Liberation Audio

The contemporary political economy of the People’s Republic of China, the nature of the Chinese system, has been the subject of much discussion and debate in mainstream academic, media, and political circles, as well as on the left. Since the end of the 1970s, China has pursued policies of “reform and opening” to develop its economy, a process that has resulted in the massive growth of production,...

The Biden administration, Pentagon and NATO allies are conducting a dangerous and reckless campaign against Russia — one that has the potential to turn into a catastrophe for the people of the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the world. The aim is to strengthen the U.S. position as the dominant world superpower, a thoroughly bipartisan goal. In recent months, Russia has been the object of intens...

Workers across the country are wondering with increasing desperation: Will the COVID crisis ever end? Two years after the first case of the virus was detected, society is becoming increasingly, bitterly divided over how to address this crucial question. All the while the death toll continues to mount. The situation is not hopeless. Although right wing demagogues have slowed the vaccination process...

Editorial Collective Note: This is a new introduction to alienation that replaces our earlier introduction written in 2006. It’s part of our renovation and expansion of our “Fundamentals of Marxism” series and other articles on Marxist theory and the class struggle. Offering a brief introduction to Marx’s theory of alienation is not a straightforward task. This is due, in part, to conflicting inte...

As the Omicron variant causes record levels of infection in the United States, the end of the pandemic seems as far away as ever. But far from preparing a robust response to defeat the virus, the Biden administration is preparing to surrender and encourage the public to “learn to live with” COVID indefinitely. When the Party for Socialism and Liberation pointed out the fact that China has in fact...

Environmentalists have long stressed limits to human interaction with nature. It’s commonly argued that transgressing “natural limits” caused the environmental crises we face today. While this sentiment might direct our attention to the severity and scale of destabilizing contradictions in our relationship with nature, its underlying analysis is unable to grasp and overcome the root cause of these...

El Partido por el Socialismo y la Liberación se une a millones de personas en todo el país para expresar nuestra completa indignación por la absolución de Kyle Rittenhouse de todos los cargos. Una vez más, el sistema judicial de Estados Unidos ha funcionado para proteger a un asesino racista, que salió a las calles de Kenosha el 25 de agosto de 2020 para hacerle guerra a la gente que protestaba po...

Después de pasar semanas llevando a cabo negociaciones en la trastienda con el senador Joe Manchin, la senadora Krysten Sinema y otros demócratas de derechas en el Congreso sobre el presupuesto del programa social, el gobierno de Biden anunció ayer un “marco” que abandona algunos de los elementos más importantes de la propuesta original. Como parte de la capitulación de la administración ante los...

The Russian revolution marked the beginning of a new period in human history. It was the first time that the oppressed were able to come to power – to take power and hold onto power. It truly had a transforming effect on the world. In this part of this series, we will lay the basis for later discussing what was to become the most famous split in political history: what is known as the Trotsky-Stal...

The Party for Socialism and Liberation joins with millions of people across the country in expressing our complete outrage at the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges. Once again, the U.S. court system has functioned to protect a racist murderer, who went out into the streets of Kenosha on August 25, 2020 to wage war on people protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Bl...

The capitalist class and its well-paid intellectuals and pundits continue to argue that the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 means that socialism and communism are impossible. A stereotyped and negative image of the Soviet Union and socialism has been relentlessly fed to the people of the United States ever since the Russian Revolution, which took place in 1917. It is extremely rare for the establ...

In the suffering of the Global South, the brutality of capitalism lies bare. In a footnote toward the end of Capital, Marx wrote that the colonized subject reveals “what the bourgeois makes of itself and of the labourer, wherever it can, without restraint, model the world after its own image”. The forms of primary accumulation he articulates there were in their most naked form in the colonies. Con...

The Bolsheviks were relatively weak in the countryside among the peasantry. They had always been in the cities; they spent most of their existence underground and going out into the country had been hard for them. They were mainly a workers’ party, but the peasants made up a huge majority of the population. The SRs (Socialist Revolutionaries) were the main party in the countryside. The relationshi...

