Romania: Thirty Years Removed From Socialism

By Patricia Gorky

Originally published at Liberation News.

Thirty years ago, the socialist government of Romania was overthrown in a military coup d’etat.

Industrialization had transformed the lives of millions of Romanians during the country’s socialist period. But the later years were marked by strict rationing and frequent shortages as the government sought to pay off its foreign debt. Romanian people hoped that their lives would improve after 1989. But life today is much worse than even the most economically-deprived times of the 1980s. A 2010 poll revealed that 63 percent of Romanians say that life was better under socialism.

Romania’s capitalist politicians search everywhere for a scapegoat to evade self-incrimination. The Financial Times states that “Romania has evolved into a democracy and strengthened ties with the West, joining EU and NATO. But its transition was always incomplete.” What is meant by “incomplete” is never defined.

Communists, and executed President Nicolae Ceausescu in particular, are the usual targets. As part of the ongoing demonization campaign, former military prosecutor Dan Voinea made a ludicrous statement to the Financial Times: “The communists remain in power until this very day, but without the names.”

A Marxist approach requires us to understand the struggle between the working and owning classes. When the communists came to power, they dispossessed the wealthy nobility, clerics and bourgeoisie of their property. Land was collectivized, as well as all major industries, and the economy was centrally planned. Millions of dwellings were built for workers, and everyone had the right to a job.

The socialist Romanian government transformed a largely agrarian society, and made great gains in industrial production. What’s more, they accomplished this feat within mere decades while under constant attack by the West. The capitalist account of Romania’s history ignores the vast achievements of socialism only to focus on its problems and shortcomings, many of which originated from the global situation at the time.

Romania’s socialist origins: Armed insurrection spurs Red Army’s arrival

Unlike the popular revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba and others that brought communists to power, the key factor to Romania’s socialist transformation was the victory of the Soviet Union in World War II.

During the war Romania had been ruled by a fascist military dictatorship in an alliance with Nazi Germany. General Ion Antonescu was not a passive supporter of Nazi Germany. His support was originally based on the fascist Iron Guard. Antonescu sent hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities to their deaths in concentration camps. This included Jewish and Roma people, as well as communists. Romania’s military was a key participant in the fascist invasion of the Soviet Union, which eventually took 27 million Soviet lives.

As the war went on, internal resistance to the dictatorship grew even as communists were driven underground. The Soviet Union began to turn the tide of war, delivering defeat after defeat to the fascist alliance. On Aug 23, 1944, a broad anti-fascist coalition led by the Communist Party arrested the dictator-general and locked him in a safe. This insurrection sped the Red Army’s advance into Bucharest days later. The Romanian army switched sides in the war and now fought as an ally of the Soviet Union.

Like so many other countries in Eastern Europe, post-war governments were primarily shaped by the militaries that liberated them from fascism – the Soviet Union in the East and the U.S. / Britain in the West. The U.S. and British governments made clear that they would tolerate no governments other than those specifically chosen by the imperialists in their “sphere.” This was evident in the cases of Italy and Greece in particular, where the British military directly intervened to crush the communists, who had led the partisan resistance to fascism and were already in control of many areas.

But instead of a capitalist government, the Soviet Union oversaw the formation of socialist governments in Eastern Europe that would serve the interests of the working class.

The Soviet Union had been pushed to the verge of annihilation not just by the German military, but by the resources and industrial capacity of essentially all of continental Europe. The Nazi war machine had relied on the militaries of Romania, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia, as well as key agricultural and oil output from Romania. Fascist resurgence was a possibility too deadly for the Soviet Union to allow.

After years of fascist dictatorship, there was no pre-war “democratic” government to go back to. The largely-discredited monarchy and bourgeois parties had the support of the West, but these very parties had been responsible for Romania’s fascist takeover.

Key support from the Soviets, whose Red Army remained in Romania after the defeat of the fascists, was given to the National Democratic Front, a coalition led by the Romanian Communist Party (PCR).

The Communist Party’s general secretary, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, had been a railway worker and PCR militant. He was born in 1901, and began working at the age of 11 years old, a situation all too common for youths of his time. For his part in organizing strikes in 1933 he was sentenced to 12 years’ hard labor. While in prison he was elected to the central committee of the PCR.

Nicolae Ceausescu, another party leader, was born in 1918, and was a shoemaker’s apprentice in Bucharest from the age of 10. He began revolutionary activity early, and was in and out of prison organizing strikes and sabotage against the Nazi-allied government. At age 22, Ceausescu was in Jilava prison when it was invaded by members of the fascist Iron Guard, who slaughtered 64 of the other prisoners before they were stopped.

In 1946, nearly 7 million people voted for the National Democratic bloc. This election had the highest number of participants in the country’s history. The new government forced the abdication of the reactionary monarchy. Two years later the PCR would merge with the social democrats to form the Romanian Workers’ Party (PMR).

‘Not just a dream’; industrializing an agrarian society

The tasks of the country were enormous. Industrial output was halved by the war and the population had been reduced from nearly 20 million to less than 16 million. More than 700,000 had died. The vast majority of the people were peasants who worked on farms, and had a life expectancy of 42 years.

At once the government set upon an electrification plan, and laid the foundation for the development of industry. Farmland owned by a small, rich minority was confiscated and collectivized. Extravagant castles and mansions were seized from the parasitic nobility and used for museums and other public institutions.

Four decades of socialist development would transform Romania from a country that imported 90 percent of machinery to a country that manufactured its own. Social services and education radically improved health: life expectancy increased by 30 years. More than 5 million jobs were created, and industrial output rose by more than 650 percent since 1950.

Housing was a major priority for the state. By 1980, the socialist government had built 4.6 million homes for people. Scanteia newspaper reported how a communist of the old underground “felt the need to touch and caress the bricks of the first apartment blocs to be built for steelworkers, so he could convince himself that they were not just a dream”.

Pregnant women and mothers were accorded rights that even bourgeois reviewers noted as “comprehensive and generous.” Women were given fully-paid maternity leave of 112 days. And with no loss to benefits, “mothers were permitted to take a leave of absence from work to raise a child to the age of 6, or they could request half-time work.”

Still a developing country suffering from centuries of underdevelopment, Romania strove to become a medium-developed country and narrow the gap between it and the West. For Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceausescu after him, lessening ties with Moscow was seen as necessary to attain that goal.

Division in the socialist camp

After the war the Soviet Union imposed war reparations on the country (along with other formerly fascist states) to repay part of the immense damage caused by the war. Although the aggregate reparations amounted to just one-fifth the actual cost of destruction suffered by the Soviet Union, these reparations strained the fragile economy of Romania. This likely did not improve the public view of the USSR. There were still Soviet troops in Romania, and Moscow exercised a direct intervention in the economy through the Sovrom joint-stock partnerships over Romania’s major industries.

Stalin’s death in 1953 and the subsequent shifts in the Soviet Union impelled the divide further. Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceausescu negotiated the buyout of the Sovroms at great cost.

But in 1955, Romania joined the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, also known as the Warsaw Pact, with the USSR and other countries of the eastern European socialist bloc.

At the same time, Romania’s leaders began to establish economic ties with capitalist and imperialist countries in order to lessen ties with the Soviet Union. In 1958 with Chinese support, Gheorghiu-Dej negotiated the removal of Soviet soldiers from Romanian soil, the only East European country to do so. As the Sino-Soviet split divided the Socialist Bloc between Moscow and Beijing, Bucharest maintained neutrality.

In 1964 the PMR adopted Gheorghiu-Dej’s theses that emphasized national independence and sovereignty, equal rights, mutual advantage, non-interference in internal affairs, and observance of territorial integrity. When Gheorghiu-Dej died in 1965, Ceausescu redoubled the steps towards nationalism. The PMR renamed itself the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), and the country became the Socialist Republic of Romania to signify a step forward.

1970s and 1980s; ‘Maverick’ Romania turns West

The 1970s was a period of tremendous growth and development for the country. Vast natural resources paired with Western trade concessions and foreign credit brought Romania’s most prosperous years since World War II.

But in many ways the country’s leadership held positions that were reactionary and opportunistic. The “independence” put forward by Gheorghiu-Dej and later Ceausescu became more and more allied with U.S. imperialism. Romania recognized West Germany, and became the only socialist country to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel. When the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected socialist president of Chile, many socialist countries severed diplomatic relations. Yet Romania maintained them.

These steps convinced the U.S. government that Ceausescu could be influenced and worked with to a certain extent. He was labelled a “maverick” by the U.S. press and internal CIA documents. They eagerly sought to distance Romania from the Soviet Bloc. In 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon made a state visit to Romania, the first visit of a U.S. president to a socialist country, three years before his famed visit to China.

Romania would go on to join imperialist financial agreements including taking loans from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The U.S. welcomed each of these moves, but other than high interest loans they gave Romania nothing of substance in return. What the U.S. really wanted was the overturn of the progressive social system and the return of capitalist exploitation and oppression.

But the coup d’etat of 1989 could not have succeeded without an accumulation of errors on the part of the country’s leaders. The government’s vacillation between the imperialist and socialist camps was one such example.

The late 1970s and early 1980s ushered in a series of crises that rocked the Romanian economy. A devastating earthquake hit Bucharest in 1977, followed by the global economic crisis. For much of the 1970s the Romanian government had been able to export key commodities like oil at high prices. But when prices slumped, suddenly Romania lost a significant source of revenue. Foreign credit that had previously offered an attractive path to development became an obstacle to the country’s survival.

Romania borrowed from the IMF, whose loan terms are designed to enslave governments in a cycle of debt by imposing crippling interest rates and severe austerity on the people. They remain a key tool for imperialists today that limit a country’s development. For the Romanian government, foreign debt had become a trap from which they desperately worked to extricate themselves.

Beginning in the early 1980s, the Romanian government rationed electricity, heat, gasoline and food – the first time since the early postwar years. Agricultural goods were exported to pay down the loan, rendering certain food items like meat and milk scarce. People arrived home in the cold winter only to have the heat shut off after a few hours. Even radio and television transmissions were restricted to preserve energy.

These were difficult years for the Romanian people. Other countries like Poland and Hungary which had taken out similar loans were not even able to pay the interest. Romania paid back the principal as well.

Meanwhile the capitalist reforms in the Soviet Union gave fodder to reactionary elements across Eastern Europe. At the same time, the West’s cultural cold war continued, particularly enticing young people in the socialist camp with pro-capitalist propaganda.

December 1989 and the military coup d’etat

By April 1989, the Romanian government declared the country free of Western debt. The Grand National Assembly enacted a ban on taking on any further foreign credits. Yet the rationing of food and energy continued. Perhaps this was an effort to impel the economy further, but these austerity measures were self-defeating.

These decisions made by the country’s leaders could only have further isolated much of the working class.

The imperialist media seized upon any sign of discontent in the Socialist Bloc. So did the U.S. government, which had financed counterrevolutionary organizations throughout Eastern Europe since the end of World War II. The imperialists carefully studied each manifestation. A 1987 classified CIA document outlined a number of possible situations that would lead to the downfall of the Romanian government given the prospect of the coming winter. Stunningly, one of the scenarios in this “winter thinkpiece” would play out almost exactly as occurred two years later: In this scenario, a group of striking workers would establish a national organization to coordinate protests. “Pragmatic” opponents of the Ceausescus in leadership would remove him from office, with support of the Securitate or military. The new government would ease restrictions on food and energy to placate most workers.

Instead of a strike in a major factory, the disturbances would arise around a reactionary Hungarian cleric in the western city of Timisoara. And one such “Council of National Salvation” was formed not from any workers’ group but from the top military brass, who began operating as a council six months before the coup.

Timisoara is a cosmopolitan city in western Romania near the Hungarian border. In 1989 there were 1.7 million Hungarians who lived in the region. Bourgeois elements in Hungary long promoted counterrevolutionary propaganda, including alleged grievances against the Hungarian minorities.

The eviction of a counterrevolutionary cleric on Dec. 16 sparked protests in Timisoara. Confrontations ensued between rightwing protestors and security forces, but there were few casualties. There was no massacre as was repeated by the imperialist press. The New York Times published hysterical reports of “mass graves in Timisoara” holding thousands of people, and the Hungarian media claimed that 60,000 had been killed. All of this was later revealed to be false.

Protests grew around the country. On Dec. 20 the military, foreshadowing its coming betrayal, withdrew from Timisoara. This was a boon to the counterrevolution; mobs of people ransacked the local Communist Party headquarters. The unrest was serious enough for Ceausescu to cut short a state visit to Iran and return to the capital.

Up to this time, the clandestine counterrevolutionary Council of National Salvation had been operating for 6 months prior. Their pre-December activities are not known, and there were a number of such councils. The most prominent included a former ambassador to the United States; a disgraced PCR politician who would become the new government’s president; and at least 4 military generals, including a retired general who had made previous attempts against Ceausescu.

On Dec. 21, Ceausescu appeared before a mass rally in Bucharest. He announced considerable increases in the minimum salary, child subsidies and pensions. He denounced the actions in Timisoara of a group who wanted to place the country again under foreign domination. In what would be prophetic words, Ceausescu spoke: “Some would like again to reintroduce unemployment, to reduce the living standards of the people, and in order to dismantle Romania, to dismember Romania, to put our independent people and nation in danger.”

His speech was interrupted by protestors, and his disoriented response to the heckling was disproportionately publicized by the imperialist media. People remained in the streets, and clashes with the authorities took place. Imperialist propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe broadcasted false reports of a “massacre” in Bucharest, and workers from around the city poured into the streets the next day. Many of the people protesting had legitimate grievances that were built up over years of austerity.

But the protests quickly devolved into fascist violence when the military defected. Rightwing mobs set fire to the National Archives and the university library. Crowds attacked Ceausescu’s home, forcing him and his wife Elena to flee the capital in a helicopter. Their pilot abandoned them on a country road where they were soon captured.

The military-led NSF seized control of the television stations and declared themselves the new government.

Military brass, a historical source of counterrevolution, were at odds with Ceausescu’s plan to integrate them into civilian work. “For years,” wrote rightwing academic Vladimir Tismaneanu in the New York Times, “troops have been forced to engage in such demeaning activities as raising crops and supplying manual labor for grandiose Ceausescu projects.”

Long held at bay by the socialist government, the terror of the bourgeoisie raised its head. On Dec. 25, 1989, a secret military tribunal charged Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu with fabricated crimes that included “genocide” and “destroying the country’s economic and spiritual values.” Moments later as he was led to his death, Nicolae Ceausescu sang the Internationale. He and his wife were executed by firing squad.

Chaos ensued in the following days. The entire leadership of the Communist Party was imprisoned. Communists were disappeared and even lynched in the streets. Some in the Securitate, whose origin came from the peasantry, put up an armed resistance to the military coup. They were hunted and executed.

Privatization and poverty, the American way

Within days the “socialist” NSF outlawed the Communist Party. Addendums to foreign treaties that called for states to guarantee full employment, housing and education were abolished.

The U.S. government was quick to intervene. As early as January 1990, Washington instructed its Bucharest envoy “to take preliminary actions to encourage the process [of privatization].” Special attention was given to the bourgeois media. The U.S. Embassy issued an urgent request for up-to-date video equipment for the television station. Prior anti-communist laws prevented the U.S. government from directly providing the equipment.

Embassy cables gloated over how the counterrevolution “has made it possible to pursue, in numerous heretofore unthinkable ways, our fundamental policy goals in Romania.”

One of those goals was the domination of Romanian polity by U.S. legal norms. The Embassy’s work plan included distributing 10,000 copies of the U.S. constitution in the Romanian language to all members of the new parliament after the elections. U.S. legal experts would “advise” Romania in the creation of the new constitution and legal codes. Newly-minted Romanian politicians would be exposed to representatives from U.S. political parties and private businesses.

