GenZedong

The Communist and Workers’ Parties, which co-sign this Joint Statement, would like also in this way to honour a great revolutionary and theorist of scientific socialism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, as 22 April marks the 155th anniversary of his birth.

The imperialist war that is shedding the blood of the peoples of Ukraine and Russia, has been going on for more than three years, while the trade and economic wars and the militarization of the capitalist economies are intensifying. These are signs that show the anti-social and parasitic nature of the capitalist system, in the face of the new crisis —the burdens of which are again being shifted on the shoulders of the workers—, the aggressive nature of capitalism and the escalation of imperialist competition, which pose new dangers to peace and the peoples. Especially in the present conditions, we feel even more the need to refer to the historical physiognomy of V.I. Lenin. A personality that dedicated his life to the cause of the working class and other popular strata, to the struggle for the abolition of exploitation and the construction of the socialist society.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the founder of the contemporary working-class party, the “party of a new type”, which was firmly separated from the opportunism and apostasy of the old social-democratic parties. Such was the Bolshevik Party, which was at the forefront of the class struggle of the proletariat and the other oppressed strata of Russia. Lenin’s party, depending on the circumstances, used all forms of struggle, did not succumb to bans and persecutions, did not lose its ideological–political independence, and thus led Russia’s working class to victory by overthrowing the exploiting classes and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers’ and peasants’ government, in the service of the interests of the many, the exploited and the oppressed. The above is also very important today as we see a number of bourgeois regimes banning CPs, putting obstacles to their activities and even setting up fake CPs. Their anti-communist actions will fail! V.I. Lenin defined and substantiated the leading role of the Communist Party, not only in establishing workers’ power but also in constructing socialism.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the theorist who, taking into account the particular reality, further developed the constituent parts of Marxism, i.e. philosophy, political economy and scientific communism. As an opponent of any opportunistic and revisionist distortion of revolutionary theory and practice, dogmatism and parliamentary illusions, without denying the intervention through the parliament.

His works, such as “What the friends of the people are and how they fight the Social-Democrats”, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia”, “What Is to Be Done”, “Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution”, “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism”, “Marxism and Revisionism”, “The Collapse of the Second International”, “Socialism and War”, “On the Slogan for the United States of Europe”, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, “The State and Revolution”, “The April Theses”, “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government”, and “The Great Initiative” are milestones in the propagation and development of Marxism and revolutionary struggle. Lenin's valuable theoretical work is still timely and serves as a beacon for the ideological-political education and action of every new generation of revolutionaries.

Of immense importance today is the Leninist approach and analysis of imperialism and its characteristics, as highlighted in Lenin’s work on capitalism in its highest and final stage, where monopolies dominate. The Leninist work, which is particularly useful at a time when the rivalry between the USA and China for supremacy in the international capitalist system is intensifying, contrasts with the identification of imperialism only with an aggressive foreign policy or only with a few powerful capitalist countries, a view that has been promoted over time by the forces of opportunism.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the leader of the Great October Socialist Revolution, which about a century ago shook the world. The victorious revolution illuminated the power of the class struggle, the power of the exploited and the oppressed -when they take the case of their interests into their own hands and turn the wheel of history forward- in the direction of social liberation. The October flame led and accelerated the establishment of a number of Communist and revolutionary Workers' parties.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the leader of the world's first socialist state, which for the first time established workers’ power based on new revolutionary institutions, such as the Soviets, sought the economic functioning of society on a new basis, the basis of the satisfaction of contemporary people’s needs and the multi-faceted free development of all people, not the profitability of the few. The USSR, the first socialist state in the world, which was realized with the special contribution of V.I. Lenin, brought to the fore new unprecedented economic, social, political, and cultural achievements for the working class and the wider popular strata that had a profound effect on historical progressive developments around the world by implementing the socialization of the means of production, central planning and workers’ control. It was the USSR, the Red Army and the people, the partisan movements led by the communists, that defeated fascism, which capitalism gave rise to. We will commemorate the 80th anniversary of this Victory this year, rejecting the desire of the bourgeois powers that fought and are fighting against socialism, to usurp it. The USSR was a mainstay for the peoples in the struggle for socialism and peace, stressing that these are intertwined. No “multipolar world”, no new “world architecture” can guarantee peace and security for the peoples, despite the declarations of the bourgeois powers, which the opportunists reproduce. The solution lies in intensifying the class struggle for disengagement from the imperialist unions, such as NATO, the EU and others, against imperialist war and the “matrix” that gives birth to it, i.e. the capitalist system.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the great internationalist, the leader who raised the flag of proletarian internationalism against the treacherous attitude of the Second International during the imperialist World War I, opposed bourgeois nationalism and other bourgeois views such as the cosmopolitanism of the capital, and led the establishment of the Third Communist International, which made a major contribution to the international labor and communist movement and today is a basic source for drawing useful lessons from the experience it accumulated through its action. Lenin’s positions on colonialism led the Communists to understand the issue of colonies and inspired them to lead the anti-colonial struggles, both in colonial countries and colonies.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the tireless and consistent opponent of the imperialist war, the defender of peoples’ struggle for national and social liberation, social justice, peace, and socialism.