On April 3, 1917, Lenin, Zinoviev and other leaders arrived in a sealed car on a train. The German government allowed them to return to Russia across Germany and through German-held territory because it hoped that they would take Russia out of the war and relieve the pressure on Germany – that was explicitly the German government’s reason. E. H. Carr, an English historian wrote a tremendous 14-vol...

The Russian Revolution is a vast subject. An exhaustive analysis of it is beyond the scope of this writing. But below, some of the key points will be highlighted. The Russian Revolution took place in the background of World War I, a war between imperialist powers over control of territories and colonies. The war caused a split in the international socialist movement. Right up to the outbreak of th...

As the Party for Socialism and Liberation, we condemn in the harshest terms the brutal military coup that took place on October 25 in Sudan and the subsequent repression and arrests by the Sudanese military forces. We stand in full solidarity with the people of Sudan and the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) in their resistance against the coup. We fully support the call by the SCP and the Sudanese P...

Three years before the 1969 Stonewall Uprising that galvanized a generation of LGBTQ activists, and more than a decade before Harvey Milk led the fight against the Briggs Initiative as San Francisco’s first gay city supervisor, a group of trans women and drag queens revolted against bigoted police violence in San Francisco’s heavily oppressed Tenderloin district. These courageous fighters turned t...

Toward the end of our earlier introduction to surplus value, the heart and motor of the class struggle, we wrote that: “The rate of surplus value for the capitalist is the rate of exploitation for the worker. By merely prolonging the working day, the capitalist accrues more (absolute) surplus value. Increasing the working day from eight to 10 hours results in two more hours of surplus value for th...

As this statement was being prepared, a Texas state judge issued a stay temporarily blocking an anti-abortion group from enforcing SB 8 against Planned Parenthood, giving some relief to health care providers and abortion rights advocates. The Supreme Court put its stamp of approval on the Texas Senate Bill 8 and demonstrated its unwillingness to protect the rights of women late Wednesday evening w...

In the battle against COVID-19, Cuba has been a country of firsts. It is the only country in all Latin America to produce its own vaccines. Cuba has sent more than 5,000 doctors to help treat COVID patients in 57 brigades to 40 countries around the world since the pandemic began. No other country has come close. Now, in a major new development, babies and children two years old and up will be mass...

How the U.S. destroyed Afghanistan Past and present U.S. officials are blaming each other for their defeat in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the corporate media are portraying the brutal 20-year occupation as a humanitarian mission, an attempt to modernize the country. Learn why the Taliban are themselves the direct result of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and why this is a failed imperialist project....

All revolutionary processes are educational. From organizing meetings and study groups to writing protest speeches and propaganda before the revolutionary moment to creating new revolutionary educational and cultural institutions and training teachers and specialists after the seizure of power, revolution is educational through and through. Yet exactly what kind of educational operations does revo...

The planet is experiencing multiple environmental crises: biodiversity loss, deforestation, increased rates of pandemics, chemical pollution, soil depletion, water contamination and shortages, runaway non-renewable energy consumption, and climate change. “Degrowth” is an environmental ideology that arose as a political response to these compounding crises. Degrowth was originally termed by André G...

The U.S. war in Afghanistan began not 20, but more than 40 years ago. Except for the towering arrogance of the leaders in Washington, it could have ended in November 2001 when the Taliban offered to surrender. The earlier phase, which lasted from 1979 to 1989, is excluded from nearly any mention by the mainstream capitalist media today. But without understanding what happened back then, it is impo...

Originally posted on RedsInEd.org At the instigation of deep-pocketed conservatives, nine states have adopted bans on Critical Race Theory education, and similar bills are being considered in 26 others. While the language in these bills is often vague, the intent is clear: to silence a truthful presentation of the role of racism in U.S. history and institutions. But teachers are fighting back thro...