Trade and economic meetings would convince Romanian officials that the economic benefits the U.S. can offer were contingent on the new government adhering to the American view of elections and the upholding of so-called individual rights to exploit the collective.

The U.S. military, which already had planned military-to-military contacts, would transform the Romanian armed forces into a “professional and non-political” corps based on a “commander – commanded” relationship.

Overnight, independent and sovereign Romania became a U.S. neocolony. A new law approved 100 percent foreign ownership of investments. State-owned enterprises, which had fueled the country’s generous social services, were sold to foreign capitalists.

Gone was the law banning foreign debt. Negotiations with the IMF began in 1993, with the requirement for the Romanian government to enter its currency into the world market, making Romania more susceptible to the tumult of global capitalism.

By 1994, half of the population lived on less than $160 a month. Price controls over food were removed. Inflation hit 300 percent. Unemployment, which previously did not exist, haunted millions. In desperation, 4 million people turned to a pyramid scheme called Caritas. The pyramid scheme was allowed to operate by the new government, and millions of families lost a collective $1 billion. The leu, Romania’s national currency, sank to 1,748 to one dollar.

Alleged discrimination of ethnic minorities was used to topple the socialist governments. But the new capitalist governments relied on the support of the racist right wing. Fascist violence against Roma, ethnic Hungarians and Jewish people erupted across the country. In a 1993 New York Times article, Henry Kamm detailed the quickly emerging racist attacks on the Roma. Using a slur for the Roma people, Kamm wrote: “The millions of Gypsies of Eastern Europe have emerged as great losers from the overthrow of Communism… Many of the economic and social protections that Gypsies enjoyed in Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia collapsed, permitting a revival of the open prejudice and persecution that have marked the history of the Roma, as Gypsies prefer to call themselves…”

Capitalism restored, social conditions deteriorate

The coup plotters’ aim, despite their claims of “democracy” and “freedom,” was never to improve the standard of living for Romanian workers.

As difficult as the years of rationing were, the quality of life for Romanians today is much worse.

More than 85 percent of all individual work contracts in Romania pay less than the minimum needed for survival, even as costs continue to climb. Many have left the country in search of an economic future. Since 1989 Romania experienced the highest levels of emigration of all European countries: 3.5 million people have fled, more than 5 times the number of deaths in World War II. Today, the diaspora represents one-fifth of the country’s own labor force.

Foreign corporations reap mega-profits from the artificially low wages of Romania. The restoration of capitalism promised wealth and freedom for the country, yet today Romania remains among the poorest countries in the European Union. Romania’s economy and natural resources have been completely opened to foreign capital for exploitation. Almost every industrial measure peaked in mid to late 1980s, and then bottomed out after the 1990s.

The Romanian government today is loyal to U.S. empire. There are now U.S. military bases in the countryside and in Romania’s principal ports. When the U.S. demanded that all NATO countries contribute 2 percent of their GDP, Romania was the first to raise military spending. By U.S. accounts, actions taken by the Romanian government in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to support U.S. interests have been “almost too numerous to list”.

When the government was toppled in 1989, many Romanian people looked to the U.S. government as a source of hope. They were convinced that the years of austerity were finally over. Some believed that now, they too would have access to abundant consumer goods and an American lifestyle.

This false image of abundance was intentionally cultivated by the imperialists to weaken the Socialist Bloc. If the imperialists could convince workers in socialist states that the U.S. was the “land of opportunity,” they could seriously weaken the stability of socialism. Defeat of the socialists in the cultural war was an important factor in the overthrow of socialist governments.

Faced with the daunting task of industrializing agrarian societies, socialist governments in addition had to produce consumer goods for its population while under technological and economic embargo, and under constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Furthermore, they had to do this within the span of just decades. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, had enriched themselves through centuries of capitalist exploitation, including the enslavement of millions of Africans and the Indigenous.

History did not cease in 1989. Capitalism’s restoration in Romania and the former Socialist Bloc has brought with it all its inherent contradictions. It is bound to reignite mass struggle. The words of the socialist Internationale, written 150 years ago and translated into nearly every language, continue to inspire the fight of the oppressed for emancipation: “The earth shall rise on new foundations; we have been naught, we shall be all.”

Select Bibliography

Marcy, Sam. “Reactionary Coup in Romania”. 4 Jan. 1990. Workers’ World. www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/marcy/1990/sm900104.html. Accessed 16 Dec 2019

Oțetea, Prof. Andrei. A Concise History of Romania. English edition edited by Andrew MacKenzie. London, Unified Printers and Publishers. 1985.

Rotaru, Constantin. Socialism și capitalism în teorie și practică fiscală. Editura Karta-Graphic. Ploiești, 2011.

Serban, Rodica. “A Grand, Historic Accomplishment of the People, for the People––New Modern Homes”. Scînteia. 7 Apr 1989. Quoted in JPRS Report: Eastern Europe. Foreign Broadcast Information Service.

Connecting the Dots: Iran, China, and the Challenge to U.S. Hegemony

By Qiao Collective

Originally published at Qiao Collective's website.

The renewed threat of outright war with Iran in the first weeks of 2020 has remobilized the U.S. anti-war left. On January 3, the U.S. deployed a targeted drone to assassinate high-ranking Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq. One day after, thousands of protesters rallied in dozens of American cities following a call for a day of action from the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). Meanwhile, Democrats offered tepid criticism despite just weeks prior voting to approve President Trump’s massive $738 billion military budget and rejecting an amendment introduced by Reps. Khanna (D-CA) and Sanders (D-VT) that would have cut off funding for executive military action in Iran or elsewhere without Congressional approval.

Amidst these leftist and liberal contestations and despite a retaliatory Iranian missile strike on a U.S. base in Iraq, President Trump called for diplomacy and claimed the U.S. “is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.” The threat of further U.S. military action in Iran may be receding for the short-term. But the reality is that the U.S. was at war with Iran far before the strike on Soleimani—just not employing tactics of war recognized by many as such. Since the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and reinstated sanctions on Iran that November, the U.S. has recommitted to a “hybrid war” designed to cripple Iran’s economy and cut off the nation from international trade. This concept of hybrid war—which deploys disinformation, economic sanctions and coercion, and political manipulation to further U.S. interests without the use of military intervention—is crucial for understanding U.S. aggression against Iran and its significance in the larger world system.

The aim of renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran is clear: as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put it, they seek to “starve the regime,” “accelerate the rapid decline” of its international trade, and “restore democracy.” Not only do the unilateral sanctions blacklist 50 Iranian banks and hundreds of individuals, vessels, aircraft and Iran’s energy sector, they aim to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero by wielding the U.S.’s global economic dominance and threatening to penalize foreign corporations and states that continue to do business with Iran. As Pompeo warned: "If a company evades our sanctions regime and secretly continues" to do business with Iran, "the United States will levy severe, swift penalties on it, including potential sanctions." The impact of this U.S. abuse of power is nothing short of a humanitarian crisis: food prices quickly skyrocketed after the announcement of renewed sanctions, and testimonials from Iranian students, doctors, patients, and others have described severe limitations on access to education, medicine, and health care under U.S. sanctions. In a talk on security issues in Ufa, Russia, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani rightly described U.S. sanctions as a violation of national sovereignty and a form of “economic terrorism.”

So why escalate military action when sanctions imposed by the U.S. and enforced by international financial organizations have already ravaged Iran’s economy? One partial answer is Iran’s deepening ties to China, whose injection of capital and pledges of military support have been a lifeline to a politically-isolated Tehran. The U.S. has become increasingly threatened by a new global political alliance led by China, Iran, and Russia and including countries like Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba. Strengthened through years of meticulous economic, military, and political cooperation and forged under shared circumstances of victimization by antagonistic U.S. foreign policy, this power bloc threatens to challenge U.S. hegemony over the global order.

First and foremost, Chinese-Iranian economic agreements have undermined U.S. sanctions and integrated Iran into a Chinese-led Eurasian economic zone which the U.S. deems an imminent threat. In 2016, Iranian President Hassan Rohani announced during a visit from China’s President Xi Jinping that Iran and China had created a $600 billion dollar, 25-year political and trade alliance. During Xi’s visit, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated, "Tehran seeks cooperation with more independent countries" because "Iranians never trusted the West." The landmark deal made explicit that China provides knowledge-sharing and will assist in building critical infrastructure such as hospitals, railways, and roads in Iran. In September of 2019, the two countries updated the 2016 agreement which would include a $400 billion investment focused in Iran’s oil, gas, and infrastructure sectors—renewed U.S. sanctions be damned. Meanwhile, since early 2019 Chinese and Iranian officials announced their joint cooperation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a massive trillion dollar trade and infrastructure project linking markets in East and Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. (Iraq also announced its intention to join BRI in 2019, to the dismay of U.S. strategists.) China has even gone as far as to turn off its oil ships’ radar and sonar technology when entering the Persian Gulf in order to avoid U.S. military detection and further punishment for “violating” U.S. sanctions. Amidst U.S. aggression against Iran and crippling sanctions that target medical supplies and kills countless Iranians, the political alliance and trade deal serves as a crucial lifeline for Iran and its people, providing the material basis for what Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif praised as China and Iran’s shared vision of sovereignty, peace, and mutual progress.

While China has proven an invaluable ally to Iran and its people, Iran—as an oil-rich nation located at the center of BRI’s trade route—also presents a strategic ally for China. Shut out of Western financial markets, Iran has turned to China as an economic partner. And unlike U.S. economic terrorism designed to undermine political autonomy in Iran, the $400 billion Chinese-Iranian deal simply gives Chinese state-owned firms the right of first refusal for Iranian petrochemical projects. (Ironically, the U.S. media insists that only one of these economic policies is predatory.) Given the U.S. government’s grave trepidations about BRI’s potential to decenter U.S. global economic hegemony, it would make sense that the U.S. seek ways to undermine Iranian-Chinese cooperation. U.S. leaders have already pressured allies in Europe and Asia to spurn Chinese investment and threatened to stop intelligence sharing with allies that accept Chinese Huawei 5G technology. Despite itself controlling world financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank whose structural adjustment loans have forcibly privatized and destabilized developing economies across the world, the U.S. has decried China’s “predatory approach to investment” and warned allies to choose sides.

But Iran’s ties to U.S. rivals such as China and Russia are not solely economic. Just days before the Solemaini assassination, Iran, China, and Russia held joint naval drills in the Gulf of Oman, a “normal military exchange” that reflected the nations’ “will and capabilities to jointly maintain world peace and maritime security,” Chinese defense spokesman Wu Qian said. Commander of the Iranian Navy Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi stated that the U.S. and some of its allied nations staged a failed military attempt to sabotage the joint naval exercise. And on January 6, Iraq’s Prime Minister welcomed Chinese ambassador Zhang Tao, who conveyed Beijing’s readiness to provide military assistance amidst U.S. refusals to cooperate with Iraqi parliament’s demands to withdraw.

Disappointingly, China’s consistent support for victims of U.S. economic terrorism has gone largely unnoticed by self-described Western leftists. The U.S. left in particular has failed to advance a systematic analysis that places U.S. aggression in Bolivia, Venezuela, Iran, and Iraq in relation, instead defaulting to a reactive, case-by-case resistance to various coups, air strikes, and aggressions as they occur. While U.S. anti-war advocates have quickly mobilized to respond to overt forms of imperial intervention—the use of military violence in Iran or its staging of the 2019 Bolivian coup, for instance—it has failed to connect the dots between these individual cases and the emergence of a global power bloc challenging U.S. hegemony, of which China plays a key and consistent role. Indeed, China has provided a recurring economic, political, and military lifeline to nations such as Venezuela (where China remains a major buyer of oil despite U.S. sanctions), Bolivia (where Evo Morales’ government spurned Western transnational companies to partner with Chinese state-owned firms to nationalize Bolivia’s lithium industry), and North Korea (where China provides crucially-needed food aid and has advocated for an easing of U.S. sanctions) as these nations have attempted to survive U.S. sanctions, expel Western capital, nationalize key industries, and chart an independent course from the U.S. world order.

The U.S. left’s inability to understand China as a proven ally for nations struggling under the boot of U.S. empire is a massive strategic failure. Instead, U.S. progressives invoke “both sides” false equivalencies that equate a real and hegemonic U.S. global power structure with the vague, potential specter of “Chinese imperialism.” Under such an argument, Chinese economic lifelines provided to Iran, Venezuela, and other nations cut out of global markets by U.S. sanctions are simply an opportunistic power play, one which would replace these nations’ subjugation under Western imperial power under a new, ostensibly equally brutal, Chinese power. The fact that such facile elisions have found a foothold amongst the U.S. left has proven to be a critical weakness in its ability to mount more than a purely reactive response to present U.S. aggression. Certainly, skeptics will argue that China benefits from its economic ties to vulnerable victims of U.S. aggression, but that ignores both the obvious facts that mutual benefit is the foundation of all international relations, and that China has been consistently targeted with U.S. secondary sanctions, propaganda, and fear mongering for its audacity to challenge U.S. policy in the Middle East, Latin America and beyond. The U.S. left’s failure to challenge—and indeed its tendency to repeat—antagonistic rhetoric against China is fundamentally contradictory to its stated solidarity with nations such as Iran, Bolivia, and Venezuela.

Notions that China is seeking to “unfairly” benefit from brutal U.S. sanctions on nations like Iran miss the fact that the U.S. is escalating its own kind of hybrid warfare against China to punish China for daring to “violate” U.S. sanctions. Indeed, the U.S. has repeatedly en-masse sanctioned Chinese companies and banks, both private and state-owned, for providing trade and aid to Iranian entities. Indeed, the so-called U.S.-China “trade war,” despite receiving little attention from the left, is part and parcel of U.S. attempts to undermine China’s ability to provide assistance to Iran and other targets of U.S. hybrid warfare. With its explicit goals of undermining Chinese state economic control, privatizing key industries, and forcing China to remove restrictions on foreign capital and company ownership, the trade war threatens to destabilize China’s role as an economic lifeline for Iran, Venezuela, and the rest of the Global South. The finance, oil, and mining industries—key targets for privatization under trade war negotiations—are crucial to China’s ability to purchase Iranian oil and assist Latin American countries in providing alternatives to Western capital investment from their mining and natural resources industries. Without full state control over its finance, oil, and mining industries, China may lose control of these industries to Western companies and could ultimately lose the ability to act swiftly and leverage those industries to defy U.S. sanctions on oil and mining industries of Global South nations like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Iran. As U.S. media celebrate China’s slowing economy and the material harm the trade war is causing Chinese people while salivating over the prospect of U.S. financial dominance over Chinese markets, it is becoming clear that a likely goal of the U.S. is to use the trade war not only to “open” China’s state-owned domestic industries to Western investment, but also to undermine its leadership of the only geopolitical bloc that poses a real challenge to U.S. global hegemony.

What’s more, the U.S. has used feigned concerns over human rights abuses as a trojan horse for its regime of sanctions against supposed “rogue states.” Seemingly progressive bills such as the Hong Kong Freedom and Democracy Act, which received near-unanimous bipartisan support in the U.S. House and Senate, include provisions that would mandate Hong Kong abide by U.S. sanctions against Iran and North Korea, while giving cover to further sanction Chinese individuals and firms and ban Chinese actors from entering the U.S. The sole opposition in the House came from Thomas Massie (R-KY), who stated his consistent opposition to sanctions which “[meddle] in the internal affairs of foreign countries” and “invites those governments to meddle in our affairs.” Supported widely by proclaimed progressive and leftist groups in the U.S., the legislation provides a textbook example of how the U.S. uses the language of democracy and human rights abroad as cover for retaliation against geopolitical rivals and to further its own human rights abuses through punishing sanctions.