The counter-revolution and capitalist restoration cannot conceal the achievements of Socialism. The disasters and injustice we are experiencing, the acute problems and the suffering of the working class, the urban self-employed, the farmers and the peoples overall caused by capitalist exploitation and oppression, emphasize the necessity and timeliness of socialism all over the world.

The Communist and Workers’ Parties denounce the wave of silence as well as the reactionary and anti-communist distortion that has been unleashed around the world by the political forces that serve the interests of the capital against V.I. Lenin to the workers and the youth. In particular, we condemn the attempt of the bourgeois classes of Ukraine, Russia and other countries that emerged from the dissolution of the USSR to demonize Lenin. We struggle for the continuation of his work, we are committed to continue defending and propagating his legacy and we call on the workers and the people to learn from it.

SolidNet Parties

1. Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PADS)
2. Party of Labour of Austria
3. Communist Party of El Salvador
4. Communist Party of Greece
5. orkers Party of Ireland
6. Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan
7. Communist Party of Mexico
8. New Communist Party of the Netherlands
9. Communist Party of Pakistan
10. Palestinian Communist Party
11. Philippines Communist Party [PKP 1930]
12. New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
13. Communist Party of the Soviet Union
14. Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
15. Communist Party of Sweden
16. Swiss Communist Party
17. Syrian Communist Party
18. Communist Party of Turkey
19. Union of Communists of Ukraine
20. Communist Party of Venezuela

Other Parties

1. Argentinian Communist Party
2. Revolutionary Brazilian Communist Party
3. Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism (Finland)
4. Communist Party (Germany)
5. Communist Revolutionary Party of France
6. Revolutionary Communist Party - Communists (France)
7. Communist Front (Italy)
8. Communist Workers' Platform USA

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7598110

I was listening to a podcast and the guy was making a point that the Jedi were just like the janissaries of the Ottoman empire because they "stole children" and I just... got so annoyed that I couldn't listen to it anymore, even though I kinda wanted to due to the other host.

I know where the argument about the Jedi comes from, which comes from the days of the old EU and Karen Traviss and all that stuff, but I just sort-of had a flash of anger. It's just a pop culture franchise, right? It's literally just a story. Hell, The Acolyte was pretty rough on the Jedi's portrayal and I enjoyed it.

Anyway, I just found it pretty dumb, but for some reason, I found that I couldn't continue. It's like I had a mental block.

I paused for a moment but then the Spotify episode remained paused.

I wasn't even that angry, but I... just found myself not interested in this spiel even though I'm normally interested in the podcast.

It just makes me feel so... Idk, silly? Thin-skinned?

To be fair, there were a few things in the podcast that annoyed me; they berated a person that asked a question in good faith, or so it seemed, and they never seemed to challenge each other all that much.

I don't even like the Jedi that much! By the Clone Wars era, they had clearly grown dodgy and conservative. Mind you, Anakin Skywalker is or was an abuser who killed Indigenous Tuskens, but, well, you know, some of the rules and how they were implemented in the Jedi Order probably didn't help his mental state either, though that's probably more the Council's doing.

Anyway, I don't know what came over me and why my anger "paralyzes" me sometimes. I haven't watched it in a few weeks but might again. But I feel somewhat ashamed because it seemed so, err, small.

" When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871, I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down once more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte--And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel so the change is in me--in my vision of the evidences.

