Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev has died aged 84.

Sergei Khrushchev, born July 2 1935, died June 18 2020

Sergei Khrushchev, during his father’s years at the head of CPSU was said to have participated in the Soviet missile and space programme, working on cruise missiles for submarines, military and research spacecraft, moon vehicles and the “Proton,” the world’s largest space booster.

His father Nikita Khrushchev, a concealed revisionist in the ranks of the Communist Party, implemented a number of counter-revolutionary measures in the years after the death of J V Stalin. In defiance of the decisions of the 19^th party congress of the CPSU, measures were introduced in the economy which strengthened the role of the market and undermined socialism. Anti-Marxist ideas, such as a rejection of Lenin’s teachings on the state, handed political power to enemies of the proletarian state, and the foreign policy of the USSR raised political disagreements in the international communist movement to the level of disagreements between states, resulting in the break with China and Mao Zedong.

Nikita Khrushchev was deposed by his contemporaries not because of disagreements over the treacherous betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, but because of the calamitous way in which this about-turn was being made. In retirement Nikita Khrushchev worked on his memoirs, which his son edited after his death in 1971. These Memoirs are a lasting tribute to the political ignorance and petty mindedness of father and son, and should be read by all communists for an insight into the mindset of a lackey, a philistine, an intriguer.

The sight, in 1999, of Sergei Khrushchev raising his right hand to swear allegiance to the USA sums up a life given in the service of US imperialism. Khrushchev Jnr insisted that his father would have understood. “He was in the Communist Party because he believed it would be best for all of us. If, like me, he had seen that capitalism ended up working better, maybe he would have come to America, too.”[i]

[i] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/06/22/sergei-khrushchev-son-soviet-leader-nikita-ended-swearing-allegiance/

5 years without Tony Benn – Stop the War laments

Stop the war campaign is now largely defunct, but at the time of the second Iraq War in 2003 it had a genuinely mass following.

Lindsey German still loves to wax lyrical about the glorious “2 million person march”, which was the defining moment of her career and the high point of StW. Despite this march being largely organised and mobilised by sections of the national (capitalist) press, and in fact the movement totally failing in its aims to stop the IRAQ or ANY OTHER war, she revels in the movement, even 15 years on.

Principally because she still doesn’t understand what led to the fleeting ‘success’ of that moment, and secondarily because it was all down-hill from there! That doesn’t bother Lindsay. There’s still just enough political credibility to be rinsed and money to be garnered from the echoes of that movement, so it is rare to hear her start any speech without alluding to her rebelliousness for “trampling the grass of Hyde park” underfoot.

Moreover, despite the leeches of the SWP dominating its position and finances (later Counterfire seized the organisation from them when they split away from their trotskyist brethren), in the 5 years or so after the Iraq war started, StW formerly maintained participation from many political groups and shades of opinion.

But with StW leadership monopolised by the worst elements of trotskyite and revisionist ‘socialists’ (John Reese, Lindsey German, Andrew Murray), they practiced their divisive sectarianism and censorship relentlessly, gradually driving out all perceived ‘opposition’ from their ranks, and confining the movement to the channels of limp parliamentary cretinism.

Repeated calls from the conference floor to encourage and lead campaigns for non-cooperation to imperialist war crimes were ignored, and when eventually these resolutions were forced through their congress they were shelved and sidelined.

Dominated by ‘left labourites’ such as Benn and Corbyn, the latter kept the anti-war movement tied to the Labour party, despite the fact that Labour was in fact waging the very war they claimed to oppose (Tony Blair was THEIR leader, let us not forget.)

This was then and in altered form remains now, the modus operandi of the British ‘left’ Labour-allied trotskyite and revisionist movement. They were viciously sectarian in hounding out opposition to this social democratic servitude, and to any voice raise against the Labour party.