It is important to note that this economic warfare has been coupled with the quiet escalation of the Obama era “pivot to Asia,” which sought to contain China’s rising influence through military and economic policy. The head of the Pentagon has called China his new “top priority,” and in January 2020, the U.S. Army announced two new regional task forces that would combat the “strategic threat” of China through a focus on “non-conventional warfare” to create an “asymmetrical advantage” for the U.S. in the event of military conflict. The Department of Defense had previously designated the Pacific as its “priority theater,” and conducts routine military drills in Japan and South Korea while selling $2 billion in arms to Taiwan in 2019 alone. This escalation of U.S. military power in Asia under the rationale of “containing China” makes clear that opposing U.S. antagonism towards China is paramount for future hopes of peace and demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific.

In order to mount a serious challenge to American empire, the U.S. anti-war movement must understand the terms of engagement: economic terrorism through sanctions and political isolation and destabilization have become the primary modes of U.S. imperialism. Often obscured by overt acts of military violence, U.S. hybrid warfare waged against not only Iran but Venezuela, Bolivia, North Korea, and China is the primary contradiction facing the global struggle against imperialism. For too long, U.S. critics of American empire have evaded the derisively termed “China question” in favor of false equivalences and the repetition of U.S. state talking points. But behind the Cold War rhetoric, China has proven itself as a strategic ally for countless nations with which U.S. leftists claim solidarity. Whether the U.S. anti-war movement will rise to oppose increasing aggression against China designed to undermine its ability to support Iran, Bolivia, North Korea, and all victims of U.S. imperialism remains to be seen.

Qiao is a collective of Chinese leftists living in the diaspora. They may be followed on Twitter @qiaocollective

The Nakba Generation and the Makings of Palestinian Revolution

By Abdel Razzaq Takriti

The Palestinian revolution was created by the men and women who lived through the experience of the Nakba (the Catastrophe). These revolutionaries identified themselves as ‘The Nakba Generation’, and their world can be understood only in light of this foundational event. As with all collective tragedies the Nakba can be approached in a number of ways. Most commonly it is defined in terms of the number of people uprooted from their homes; the forcible expulsion and dispossession of 750,000-950,000 Palestinians; the violent expropriation of 78% of their native lands by recently arrived European Jewish settlers; the death of more than 12,000 Palestinians over 1947 and 1948 along with the injury of tens of thousands; the massacre of hundreds of villagers and townspeople in nearly three dozen localities.

Yet these numbers do not capture the meaning of the Nakba, which is better grasped through the now thousands of oral narratives and memoirs of the period that have been recorded, filmed, written down, and published. Each highlights the seminal nature of the event, and the Nakba’s overwhelming impact upon the lives of those who experienced it. Amongst these histories there is a specificity to revolutionary recollections. These do not only describe the moments of individual and collective destruction of home and society; they allow us to understand the centrality of the experience of dispossession to the formation of Palestinian revolutionary consciousness.

The first accounts here are by Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) and George Habash (Al-Hakeem), two young men who went on to become leading revolutionaries. Their recollections give us a sense of their secondary socialisation prior to the Nakba. Both figures were involved in anti-colonial activities as school students in Jaffa and Lydd respectively, and their engagement took the shape of occasional mobilisations within resistance structures that had existed in Palestine during the late British Mandate period. In the case of Abu Iyad, this is seen in his participation in the Ashbāl (Lion Cubs) section of the al-Najjada organisation, a type of patriotic boy scouts’ activity. As for Habash it was reflected through his participation in school strikes and national demonstrations. More significantly, both accounts illustrate that a national tragedy, affecting an entire people, was witnessed and experienced at an extremely intimate level. Neither Khalaf nor Habash heard of these events through the radio, a newspaper, or even a parent, grandparent or other relative: they lived through the unfolding collective disaster themselves.

The factual record of the Nakba is growing rapidly, and researchers are unearthing atrocities whose memory had hitherto been overlooked. These moments of profound national loss altered the lives of a large number of future Palestinian leaders and cadres. One example is the Tantura massacre, during which dozens of inhabitants from the village were slaughtered. ʿAbd al-Razzaq al-Yahya, a young cadet from this village (and a future commander of the Palestine Liberation Army) gives his account here. His memories reflect the anguish and concern he experienced as he learnt of the massacre while receiving military training in Syria, and the profound marks it left on his family and himself.

One of those mentioned in this source is ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Husayni, who lost his life during the battle for Palestine. Such iconic figures were revered on both a national and a broader Arab scale, and had a stature that can be seen in any macro-historical account. However, the experience of the Nakba can also be approached most usefully micro-historically. At a grassroots level, memories of resistance were connected to local as well as national experiences. Most fighters (especially in rural districts) did not publish memoirs, but their accounts circulated orally, creatizing the foundation for a growing literature of local Palestinian histories. A typical example is the discussion of the village of Hamama in the ͑Asqalan district authored by a son of the village. Such sources provide a rich description of the lives of rural men and women that would otherwise be overlooked, recording the resistance of those that fought and lived, as well as the names of those that died.

A recurring theme in such accounts is the imagination and ingenuity of fighters in devising methods of resistance in the face of superior Zionist strength and inadequate Arab army support. One such description, of the defense of Salamah village, describes the benefits of shifting political organisation for the defense of a town from its notables to the youth, through elections. For many future revolutionaries growing up in the refugee camps of the 1950s, these stories of fighters from their own villages had a deep influence on their worldviews and future choices. Equally influential was a sense of the political and military helplessness that surrounded the experience of dispossession. Palestinians lacked adequate organisations, weapons, or training to confront the scale of the military assault waged against their them. This predicament created the impetus for more organised future revolutionary involvement, one that could provide a concrete means to reverse their dispossession from their homes.

The absence of powerful and effective organisations on the eve of the Nakba was due to a variety of factors. Most important was (and as noted by Abu Iyad), the wholesale destruction of organised political activity by the British colonial power during the 1936-39 Palestinian revolt, critically weakening Palestinian capacity for resistance in 1948. Yet there was widespread resistance: as the memoirs of Ahmad al-Yamani (Abu Mahir) show, huge effort was exerted on local levels to withstand the existential crisis then faced by Palestinians. Abu Mahir, for instance, drew on his experience as a trade union organiser and working class activist to establish local committees in the Galilee district surrounding his village Suhmata. This initiative eventually collapsed through an overpowering military conquest, and ultimately the inhabitants of the district were all forced out of Palestine. Before they were expelled, some were thrown into forced labour camps, as described here, or coerced into acting as servants for Zionist fighters.

The urban notable leadership did not possess either material or military backing to prevent this national destruction, nor did they have the political capacities to represent their people, or preserve their country intact. The most ambitious of their political initiatives, in the immediate aftermath of the Nakba, was the All-Palestine Government, whose founding declaration is presented here. The government was established on 22 September 1948, at a time when the Nakba was still unfolding. Although its official capital was Jerusalem, its actual headquarters were in Gaza before moving (under Egyptian pressure) to Cairo. Its President (Haj Amin al-Husayni), Prime Minister (Ahmad Hilmi ʿAbd al-Baqi Pasha), and the cabinet were made up of ministers all drawn from urban notable backgrounds.

In theory this institution (recognised by the Arab League states except Jordan) had a mandate that extended over the entirety of Palestine. However, by the end of the war the state of Israel had just been established over 78% of the British Mandate Palestine’s territory; the remaining 22% of the country was now referred to as “the West Bank and Gaza Strip”. Those Palestinians remaining in territories lost in 1948 were subjected to strict Israeli military rule and martial law, while the West Bank was annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Only a very small corner of Palestine, the Gaza Strip, was theoretically under the domain of the All-Palestine Government. Even there however, political, military, and financial control was firmly held by the Egyptian administration. So, by the end of the 1948 war, Palestine was erased from the political map.

Under such extreme conditions of external colonial and regional domination, the All-Palestine government proved unable to advance their people’s cause. The core demand of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands was completely rejected by the new Israeli state. A tiny number of refugees smuggled themselves back into their country, including political figures affiliated with the Communist Party such as Emile Habibi and Emile Touma. They became prominent leaders within the ranks of Palestinians who remained within the boundaries of the newly established Israeli state.

The political and humanitarian outcomes of the 1948 War created major transformations in regional political thought, as Arab intellectuals began to grapple with the outcome of the war and its cataclysmic implications. Amongst the most significant texts to emerge was The Meaning of Disaster (Maʿana al-Nakba). This classic text, published in August 1948, was written by Constantine Zurayk, a Syrian professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB), and one of the foremost Arab intellectual figures of the mid 20th century. It was here that the word “Nakba” was first used as a description of the series of events of 1947 to 1948 in Palestine. These events were not only catastrophic for the Palestinians, wrote Zurayk, but for the Arabs as a whole. In his estimation, the catastrophe was caused by the absence of a modern political structure that could liberate the Arab world from foreign dominance and control. Therefore, reversing the Nakba required Arab political and territorial unity, as well as economic and social modernisation. This great transformation, in Zurayk’s conception, could only come about through a young revolutionary elite that possessed a modernising social and political outlook and impeccable moral credentials. From the perspective of Palestinian revolutionary history, perhaps the most important passages here pertain to the critical step this elite must undertake, which was to “organise and unify itself into well-knit parties and organisations.”

The theory of revolutionary transformation articulated by Zurayk belongs to the well established vanguardist tradition in modern political thought. What is most relevant to the generation of the Nakba is its immense impact on the Arab political scene. One of the book’s immediate and direct effects was the establishment of a group that eventually took the name the Movement of Arab Nationalists (MAN) in Beirut. The next reading is from the memoirs of one of its founders, Ahmad al-Khatib, who was a Kuwaiti medical student in 1948. Al-Khatib was part of a circle of students from various Arab countries, including George Habash, Wadiʿ Haddad, and Hani al-Hindi, all closely connected to Zurayk, and highly influenced by The Meaning of Disaster. Giving a sense of the intellectual development of this group, al-Khatib’s memoirs show how the aim of reversing the Nakba propelled him and his comrades to seek the transformation of the Arab political reality by creating a clandestine network operating across the region. Al-Khatib established the Kuwaiti branch of this network, which was soon to become the most important political movement in that country, and a firm base for pan-Arab popular action towards the liberation of Palestine.

Al-Khatib was part of a generation that understood the cause of Palestine as belonging to them as much as it belonged to the Palestinian people. However, his experience of the Nakba was more direct than most. His time as a medical volunteer in ʿAin al-Hilweh refugee camp for Palestinians in the south of Lebanon filled him with frustration with “the Zionists, the countries that supported them, and the Arab parties and countries that failed the Palestinians.” This frustration provided the impetus to chart a path influenced by the legacy of the previous generation of Palestinian revolutionaries. Along with George Habash and Wadiʿ Haddad, al-Khatib would regularly visit an injured old fighter, Ibrahim Abu Dayya. Abu Dayya taught them patriotic songs and shared his vast experience of armed struggle in great detail. He had participated in the 1936 revolt, but had really gained fame and distinction during the 1948 war, when he was a leading military commander with a famous victory at the battle of Surif. Severely wounded after being hit with seven bullets during a successful attack on Ramat Rahil, he eventually ended up in the AUB hospital in Beirut. On the news of his death in March 1952, he was eulogised in the recently established newspaper al-Thaʾar, the earliest publication of the Movement of Arab Nationalists. Here, the young generation of revolutionaries vowed, in his memory, to revive the struggle, drawing on his rich historical legacy.

While prominent fighters like Abu Dayya were remembered by name, ordinary people involved in the struggle for Palestine lived on in collective forms such as literature. Their experiences were reconstructed in the works of revolutionary authors such as Samira Azzam, who experienced the Nakba as a 20-year-old young woman and became active in the Palestine Liberation Front-Path of Return group in the 1960s. Her short story Bread of Sacrifice (1960) approaches the Nakba from the standpoint of Palestinian urban resistance. Set on the eve of the fall of Haifa, April 22 1948, the story is underscored by romantic motifs, and culminates in a tragic ending. Yet tragedy here signals an on-going grievance that is a source of renewed mobilisation. Significantly, this mobilisation draws upon the contributions of women as well as men. As Azzam’s heroine Suʿad makes clear, confronting the Nakba was a natural and essential human need experienced regardless of gender, and challenging patriarchal authority was the first step towards women’s participation in the revolutionary struggle to return home.

Beyond its defining impact on Palestinian and Arab grassroots political movements, the Nakba also shaped the experience of a generation of Arab leaders who assumed power through revolutionary action in the 1950s. Many had participated in the Palestine War, fighting in their countries’ armies following the Arab declaration of war in May 1948. The most prominent of these was Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose time in Palestine influenced the future course of the Palestinian revolution; his approach to the cause, his understanding of it, and his sympathy with it cannot be viewed in isolation from his experience of the Nakba, as seen in his memoirs. For members of his generation, this event was a defining moment that had altered the fate of the region for decades to come.

Republished from The Palestinian Revolution, a bilingual Arabic/English online learning resource that explores Palestinian revolutionary practice and thought from the Nakba of 1948, to the siege of Beirut in 1982

Sources

1. Iyad, Abu (Salah Khalaf). My Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle, New York: Times Books, 1981 (pp. 3-12).

2. Habash, George. al-Thawriyun La Yamutun Abadan. Beirut: Dar Al-Saqi, 2009 (pp.27-30).

3. Al-Yahya, ʿAbd al-Razzaq. Bayn al-ʿAskariya wa-l-Siyasiya. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2006 (pp. 39-44).

4. Abu ʿAwda, Ali. Qariyat Hammama: Tarikh wa Turath wa Ansab. Gaza: Samir Mansour Library, 2015 (pp. 582-599).

5. al-Yamani, Ahmad Husayn Tajrubati Maʿa al-Ayyam. Damascus: Dar Canaan, 2004. (pp. 153-174 & 193-205).

6. Declarations of the All-Palestine Government, September – October 1948 in Documents on Palestine Volume II: 1948-1973, Jerusalem: The Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, 2007.

7. Zurayk, Constantine, The Meaning of the Disaster. Beirut: Khayat's College Book Cooperative, 1956 (pp. 2-3, 34-37 & 42-45).

8. al-Khatib, Ahmad. Kuwait: Min Al-Imara Ila al-Dawla, Dhakariyat al-ʿAmal al-Watani wa-l-Qawmi. Beirut: The Arab Cultural Center, 2007 (pp. 72-83).

9. “Ibrahim Abu Dayya” [Obituary]. Al-Tha’r (Beirut), Thursday 20 November 1953 (p. 8).

10. ʿAzzām, Samīra. Khobz Al-Fida’i. Beirut: Dar al-Awda, 1956.

11. League of Arab States. Arab League Declaration of War. Damascus, 15 May 1948.

12. Abdel Nasser, Gamal. “Memoirs of the First Palestine War, Part I”. Akher Sa’a (Cairo), April 1955.

13. Photographs of Lydda and Jaffa before 1948. Library of Congress.

Lessons of Rojava and Histories of Abolition

By Brendan McQuade

Originally published at Marxist sociology blog.

The Rojava Revolution is one of the most important revolutionary struggle of recent years. In the context of civil war and great power intrigue, the Kurdish movement evolved into a multi-ethnic and non-sectarian autonomous administration that governs approximately two million people in Northeastern Syria. These liberated areas have produced important experiments in direct democracy, cooperative and ecological development, and community self-defense and conflict resolution.

The Revolution is also the liberatory counterpoint to the Islamic State. In 2014 and 2015, Rojava’s militias received international attention for breaking the Islamic State’s siege of the city of Kobani and creating an evacuation corridor for some 50,000 Yazidis who were fleeing the Islamic State. Given the Syrian Civil War is also a climate conflict, the great political question of the 21st century may well be the socialism of Rojava or the barbarism of the Islamic State.

