Spectator’s confused rant – Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, Fascism, Totalitarianism…

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Our party had a proud contingent on this year’s Mayday Rally in London – and will have another tomorrow in Manchester, for anyone who wishes to join us. The Spectator (a mainstream conservative mouthpiece of British imperialism) have kindly reproduced a beautiful picture of our banner (above) along with the confused headline “I’ve just seen Nazi banners in Trafalgar Square. Well, almost“, followed by a hackneyed, wholly irrelevant, and breathtakingly ignorant rant conflating socialism/communism and fascism. It is a series of arguments that hold little water, and increasingly seen by British workers for the blatant lies they are. Moreover, we have answered these lies time and again – but are not afforded the air-time in this ‘democratic’ society to reach a mass audience.

Stalin remains a figure of controversy in this country – it must be acknowledged. But then so does history in general. For the record of the October Revolution, the Soviet Union, and their profound impact upon the modern world, is a class question – one that threatens the misanthropic interests of our ruling class as no other. And like all class questions, there is no single “national interest”, but the conflicting interests of the great mass of workers on the one hand [and overwhelmingly, the British population remain workers, although they are encouraged to think of themselves as little capitalists], and the currently dominant interests of a tiny handful of city financiers and great industrialists, who control the great mass of British Capital, on the other.

There are some feint-hearts, even among ‘socialist and communist’ groups, who think it ‘tactically unwise’ to openly carry such ‘provocative’ banners on the streets of London. But they miss the point. To advocate socialism, is to ask that power be transferred from the hands of the capitalists to the hands of the workers.

To even hint at such a policy will bring charges of ‘stalinism‘ from the bourgeois class, and their ideological agents in the working class movement. And quite right. Stalin, after all, was a serf who participated in the October Revolution that overturned a feudal and religious empire. He went on to lead the construction of a worker’s state, which liberated 1/6 of the world’s surface from exploitation of man by man, and nation by nation. The Soviet Union and the Red Army went on to defeat the mightiest (Fascist) warmongering armies of capitalist imperialism ever assembled on the face of this earth, ushering in a period of peace and prosperity for a third of humanity, who built a socialist economic system. To give up the example of the Soviet Union from the outset is to give up on socialism altogether.

Whose interests did Stalin serve? That is the question. The answer is ours. British workers, as much as Soviet workers. [Consider, for example, the real reasons behind the provision of the NHS after Soviet Victory in WW2, and its increasing privatisation now the Soviet Union is no more] That is why he remains a colossus, that cannot be removed from the pages of history and the consciousness of the workers, despite all the malign lies, and gnawing criticism of the intellectual and political servants of the imperialist monopoly-capitalist class.

On the role of Britain’s imperialist ruling class supporting fascism, there is no shortage of material, whether we turn to the recent example of the Ukraine, or the older examples from the run up to world war 2, and the Spanish Civil War.

On the legendary role of the Soviet Union in combating fascism, and the part played personally by Stalin in this battle, there is also no shortage of material. Indeed, without understanding the military, economic and political events that lead to the defeat of the German 6th Army, that flower of the NAZI war machine, by the Soviet Red Army at Stalingrad, modern history is simply incomprehensible.

Henry Metelmann’s personal account of the battle of Stalingrad – and his experiences of German fascism before, and his reflections on WW2 and the intervening period since, are revelatory.

We would particularly ask our readers – friends and critics – to familiarise themselves with this material in order to negotiate the blathering of such confusionists as the Spectator’s Mr Bloodworth, or the Telegraph’s Mr Walters, and all the other heirs of the Hearst Press, stretching back to Gobbles himself, of whom this unfortunate pair are but minor examples.

Millions Killed by Communism?

The origins of the fantastic figures for “alleged deaths attributable” to Stalin and Mao, are shrouded in obscurity, for the methods used to conjure them up are so unscientific as to be laughable, were they not propagated on an industrial scale by the press of the capitalist gangs that seek to continue their domination, without subjecting their assertions to the slightest level of scientific rigour, scrutiny, peer-review, or basic journalistic standards. The wilder the accusation, the more gleefully they are propagated.

Mario Sousa’s excellent pamphlet, Lies concerning the History of the Soviet Union, has been translated into English by Ella Rule, our vice president and international secretary, and should be compulsory reading for anyone who wishes to understand the Soviet Union, the working class movement, socialism, or modern history.

As to the Spectator’s scurrilous assertions regarding China, and Mao’s alleged death toll during the Great leap forward, we would also ask all interested in the truth to read this article reproduced in Lalakar, and simply note the massive increase in life-expectancy (from 35 to 69), health and population in China during the time of Chairman Mao’s leadership of New China when the Chinese people can truly be said, to have stood up!

Given that the Soviet Union is no more, and the UK state spends much of its time justifying its armed incursions abroad, and at home, on the basis of fighting the bogeymen of “islamist extremism” and “religious fundamentalism”, one might ask why we are subjected to this constant stream of invective against the great communist leaders at all –  since they have already been dismissed as a historical irrelevance time and again.

We should note in passing the breath-taking hypocrisy of our British imperial masters, who claim to be motivated by deep concern for ‘democratic and peaceful’ aims, but feel ‘morally obliged’ to promote their humanitarian sentiments by funding such agents as the medieval Al-Qaeda nutters in Syria (who, fresh from lynching black Africans in Libya, lop off heads and devour human livers, in order to overturn a secular, progressive, democratically elected and socialist leaning anti-imperialist government – who incidentally won’t allow the US any military bases on their soil, but are one of the chief supporters of all popular democratic forces across the Middle East), and openly fascist pro Nazi Racists in the Ukraine.

British workers must learn to hold our heads up high, reclaim our history and challenge the lies that aim to keep us on our knees!

Long live Mayday! Long Live the glorious memory and example of the USSR! Slava Stalin!