Tag Archives: national question

Fan the Flames – A Revolutionary Position on the Chicano National Question: A Pamphlet by the August Twenty-Ninth Movement (M-L)

The August 29th Movement (M-L) was a Chicano Marxist-Leninist organization in the U.S. from 1974-1978, when it merged with I Wor Kuen to form the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L). This was made available on the web by LeftSpot:

[QUOTE ON INSIDE FRONT COVER OF PAMPHLET:]

The liberation movement of the oppressed peoples and the proletarian revolution. In solving the national question Leninism proceeds from the following theses:

a] the world is divided into two camps: the camp of a handful of civilised nations, which possess finance capital and exploit the vast majority of the population of the globe; and the camp of the oppressed and exploited peoples in the colonies and dependent countries, which constitute that majority;

b] the colonies and dependent countries, oppressed and exploited by finance capital, constitute a vast reserve and a very important source of strength for imperialism;

c] the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed peoples in the dependent and colonial countries against imperialism is the only road that leads to their emancipation from oppression and exploitation;

d] the most important colonial and dependent counties have already taken the path of the national liberation movement, which cannot but lead to the crisis of world capitalism;

e] the interests of the proletarian movement in the developed countries and of the national liberation movement in the colonies call for the union of these two forms of the revolutionary movement into a common front against the common enemy, against imperialism;

f] the victory of the working class in the developed countries and the liberation of the oppressed peoples from the yoke of imperialism are impossible without the formation and the consolidation of a common revolutionary front;

g] the formation of a common revolutionary front is impossible unless the proletariat of the oppressor nations renders direct and determined support to the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples against the imperialism of its “own country,” for “no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations” [Engels];

h] this support implies the upholding, defense and implementation of the slogan of the right of nations to secession, to independent existence as states;

i] unless this slogan is implemented, the union and collaboration of nations within a single world economic system, which is the material basis for the victory of world socialism cannot be brought about;

j] this union can only be voluntary, arising on the basis of mutual confidence and fraternal relations among peoples.
[Stalin from Foundations of Leninism]

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How the restoration of capitalism has destroyed Kyrgyzstan

The following is from the anti-imperialist journal, Lalkar, associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist):

How the restoration of capitalism has destroyed Kyrgyzstan:
Ethnic conflict among the country’s poor has its root in the betrayal of socialism. Communism remains the answer.

The troubles in Kyrgyzstan came to the attention of the world on 6 April in Talas, which is in the north of the country close to the Kazakh border.

Recent events

An anti-government demonstration turned violent, and sparked off a series of further anti-government demonstrations, despite the authorities imposing a state of emergency on 7 April. The government responded by arresting many opposition leaders, and the opposition in turn retaliated by occupying the internal security headquarters and a state TV channel in the capital, Bishkek (formerly Frunze).

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FRSO: Resolution on the Struggle for Immigrant Rights

The following resolution is from the 6th Congress of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization:

Whereas:  It is imperialism that forces immigrants from their countries in the Third World to escape poverty and repression.  The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has opened up the Mexican economy to even greater penetration by U.S. multinational corporations and agribusiness.  U.S. backed governments and counter-revolutionaries in Central America have violently attacked popular movements and governments, leaving economic devastation in their wake.  U.S. imperialism has driven and continues to drive millions of Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States. 

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Claudia Jones, Communist

In honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day (March 8th), The Marxist-Leninist will post a number of articles throughout the month of March dealing specifically with the issue of women’s liberation. The following article is from latest issue of the British journal, Lalkar:

Claudia Jones, communist
A presentation made to the Stalin Society by Ella Rule on 22 March 2009

Today is Mother’s Day. Claudia Jones too thought often of her mother. At a party given for her in New York, Claudia spoke about the early influences that pointed her in the direction of communism:

On this, my 37th birthday, I think of my mother. My mother, a machine worker in a garment factory, died when she was just the same age I am today – 37 years old. I think I began then to develop an understanding of the suffering of my people and my class and to look for a way to end them.”[1]

Right from the start, Claudia realised that what she and her family was suffering in New York was also being suffered by working-class people of every race and nationality, even if black people and women were often suffering more.

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FRSO: Education is Under Attack!

The following statement is from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization:

Today education is under attack. Tuition and fee hikes are closing the doors to higher education. Working class and even many middle class college students are being forced out or are taking on crushing debts. Cuts in financial aid and student services and extra fees for undocumented students are limiting access. Furthermore, programs won through past struggles such Ethnic Studies and campus Women’s Centers are coming under attack. We say “Education is a Right, Not a Privilege”!

Across the country students are fighting back. Mass protests and building occupation rocked the University of California in opposition to tuition hikes. Workers, teachers, and their unions have joined with students to fight for their jobs and for education. The recession and financial meltdown have led to the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Lay-offs, foreclosures, and budget cuts are hitting our communities while the government bails out the big banks and corporations. March 4 is a national day of action to fight these cuts on campuses and schools across the country.