It’s no surprise the Rojava Revolution has been a point of inspiration for radicals across the world and, particularly, abolitionists and others on the libertarian-left. In their manifesto, Burn Down the American Plantation, the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement, an anarchist organization with chapters in Philadelphia, New York Chicago, New Haven, and California’s Inland Empire, considers Rojava to be a blueprint for organization elsewhere: “The Rojava Revolution, the anti-state revolution in northern Syria, provides us with a successful example of the strategies of organization and resistance we need to apply in the US today.”

It’s also no surprise that the Rojava Revolution may soon be over. The revolution developed in a power vacuum created when Assad government unilaterally withdrew from the Kurdish regions in Northeast Syria to focus on the developing civil war in Western Syria. The United States made a pragmatic alliance with Rojava during the campaign against the Islamic State but what that support meant going forward was never clear. Turkey, Syria’s neighbor to the north, is keen to both see Assad out and the Kurdish movement crushed. Between Turkey and the Trump administration, it was only a matter of time before the precarious balance of political forces shifted against Rojava. In October 2019, the US withdrew troops from Syria, clearing the way for Turkish invasion. This threat, in turn, forced Rojava to reconcile with Damascus for short term survival. What this means for the future of the Revolution is far from clear but it’s hard to feel encouraged.

What does this tragedy mean for our understanding of political struggle today? Does the seeming twilight of the Rojava Revolution mean that it is just another failed one? The Rojava Revolution could not defend itself against the state. It’s unclear how similar strategies could prevail in the United States, where the openings for the type of democratic autonomy seen Rojava are much smaller (or perhaps fundamentally different).

These questions, I contend, can only be answered if we confront them on the level of political strategy and opportunity, rather than political philosophy and identity. Abolitionists and anti-authoritarians are right to be inspired by example of Rojava but translating the lessons of the Revolution to a wildly different political context like the United States is no simple task. To better understand the Rojava Revolution, I return to the fundamentals of historical materialism. My recent article published Social Justice, “Histories of Abolition, Critiques of Security,” considers Rojava in relation to the debates abolition in the nascent US left: the rejection of abolition as fanciful and its defense as an area of non-reformist reformism in the struggle for 21st century socialism and strategy of insurrection. The impasse between a rejection of abolition and the tired revolution/reform binary can be resolved by returning to fundamentals of historical materialism, and particularly, W.E.B. Du Bois’ analysis of “abolition democracy” in his seminal work, Black Reconstruction.

Histories of Abolition

Abolition democracy refers to the social forces that led the “Reconstruction of Democracy” after the Civil War. It was revolutionary experiment made possible, first, by the direct action of black workers, a General Strike, and, later, advanced through continual mobilization (including armed self-defense) and the non-reformist reforms of Radical Reconstruction. While the antislavery struggle provided the political content of abolition democracy, this revolutionary project existed in precarious conditions, the temporary alignment of black workers, middle class abolitionists represented in Congress by the Radical Republicans, and, eventually, northern industrialists and poor southern whites. It was a revolutionary moment that was never fully consolidated and, as result, its gains were rolled back.

Despite this seeming failure, the moment held a deeper significance that middle class Abolitionists (and many subsequent scholars) largely missed. Abolition democracy challenged the fundamental class relations upon which historical capitalism stood: a racially stratified global division of labor, which, starting the in the sixteenth century, tied Europe, West Africa, and the Americas together in a capitalist world-economy. Black workers were the most devalued and exploited laborers, what Du Bois called “the foundation stone not only of Southern social structure but of Northern manufacture and commerce, of the English factory system, of European commerce, of buying and selling on a world-scale.”

By striking at the root of global capitalism, the American Civil War that produced the cataclysm and change that created the possibility for radical change. This possibility was lost because the Abolitionists never confronted capital and the labor movement never embraced abolition. When politics shifted, the temporary class alliances that enabled radical reconstruction gave way to what Du Bois called a “counter-revolution” or “dictatorship of property.”

On a more general level, Du Bois establishes the need to understand abolition in relation to the (1) social relations and (2) historical processes that define a particular historical moment, while also considering (3) social movement clusters that were contesting these relations of forces. In Black Reconstruction, then, Du Bois analyzes the abolition democracy in relation (1) the class composition of the antebellum United States, (2) the consolidation of an industrial economy, and (3) the interaction of the budding labor movement with the anti-slavery actions of black workers and Abolitionists.

In this way, Black Reconstruction offers a different understanding of abolition, beyond the tired revolution-reform binary. As an analytic and organizing concept, abolition democracy becomes the liberatory politics embedded within struggles of historically-specific mobilizations of popular forces. It is the struggle for freedom from violent regulation and subjectification. Du Bois shows that it is organically tied up with the related fights to secure conditions for social reproduction, distribute the social product, shape shared institutions, and set collective priorities. In other words, abolition—or socialism, for that matter—is not a political program we can define in the abstract and implement. It is a process of liberation tied to broader clusters of emancipatory movements as they emerge and exist within specific historical moments. The question, then, is not revolution or reform but who is fighting for abolition—or socialism—what does that even mean in the contemporary United States and what will it take to win.

Du Bois provides a historical materialist understanding of abolition as interplay of disruptive direct action and incremental change within a historically informed understanding of a particular social struggle. This holistic approach highlights the specific social relations that constitute the exploitative and oppressive social formations in which we live. In this way, Du Bois can provide the necessary perspective to ask what kind of interventions could be “non-reformist,” while also creating space to understand direct action and insurrection in terms of political strategy, rather than philosophy.

Abolition, Socialism and Political Strategy

This approach undermines some of the common slogans made about nature of structural violence today. Mass incarceration is not the New Jim Crow nor is it a direct a simple outgrowth of slavery. What Angela Davis terms “the prison of slavery and the slavery of prison” are different arrangements. Slavery, convict leasing, and Jim Crow were systems to marshal and mobilize labor. Mass incarceration is a system to warehouse surplus populations. These differences, moreover, speak to tremendous structural transformations in the world-economy and the American state. If we want to be politically effective, we, unlike abolitionists of the 1860s, must appreciate the specificities of our moment.

This means acknowledging that, as Julia Sudbury does, “the slavery-prison analogy tends to erase the presence of non-black prisoners.” It means recognizing that an exclusive focus on anti-black racism threatens to dismiss the experiences of Latinx and indigenous people with imprisonment, policing, and state violence. It means admitting that the incarceration rate for white people in the United States, while much lower than that of historically marginalized groups, is still grotesque in comparison with the rest of the world. In the words of Angela Davis, it means understanding that the prison “has become a receptacle for all those human beings who bear the inheritance of the failure to create abolition democracy in the aftermath of slavery,” while also recognizing that “this inheritance is not only born by black prisoners, but by poor Latino, Native American, Asian and white prisoners.” It means it thinking about revolutionary strategy in way that appreciates the historical forces that create our moment, without being unthinkingly tied to anachronistic ideas and strategies that today may be ineffective.

Most importantly, this perspective allows us to situate powerful moments of revolutionary breakthrough in their historical context and derive the appropriate conclusions from them. In this regard, we should not dismiss the way Burn Down the American Plantation highlights the experience of Rojava Revolution. Rather, we should understand the social processes and social relations that surround this important event, namely the collapse of the state during Syria Civil War and the trajectory of the Kurdish Movement.

Contextualizing the Rojava Revolution in this manner is not the same as dismissing its relevance. Instead, it allows us to usefully interpret its lessons from the vantage point of particular time and place. Recognizing that the Rojava Revolution took place amidst civil war and state collapse raises doubts about the applicability of the model in areas where the state is strong. Burn Down the American Plantation advocates “placing self-defense at the center of our revolutionary movement” and calls on existing anti-fascist groups and cop watches to model themselves on the self-defense forces of Rojava Revolution. Specifically, the manifesto calls on these organizations to “Develop…the capacity to begin launching offensive actions against fascists and the regime.” This advocacy for armed insurrection is misguided. It fails to appreciate the conditions that made Rojava possible, while also neglecting to mention the awesome coercive powers of the American state and the weakness of the nascent American left.

Moreover, contextualizing Rojava gives us the possibility of translating the lessons of the Revolution into our context. The continually high numbers of “police involved shootings” in the United States, the breakthrough of white supremacist movements, the escalating confrontations at protests, and mounting incidents of political violence all underscore the urgent need to community self-defense in this political moment. This is need is structural as evinced by the recent emergence of armed left formations in the United States like the Socialist Relief Association and the Red Guards of the Party for Socialism and Liberation that joined older groups like Red Neck Revolt.

More generally, there is a budding muncipalist movement in the United States that, in part, draws on some of the same intellectual currents that also inform Rojava. In this United States, this movement is best exemplified by Jackson-Kush Plan associated with Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Cooperation Jackson. The plan has three pillars building cooperative economy, creating participatory structures at the city level, networking progressive political leaders. Moreover, this electoral road to libertarian socialism at the city level has already delivered some concrete results. In 2013, Jackson, Mississippi elected Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, who campaigned on the promises of to implement the Jackson Plan. Although Lumumba died less than year into office, his son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, successfully won the mayoral race in June 2017. Already, the new administration pursuing an economic development strategy based around promoting cooperative businesses and putting in place a participatory process, empowering popular assemblies organized by to develop a budget proposal/

Notably, however, Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s young administration has been remarkably conventional when it comes to criminal justice. While the Mayor Lumumba has repeatedly drawn the link between crime and poverty, he’s also pledged to be “tough on crime.” Moreover, the new administration has maintained conventional police force and made no moves toward instituting community control of the police. Here, in a city where political power is held by radical administration, the self-defense experiments of the Rojava Revolution may make an instructive example, albeit not a simple blueprint. If grassroots alternatives to police existed in Jackson, could it pressure Lumumba to adopt more radical positions like community control of police or—better—disband the police department and replace it with community controlled self-defense forces and restorative justice bodies? The point here is not outline a political platform or provide a detailed analysis of contemporary attempts to create municipal socialism in Jackson but rather to demonstrate the way the holistic and historical conception of abolition advanced by Du Bois expands our expands our political parameters, allowing us to both make sense our current conditions and relate them to other powerful instances of abolitionist organizing.

Taken together, this approach to abolition allows us to both learn for the past and appreciate how previous struggles shaped the specificities of the present moment. If abolition can be usefully described as the liberatory politics immanent within the historically specific social struggles, one should be able to find abolitionist tendencies, abolitionist demands, abolitionist practices, and abolitionist institutions in most emancipatory movements. This approach can allow us to consider these moments relationally and learn the historical lessons of other moments of “abolition democracy.” This is how we learn what it takes to get free.

Brendan McQuade is an assistant professor at University of Southern Maine and author of Pacifying the Homeland. This commentary is adapted from a longer article published in Social Justice.

Zimbabwe's Political, Social, and Economic Prospects: 2019 in Review

By Mafa Kwanisai Mafa

Political landscape

After the 2018 harmonized elections which gave the ZANU PF party the mandate to rule, President Emmerson Mnangagwa appealed to all political party Presidents who contested in the elections to come together in a national dialogue and find a way to stop the toxic political polarization which continues to divide the Zimbabwean nation. Another reason for the national dialogue was to provide a viable platform for contributing towards lasting solutions to the challenges that confront the country. All the 19 political parties accepted the President’s invitation to Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) refused on the basis that they don’t recognize the Presidency of Emmerson Mnangagwa.

They claim that Mnangagwa is an outcome of a rigged election despite the fact that they were deemed free and fair by many international observers and also by the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe. A southern Africa bloc, Southern Africa Development Commission (SADC) is in support of the POLAD platform created by the government of Zimbabwe and support a full inclusive dialogue. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki who brokered the Global Political Agreement (2008) before was in the country towards year end to bring all stakeholders to the table and consult. President Thabo Mbeki is pushing for talks to end economic crisis. Mbeki held marathon meetings with the protagonists in Harare as well as other political, civic society, and church leaders. The opposition MDC says it is committed to “real dialogue” to solve the political and economic morass in the country and will not be part of President’s Mnangagwa’s POLAD platform.

The opposition, in cahoots with their international allies through foreign embassies and civil society groups, are escalating their efforts to topple the government of Emmerson Mnangagwa. These organizations are fighting in the opposition corner by supporting and funding the MDC destabilization agenda. The same organizations have been urging USA and EU to maintain the illegal economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, citing alleged human rights violations by the government and security services. The MDC opposition leadership has been on the whirlwind tour in western capitals asking for more sanctions to put pressure on the Zimbabwean government.

Economic Situation

Zimbabwe is in the throes of its economic decay in a decade characterized by acute shortages of cash, medicine, fuel and rolling power cuts of up to 20 hours a day. Inflation skyrocketed to 481.5% in November 2019, in the process eroding salaries and decimating pensions. Zimbabwe is also grappling with price increases which are changing every day. In the interim, salaries have remained depressed, with consumer spending severely curtailed. Zimbabwe economic morass constitutes one of the biggest threats to ZANU PF's continued hold on power. United Nations expert Hilal Elver, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, noted that Zimbabwe is on the brink of starvation, a crisis that has been compounded by hyperinflation, poverty, natural disasters and economic sanctions. The ZANU PF Central Committee report of 2019 noted that the most latent security threat that has great consequences is the unstable economy, which is largely propelled by the parallel market (black market). Formal trading prices are determined by the parallel market exchange rate, which has been sharply rising on a daily basis. Prices of all commodities and services have followed suit to unsustainable levels.

The report admitted that most people are failing to make ends meet, so poverty levels are rising very much throughout the year. As a result anger is brewing among the citizens while there is loss of confidence on the direction the economy is taking. In January a steep hike in fuel prices led to violent demonstrations across the country which the army and police ruthlessly put down. The human rights groups estimated that about 17 people were shot down with live ammunition by the security forces during the three days protests.

Zimbabwe is suffering from massive power cuts which has brought a number of businesses to a standstill. The power utility in 2019 went on to increase tariffs by 320%. The increase in tariffs was meant to solve the power crisis in the country but failed dismally with some businesses bearing the brunt as they lost productive hours.

Economic Sanctions and the Regime change agenda

This is a sad chapter in Zimbabwe's recent history which marked the beginning of a well-organized, meticulously coordinated and generously funded campaign of economic sabotage and misinformation designed to mislead both the Zimbabwean population as well as the international community with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the elected government. Activists are being trained in foreign lands by intelligence forces on how to organize and apply strategies to undermine the government and its economic policies. This is meant to render the country ungovernable and incite the population to revolt and overthrow a legitimate government.

October 25, 2019 was declared a national holiday in Zimbabwe for people to march against western sanctions. Sanctions are causing more harm as they have affected people, companies, and schools. Zimbabwe has for the past two decades failed to access lines of credit from IMF and the World Bank. Some banks in the country are restricted from trading with international financial institutions. Under the USA Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, American companies are not allowed to deal with Zimbabwe entities on the sanctions list. Some companies associated with the state have had their money intercepted and blocked when they attempt to do business with international institutions. Companies are finding it difficult to move money into the country because banks can be fined for dealing with sanctioned countries.

In April 2019, the USA fined the Standard Chartered Bank US$18 million for dealing with a sanctioned country. Many companies have been forced to close shop or to scale down their operations. This has led to a loss of jobs. Many international investors are shying away from investing in the country.

In the past two decades, various opposition leaders from the MDC party have been consistently calling for and instating on the maintenance of the illegal economic sanctions with the aim of regime change. SADC set October 25, 2019, as the SADC day against Zimbabwe sanctions which marks the start of a sustained call for the unconditional lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe through various activities.

