Contrary to popular belief, not everyone hated their lives under socialism during the Cold War.
Anytime that anyone decides to look up information surrounding socialist projects throughout history, they are bombarded with inaccurate information about said projects, as well as the countless individual testimonies that portray life in countries like the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as astronomically horrible.
A constant barrage of insults ranging from the concept of “food insecurity” to “state oppression” is inevitable when attempting to find personal accounts of life in these countries and other similarly positioned ones. …
Pitting the working class against each other reaches new heights through both immigration and globalization.
There tends to be much discourse surrounding the function and utility of immigrants as members of the proletariat. Reactionaries often describe these new additions to the national working class as individuals who are not needed and are, supposedly, taking the jobs from the already-existing proletariat. This is, for other purposes, not a fact. However, that is not the point of the message that is to be portrayed here.
On the other hand, liberals and the perceived ‘left’ within most Western countries tend to argue that these (working class) immigrants are necessary to further develop goods, services, and other types of…
COVID-19 and sanctions have created dire conditions for the Venezuelan people, despite the further development of South-South cooperation.
The coronavirus pandemic — while rather old at this point — has persisted throughout much of the world. While countries like China, New Zealand, and Vietnam handled the highly precarious situation with very high degrees of effectiveness, countries like the United Kingdom and the United States continue to struggle with government mismanagement and new strains. Keeping this in mind, economic warfare is consistently at play against countries such as Iran and Venezuela, hindering their ability to combat the virus.
The initial spreading phase of COVID-19 has long been over, with preventative measures being taken by most people in one way…
The deterioration of capitalism takes a major toll on ordinary working class civilians, even when the new year rolls around.
Every late December, the holiday season largely comes to a close. This is then prompted by the desire for a prosperous new year, especially when it feels as though the year that has ended was, for lack of a better term, just dreadful. It is plastered on advertisements across concrete jungles, on the Facebook feeds of anyone aged 20 or older, as well as through countless blog posts talking about how a new year means a “new me”.
Of course, 2020 has certainly been different than other years, given the presence and persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The inability for…
Many articles published in most mainstream sources tend to be perceived as impartial, but this a false reality.
It goes without saying that in the era of news being available at the tip of your finger, misinformation is abundant. When scrolling through Facebook or Twitter, copious amounts of information is being processed by your mind, even if that information is fake. Usually, misinformation is understood as the manufacturing of content that appears to be real, but is false (or, at the very least, misleading) in actuality. Perhaps the idea of a troll farm comes to mind, or maybe news being pumped out of ‘biased’ state-funded news outlets.
However, some of the biggest perpetrators of producing fake news are…
First, the bourgeoisie said it would be impossible. Then they moved to other tactics.
Before the October Revolution in the Russian Empire, many bourgeois scholars stated that socialism would be impossible to implement, going as far as exclaiming that it would be undesirable for the economic system to exist in any capacity regardless. This would lead to liberals embarking on the belief that capital and labour both need each other, when this is most definitely not the case.
However, following the success of the revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the bourgeoisie throughout the world feared an educated and united proletarian mass pitted against them. …
As the right-wing emphasizes their reactionary opposition to immigration, we should seek to offer a socialist critique.
Many self-proclaimed ‘leftists’ and ‘socialists’ in the Western world choose to support immigration, largely as a reaction against the anti-immigration narratives espoused by conservatives and fascists alike. This is an incorrect approach to comprehending the way in which immigration works, the interests that it appeals to, and more.
To fully understand how immigration functions and its perceived inherent ‘goodness’, it is imperative to analyze the questions of why immigration happens in the first place as well as why they choose to go to countries like Canada or the United States. …
The question of ‘what to call’ the over-exploited world should not even be a question in the first place.
As socialists, the question of what to call the developing world has been one that has been given much prominence over the course of history, especially following the end of World War II (WWII). The world that is depicted as colonial (and ‘post-colonial’) has been referenced in countless ways, ranging from ‘dependent states’ to the ‘over-exploited world’. This article will examine the majority of the terms used, as well as why it does not necessarily matter, outside of particular contexts.
The following terms are, arguably, the most common ways of describing the portions of the world that have had their…
The two concepts are directly intertwined, not separate from each other, as some might argue.
In mainstream political discourse, the concept of a political revolution that overthrows a government — namely a pro-Western one — tends to be associated with the creation of a very scary image. For instance, the themes of terrorism, military dictatorship, unnecessary blood being shed, and the destruction of existing so-called “democracy” comes to mind.
People may point to countries like France, where the creation of a liberal republic turned into the infamous Reign of Terror, despite the fact that the French Revolution itself was a bourgeois revolution. They may also point to coup d’etats that have occurred throughout various countries…
The global pandemic is infringing on the progression of developing a conscious working class.
When one becomes an ideological proponent of Marxism, the desire to build a working class movement becomes more apparent, largely due to the fact that the individual in question has become more class conscious than they previously were. This is, for the most part, a universal phenomenon and can be attributed to the fact that the necessity for revolution and the proclamation of a proletarian republic becomes glaringly clear.
The first steps towards developing a working class that is fundamentally ready for an uprising is to organize locally within your community or alongside a revolutionary organization. In many cases, this…
Martin Barakov
South Slavic writer focusing on anti-imperialism, Marxism, and the international working class.