People pretend that the Bible means the same to them at 50 that it did at all former milestones in their journey. I wonder how they can lie so. It comes of practice, no doubt. They would not say that of Dickens's or Scott's books. Nothing remains the same. When a man goes back to look at the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination call for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't altered; this is the first time it has been in focus."

-In a letter to William Dean Howells

I haven't seen anybody mentioning this, the only sources I could find related to it are religious and/or anticommunist sources.

So, Romzha was a Catholic priest in the USSR. After World War II, the Russian Orthodox Church wanted the Greek Catholic Church in the USSR to merge with them, but Romzha refused this, and he was reportedly threatened by Soviet officials.

In the end, Nikita Khrushchev ordered the NKVD to assassinate him. This resulted in him getting rammed by a military truck before being sent to the hospital and killed via lethal injection. He would later be called a martyr.

Is there any Marxist-Leninist source on this?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7579524

What do you all think of this?

Video is only 6 minutes and 44 seconds long.

Project is called "Mouseless" and seems to be a keyboard mod.

I'm not quite sure what to think of this yet. A few months back I remember there was talk about a marxist winning an election in Sri Lanka, but now it looks like things are a lot more complicated than I'd thought. What do we think about this?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7572635

I should consider this...

I wonder if Virginia has anything like this.

It's useful to understand how it'll work in practice beyond all the rhetoric and demagogy.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7551653

Body-wise, I was feeling weird when I had a sudden burst of energy and "heart flutters" and that may already be the answer to my question as to what was ailing me or what I felt physically "bad."

Thing is, I couldn't tell you otherwise what was bad and why my mood dropped when my energy rose.

It may be that, when I get energy, I feel angst or anguish over realizing the state of things as my mind becomes clear or perhaps I'm feeling my own body or lack of depersonalization for the first time (it's happened multiple times but you know what I mean).

I don't want to be unscientific so I thought I'd ask others here with the hopes that someone will have the valid answer (of course, I'm using Google or Bing so it's not like I'm just relying on the opinion of random people, though maybe the search results aren't that good either).

Donald Trump's trade war went nuclear, hitting China with 145% tariffs, aimed at economic decoupling. This is already backfiring on the US economy, which is heavily reliant on Chinese imports. The volatility also fueled a crisis in the bond market, with Treasury yields rising. Ben Norton explains.

Poland sure is a place.

~~they could've just hired Daniel Craig and shaved his hair, no need for deepfakes~~

We should all participate.

And in addition to what the above post explains, there is the fact that China is simply structurally NOT designed the way that western financialized economies are:

The United States consumes what others build.

China builds what others need.

In a conflict over trade, finance, and supply chains—Only one system can scale production, redirect flows, and absorb pain.

This isn’t a war China fears. It’s one it calculated.

The U.S. economy rests on financial rent and military coercion.

Its power depends on maintaining monopoly control over flows it no longer produces: – Software it licenses – Patents it enforces – Currency it prints

The U.S. outsourced labor, privatized infrastructure, and handed capital the steering wheel.

China retained state control and made production the spine of its development strategy.

It now produces more manufactured goods than the U.S., Japan, and Germany combined—because it never surrendered the means to do so.

The U.S. economy is dominated by the FIRE sector—Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate—which makes up over 20% of U.S. GDP (doubling the manufacturing share), yet produces no tangible goods.

Credit flows to speculation: asset inflation, buybacks, and debt servicing—not production.

The U.S. Federal Reserve defends asset prices, not industrial stability. China’s financial system is subordinated to national goals.

Over 70% of banking assets are state-controlled.

China’s “Big Four” banks are among the largest in the world—funding infrastructure, manufacturing, and tech development.

State-owned enterprises control over 40% of China’s industrial assets, directing capital into strategic sectors: energy, telecom, transport, and heavy industry.

One system is ruled by finance.

The other commands finance to serve production and sovereignty.

This isn’t just a clash of policies—it’s a clash of economic systems.

The U.S. economy is structurally driven by short-term profit and private capital. Results: – Core industries outsourced – Infrastructure neglected – Annual trade deficits over $1 trillion, financed via money printing and debt – More GDP from fictitious assets and paper than goods

China’s economy is built under long-term state direction: – Investment flows to infrastructure, industry, and technology—before demand exists – National priorities guide capital, not stock prices – Projects are judged by strategic impact, not quarterly returns – Economic planning spans decades, not election cycles

Where one system waits for the market to justify action, the other builds the foundation first—then scales everything around it.