There is an organization based in Belgrade called Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) which is clandestinely training antigovernment activists with strong umbilical links to the Zimbabwean main opposition MDC. Its mission is to layout the groundwork for civil unrest. Srdja Popovic is the founder and executive director of this organization. He is based in Belgrade, Serbia and his job is to foment revolutions in countries such as Sudan, Swaziland (Eswathini), Venezuela, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Burma, Vietnam, Belarus, Syria, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. Most of the activists which were arrested in Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the January 14 and 16, 2019 violent protests and charged with treason and subversion received their training in Czech Republic and the Maldives. Their training involves organizing mass protests, the use of small arms, and counter intelligence. Most of the organizations which are engaged in these nefarious and subversive activities to topple the government of Zimbabwe are also funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an American private and nonprofit organization which focuses on “strengthening democratic institutions.”

CANVAS was founded in 2003 by Srdja Popovic and Ivan Marovic and ever since it has been training antigovernment activists in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Iran, Lebanon, Tibet, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Srdja Popovic was one of the key founders and organisers of the Serbian nonviolence revolution group called Otpor! Otpor! Campaign which toppled the Serbian President Slobodan Milosovic in October 2000. CANVAS has been successful in most countries mentioned in fomenting uprisings save for Swaziland, Belarus, and Zimbabwe, which are still enjoying some peace. Foreign organizations are coordinating workshops and trainings in the country, the region, and overseas to topple the Zimbabwe government.

Austerity and the International Monetary Fund

Zimbabwe launched its austerity measures under the Transitional Stabilization Programme (TSP) in October 2018 when it was presenting the 2019 national budget. The time frame of the programme is scheduled to run from October 2018 to December 2020. The purpose of the austerity measures are meant to implement cost cutting measures, and to reduce the public sector wage bill. In addition to that, austerity reforms are aimed at increasing tax revenues by introducing the unpopular 2 % Intermediated Monetary Transfer (IMT) tax, restructuring the civil service and the privatization of ailing state enterprises and parastatals. These reforms are meant to bring about fiscal balances in the public sector. These reforms are meant to reduce government spending, increase tax revenues or to achieve both. The International Monetary Fund is keeping an eye on these reforms through a Staff Monitored Programme which covers a period from May 2019 to March 2020. These measures are very unpopular with the masses as they have proved to be anti-developmental, self-defeating, and have an adverse effects on the toiling working class.

The civil service has been affected by the austerity measures in terms of salaries which are now pegged at less than US$30 a month. Persistent threats of strikes and demonstrations have crippled important sectors such as health, education and even provision of documents such as passports. These austerity reforms shrink economic growth and cripple public service delivery. From past experiences IMF is unlikely to offer any bailout to the Zimbabwe economy, which means the country will have to lift itself out of any economic slowdown caused by the austerity measures. Critics of austerity measures fear that the reforms are acting as a double edged knife that leads to economic recession, job cuts, and company closures whilst failing to tackle runaway government expenditure. Its most likely that history is going to repeat itself, cognizant of the 1990 Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) which left the economy worse off, further marginalizing the poor and vulnerable groups.

The impact of austerity measures are likely to widen the already high income inequality gap in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is worsening social suffering as the government cuts social spending by 62%. Low income households are the most affected through expenditure cuts on social protection programmes which are mend for the children, elderly and the disabled and beneficiaries of Basic Education Assistance Programme (BEAM) and health facilities. In the current budget the government prioritized Defense and Home Affairs. The impact of taxation policy on distribution and equality is so glaring. Big companies are being offered several investment incentives under the 2019 national budget, the citizens under distress of the additional 7c and 6.5c per litre of diesel, petrol and paraffin. Implications of the 2c on Intermediated Money Transfer above Zimbabwe $10 are similar. This shows the repressiveness of the Zimbabwe tax system, where the poor contribute more than the rich.

By experimenting with TPS the government is repeating the mistakes of 1990 under ESAP and it’s expecting different outcomes. The commercialization and privatization policy is being smuggled into the fiscal policy under the government mantra of “Zimbabwe is open for business.” The Transitional Stabilization Programme, just like the previous Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, is affecting the economic opportunities for the urban middle income and the working class while marginalizing the poor further, especially women and children. The combination of privatization with the proposed labour market reforms under the Special Economic Zones, further exposes labour to exploitation. The Public Private Partnerships model in public hospitals has led to segregation and deepening inequality between the haves and have nots.

The austerity measures have failed to stabilize the economic situation as the cost of living has increased to extreme levels. The ever increasing prices of basic commodities has become a breeding ground for more poverty and vulnerability amongst the masses. The persistent hard economic situation is reversing and derailing some of the progressive plans the government has put in place to attain the UN sustainable development goals. The Zimbabwean government is a signatory to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the 2020 Agenda and it is committed to ensure that no poverty or hunger exists by 2030. It looks like there is no reprieve for the masses as fuel prices are continuing to rise due to the weakness of the Zimbabwean dollar against the US dollar and other foreign currencies.

The Zimbabwe government must come up with socialist policies that ensure that all citizens afford to live a dignified lifestyle. The economic hardship are causing moral decadence and erosion of social norms and values. The urban areas are becoming dangerous as incidents of robberies and prostitution are on the increase as well as reports of drug abuse amongst the youths. By intruding the TPS government is trying to please the IMF because since 2016 the government has been implementing the IMF staff monitored programmes.

Social services

Upon attainment of independence in 1980, Zimbabwe experimented with Socialism as it pursued a free primary school education and primary health care policies. This contributed to the high literacy levels which the country boasts as the highest in Africa, but the withdrawal of government support as recommended by ESAP climaxed in the introduction of school fees and user fess even in government hospitals. This had serious repercussions on women and children, as this contributed to gender inequality as parents were forced to prioritize educating the boy child at the expense of a girl child. Child mortality heightened as expecting mothers could not afford the hospital fees. These reforms mainly target social services, and even now in Zimbabwe it is the social services that are bearing the brunt of the austerity measures. Under the TPS, the government has removed fuel and electricity subsidies and this has caused the skyrocketing of prices of basic commodities and services.

The removal of subsidies are greatly affecting the companies on production as many companies are closing shop because it’s now difficult to sustain operations using diesel and petrol power generation. Inflation is rising at an alarming speed and the living standards, life expectancy, and economic production are plummeting. These hardships are causing increase in inequality, disaffection and exclusion. Opposition to the ruling class is deepening each day. The government economic crisis is becoming more pronounced, with a mounting foreign debt, declining experts and urban strife due to increased food prices, unemployment, the rising cost of living and brain drain. Many educated Zimbabweans are leaving the country for the foreign countries where they are being subjected to xenophobic attacks and precarious labour and exploitation.

The government under the direction of TPS intends to privatize some parastatals. With the high levels of corruption in Zimbabwe it is likely that these companies will be sold to acolytes, fronts and elites. This could be reminiscent of what happened in Russia in the 1990s, a period that gave rise to the oligarchs who stripped Russia of its gas and oil resources leading to the emergency of overnight billionaires. The Russian ultra-rich, such as Chelsea Soccer Club owner Roman Abramovich, amassed wealth during the economic and social turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the introduction of the free market economy. Oligarchs are monopolistic by nature. These are the pitfalls of privatization.

Greece is a good example of a country which experimented with austerity measures. In 2010, Athens imploded after its Parliament voted and approved the draconic austerity measures which they thought would unlock 120 billon Euros of emergency loans for the debt stricken country to avoid insolvency. Up to this day Greece is feeling the negative effects of austerity measures nine years later. The Greece story is a good example of how negative and cruel the austerity measures could be. The experimenting with TSP will leave most of the Zimbabwean population in dire straits. The public expenditure cuts, linked with this year’s drought and the effects of Cyclone Idai, will leave many people destitute. Pro-poor and socialist policies are the only way that is going to redeem the toiling masses and bring social development. The government vision of an upper middle class by 2030 under its slogan Vision 2020 remains a pie in the sky, influenced by western imperialist privatization efforts. The reality for most Zimbabweans is an economy that is regressing at an unprecedented rate.

Drought and Climate Change

Zimbabwe is grappling with a nationwide drought that h” The government vision of an upper middle class by 2030 under its slogan Vision 2020 remains a pie in the sky as the economy is regressing at a faster, unprecedented rate.

Drought and Climate Change

Zimbabwe is grappling with a nationwide drought that has depleted dams, cutting output by hydro power generation at Kariba dam. The has caused harvests to fail as most crops are wilting and this has prompted the government to appeal for US$464 million in aid to stave off famine. These prolonged droughts, dry spells, and heat waves are a result of climate change. Most major cities in Zimbabwe are rationing water in an effort to stretch the water supplies. The world over more than 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress and the UN has warned that the problem is set to worsen with demand expected to grow as much as 30% by 2050. A combination of drought and economic meltdown are pushing Zimbabwe to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. In the rural areas, 5.5 million farmers are struggling to find food. In urban areas, the inflation rate of 480% is forcing the poor families to survive on just one meal a day. The crisis is being made worse by a formal unemployment rate of 90% and also by an indebted government that is struggling to provide basic services, perennial shortages of fuel and foreign currency, and regular 20-hours daily power cuts.

Zimbabwe is marching towards unprecedented food insecurity levels in its history, the 2018/19 was the driest season in 40 years and these are the signs of climate change. Approximately 8 million Zimbabweans are now dependent on food from the World Food Programme and other donor agencies from western countries. Water and electricity are in short supply and basic health services close to collapse. The rising inflation has made the imported food in the shops unaffordable to many.

Zimbabwe was also ravaged by Cyclone Idai which devastated the eastern parts of the country leaving 259 people dead and thousands displaced. The storm caused destructive winds and heavy precipitation causing riverine and flash floods, deaths, and destruction of property and infrastructure. According to official figures, 250,000 people were affected by the cyclone. The forecast was done two months before the cyclone struck but authorities were “caught off guard.”

Trade Unionism, Picketing and Demonstrations

As the nation is falling in a deeper economic abyss, trade unions have come under spotlight and clashes with the government and business over the working conditions are increasing. The Zimbabwean working class is dwindling with 10% employment rate. The working class in Zimbabwe is starving, failing to pay rent, and has no access to health care. The purpose of trade unions among other things are to negotiate for living wages and better working conditions, regulating relations between workers and the employer, taking collective action to enforce the terms of collective bargain, raising new demands on behalf of its members, and helping to settle grievances.

Trade unionism in Zimbabwe has been hijacked by politicians and no longer serves the interests of the working class. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) came into existence on 28 February 1981, after joining of six unions, namely African Trade Union Congress (ACTU), the National African Trade Union Congress (NACTU), Trade Union Congress of Zimbabwe (TUCZ), United Trade Unions of Zimbabwe (UTUZ), Zimbabwe Federation of Labour (ZFL) and the Zimbabwe Trade Union Congress (ZTUC). These unions came together to form the now Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. The ZCTU is now being used by the western governments as a tool for the regime change agenda which saw it becoming a bedrock of the opposition party, the Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) which was formed and launched in September 1999.

The birth of the Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) on September 12, 1999 was the genesis of the ZCTU participation in politics. This unwarranted meddling in politics has left the working class poorer. Trade unionism in Zimbabwe has become a stepping stone for individuals to gain political power at the expense of the poor working class whom they claim to represent. The unions are failing to address the working class needs yet they must be the voice of the working class. Majority of the working class in Zimbabwe are being subjected to exploitation, unions must negotiate for higher living salaries, and jobs must be dignified and productive with adequate social protection. The unions have been captured by western government forces seeking to topple the government so that they can exploit the natural resources freely. Currently, Zimbabwe is reeling from the economic sanctions wrought by illegal economic sanctions imposed by USA and EU. The ZCTU must join calls and demand the lifting of the sanctions that are severely affecting its membership. The current crisis in Zimbabwe is exacerbated by the disputed 30 July 2018 elections, economic collapse, high prices and cash shortages, high unemployment, and public health crisis. The local authorities in major cities are failing to provide adequate clean water to residents and even basics such as regular garbage collections have been delayed.

Company closure and the slowing down of production in most sectors of the economy has led to a decline of trade union membership, and those that are still working are earning very low wages. Most workers are now in the informal sectors such as vending. Factory shells in the light and heavy industrial sites in major cities are deserted. Manufacturing and industrialization has stagnated and been replaced by importation of finished goods from neighboring countries.

Zimbabwe currency collapsed in 2009 which led to the adoption of the US dollar as legal tender but the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe lacked the foreign currency reserves to meet this obligation. Prices of basic commodities have risen dramatically and the purchasing power has been eroded. In January 2019, the country’s 305,000 civil servants gave notice to strike after they were paid in the local currency which is called the bond note instead of the US dollars. During that same period the government raised fuel prices by over 200%, which made Zimbabwe fuel to be the most expensive in the world. The following day, the ZCTU called a three-day general strike, which was supported by many civil society organizations. Many people joined this nationwide strike because of widespread anger over economic decay but there was massive looting and property destruction. This provoked a brutal crackdown by the security forces, and the government shut down the internet to prevent social media coordination of the demonstrators.

Between the period of 1996 and 1999, George Linke of the Danish Trade Union Council came to Zimbabwe with an agenda to transform the ZCTU into a political party. Part of his mission was to identify other groups in the country which were to join the proposed new political formation. This party was to spearhead the regime-change agenda. The transformation of the ZCTU as a political formation brought together employers, workers, students, and former white farmers. This new party was also formed as a response to a government resolution to designated 1,500 white-owned farms for expropriation and the increased emphasis on black empowerment and the draft constitution which would enable the government to acquire white-owned farms compulsorily without compensation. The ZCTU allowed itself to be transformed into a political party so that it can serve the interests of the former white farmers and western capital. Labour unions are being funded by the arms of the US government through conduits such as the National Endowment for Democracy, International Republican Institute, and National Democratic Institute, which have nothing to do with strengthening workers’ rights and everything to do with toppling governments.

In September 2019 the Zimbabwe health care system became shambolic, characterized by an acute shortage of drugs and an indefinite industrial action by doctors over salaries. The country’s public hospitals, already beset by a myriad of challenges, degenerated into death traps after doctors embarked on a strike that is still ongoing. In response, the government dismissed 448 doctors while it pursued disciplinary action against 1,000 others.

Also in August, Zimbabwe was hit by another wave of protests, which saw the security forces brutally squashing the demonstrations. The ZANU PF ruling party and the main opposition party MDC both feel the way forward and out of this economic crisis is to impose neoliberal austerity measures against the working class and the poor. The right-wing organizations that are currently pushing for social dialogue are fronts of the imperialist countries and are funded by them.

Demands

The Zimbabwe working class are demanding a living wage and pensions.

Workers are demanding that never again should they allow the workers’ struggle and trade unions to be hijacked by politicians.

Workers demand the immediate stoppage of harassment of street vendors who are trying to make a living to support their families.

Workers stand against the government mantra of “Zimbabwe Is Open for Business” as this is tantamount to selling the country to imperialist investors.

No to privatization of government companies, as this will benefit the elite connected to the government who will buy the company for a song.

The rich, which include huge mining companies, multinational corporations and foreign investors, must be taxed more to finance developmental interests of the poor

The only way forward is to smash the system of capitalism which breeds wars, poverty, and misery and replace it with Socialism. This can only be achieved by building an International Workers Socialist Revolutionary Party. This is the time as capitalism is in deep crisis globally.

Aluta Continua!

The author may be contacted at cdemafa@gmail.com

Sanctioning Syria

By Chris Ray

This was originally published at Monthly Review.

The United Nations was willing to pay for doors, windows and electrical wiring in Alaa Dahood’s apartment but not for repairs to her living room wall torn open by a mortar strike. That was deemed to be ‘reconstruction’—an aid category forbidden in Syria. “My mother and I used our savings to fix the wall ourselves,” Alaa, a primary school English teacher, told me.

Alaa lives with her widowed mother Walaa in Saif al-Dawla, a suburb of Aleppo that became a frontline between government troops and opposition forces in 2012. After their low-rise housing block came under sniper fire the family fled to a government-controlled sector of the city and, later, to the relative safety of Damascus.