Campaigning fo the Labour party (not their remit!), has remained the core mission of StW and the meaning of their cries of ‘non-sectarian’, which always acts as a prop for parliamentary cretinism, and social chauvinism – and is their occasionally stated reason for refusing to draw the anti-war movement into creative channels of actually threatening imperialist war. Nothing must be done to damage the chances of Corbyn’s election possibilities, we are told ( – perhaps they should give this advice to JC himself!)

As a result ’Stop’ the war ultimately wound up following its Labour masters (‘Red Ed Miliband’) into SUPPORTING imperialist wars of destabilisation, notably against Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2012.

To return to Counterfire’s (StW) hypocritical lionisation of themselves in the form of Tony Benn, let us be unafraid to give him his historical due. Two facts alone will suffice to recall his true role and character:

1. Tony Benn was a tireless fighter for more and grater sanctions against the starving people of Iraq in 2003 (Along with such ‘democrats’ as Madeleine Albright). He had a singular ability to frame these attacks as being ‘against war’ (“Sanctions have not run their course”), while being impeccably pro-imperialist!

1. Tony Benn, as British Secretary of State for energy, conspired with the racist apartheid state of South Africa to rob occupied Namibia (then SW Africa) of its uranium for British nuclear power and weapons. Check the details of the Rossingham contract, and see for yourself.

Now that is a Good social-pacifist / social-imperialist, as Lenin would have termed him! No wonder the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) considered him, like his successor JC a safe pair of hands to ‘lead’ and limit the scope of their ‘peace movement.’

‘Stop the war’ tell us, of their good friend and former comrade (Benn): “He never left Labour, but was critical of much of its politics and always encouraged people to be involved in activity as their starting point in politics.”

Moreover, say StW, “he was completely committed to united work. He disliked sectarians [anti-imperialists] and couldn’t understand why some on the left spent their time attacking one another [ie criticising the Labour Party and its betrayal of the working class].”

Indeed. Tony Benn was determined to act as a prop of the parliamentary system (‘democracy’ – if only for the wealthy) and the Labour party (social-democracy), which in turn acts as the chief conductor of British ruling-class influence into the British working class movement.

He gave up his peerage – but never his love and service for the British ruling class. With friends like these, what need have the working-class for enemies?

Support the Venezuelan People: Support President Maduro! No war for Oil!

 

 

 

On Friday 4^th January 2019, the Lima Group of nations, at a conference in which Trump’s Secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, made an appearance by video-link, have issued a declaration that the Venezuelan government is illegitimate, denounced it for human rights violations, questioned its territorial legitimacy, and imposed sanctions on Venezuela.

 President Nicolas Maduro has characterised this move as an imperialist-sponsored attack on the constitutional and democratic order of Venezuela, and a move towards Coup d’état and direct military intervention, with the aim of gaining control of the natural resources of the Venezuelan people. 

***Support the Venezuelan people: attend the Venezuelan Embassy tomorrow, 10th January, 11am – 3pm, to show your support for the inauguration of President Nicholas Maduro! 1 Cromwell Road, South Kensington, London, SW7 2HW***

Hands off Syria!

Red Youth have organised and taken part in demonstrations in London, outside Downing street, and across the country over the last few days, to tell ‘our’ Prime Minister and the imperialist government she heads up, that British youth and British workers say NO TO HER WAR ON SYRIA!

We don’t buy her lies and propaganda! We say victory to the real democratically elected government of Syria! We say Victory to the Syrian Arab Army! We call for defeat of ‘our’ cowardly British pilots, who took off from their base in occupied Cyprus to fire 4 tomahawk cruise missiles at the Sovereign people of Syria. They deserve to be shot down for their crimes.

This was not a humanitarian mission, it was an illegal and unprovoked attack on the right of a Sovereign people to self-determination. It is just one episode in the long stream of aggressive wars and interventions that Britain under NATO has taken a shameful part in – we say: NOT IN OUR NAME!

Watch footage from the London demonstration, including speeches and interviews from CPGB-ML comrades here:

Well done to everyone who joined us to demonstrate against war in Syria on Friday. Comrades also held demonstrations across the country on Sunday 15 April in Brighton, Bristol, Leeds, and Manchester.

