social Charter, and the European Council has documented frequent violations of human rights.
  ... The social situation in Europe, and in countries on its periphery, is intolerable.   (Granma - Excerpts from Rebelion)
World Socialist Review
edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles
Putin announces expanded collaboration with Cuba
Russia reaffirms opposition to U.S. Blockade

AN increase in Russian collaboration with Cuba, with large projects planned, was announced by Vladimir V. Putin, President of the Russian Federation, speaking at a press conference with Raúl Castro Ruz, President of Cuba’s Council of State and Ministers, after the signing of 10 important new bilateral agreements.
  Putin emphasized that his country will continue to support Cuba in its struggle against the illegal and illegitimate blockade imposed by the United States for over 50 years, and thanked Cubans for the cordial hospitality offered during the Russian delegation’s visit, and the excellent environment which facilitated joint work, PL reported.
  Speaking in the Palace of the Revolution July 11, the Russian President said that planned are large, comprehensive projects which will expand cooperation between the two countries in such key areas as energy and health.
  He referred to the decision made by his government to cancel 90% of the debt Cuba has owed Russia since the Soviet era, which had reached some 35 billion dollars, according to ain.
  The other 1.0% will be invested in Cuba, Putin added, recalling that joint efforts have been planned through 2020.
  These investments were agreed upon during the 10th meeting of the Inter-governmental Commission for Economic-Commercial and Scientific-Technical Collaboration, held in 2012.
  Cuban President Raul Castro also spoke with the press following the signing ceremony, recalling that Cuba’s debt to Russia grew as a result of the “ussr’s decisive aid,” adding, “It was generous aid, without which, we can be sure, the Revolution would not have been able to persevere.”
  “After so many years, that the current government of Russia would forgive 90% of this debt, and that the remaining 10% - around 3.5 billion -would be invested in Cuba, once again demonstrates the great, palpable generosity of the Russian people toward Cuba,” PL reported.
  He thanked the Russian government and people for the decision to cancel a large portion of Cuba’s debt and expressed confidence in the future growth and strengthening of ties between the two countries, saying, “We wish to express our gratitude to the people and government of Russia for these accords, and for the decisions President Vladimir Putin has announced.”
  Raúl also commented that events which took place in the Soviet Union, during the 1990’s, left the world power off balance, and that, as of 2000, Russia began to recuperate strength in the international arena, the effects of which are currently being noted, first on a global scale, and now in the relations of a new kind which Cuba maintains with the people and government.
 “We are very pleased that, in the international arena, we agree with the firm, intelligent policy currently being implemented, as we see it, by Russia,” the Cuban President stated, adding that he expected this level of agreement to continue, in a new stage of international relations.
 The Russian President arrived in Havana during the early morning hours and began his day with a visit to the Soviet Internationalist Soldiers Monument, where he placed a floral wreath during a commemorative ceremony, in the company of President Raul Castro.
 The distinguished guest paid tribute to the 68 soldiers and officers who fell in combat or died in Cuba 1962-1964, whose remains rest at the site constructed in 1978, a symbolic reminder of the fraternal ties shared by the two countries.
 The ceremony featured a commemorative march by a Revolutionary Armed Forces (far) unit, and was attended additionally by Foreign Minister Bruno
Rodríguez Parrilla, and Army General Álvaro López Miera, deputy minister of the far and decorated Hero of the Republic.
  Later in the day, Bruno Rodríguez accompanied President Putin to the Jose Martí Memorial, in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución, where the visiting leader paid his respects with a floral wreath.
  Havana was the first stop on the Russian President’s Latin American tour, which also took him to Argentina, Nicaragua, and finally Brazil, for a Summit of the brics bloc, which includes Brazil, India, China and South Africa. *