“The stress was too much for my father; he was a nervous man and he died from a heart attack in 2013. My mother and I came home in 2017, when Aleppo was safe,” Alaa said as she served spiced coffee in the living room of her modest two-bedroom home.

More than 521,000 war-displaced Aleppans had returned home by the end of 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported. Very few found their properties undamaged. However, in all of Syria, only 42,000 residents got UN ‘rehabilitation’ aid—the assistance category that covered Alaa’s repairs. UN help was largely restricted to short-term emergency relief—the only aid category acceptable to major UN donors who oppose the continued rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

Alaa got no help with her wall but her UN-financed windows are at least made of glass. In Hanano, a suburb of eastern Aleppo previously under rebel control, a young security guard, Mohamed, showed me his family apartment, which overlooks a football field crammed with the skeletons of burned-out buses and cars. Mohamed installed windows made of plastic sheeting last winter, when the temperature fell below freezing. He got the plastic in a UN-supplied Do-It-Yourself ‘shelter kit’ that included pinewood for window frames, fiberboard for doors, expansion foam, nails and tools.

“Plastic is no good for winter but it is better than nothing,” said Mohamed, who did not want his last name published. Despite a severe fuel shortage he managed to buy enough heating oil to warm the bedroom of his frail 13-year-old sister, Asma, for a couple of hours every night. Mohamed has replaced plastic with glass in one window and is putting aside money to do the rest.

Shelter kits come under the heading of short-term emergency aid. The UNHCR says the kits covered about 92,000 Syrians in 2018—more than twice the number who benefited from home rehabilitation. The UN values shelter kits at around US$500 but recipients often sell them for much less or burn the wood for fuel, according to Syrian agencies that implement internationally-funded programs.

One of the UN’s biggest Syrian partners, the Greek Orthodox aid agency Gopa-Derd, refuses to distribute the kits. “We won’t be a part of putting plastic sheets over window frames where there should be glass. Plastic sheets are not going to fix a hole in a wall or keep a family warm in winter,” said Sara Savva, Gopa-Derd’s deputy director.

Another UN partner, the Syria Trust for Development, which managed Alaa’s repairs, wants shelter kit money redirected to rehabilitation. “We did 1000 shelter kits in 2017 then decided no more. They are a waste of time and resources,” said the Trust’s Aleppo director, Jean Maghamez. He added, however, that the Trust’s rehabilitation program covered only 200 Aleppo apartments in 2019 due to UN funding cuts.

A March 2019 joint statement by the governments of the  U.S., UK, France and Germany reaffirmed their opposition to any reconstruction assistance in Syria until “a credible, substantive, and genuine political process is irreversibly underway.” The UN’s position was set out in a 2018 internal directive from its Office of Political Affairs, then headed by a  U.S. career diplomat, Jeffrey Feltman. “Only once there is a genuine and inclusive political transition negotiated by the parties, would the UN be ready to facilitate reconstruction,” it said.

A negotiated settlement remains distant, however. A UN-backed peace plan drawn up in 2012 is moribund. Separate talks overseen by Assad’s patrons Russia and Iran together with Turkey, which supports elements of the jihadist opposition have also made little progress.

Use of UN funds to rebuild the wall of Alaa Dahood’s apartment would have risked crossing what UN staff in Syria refer to as a “red line” between rehabilitation and reconstruction. Neither term is clearly defined but the line is zealously policed. UN staff in Damascus told me they frequently field questions from governments, other UN donors and “human rights monitors” alert to any infringement of the reconstruction ban.

A June report by New York-based Human Rights Watch wagged a disapproving finger at the UN Development Program (UNDP), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Oxfam and others for having rebuilt water sanitation networks and healthcare facilities in government-held Syria. Any project aimed at “rebuilding and sustainable restoration of infrastructure, services, housing, facilities, and livelihoods can carry risks of entanglement in serious human rights abuses,” Human Rights Watch claimed.

To avoid breaching the reconstruction ban, the Syria Trust generally will not rebuild any apartment wall with a hole bigger than two square meters, its lead engineer in Aleppo, Ragheb Al Mudarres, told me. Gopa-Derd wants rehabilitation broadly interpreted to allow homes to be made safe for occupation. “If there is a hole in the wall we block it, if water drips from the ceiling we fix it, if there is no door or windows we install them. Some donors consider this to be reconstruction—we don’t,” Sara Savva said.

UN employees say they follow an unwritten guideline to avoid work on any public building with more than 30 percent structural damage. In one case, the reconstruction ban obliged agencies to reject a neighborhood committee’s plea for help to rebuild three schools. Funds were available, the proposal was technically sound, and the schools were in eastern Aleppo—once hailed by regime-change supporters as a bastion of revolution.

Across the country, 1.75 million children have no school to attend and the need in eastern Aleppo is particularly acute. However, its population apparently can expect little help from former foreign sponsors who walked away after the shooting stopped.

The UN describes Syria’s humanitarian needs as “staggering.” About 5.6 million people have gone abroad—about two thirds as refugees—and about 80 percent of the 18 million who remain need assistance. One third of the housing stock has been destroyed, leaving more than six million people without a permanent home.

Some 7.6 million suffer from an acute lack of clean drinking water and 4.3 million women and children are malnourished. Previously eradicated diseases like polio, typhoid, measles and rubella have returned and one in three children misses out on life-saving vaccines. About 1.5 million people live with permanent, conflict-related disabilities.

In this environment, restrictions on foreign aid are onerous but trade and financial sanctions are lethal. They have “contributed to the suffering of the Syrian people” by blocking imports of anti-cancer drugs, antibiotics and rotavirus vaccines, medical equipment, food, fuel, crop seeds, water pumps and other essentials, the UN Special Rapporteur on sanctions, Idriss Jazairy, reported in 2018. Jazairy called the sanctions “pernicious” and said they obstructed efforts to restore schools, hospitals, clean water, housing and employment.

U.S. measures are the most punitive of overlapping sanctions regimes also applied by the European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia and others. In the words of a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, the U.S. is waging “economic war” to “strangle to death” Assad’s government. The casualties are the poor, the sick and children—not the political and business elite.

In Damascus, rebel rockets no longer fall on residential districts that have remained loyal to the government through almost nine years of war. However, rather than celebrating the relative safety, Syrians I meet are exhausted by prolonged and worsening economic hardship. “I lived with war every day for seven years and got used to it. I can’t get used to not being able to feed my family,” a state employee said.

EU and U.S. fuel embargoes have hit hard, with nationwide electricity shortages and long queues for rationed petrol and bottled gas. Pharmaceuticals are even harder to obtain than fuel. The World Health Organization says sanctions block the import of anti-cancer drugs, which were subsidized at low prices by the public health system before the war. Sara Savva said medicine for diabetes or heart disease, when available, could cost an average employee a month’s salary. “Forget about chemotherapy or cancer medication—that’s ridiculously expensive,” she said.

Medical equipment is obsolete because the health ministry can’t import parts or update software. Doctors at a major Damascus hospital told Reuters about 10 percent of patients suffering from kidney failure are dying due to the hospital’s inability to source parts for European-made dialysis machines.

Humanitarian exemptions from sanctions supposedly exist but are difficult and costly to obtain. In any case, financial sanctions have isolated the country from global banking and payment systems, which is why foreign ATM and credit cards are useless in Syria. Even international aid organizations are forced to carry cash across the Lebanese border in vehicles or use informal money traders. So tightly drawn is the noose that European banks have refused to open bank accounts for UN staff when the word “Syria” appeared in their job title.

The UN has not endorsed sanctions but their effect on humanitarian aid has been “chilling,” Jazairy said. Exporters, transport companies, and insurers have refused to do any business with Syria for fear of inadvertently violating U.S. sanctions, which are extraterritorial. They apply to any transaction which involves a U.S. connection, such as goods with more than 10 percent  U.S. content, or use of  U.S. dollars.

In one case, European manufacturers declined to tender for supply of wheelchairs to the UN in Syria. The market is potentially big—about 86,000 Syrians have reportedly lost limbs in the conflict—but not lucrative enough to justify the risk of losing access to  U.S. customers. In his 2018 report, Jazairy argued for the release of Syrian central bank assets “frozen” by the EU. His suggestion that the money be set aside to pay for wheat and animal fodder imports to meet the “urgent survival needs of the population” was ignored.

The UN says its Syrian operations merely complement the work of state bodies, which are primarily responsible for meeting the humanitarian emergency. However, the 2019 national budget was set at less than US$9 billion—half the 2011 level—and actual expenditure is almost certainly lower. In eight years of war, GDP has fallen by between one half and two thirds. During December 2019, the Syrian pound fell to around six percent of its pre-war value.

The government still subsidizes fuel, bread, rice and other staples, but, with ministry budgets shrinking, welfare services are increasingly delivered by local non-government organizations such as the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Gopa-Derd and the Syria Trust. In the Aleppo suburb of Hanano, the Trust runs a UNHCR-funded community center housed in a former Islamic State prison. On the day I visited, a teacher was helping children to model the Earth’s relationship to the Sun with the use of globes and torches. Legal aid was on offer to divorced women seeking child custody and a female doctor was seeing patients.

The center also provides what its English teacher, Walaa Kanawati called a “psychological counselling service.” She said it was in high demand from parents worried about children’s behavior and women subjected to domestic violence. According to Kanawati, the center spends a lot of time trying to teach children and young adults how to disagree without fighting. “We role-play two individuals or two teams and help each side to defend their opinion,” she said. “We pose topics that come out of society, like early marriage, which is a big problem in this area. We’ve got mothers as young as 15.”

The Trust was also holding remedial English and math classes for children who missed years of school when living in rebel-held districts. Kanawati said those children struggle to keep up with lessons and often drop out of school.

Alaa Dahood, the primary school teacher from Saif al-Dawla also talked about the challenge of educating students from what she called “the other side.” “They are two, three and four years behind other children and I have to stay back after class to teach them to read and write,” she said. Some got no schooling in opposition-controlled zones while others were only given religious instruction. But, “parents from the other side usually appreciate education. They want their children to be as good as their classmates,” Alaa said.

In Damascus Gopa-Derd operates a UN-funded community center in the eastern suburb of Dweila. The area is an uneasy mix of residents subjected to years of mortar fire from neighboring Ghouta, a jihadist wartime stronghold, and Ghouta refugees who fled air strikes leading up to the army’s takeover in 2018.

Center staff try to promote integration by making services available to both groups. They also encourage boys and girls to attend classes together. Families displaced from opposition areas typically believe sexes should be segregated at a young age and “only boys are important,” said Remi Al Khouri, a Gopa-Derd manager. She said single-sex primary school classes were unknown in Syria before “the crisis,” adding: “We want to show that it is normal for boys and girls to go to class together and play together.”

In the nearby suburb of Kashkoul, another Gopa-Derd community center was focused on combatting sexual abuse of children. According to the center’s manager, Lina Saker, child abuse got worse during the war. I observed a class of boys and girls aged between five and ten engrossed in an exercise on “body safety and personal boundaries”; a female teacher used a wall chart to indicate the body’s “no touch” areas. “Some of these children are already victims and we want them to know it is unacceptable for people to touch certain parts of their body,” Saker said.

Getting children off the streets and into school would make them less vulnerable but displaced families often rely on sons and daughters to earn income. The center is trying to help children as young as nine who sell bread on the street, prepare shisha pipes in cafes, collect rubbish for recycling and help out on construction sites. It arranged medical treatment and schooling for a 14-year-old girl whose health suffered from her work in a charcoal factory.

While the body safety class was in session, the children’s mothers were in a nearby room talking about early marriage. Most had married before the legal age of 18 and a center employee was encouraging them to open up about the physical, emotional and material consequences. “We want to persuade them to stop their own daughters from marrying early and to give them a good education,” Saker said.

President Thomas Sankara: A 70th-Birthday Tribute

By Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu 

This was originally published at Pan-African Review.

President Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara would have turned 70 on the 21st of December 2019. At the tender age of 37, however, he was felled by bullets from soldiers loyal to his best friend, Blaise Campaore. Thomas Sankara’s passion was Africa’s advancement; his experimental field was Burkina Faso. What President Sankara wanted to see in Africa, he strategized, mobilized and implemented in Burkina Faso. He would then present his successes to African leaders, while encouraging them to surpass his achievements. Thomas Sankara’s achievement are too numerous to be summarized in an essay or even be elucidated in any book, but a few key points will be here noted.

Perhaps, the first in Thomas Sankara’s achievement is his refusal to borrow a dime from the IMF or any other foreign government or agency, mobilizing instead his fellow citizens to invest in community development and to consume only what the land of Burkina Faso yielded. Likewise, President Sankara, at the risk of being a target of the malignancy of Western governments, strongly encouraged other African leaders to shun external aid and borrowing. Thomas Sankara implored African leaders to rethink governance by reorganizing governmental systems and expressing those systems along a different line from the West in order to reduce costs and simplify governance.

A Pan-Africanist who was deeply committed to the cause of African people, it bothered President Sankara that African leaders were not seriously investing in the progress and unity of the continent, but were excited about uniting and aligning with the West. At a 29 July 1987 meeting of African leaders in Addis Ababa, he decried the poor attendance often recorded at meetings where Africa’s advancement is discussed; “Mister President,” he asked the [O]AU chairman, “how many heads of state are ready to head off to Paris, London, or Washington when they are called to a meeting there, but cannot come to a meeting here in Addis-Ababa, in Africa?”

Like Patrice Lumumba, Sankara incurred the wrath of the French President, Francois Mitterand when Mitterand visited Ouagadougou in 1986. Citing the spirit of the 1789 French Revolution, President Sankara reprimanded France for its oppressive policies in Africa and for the disrespectful treatment of African immigrants in France. Mitterand was livid with rage. He was used to African leaders groveling and shriveling under the mighty-hand of France. The French President would toss his prepared speech aside and take on Sankara, concluding with the thinly veiled threat, “This is a somewhat troublesome man, President Sankara!” Many would say that Sankara’s days were numbered after that fateful visit.

Prior to the French President’s visit, Thomas Sankara, a man of deep philosophical convictions, had in 1984 dumped the colonially contrived and imposed name of Upper Volta to call the nation what they wanted to be known as, Burkina Faso, “Land of Incorruptible People.” That renaming exercise was paired with an asset declaration exercise where President Sankara made known his properties, consisting of one working and one broken down refrigerators, three guitars, four regular motorcycles and one car. Thomas Sankara capped his salary at $462 and forbade both the hanging of his portrait at public places and any form of reverence attached to his person or presence.  Burkina Faso is about Burkinabes and there are 7 million of them. This seemed to be his guiding principle.

Thomas Sankara believed and invested in the education of Burkinabes. Literacy rate was at 13% when he became the president in 1983, and by the time of his assassination in 1987, it stood at 73%. Under his administration, numerous schools were built in Burkina Faso through community mobilization, teachers were trained and women were strongly encouraged to pursue education and career.

Burkina Faso’s agricultural fortunes experienced a turnaround during Thomas Sankara’s administration. First, the consumption of imported goods was strongly discouraged and Burkinabes once more reclaimed their taste buds from France. Thomas Sankara redistributed idle-lying lands from wealthy landowners to peasants who were eager to cultivate them. In three years, wheat cultivation jumped from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare. His administration further embarked on an intensive irrigation and fertilization exercise leading to an outstanding success across other crops including cotton. Burkina Faso soon become self-sufficient in food production, while cotton was used to make clothes, after having banned importation of clothing and textiles.

Convinced that the health of Burkinabes was paramount in any conversation regarding national advancement, President Sankara flagged off a national immunization program that–within weeks–saw the vaccination of over 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Access to healthcare was a basic human right of every Burkinabe and President Sankara mobilized communities across the nation to build medical dispensaries, thereby ensuring the proximity of primary healthcare to citizens in the most remote areas.

