Liberation Audio

Marxist ideology is one of the most potent weapons the working and oppressed classes have, a weapon that our class can and has used to not only win reforms but to build revolutionary societies where the people, and not profits, are in control. As the PSL identified at our 3rd Party Congress in 2016, one of our primary tasks is to mend the “break in ideological continuity” that emerged after the ov...

The full story of the struggle to end chattel slavery in the U.S. has yet to be fully told. History books have always minimized the struggle of enslaved people, who from the beginning in 1619 in North America, fought slavery at every turn, rebelling, escaping, fighting for the right to fight. Some 180,000 enlisted in the Union army and suffered among the highest casualties in a war where high casu...

July 26 marked the 68th anniversary of the dawn raid on the Moncada Barracks led by Fidel Castro that sparked the revolutionary movement that would triumph six years later in 1959. Due to COVID-19, mass demonstrations were canceled but the celebrations of the National Day of Rebellion continued nonetheless. Cuban leaders and youth performed voluntary work in the countryside, as a part of a traditi...

“In contradistinction to German fascism, which acts under anti-constitutional slogans, American fascism tries to portray itself as the custodian of the constitution and ‘American democracy.’” – Georgi Dimitrov Six months ago, on January 6, 2021, a racist mob, incited by outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol in a chaotic attempt to prevent the congressional certification of...

“Hammer and Hoe,” a 1990 book written by historian Robin D.G. Kelley, chronicles the development of a communist movement in Alabama during the Great Depression. It highlights the struggles communists faced in organizing a sharecroppers’ union and building mass campaigns to free people accused of crimes in political frame-ups like the Scottsboro Boys. Kelley emphasizes how communism was able to syn...

Editor’s note: The following article was written by Walter Rodney for a 1971 issue of Maji Maji, the quarterly journal of the youth wing of the Tanganyika African National Union. The speech is held at the Robert W. Woodruff Library in Atlanta, Georgia, under the supervision of the Walter Rodney Foundation. The text here is from History is a Weapon with a few additional copyedits. To most readers i...

Ask any teacher in any setting, and they’ll tell you there’s no “formula” or “recipe” for education. Despite what corporate charter movements assert—like Teach for America’s “I do, you do, we do” rote learning—teaching is always dependent on relationships, trust, respect, and a host of other elements—and all of these can change day to day. Teaching on a Monday after a big fight broke out at a week...

The economic reality of the United States today is one of vast inequality in wealth and living standards. At present, 31.1 million households do not have enough food to eat in an average year. Housing within the means of average Americans is increasingly scarce, forcing people, including families, to live on the streets. Even for those who are insured, medical care involves ever-increasing costs f...

This article is the third in a series of articles on the situation in Cuba recently written by Manolo De Los Santos and Vijay Prashad. On July 22, US President Joe Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris released a “fact sheet” on US “measures” against Cuba. The release from the White House said that Cuba was a “top priority for the Biden-Harris administration.” On March 9, Biden’s Press Secret...

To the surprise of many, the Republic of Cuba finished the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games with 15 medals. Their seven gold, three silver and five bronze medals place them 14th in the world. This is remarkable given the impact of the U.S.-imposed blockade and the size of Cuba’s population. Of the countries that won more medals than Cuba, only New Zealand has a smaller population. Cuba ranked second in...

In this presentation, a PSL member outlines the Party's position on the upcoming Governor recall election in California. We explain why we should vote against this undemocratic right-wing power grab, expound on the reactionary policies of frontrunner Larry Elder, and why voting NO on the recall is better for the working class, even though we do not support Gavin Newsom or his policies. Read a part...

The unopposed entrance of Taliban forces into Kabul marks the bitter conclusion of a 20-year year military adventure by U.S. imperialism that senselessly inflicted death and suffering on an enormous scale. The fact that the U.S.-backed Afghan government surrendered without a fight is the clearest indication that it was nothing more than an extension of U.S. imperialist power. The stark reality sho...