Although touted as a “one-off” strike to chide Assad for the fictional chemical attack in Douma, we know it is in reality one part in a long series of aggressions against not just the Syrian people, but against all nations that dare stand outside the sphere of western imperialism.

Hear what Syrian representative to the United Nations, Dr Bashar Ja’afari, had to say about the illegal strikes against his country here:

We know that, unfortunately, the solution to war is not to be found in a big enough demonstration, a strongly-worded petition, nor the prospect of an ‘anti-war’ government, as no such thing is permissable while we live under the heel of imperialism.

It is clear that a wide section of the British population are becoming increasingly skeptical of the bourgeois government and media. The opportunity to bring our message to workers and point them in the direction of our class enemy has not been so clear in a long time.

Understand imperialism’s drive to war:

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The Rise of Fascism in the USA

Popular discourse in the US has been focused on the ‘Alt-Right’ for some time now, popularly described as a new far-right movement which made a name for itself during Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016, utilising strategies ranging from the use of memes on social media and image boards like 4Chan to spread their agenda to the open and active use of terrorist violence, as in the case of James Alex Fields, who drove into counter-protesters at the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville last year, murdering Socialist organiser Heather Hayer in cold blood. The so-called ‘Alt-Right’ is a terrorist, nationalist, anti-modernist, anti-communist and, primarily, capitalist movement. It is a movement of the intellectual class masquerading as the working class, using the rhetoric of the oppressed to fight for a system which only serves to intensify oppression. The Alt-Right, as a label, is used to recuperate the ideas of Fascism as to make them easier to swallow, so to speak, much like how the term ‘National Socialist’ was used to make far-right capitalist ideas sound appealing to the semi-class conscious German worker of the 1930s.

The primary tactic of the modern American fascist is to appear, just as the Nazis and the Italian Fascists did before them, as a movement for liberation against an omnipresent and all powerful enemy. For the Nazis it was the Jew, his ideology of ‘Cultural Bolshevism’, and for the ‘Alt-Right’ it is ‘The Globalist’ and his ideology of ‘Cultural Marxism’, a non-specific concept whereby every university, government institution, news outlet and NGO has been infected and is leading to the degeneration of the West. Their solution? Destroy the ideology and its propagators. However, when you have an idea so non-specific as “Cultural Marxism” or “Postmodernism” (another term used by American fascists with a wilful misunderstanding of what it actually means), anyone can be deemed a heretic and become a target to end up like Heather Hayer, dead at the hands of an angry man who convinced himself that driving a car into anti-fascist protesters would help destroy an all-encompassing Globalist agenda. It is the adaptability of the fascists to achieve their goal that allows their movement to exist indefinitely, requiring only a change in language or which ethnic/religious/cultural group should be scapegoated to seem new and, in the current case, ‘Alternative’.

British fascists are not the same as their American allies. While taking some inspiration from the Alt-Right’s easily applicable tactic of using memes to generate humour while exploiting people’s fears and insecurities, established fascist groups like Britain First and the EDL have not gained nearly as much support from the surge in white nationalist populism in the west as similar American organisations have. Despite their 1.9 Million likes on facebook, Britain First – the largest fascist organisation in Britain – has less than 1000 members nationwide and can often motivate less than 20 members to show up for their rallies. Contrast Britain First with Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute, an organisation which frequently organises events and has made Spencer, its executive director, a household name amongst politically aware Americans. The organisation’s founder, William Regnery II, is the heir to a multi-million dollar fortune and the grandson of William Regnery I, a member of the national leadership of the white supremacist and anti-semitic America First Committee, as well as a former donor to the Democratic Party. The National Policy Institute’s leading members, it’s founder and it’s current director are all wealthy university graduates pretending to fight for America’s white working class population while being comprised entirely of white capitalists fighting for positions of power and wealth. Britain First does not have access to the millions of dollars available to the National Policy Institute through Regnery, nor does it have an understanding of political theory or sociology, both of which Richard Spencer – PhD in European Intellectual History and MA in the Humanities – does.