Infrastructural challenges were tackled headlong by President Sankara, mostly through the mobilization of citizens, both rich and poor, as construction workers in the building of access roads and other structures across the country. Within a short period of time, all regions in Burkina Faso became connected by a vast network of roads and rails. In addition, over 700 km of rail was laid by citizens to facilitate the extraction of manganese. In order to move Burkinabes away from slums to dignified houses, brick factories were built, which utilized raw materials from Burkina Faso. For the sake of emphasis, all these were achieved without recourse to borrowing or external financial assistance in a nation dubbed one of the poorest in Africa before Thomas Sankara became the President.

A man of integrity and transparence, Thomas Sankara expected nothing less from everyone in leadership position in Burkina Faso. Thomas Sankara refused to use air conditioning system as president of the country, since according to him, that will be living a lie as majority of Burkinabes could not afford such. Upon assumption of power, Thomas Sankara sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and commissioned the use of the cheapest brands of car available in Burkina Faso, the Renault 5. Salaries of public servants, including the president’s, were drastically reduced, while the use of chauffeurs and first-class airline tickets were outlawed.

Ever before women advancement became a buzzword globally, President Thomas Sankara led the way in advocating for the equal treatment of women. His cabinet was heavy with female appointees while numerous governmental positions were occupied by women. Female genital mutilation, polygamy, underage and forced marriages were outlawed while women were encouraged to join the military and to continue with their education even during pregnancy.

Thomas Sankara was passionate about the environment and its conservation.  He encouraged citizens to cultivate forest nurseries and over 7,000 village nurseries were created and sustained, through which, over 10 million trees were cultivated in order to push back the encroachment of the Sahel desert.

President Sankara pursued peace with his adversaries. On the morning he was gunned down, he was armed with a speech he had worked on all night, aimed at reconciling opposing factions in Burkina Faso and addressing the grievances of certain sections of the labor force. He did not live to present that speech.

In the short time he had, Burkinabes advanced as a nation and as a people. Outside of the already enumerated physical signs of progress, the social psychological impact on Burkinabes, of being truly and completely independence for the first time since the late 19th-century colonial incursion, was tremendous. Ironically, it was that same independence from France, termed “a deteriorating relationship” with the former colonial powers that Captain Blaise Campaore cited as one of the major reasons why he instigated the coup against Sankara.

Africa has produced much greatness; let it never be said that the continent is lacking in greatness. If truth be told, Africa’s great people of character and principle have often been silenced by forces of greed, exploitation and selfishness. Africa must then learn to build strong and enduring systems for the protection of virtue, the promotion of character and the vilification of vice. Africa would have been better than what it is today, if Thomas Noel Isidore Sankara were alive as an elder statesman to celebrate his 70th birthday anniversary. Yet, in death, he continues to serve as an inspiration to many Africans on what we can become as individuals and as a continent if we choose selflessness, commitment and passion for the continent and her people as the driving force behind our actions.

Do Recent Escalations with Iran Stress the Urgency of a Sanders Presidency?

By Jonas Ecke

The recent US assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top military commander, was a reminder, if any was needed, of the dangers of US militarism. It also raises the question: Who, in the US, could offer a realistic alternative to this country’s ingrained militaristic path-dependency?

At first sight, Bernie Sanders seems to be the ideal candidate. Whenever Sanders talks international politics on the Democratic primary campaign trail, he urges the US to take on a global role not based on militarism, but on multilateral efforts to address challenges that transcend nation-states, for example persistent extreme poverty and impending planetary extinction.

Of course, we know that speeches on war and peace held by politicians who do not command much political or military might should be taken with more than a grain of salt. This caveat is certainly true for politicians from the Democratic Party, who are more willing to provide rhetorical support for global human rights initiatives, peaceful conflict resolutions, and multilateralism compared to their Republican peers, yet seem unwilling or unable to deliver on these values once in office.

Let us consider the last three Democratic Presidents: Before President Carter armed the Mujahidin in Afghanistan and provided arms for horrendous human rights abuses in East Timor, El Salvador, and elsewhere in the late 1970s and early 80s, candidate Carter promised a new kind of foreign policy centered on unalienable human right norms. Ushered into the White House with promises of a “peace dividend” after the conclusion of the Cold War, President Clinton would deliver weapons into the hands of abusers in Turkey, Indonesia, Columbia, and Israel. These policies were pursued even though the world had become more peaceful as a whole.

And then, of course, there was Obama: An erstwhile critic of the Iraq war and skillful orator whose speeches peaceniks could project their political dreams, President Obama would go on to support proxy fighters in Yemen, Somalia, and Syria, increase the drone strike program tenfold, and join France and other nations in toppling Gadhafi in Libya, contributing to the kind of instability that he decried on the campaign trail. In Obama’s last year in office alone, the US dropped 26,171 bombs.

In early stages of their careers, all of these politicians tried to resonate with vast segments of the US population who want a foreign policy not dictated by weapon merchants and a foreign policy elite that is disconnected from the real costs of war. Once in office, however, every one of them fell short of expectations and/or fell in line with US imperialistic endeavors.

Is there reason to believe that Sanders is any different, that he would somehow escape the dangerous ideation that Realpolitik necessitates destructive militarism, if he were given the chance to enter the Oval Office? It’s a question of high relevance as the US might enter into another war in the Middle East.

Sanders’s Track Record on Foreign Policy

Sanders’s political record and election platform, which are explicitly centered around a more peaceful US foreign policy (if this is possible), show a commitment that makes him more likely to abstain from the militarism of his Republican and Democratic predecessors. Not just his words, but his actions – from his time as a protestor of the Vietnam War via his opposition to Reagan’s brutal Nicaraguan proxy war and the 2003 Iraq invasion, to his recent senate resolution to stop US military support for Saudi Arabia’s devastating air campaign in Yemen – give hope that he would steer the path.

Sanders’s famed authenticity and passion do not only shine through when he talks about today’s frivolous levels of economic inequality, but also when it comes to foreign policy. Particularly in his debates with Hillary Clinton in 2016, Sanders delivered lessons on the long history of tragic blowbacks from interventionism and regime change for a younger generation. Referring to Henry Kissinger’s role as a mentor to Hillary Clinton in a debate in Milwaukee, Sanders stated, “I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger.” He then recounted how a military campaign and coup masterminded by Kissinger contributed to the genocide in Cambodia.

All of this is not to say that Sanders is without fault. After all, he is a career senator for an imperialistic state. As such, he has occasionally compromised on foreign policy issues in his long senate career, for example when he approved General James “Mad Dog” Mattis – who directed the bloody campaign against the Iraqi city of Fallujah – in the senate in 2017.  Sanders has also not categorically ruled out the continued use of drones, and moments of pandering to America’s war culture have broken through from time to time. Overall, though, it is safe to assert that Sanders has allowed the courage of his conviction to dictate his foreign policy choices far more often than most others.

If Sanders becomes the 46th president of the United States, his constituents would have to become more educated about foreign affairs and consistently hold him accountable. Herein lies another advantage of Sanders: He is not a politician who seeks to become a technocrat who implements reforms within circles of initiated “experts,” and without much public input. Sanders is spearheading a movement of predominantly, but not only, young US citizens, who have soberly reflected on the many failures of the post-9/11 militarism they have experienced in their lifespan and are committed to continuously engage with the political system. As Noam Chomsky points out, this quality represents an unforgivable sin among the powers that be.

Will It Matter?

Contrary to what his Democrat party detractors – who seem to believe that access to D.C. think tanks, halls of power, and universities equals foreign policy expertise – claim, Sanders has for the most part instinctively arrived at the right decisions on various foreign policy crises from Yemen to Nicaragua. His track record stems from his ability to avoid, in his own words, the “old Washington mindset that judges ‘seriousness’ according to the willingness to use force.” Rather than engaging in futile and immoral military adventures abroad, Sanders promises to finally adequately fund foreign aid programs. These programs only cost a fraction of what’s spent on the military, but could offer shelter, protection, and perhaps even opportunities to the millions who have been displaced by conflicts. As the “severe global funding shortages” for UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, epitomize, the displaced have been all but abandoned by an international community that cannot resolve the conflicts that cause the displacement.

If the past few months are prologue, the world will be an even more dangerous place by the time Sanders might take office. In the Middle East, global powers such as the EU, Russia, and the US, as well as regional actors such as the Gulf Council states, Iran, and Turkey, will continue their disastrous strategy of funding violent proxies, both offensive and defensive, as they have already done in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. The whole region might be pushed to the brink by the dangerous escalations of Trump and the US “military–industrial–media complex” on Iran.

Recent history suggests that it may not matter who occupies the Oval Office, as the US war machine, its financial benefactors, and its complicit media seem to churn on out of systemic necessity. The nation’s economy has become largely dependent on the arms industry, as weapons remain one of the most exported products from the US. Thus, the only way to keep this market stimulated is by using and recycling munitions, as well as providing weaponry to foreign states. If Sanders attempts to undermine this process, there could be a heavy price to pay. However, if enough Americans back a Sanders presidency by holding its proverbial feet to the fire, a different path may begin to be carved out. At the end of the day, someone must (and will) occupy the office. The most realistic prospect for an urgently necessary de-escalation and the rebuilding of whole societies and bilateral relationships will be having Bernie Sanders at the helm.

From Stolen Land to Riches: US Neo-Colonialism in South Korea

By Riley Bove

The history behind the division of Korea into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) is a complicated matter that crosses many spheres. The history between the US and Korea dates back to the Joseon Dynasty when American missionaries introduced Christianity to the peninsula through mission trips and the building of orphanages. When the Japanese colonized the Korean peninsula at the turn of the 20th century, it led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, the enslavement of Korean people, as well as the violent suppression of culture, language, and national sovereignty. After World War II and the defeat of Japanese colonialism, and the liberation of Korea, the US enacted both military and governmental control in the southern half of the peninsula. The Korean War was one of many conflicts during which US imperialism acted through proxies to contest the global struggle for socialism and national liberation through the US’s “containment policy.”

The point of this article is to explore the ways in which the US has enacted imperialism and neocolonialism on the Korean Peninsula since its division in the post-WWII era and into the present day. While much attention is paid to the devastation the US caused--and continues to cause--in the DPRK, this article focuses more on the divisive and exploitative role its played in the ROK.

The history of the exploitation of the Korean peninsula dates back to the colonization of Korea by Japan in 1910. By the 20th century, the Korean peninsula had already come under the Japanese sphere of influence and under the militarized gaze of the Meiji government. By 1910, Korea was fully under Japanese colonial rule. American missionaries had already been in contact with the Korean peninsula, starting the 1880s, spreading the evangelical faith throughout and beginning the connection between Korea and the West.  Japan had set its imperialist sights on conquering the rest of the Pacific by 1940. From 1910 to 1945, Korea was subjected to a brutal 35-year-long colonization by the Japanese. For example, Korean women experienced sexual subjugation under Japanese rule. In her essay, “The Korean “Comfort Women’: Movement For Redress,” Sarah Soh Chunghee states that, “Japan began drafting Korean women in full force from around 1937 when its army invaded China and the soldiers raped and murdered tens of thousands of Chinese women in Nanjing” (1228). While occupying Korea, Japan forced women into sexual slavery and men, women, and children were murdered by the Japanese as they moved to fight the indigenous resistance  movements that emerged.

By the end of WWII, the liberation of Korea was underway as revolutionaries swept the Japanese imperialists from the peninsula. Both the Soviet Union and the US consolidated to rebuild the peninsula after the liberation movement. The Soviets helped the north establish a workers-led state and reclaim the land previously owned by landlords. There were preparations to have a “People’s Republic” in Korea that was of, by, and for Koreans. However, this never came to fruition. Anna Louise Strong, in her report for the CIA, writes that: “When the Americans landed in Korea, the Koreans had already a de facto government. A "People's Republic" had been declared a day earlier by a congress of Koreans themselves. General John R. Hodge, commander of the U. S. armed forces, dissolved this "People's Republic," and drove most of its members underground.”  Strong details how, between the liberation of Korea and the creation of the state of South Korea, a people’s democracy was already established in the south. However, the American forces overthrew the de facto government and established a US-backed puppet military dictatorship. The north established their own government without any assistance from foreign powers, while in the south, the Americans maintained their iron grip which has continued into the present day.

After the American “intervention” and toppling of the de facto “People’s Republic of Korea” government, the American imperialists  implanted a pro-US ally, Syngman Rhee, in order to govern the southern half of the peninsula. Rhee was a Western educated Korean who had anti-Japanese credentials but was fully in the pocket of Washington and Wall Street. Once Syngman Rhee was in power, he imposed his oppressive crackdown of all dissidence. In their essay, “Organizing Dissent against Authoritarianism,” Park Mi states that, “Even a moderate dissident became equated as a procommunist and pro-North Korean activity that was deemed to be prosecuted under the National Security Law” (263). The National Security Act (NSA) became the justification for repressive actions of the Rhee regime, including massacres that totaled in the hundreds of thousands. Park also details that, “Military confrontation with North Korea was used as an excuse to justify violations of human rights and the suppression of political dissidents” (263). The geopolitical landscape of a divided Korea was used by the South Korean-US government as a justification for the suppression of the people’s right to self-determination. At the same time in the United States, during the 1950s, McCarthyism reigned over the political landscape of post-war America. McCarthyism was defined as a “Second Red Scare”, a time of anti-communist setiment and political repression, in which the entire organized left was almost incapacited, with its leaders jailed or driven underground, and anyone who had any pro-communist or even pro-peace sentiments “blacklisted.” In the ROK, the Rhee regime enacted its own McCarthyism era under the NSA in order to snuff out and executed thousands of suspected communists.

After the Rhee administration was overthrown in the 1961 coup d’etat, Park Chung-hee rose to power and declared martial law under the Yushin Constitution, which allowed Park to openly violate civil liberties and assume total control of the government. Under his regime, worker unions and other types of mass organizing were suppressed and thousands of union members and organizers were brutally murdered. They faced sexual assault and rape as well as other forms of police violence. Student organizers, as well as organizations deemed to be Marxist oriented, were brutally suppressed under the Park regime.

Park was assassinated in 1979 and another pro-US dictator, Chun Doo-hwan, took power. Political and civil tension culminated in the Gwangju Massacre in 1980 in which 2,000 people, including student-led activist groups and anti-government demonstrators, were murdered by the military and governmental forces. Chun remained in power until 1988. Leading up to the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, the Chun government attempted to make the city more “presentable”. Park Mi writes that, “the Chun government introduced a ‘beautification of the environment’ bill, which was designed to eliminate slums and unregistered street vendors” (278). The Chun government had attempted to gentrify the city, leaving the poor and working class citizens in poverty and forced many into homelessness. All while this was happening, the US government, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, actively supported and endorsed the brutal regimes. In the 1980s, the US sent a massive influx of capital to South Korea, and it was only during this time that the GDP of the South overtook that of the North.

At the end of WWII, the country had been transformed into one of the poorest countries in the world. The Korean War, which spanned from 1950 to 1953, economically devastated the entirety of the Korean peninsula. The US military and other allied forces fire-bombed and destroyed 22 of the 24 cities in the northern half. Thousands of people died in the war and hundreds of thousands of children become orphaned and displaced during and after the war. While the US fought under the flag of the UN, this was nothing more than a fig leaf for US imperialism. In one of the most infamous massacres to happen during the Korean war, a US cavalry regiment had opened fire on a crowd of South Korean refugees, murdering 150-300 of them. It would be known as the No Gun Ri massacre. Many years after, the US military attempted to whitewash the massacre and it still hasn’t been held accountable in its role of murdering civilians.