Approximately 400 years ago, in August 1619, enslaved Africans touched foot in the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States for the first time. The centuries since have seen the development of a racial system more violent, extractive, and deeply entrenched than any other in human history. Yet where there is oppression, there is also resistance. Since 1619, Black radicals...

Editor's note: Central to our ideology is the idea that in order to understand and prepare for the class struggle in the U.S. we must first take the global situation into account, understanding that the interconnectedness of global and national politics is primary and dialectical, constantly changing and bursting with contradictions. In this document we assert this thesis and undertake an examinat...

Our first class starts by examining various definitions of fascism in order to foreground how it has functioned historically as a concept-in-class-struggle, while also emphasizing the importance of a dialectical approach. This will allow us to situate fascism within the deep history of capitalism and its imperialist expansion. We then analyze how the Italian fascists and the Nazis rose to power wi...

Our final class is an opportunity to synthesize the wide-ranging themes addressed, with a particular focus on the current state of U.S. politics and the global fight against fascism. We consider what lessons organizers can learn from the history of communist struggles against fascism, both within the U.S. and internationally. We also examine the contemporary moment, and in particular the election...

For this class, we focus specifically on the relationship between fascism and the U.S.’s racist police state. How has fascism functioned in the U.S., and how has the Empire contributed to its growth internationally? What were the forces operative behind the so-called Business Plot in 1934, a planned fascist seizure of state power, and what light does this shed on the present moment? What lessons c...

This class looks at some of the important communist responses to fascism and explores how communists have organized on the ground to fight and win against fascists. We begin with interwar Europe and international debates in communist party organizing but also discuss how Marxist-Leninists like the Black Panther Party understood fascism in the U.S. This provides us with some useful perspectives on...

The United States, a country with a $20 trillion economy, is waging a full-scale economic war against an island whose economy equals half of one percent of that — Cuba. The war has been going on for 60 years. It began shortly after the 1959 revolution to punish Cuba for taking control of corporations owned by rich capitalists in the United States who had brutally exploited the Cuban people for dec...

Cuba, like every other country on the planet, is struggling with the impact of COVID-19. This small island of 11 million people has created five vaccine candidates and sent its medical workers through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to heal people around the world. Meanwhile, the United States hardens a cruel and illegal blockade of the island, a medieval siege that has been in place...

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel spoke to the Cuban people today — Sunday, July 11 — at 4:00 p.m. Eastern, after going to the site of one of several protests that took place in Cuba today. This unprecedented series of events are the result of the growing difficulties the people are experiencing by the double blow created by the increasingly severe U.S. blockade and the effects of the COVID-19 pan...

The Party for Socialism and Liberation stands in full solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, its government and people in the struggle against the latest sinister counter-revolutionary efforts of U.S. imperialism. The sixty year old blockade and hundreds of sanctions imposed under the Trump Administration have caused grave shortages of food, medicines, electricity and other necessities of life. The...

The notion that the rich are rich because they’re frugal, smart, entrepreneurial, and hardworking, and that the poor are poor because they’re wasteful, lazy, stupid, and irresponsible is widespread. This is the ideology of meritocracy: that success or failure in life is up to the individual’s choices. The ideology takes on different forms, such as the idea that Black liberation is achieved through...

Gentrification is the systematic process of displacing poor people from a community and replacing them with more affluent people, all in the interest of profit. It has become a primary local policy of the representatives of the ruling class and is clearly carried out by the state. While it is clearly a policy, it is also an outcome of the capitalist approach to housing and development. Profit is k...

In the early hours of July 7, Haitian president-turned-dictator Jovenel Moïse was assassinated at his home in Port-au-Prince. While many details of the assassination remain unclear, the political vacuum in Haiti will likely result in a fierce struggle over the direction of the nation in the coming weeks. The Biden administration’s initial reactions to the assassination disturbingly indicate that t...