Only one of these models is structurally equipped for a prolonged struggle.

In response to sanctions, embargoes, and global instability, China did not beg for reintegration. It reorganized.

Xi Jinping's Dual Circulation policy, launched in 2020, formalized this pivot:

– Internal circulation builds a self-sustaining cycle of production, consumption, and tech upgrading – External circulation reroutes trade and investment toward non-hostile, dollar-optional partners

In 2023: – Roughly 60% of GDP growth came from domestic demand – Manufacturing investment rose 8.5%, led by semiconductors and green tech – Yuan-based trade settlements increased 35% YoY – Most export growth went to BRICS+, ASEAN, and RCEP

This was not isolation.

It was systemic insulation—a deliberate firewall against imperial leverage.

Structural insulation requires monetary sovereignty—not symbolic, but operational.

China is dismantling the architecture of dollar dominance not through confrontation, but through replacement: a parallel financial system rooted in state control, commodity trade, and productive alignment.

– The People’s Bank of China has signed currency swap agreements with 40+ central banks, allowing trade to bypass the dollar – CIPS, China’s alternative to SWIFT, cleared over ¥100 trillion in 2023 across 65+ countries – Yuan-denominated oil contracts in Shanghai now cover nearly 10% of global Brent trade – The digital yuan has processed ¥1.8 trillion, designed for cross-border use under sanction conditions

As Xi Jinping stated, “Financial security is an important part of national security.”

China’s response is not reactive.

It is systemic: an architecture built to protect development from the empire of debt.

Monetary sovereignty alone is insufficient.

If the core technologies remain foreign-controlled, so does the future.

The West does not defend innovation—it defends monopoly. – Intellectual property functions as a rent extraction regime – Licensing locks in dependency – Export bans are not regulation—they are containment tools

China’s answer is structural: – ¥1.3 trillion ($180B+) invested in semiconductor autonomy since 2020 – Huawei’s in-house 5G phones broke U.S. containment in 2023 – SMIC has reached 7nm fabrication under sanctions – Beidou satellite system fully replaces GPS in national infrastructure – AI, quantum, and biotech are now embedded in state-directed research pipelines

You cannot build a sovereign economy on rented code, outsourced fabrication, and foreign-controlled patents.

China understood this—and began severing the licensing leash.

China is not merely defending itself from economic warfare.

It has built the capacity to escalate—quietly, structurally, and at scale.

– IP enforcement is discretionary—China can revoke recognition of U.S. patents and copyrights, undermining entire rentier sectors

• Effective monopoly over rare earth production – U.S. tech firms subject to exclusion from procurement and regulatory access – Divestment from U.S. treasuries is gradual, but real

And beneath the surface:

– China’s undeclared gold reserves are estimated by some analysts at 5,000–8,000 tons, well beyond the official figure – A gold-backed yuan or BRICS trade currency would not need global adoption—just bilateral trust from major energy and commodity exporters – A formal declaration would trigger capital flight from dollar assets, upward pressure on gold, and questions about U.S. solvency in real terms

The U.S. depends on threats and spectacle.

China leverages material chokepoints and policy discretion.

Escalation does not need to be loud to be effective.

It only needs to be unanswerable.

What gives China the advantage in a prolonged economic conflict isn’t just its resources.

It’s the structure of its political economy—shaped by revolution, consolidated by planning, and never fully surrendered to private capital.

– Land is publicly owned. There is no rentier landlord class extracting rent from the productive sector. – The banking system is majority state-owned – The state holds commanding positions in energy, transport, telecoms, and heavy industry.

• Billionaires are allowed but not in command. When they move against the national plan, they are removed—legally, administratively, or, when necessary, terminally.

Capital is permitted to operate. It is not permitted to rule.

This system reflects a historical break from Western capitalist development.

This is not simply a policy difference.

It is a different historical resolution to the question of who governs the economy.

In this economic war, the system that still commands its own foundations holds the strategic high ground

https://xcancel.com/upholdreality/status/1910042585776980026

yea