In her book, “From Orphan to Adoptee,” Soo-jin Pate critically analyzes the rise of militarized humanitarianism and the birth of transnational adoptions of Korean children after the Korean War. Pate writes that, “However, its location—its close proximity to the Soviet Union—made Korea extremely important to the United States” (24). Pate describes that even though the mountainous landscape of the Korean peninsula did not offer any crucial resources to the United States that they couldn’t get elsewhere, the close proximity to the Soviet Union made the Korean peninsula an important geopolitical area. This is true, but it is also important to acknowledge that Korea was and is targeted because the DPRK’s social and economic system remains antithetical to capitalism and imperialism.

Pate also writes about the conditions of post-war South Korea for orphans: “In addition, 100,000 children were left without homes and separated from their families so that by the end of the war, over 40,000 orphans resided in orphanages” (30). The devastation of the Korean war left children without parents and the orphanages that already existed were overfilled. Missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, along with American NGOs or non-governmental organizations, built more orphanages and provided materials for food and other necessities. Under the backdrop of the US military occupation and the Korean War, this type of humanitarianism became militarized. Pate also echoes this sentiment: “Militarism and humanitarianism became conflated through programs such as Armed Forces Assistance to Korea and Korean Civil Assistance Command, which produced what I call militarized humanitarianism” (34). Also under this backdrop of militarized humanitarianism, NGOs such as Holt International became frontrunners in the transnational adoptions of Korean orphans. With this, American families flocked to adopt children under the guise of “saving”. This type of savior complex often drove the NGOs like Holt International to be one of the most profitable companies in adoption of children. By contrast, orphans in the DPRK remained in the country, and the government provided them with excellent shelter, education, health care, and other resources. In the DPRK, war orphans were something like national heroes.

Images of “cold, hungry, and threadbare” children filling their stomachs with food donated by American and other Western countries inflated the image of the US military and others as saviors to war-torn children. A lot of these Korean orphans were exploited by public relations in the military in order to further conflate this trope. Images of children smiling and interacting with American servicemen became the poster for militarized humanitarianism. American media campaigns started to funnel money and editorials, describing the orphans as “victims of communism.”

With this mass campaign, American NGOs and other organizations donated immense resources. The influx of media attention and campaigns became the driving force of Korean adoptions. Pate describes the conditions of adoptions as follows: “The geopolitics of the Cold War and the discourse of Cold War Orientalism created a particular set of conditions that made the bodies of Korean children highly desirable” (87). She also writes that, “These children were highly desirable because they were perceived as exotic and cute and because they were perhaps the least threatening group of Asians that the United States had ever encountered” (87). Because of the anti-communist sentiment that plagued American society and Cold War politics, this made Korean children highly sought after for international adoption

 Korean children were seen as non-threatening because many of them were extremely young—infants and toddlers—so assimilation into American society would be easier than it would be with older children. Orientalism also played a part in the tropes of Korean children being more submissive towards assimilation tactics and being perceived as non-enemies. The fetishization of Korean girls had to do with similar orientalist tropes of East Asian women as docile and hyper-feminized. Pate describes the phenomenon this way: “the Oriental doll connotes femininity, exoticness, delicateness, silence, and docility, these very descriptions become assigned to the Korean female orphan” (94). This commodification of Korean women, in other words, relied on the racist, misogynistic, and imperialist view of Korean women as “doll-like”. As Pate writes, the interaction of Korean women with US military servicemen was used as a bargaining chip and to help maintain friendly relations between the US and South Korea.

Korean women and young female orphans were often forcibly recruited into sex work for the US military. These types of “camptowns” became a hotbed of sexual assault and rape. This form of exploitation towards Korean women echoes the brutal sexual violence that was forced upon Korean women by Japanese imperialists during the colonization of Korea and WWII. Soojin Pate wrote that, “the United States adopted a ‘boys will be boys’ policy toward camptown prostitution in South Korea. They were able to justify this policy by linking military prostitution to issues of national security. Citing a 1965 study on troop–community relations conducted by the Eighth U.S. Army” (58). The US military, as Pate argues, adopted a more “turning a blind eye” policy toward camptown and military prostitution. Sexual exploitation as US imperialism had evolved into the misogynistic sex industry.

Park Chung-hee had encouraged this sort of sexual exploitation as it fueled the South Korean economy. The Cold War era had turned South Korea into a neoliberal and capitalist hotspot. Even after the partial revitalization of the South Korean economy in the 1960s, political and inequitable economic woes dominated the geopolitical landscape of South Korea for decades. With the birth of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s, South Korea’s economy was boosted by technological companies, such as Samsung and Hyundai, primarily trading with its neo-colonial ally, the United States. Social issues such as high rates of suicide have been a consequence of the overbearing demands of production with little to no compensation for the workers themselves. As J. Sul wrote in an article for Anti-Imperialism.org, “I cannot state all the suicidal cases here, but note well that the suicide rate in South Korea is in the top among the OECD nations” (Sul). Toward the beginning of the 2000s, anti-American sentiment began in full swing in South Korea as two events, the 2002 Yangju highway incident where two Korean schoolgirls were fatally killed by a US military vehicle and the murder of Yun Geum-i in 1992 where a bartender was murdered by a US military private. These two events brought up the question of the USFK’s (United States Forces Korea) continued presence in Korea.

These are just some of the ways that US imperialism and neocolonialism manifest on the Korean Peninsula, and why the US’s presence in South Korea is detrimental and has only led to the division and exploitation of the ROK. However, the puppet regimes had also committed violence and murder with the full support of its neo-colonial ally. The US military occupation of South Korea remains the primary obstacle to peace and reunification of our homeland.  The United States needs to end its military occupation in South Korea and dismantle all of its military bases and facilities, paying reparations to all the peoples of Korea.

“For a colonized people: the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”

― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1960)

Riley Bove (Seungyoon Park) is a student at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and an organizer with the ANSWER Coalition in Indianapolis.

References

Fanon, Franz. Les damnés de la terre. A verba futuroruM, 2016

Soh, Chunghee Sarah. “The Korean ‘Comfort Women’: Movement for Redress.” Asian Survey, vol. 36, no. 12, 1996, pp. 1226–1240., www.jstor.org/stable/2645577.

Moon, Katharine H. S. “South Korea-U.S. Relations.” Asian Perspective, vol. 28, no. 4, 2004, pp. 39–61. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42704478.   

Pate, SooJin. From Orphan to Adoptee: US Empire and Genealogies of Korean Adoption. U of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Strong, Anna Louise. In North Korea: First Eye-Witness Report. Prism Key Press, 2011.

Sul, J. “Neoliberalism in South Korea: Financial Crisis, Fascism, and the Rise of Precarious Work.” Anti-Imperialism.org, 1 July 2015, https://anti-imperialism.org/2015/01/12/neoliberalism-in-south-korea-financial-crisis-fascism-and-the-rise-of-precarious-work/.

Mi, P. (2005). Organizing dissent against authoritarianism: The South Korean student movement in the 1980s. Korea Journal. 45. 261-288.

The Ballot and the Bullet: Building Socialism in ‘America’s Backyard’

By Matthew Dolezal

When faced with momentous external challenges — be they Spanish colonialism, American imperialism, or devastating hurricanes — the Cuban people have consistently risen to the occasion. In response to ongoing internal challenges, the popular new Cuban constitution (which took effect in April) entrenches the solid Marxist-Leninist foundation of the island’s socialist state while updating the 1976 constitution to better reflect the modern post-Cold War period.

Under the new constitution, each presidential term is five years, with a limit of two consecutive terms in office for those who serve. In addition, the role of Head of State is divided between the president and the newly established office of prime minister.

Other new rights and policies include the presumption of innocence in criminal cases, the right to legal counsel, and the (heavily regulated) use of private property and foreign investment to stimulate the economy (particularly to offset the revenue lost as a result of the continued U.S. blockade).

Despite the many exciting modernizations articulated by this fresh new document, much remains the same. Cuba’s Communist Party is still in only political party legally allowed to operate, and the state continues to control the land and means of production. The news media cannot be privatized, and, according to the new Magna Carta, Cuba will never return to the exploitative, pre-revolutionary capitalist system.

Bourgeois historians and pundits often glibly frame successful socialist governments as “authoritarian.” But from a materialist perspective, the vanguard party serves to protect the achievements of the proletarian revolution — including universal healthcare, education, housing, subsidized food, and land reform — from reactionary and imperialist threats (such as the CIA-backed coup Ernesto “Che” Guevara witnessed in Guatemala prior to the Cuban Revolution). In addition to the Communist Party’s general success, apologists for Western capitalism now have to grapple with the fact that significant democratic processes are occurring within Cuba’s one-party system.

The process to draft a new constitution began in August of 2018 and included the input of millions of Cuban citizens. Assemblies throughout the island were established, and thousands of “standard proposals” were debated for three months. In all, the old constitution faced 760 modifications. The proposed constitution was then featured in a referendum that took place on February 24, 2019. With massive voter turnout, the new constitution was easily passed when more than 85% voted “yes.”

Based on the long-standing solidarity between Cuba and its Latin American ally Venezuela, this recent constitutional process undertaken by the Caribbean nation may have been inspired by Venezuela’s ongoing Bolivarian Revolution. After the 1998 election of the popular Venezuelan revolutionary Hugo Chávez, the formerly discarded masses were not only lifted out of poverty, but politically empowered through a nation-wide upsurge in grassroots democracy.

As historian Greg Grandin wrote in 2013,

“Chávez’s social base was diverse and heterodox, what social scientists in the 1990s began to celebrate as ‘new social movements,’ distinct from established trade unions and peasant organizations vertically linked to — and subordinated to — political parties or populist leaders: neighborhood councils; urban and rural homesteaders, feminists, gay and lesbian rights organizations, economic justice activists, environmental coalitions; breakaway unions and the like. It’s these organizations, in Venezuela and elsewhere throughout the region, that have over the last few decades done heroic work in democratizing society, in giving citizens venues to survive the extremes of neoliberalism and to fight against further depredations, turning Latin America into one of the last global bastion of the Enlightenment left.”

Shortly after Chávez was inaugurated, Venezuelan citizens voted to replace their 1961 constitution with a new document that “expanded the rights of all Venezuelans, formally recognized the rights and privileges of historically marginalized groups, reorganized government institutions and powers, and highlighted the government’s responsibility in working towards participatory democracy and social justice.” This Bolivarian constitution includes mechanisms by which the document can be revised by the people through nation-wide participatory democracy. In 2007, for example, a series of constitutional reforms were debated for 47 days at more than 9,000 public events before a referendum finally took place.

At the height of the American civil rights movement, charismatic black liberation leader Malcolm X issued a powerful ultimatum — “the ballot or the bullet” — in his famous 1964 speech. The metaphor of the proverbial “ballot” and “bullet” can be useful in recognizing both the political and the physical dimensions of socialist struggle. A historical example of these two seemingly disparate themes merging was the short-lived alliance between Chile (“the ballot”) and Cuba (“the bullet”) in the early 1970s, iconically symbolized when revolutionary leader Fidel Castro gifted a personalized AK-47 to democratically-elected socialist president Salvador Allende.

But movements do not have to choose between these two options exclusively. Broadly speaking, Venezuela’s revolution emerged through the ballot box and was later protected through armed defense, whereas Cuba’s revolution was itself an armed struggle that would later evolve through ballot initiatives and grassroots democracy.

The ongoing Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions are impressive enough by themselves, but the material conditions they arose from and the hardships they have endured make them utterly awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, socialism doesn’t develop in a vacuum. It doesn’t grow in a petri dish. Building international socialism brings with it the baggage of constant imperialist assaults aimed at exploiting labor and extracting resources on behalf of global capital.

Now a spectre is haunting Washington — the spectre of the Monroe Doctrine. In its belligerent re-imagining of the 19th century foreign policy staple, the Trump administration has demonized and attacked the sovereignty of both Cuba and Venezuela. In conjunction with a new round of economic sanctions against the so-called “troika of tyranny”, former National Security Advisor and Bush-era war criminal John Bolton claimed last April that the “Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.”

Bolton also announced that the U.S. would reintroduce the Helms-Burton Act — a 1996 law that allows American citizens to file claims related to properties that were nationalized after the Cuban Revolution. However, as Dr. Arturo Lopez-Levy opined, “It is not the United States government’s responsibility or place to force the […] Cuban government to prioritize compensating Cuban right-wing exiles over demands for other reparations, such as for slavery or any of the many other abuses committed in Cuban history before or after 1959.” Furthermore, as author Saul Landau observed, “By 1991, […] the Castro government had settled claims with most of the nations whose properties it had confiscated and offered terms to U.S. companies as well.”

In addition, the Trump administration began restricting U.S. travel to the island in June and revived the half-century-long economic blockade that was briefly loosened under the Obama administration. These Cold War-inspired policies are certainly draconian, but it seems the American regime’s primary target is Cuba’s oil-rich ally across the Caribbean Sea. As John Bolton himself admitted, “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

After winning the Venezuelan presidential election in May of 2018, Nicolás Maduro was sworn in on January 10, 2019 to begin his second term in office. Then, on January 22, Juan Guaidó — a man whom 81% of Venezuelans had never heard of — suddenly declared himself “interim president.” Although Guaidó did not run in any presidential election, American politicians and pundits quickly praised this brazen U.S.-backed coup attempt, some even insisting “this is our backyard!” Washington’s latest regime-change effort in the Bolivarian Republic has thus far failed, but the Trump administration’s brutal economic sanctions have killed an estimated 40,000 Venezuelans in just one year.

Despite this rampant imperialism, there have been notable solidarity efforts — both between Cuba and Venezuela as well as internationally. However, in its overall capacity for both relevant material analysis and tangible solidarity, the American Left has gone astray. Steve Stiffler contends that the U.S. Left’s failure to properly frame Chavismo allowed right-wing propaganda to gain control of the narrative. This defeat in the realm of discourse led not only to the empowerment of far-right forces on the ground in Venezuela, but to a diminishment of the socialist support from within the empire that was once reliable.

An indispensable historical model we should look to for guidance is the Venceremos Brigade. In 1969, a group of young American radicals volunteered their manual labor to assist with Cuba’s sugar harvest in the wake of the crippling U.S. embargo. This primary delegation to the island included 216 brigadistas who helped cut sugar cane for six weeks. Since then, the Venceremos (“we shall overcome”) Brigade spearheaded solidarity efforts between Americans and Cubans, bringing in more than 10,000 people to engage in agricultural work, construction, and other projects. Former brigadista Diana Block recently recounted, “I had traveled to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade in 1977. At that time many radical U.S. political organizations looked to Cuba, and other global anti-colonial struggles, for inspiration and direction. Following Cuba’s lead, international solidarity was recognized as a key organizing principle.”

During my brief trip to Havana last summer I toured Museo de la Revolución, which was still a work in progress. A sizable mural of Fidel speaking to a crowd rested against a banister as workers on scaffolds renovated the neighboring room. After examining the intriguing exhibits, I browsed the items in the gift shop and came across a concise booklet entitled Notes on Che Guevara’s Ideas on Pedagogy by Linda Martí, Ph.D. In it, Martí emphasized the role of a humanistic philosophy in socialist society:

“Is humanism present in every daily decision made by every citizen of our country? Is this concept of a humanist conscience the basis of every analysis made of services, production, or education? Collectivism, as a new personality trait and an expression of humanism in interpersonal relations, was the object of study, inquiry, and experimentation of Che’s theory and praxis.”

Humanism — in an internationalist sense — can motivate the more privileged Western leftists among us to stand in solidarity with independent socialist projects of the Global South and denounce the neo-colonialist tendencies of the ruling classes. Our struggle, after all, is global. Whether utilizing the ballot, the bullet, or both, we should work toward the liberation of all people and consign Eurocentric rubbish like the Monroe Doctrine to the dustbin of history.