Georgi Dimitrov, a Marxist theoretician and revolutionary who studied and wrote about fascism for many years, defined fascism as the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialistic elements of financial capital…which cultivates zoological hatred against other peoples.” To put that in plain English, fascism is the open violent control over society by the most undemocratic, regressive and bigoted members of the ruling class, who put forward policies to divide the working class along lines of race, gender, religion and sexuality. When Dimitrov describes fascism as the “open” dictatorship of the most reactionary capitalists, he is alluding to a much larger problem. Fascism is the open dictatorship, but for it to be open it must first be hidden – a look at American foreign policy since the turn of the 20th century shows that the United States has been exporting Fascism for over 100 years, supporting the United Fruit Company’s proto-fascist takeover of Honduras in 1903 with US Army soldiers, committing terrorist attacks on railways and independent farms in the country up until 1924, occupying Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933 with a military dictatorship, destabilising the newly liberated and unified People’s Republic of Korea with the formation of the US Army Military Government in Korea south of the 38th Parallel in 1945, the takeover of the Iranian government in 1953 by US-backed monarchist rebels for the purposes of securing oil for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now known as BP) and, to skip several other examples to bring us up to the modern day, the funding of Al Qaida front organisation Jundullah against the current Iranian government, the 2011 takeover of Libya which led to the re emergence of slavery, the introduction of sexist and fundamentalist laws, the growth of US-backed Jihadist groups and mass destabilization the region hasn’t seen since before Gaddafi took power in 1969. The most recent and ongoing attempt by the US to export fascism overseas is the attempted takeover of Syria.

 

It is clear from a quick glance back at American history that the current fascists in the United States are attempting to bring fascism home, so to speak.

 

The USA has reached a point, for the first time since the 1930s, where open fascism has become a commonly accepted political opinion. White Supremacist organisations have hundreds of thousands of members, get featured on mainstream tv, and run channels on new media outlets such as YouTube that have staggering numbers of subscribers. Why is this?

 

Dimitrov argued that fascism is adopted as a tactic of capitalism, rather than as a distinct governmental form. As the threat grows from the genuinely working class movement, the communists, notions of ‘democracy’ and ‘tolerance’, which capitalist governments usually at least pay lip service too, become abandoned as decadences of a better time, at least from the capitalist’s perspective, and white supremacism, patriarchy, and countless other bigoted policies are openly adopted.

 

Something little known about the three most famous historical examples of fascism – Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain – is that they all had very strong communist movements prior to the adoption of capitalism. In Spain this even came to open war, with the communist-led Republican army fighting the fascist army of Franco, a war that sadly resulted in Franco’s victory. Even less likely to be mentioned is the Western investment into the fascist economies. American investment propped up Germany, British investment Italy, and Franco’s army was supported by every major nation except for the USSR, with funding given by all our supposedly ‘tolerant and accepting’ capitalist democracies! Fascism was adopted, fascism was supported, in order to crush the workers movement and perpetuate capitalism.

 

The USA faces the prospect of collapse. China now threatens their domination of the world; their One Belt One Road policy giving the US’s victims an alternative economic partner, they are no longer held in a stranglehold. Movements like Black Lives Matter are popping up in the US and exposing the white supremacist nature of organisations like the police and secret service. Public awareness is growing of the US’s abuses of the third world, and of their own citizens, particularly black, hispanic and native american citizens as well as women and LGBTQ people. It has become less and less possible for the US capitalists to hide the atrocities they commit, and so their only option has become to make these atrocities accepted by enough of the American people. Racism becomes more and more accepted an opinion, as does misogyny, under dogwhistle phrases like ‘race realism’ and ‘anti-feminism’.

 

The fascist movement has grown as a reaction to the increased awareness of racism, sexism and imperialism among the American people. We must be ready for such a movement to grow as knowledge increase of British atrocities, as the British becomes less trusted and people start to see the real picture of British white supremacism and imperialism, and we must be ready to combat it.