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Langston Hughes: Goodmorning Stalingrad!

The following poem honoring the battle of Stalingrad, where the Soviet Union turned back the tide of Fascism during World War II, is by the great revolutionary African American poet, Langston Hughes:

Goodmorning, Stalingrad!
Lots of folks who don’t like you
Had give you up for dead.
But you ain’t dead!

Goodmorning, Stalingrad!
Where I live down in Dixie
Thinkgs is bad —
But they’re not so bad
I still can’t say,
Goodmorning Stalingrad!
And I’m not so dumb
I still don’t know
That as long as your red star
Lights the sky,
We won’t die.

Goodmorning Stalingrad!
You’re half a world away or more
But when your guns roar,
They roar for me —
And for everybody
who want to be free.

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Martin Luther King’s final speech in Memphis, like you’ve never heard it before

Typically the Gregory Brothers do the youtube show Autotune the News in order to try and respond to serious subjects in a popular and funny way, while taking a jab at pitch correction in music. But there’s nothing particularly funny about this video, which the Gregory Brothers posted for MLK Day 2010. It may not be to everyone’s liking, but it is certainly an interesting tribute.

The Marxist-Leninist posted the following article for MLK Day 2010: Mao Zedong on the Assassination of Martin Luther King.

RSU Presentation on Imperialism and National Liberation

The following video presentation on the Marxist-Leninist theory of imperialism (monopoly capitalism) is from the UVU Revolutionary Students Union.

Lenin gives five basic features of imperialism:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)

There are also four fundamental contradictions of imperialism. Stalin, in The Foundations of Leninism, went on to enumerate three of them: (1) the contradiction between labor and capital; (2) the contradiction among the various financial groups and imperialist Powers in their struggle for sources of raw materials; and (3) the contradiction between the handful of ruling, “civilised” nations and the hundreds of millions of the colonial and dependent peoples of the world. There is a fourth in the contemporary world as Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists have pointed out: (4) the contradiction between imperialism and the socialist countries. Of these four contradictions, the principal contradiction in the current period is that between the oppressed nations and imperialism. These four contradictions can only be resolved by social revolution.

These videos do well to explain Lenin’s theory in a lively and contemporary way. See also their excellent presentations on the PFLP and on ‘Stalinism’.

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Mao Zedong: “I Place My Hopes On the People of the U.S.”

To commemorate the 116th anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong on December 26, 2009, The Marxist-Leninist is posting the following article from the anti-revisionist New Communist Movement of the 1970s. The article is from the theoretical journal of the October League / Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), Class Struggle (#6 – Winter 1976-77). It is being made available online here for the first time.


‘I Place My Hopes On the People of the U.S.’
Article from the Sept. 20 issue of The Call on Chairman Mao’s teachings about the American people

Chairman Mao was a great internationalist who took his stand alongside the working and oppressed people of the world in their struggle against imperialism and reaction. He paid especially close attention to the struggles of the working-class and minority people here in the U.S., giving them encouragement and support.

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Harry Haywood: Trotsky’s Day in Court

The following examination of Trotskyism by the great African American Marxist-Leninist, Harry Haywood, is from “Trotsky’s Day in Court”, Chapter 6 of Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist (1978), which takes place while Harry Haywood is studying in Moscow at the KUTVA, The University of the Toilers of the East. For a more thorough Marxist-Leninist examination of Trotskyism, read M.J. Olgin’s outstanding 1935 book, Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise, which is perhaps the best treatment of the subject:


Trotsky’s Day in Court

Apart from our academic courses, we received our first tutelage in Leninism and the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the heat of the inner-party struggle then raging between Trotsky and the majority of the Central Committee led by Stalin. We KUTVA students were not simply bystanders, but were active participants in the struggle. Most students – and all of our group from the U.S. – were ardent supporters of Stalin and the Central Committee majority. 

It had not always been thus. Otto told me that in 1924, a year before he arrived, a majority of the students in the school had been supporters of Trotsky. Trotsky was making a play for the Party youth, in opposition to the older Bolshevik stalwarts. With his usual demagogy, he claimed that the old leadership was betraying the revolution and had embarked on a course of “Thermidorian reaction.” (1) In this situation, he said, the students and youth were “the Party’s truest barometer.” (2)

But by the time the Black American students arrived, the temporary attraction to Trotsky had been reversed. The issues involved in the struggle with Trotsky were discussed in the school. They involved the destiny of socialism in the Soviet Union. Which way were the Soviet people to go? What was to be the direction of their economic development? Was it possible to build a socialist economic system?  These questions were not only theoretical ones, but were issues of life and death. The economic life of the country would not stand still and wait while they were being debated.  

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