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A brief history of the Comintern – the Third International of the working class

21Sep

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Literature, World

A brief history of the Comintern – the Third International of the working class

The history of the Comintern is the history of the first worldwide wave of working-class revolution. Let its lessons inform our quest to build the next wave. A recent video on Proletarian TV showed a wide-ranging discussion on the historical backdrop to the Communist (Third) International (aka the Comintern), its development and its eventual dissolution, between comrades Harpal Brar of the CPGB-ML and American Marxist Caleb Maupin. During their talk, they touched briefly on the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, the nature of the Chinese revolution, and the tactical shift in Comintern policy between 1928 and 1935 in the face of the rise of fascism. We reproduce here some accompanying background information to those earth-shaking events. The video itself can be viewe...

How British Imperialism Crushed the Greek Revolution – Part 2

21Sep

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Greece, United Kingdom

How British Imperialism Crushed the Greek Revolution – Part 2

(By Nina Kosta and George Korkovelos) The British in Greece English historian Elizabeth Barker writes that during WW2, the British government “continued to behave as if Greece was its fiefdom“. The only military aid that Britain gave to Greece was Italian loot from North Africa, while at the same time undermining efforts to buy modern aircraft from the US, which eventually, although paid for by Greece, ended up in the RAF. The British presence in occupied Greece was a brutal colonial operation that led to the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). Churchill considered Greece to be an integral part of the British Empire and wanted exclusive control over it: “Even the last British employee controlled the Greek government abroad (exiled in Cairo) completely. They controlled, ...

21Sep

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Russia

Is Russia imperialist?

Since Russia began its Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, not only Trotskyite and revisionist outfits, but also quite a few communist parties have denounced Russia. Further, they have asserted that the conflict in Ukraine is an inter-imperialist war in the outcome of which the proletariat has no interest; that Russia is not defending its national sovereignty against the NATO-led proxy war in which the Ukrainian people are being used as cannon fodder to further NATO’s attempt at domination of Russia. In our view, Russia, though capitalist, is not an imperialist power. It is defending its sovereign right to an independent existence. As such, the proletariat ought to support Russia’s SMO and work for the defeat of NATO’s military and economic war on Russia. In this...

21Sep

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Russia

The International Anti-Fascist Congress

On the 20 August 2022, in Patriot Park, Kubinka near Moscow, the inaugural gathering of the International Anti-Fascist Congress (IAFC) was opened. Organised by the Russian Ministry of Defence (MOD) with the stated aim of uniting “the efforts of the international community to combat the ideology of Nazism in all its manifestations,” the Congress began with a plenary session addressed by the Russian Minister of Defence, Army General Sergei Shoigu. In welcoming the forum participants from many nations, he asked them to participate in discussing the causes of neo-Nazism in the modern world and ways of countering it. In his opening address General Sergei Shoigu listed some of the examples and proofs of fascism to be found in today’s world, stating: “Today we are witnessing ano...

Imperialist lies – dissecting the clichés of Anglo-American ethnocentrism

21Sep

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

USA

Imperialist lies – dissecting the clichés of Anglo-American ethnocentrism

Former US ambassador calls on Britain and the USA to ‘come to the rescue’ of the world … ‘again’. Robert Wood Johnson, US ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2017 to 2021, recently wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph of 5 August 2022 entitled ‘Britain and America must save Europe from humanitarian disaster’. One should expect a former US ambassador to know better than to refer to the USA as ‘America’, but this is a mere hint of ethnocentricity as compared with what follows in his text. The article’s subtitle reads: “For decades, our two countries have come to the aid of humanity in its darkest hours. We must do so again,” but it will soon be made clear that humanity has no interest in receiving any more of such ‘aid’. Lies about Ukrainian refugees John...

21Sep

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United Kingdom

Farewell to Eric Levy

Eric Levy, a veteran of the anti-imperialist movement, died on 20 July 2022 at the age of 94. Some of us had known him since the 1960s. Born in 1928 in Manchester, spending his childhood in Egypt, he was an active participant in the working-class movement in America, before moving to London in 1958, where he threw himself into anti-racist, anti-imperialist and communist work. A friend, and lifelong admirer, of the great African-American singer, actor and progressive political activist Paul Robeson, he met Claudia Jones when Robeson came to London after the US government was forced to return his passport. Claudia, a talented and dedicated communist and founder of the Notting Hill Carnival, who had been deported following her imprisonment in the United States, became a c...

21Sep

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Europe

Dutch farmers’ militant struggle

In Holland farmers have for months been blocking roads, dumping manure in front of the homes of politicians, and setting haystacks alight, as well as mobilising massive convoys of tractors and other farm vehicles to disrupt the movement of traffic. Their protest is fuelled by the fact that measures being taken by the Dutch government and the EU to reduce nitrogen pollution will drive a very large number of them out of business by the end of the decade, while adversely affecting the profits of those who remain. Given that nobody wants thousands of farmers to lose their livelihoods, while at the same nobody wants the environment destroyed by an excess of nitrogen, how is it possible for this circle to be squared? Let us examine the full scale of the problem, starting with the ...

Manifesto for the present crisis: Class against class

21Sep

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United Kingdom

Manifesto for the present crisis: Class against class

Following the pandemic, the whole world is finding itself in a situation of economic chaos. Living standards of working people are falling precipitously almost everywhere in the world. Countries such as Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Ghana are already bankrupt and unable to purchase essentials needed by their populations – medicine, food and energy especially. In Britain, things are also very bad, though not as bad as they are in most countries of the world. Prices have gone through the roof, while wages, even in a time of relatively full employment are in no way keeping up with inflation. The government is reducing expenditure on public services in order to reduce its borrowing requirements, while simultaneously increasing taxation on the working populat...

Amazon workers against Victorian working conditions

20Sep

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United Kingdom

Amazon workers against Victorian working conditions

The global internet sales and home entertainment giant, Amazon, has seen the British section of its massive 1.5 million worldwide workforce take unexpected steps into militant resistance as a result of a derisory pay offer. Amazon does not recognise any trade unions in Britain for the purposes of pay and conditions bargaining although some of their staff are members of the GMB or Unite. Spontaneous walkouts, sit-ins and slowdowns have hit Amazon sites in Bristol, Tilbury and Coventry with others set to join in. Both the unions mentioned have been mildly supportive of the workers’ actions, but both went to great pains to stress that any action was nothing to do with them and claimed to workers that, if they were recognised by Amazon for bargaining purposes, the pay offer would h...

20Sep

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

United Kingdom

Support the postal workers!

Royal Mail postal workers, already on strike on 26 and 31 August in a dispute over pay, have now also voted overwhelmingly for further industrial action over working conditions. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) reported that almost 99% of its members voted in favour of taking further strike action on a 72% turnout. Clearly the lead taken by the rail workers and dockers in refusing to take cuts in their pay and working conditions, at a time when the cost of living crisis is already pushing people onto the breadline, is having a tonic effect on workers everywhere. Royal Mail bosses blame workers for the losses the company is making, resorting to the crudest blackmail and threatening that if there is not a “significant operational change” (that is, unless workers accept the i...