Showing posts with label Charles Andrews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Andrews. Show all posts

Thursday, February 15, 2024

China’s Stock Market: A Lesson on What Socialism Is Not

By Charles Andrews*

Late in January, the Chinese government arranged for its state-owned companies to put as much as $282 billion into the falling stock market. The companies were told to buy via Hong Kong accounts.

The government is desperate to halt a big slide in the Shanghai Composite Index, which had fallen nearly to its March 2020 low point at the start of the COVID pandemic.

Why does a “socialist” economy have a stock market?

Sunday, November 5, 2023

Joti Brar’s Tantrum About the Imperialist Pyramid

The Institute for the Critical Study of Society (ICSS) has announced its video session for Nov. 5, 2023. Joti Brar will speak on “The Theory of the Imperialist Pyramid.” Fortunately, she has written an article on the same topic.

The ICSS’s advance announcement coyly identifies Brar as a member of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform. That she is. She is also a vice chair of the CPGB M-L and daughter of Harpal Brar, a founder of the group (be sure to include the “G” for Great Britain in order to avoid mistaking it for the CPB M-L).

Monday, October 16, 2023

Who Understands Civilization — Xi's CPC or Working People?

 By Charles Andrews*

Xi Jinping, chairman of the Communist Party of China (CPC), asks, “Without the 5,000-year-long Chinese civilization, how could we have Chinese characteristics?"(i

When Donald Trump visited Beijing in 2017, Xi told him, “The only continuous civilization to continue onwards is China.”(ii)

Saturday, April 8, 2023

Material Forces that Turn Socialism into Capitalism

Nikita Khrushchev and Deng Xiaoping.
By Charles Andrews.

The Soviet Union and China proved that people can build socialism. They also showed that apparently firm socialist countries can fall to capitalism – from within and from the top of the communist party.

Should we give up on socialism, or shall we solve a problem: how do we keep on the communist road to a society of no rich and no poor, securing common prosperity for everyone, and with full development of our humanity in work?

Saturday, October 22, 2022

Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and Xi Jinping's Report to 20th Congress

Facts count more than words. Xi Jinping says, "China respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries." A couple of days later, the Chinese Consul General in Manchester stepped onto UK territory outside the consulate gate. He grabbed a demonstrator from a noisy but peaceful rally, dragged him into the consulate compound, and had his staff beat the man up.

However, for those persons still wedded to evaluating the PRC by its words, let us look at how Xi Jinping's report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) uses "Marxism" and "Marxism-Leninism." His 25,000-word speech contains exactly one mention of Lenin or Leninism:

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Socialism Is a Series of Communist Projects

By Charles Andrews*.

In the 1950s many workers had steady jobs with a health plan, sick leave, and annual paid vacation. They could afford to buy a home, which in parts of the country had mortgage payments as low as rent. It was a dramatic change from the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

What did tomorrow hold? The outlook was vague but good. Neither the capitalist class, its government officials, nor church leaders offered a definite vision of the future. Very few people sought out the left.

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Want Democracy? Then You Need a People's Dictatorship

 By Charles Andrews.

A mob was permitted, even helped, to take over the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021. No government can allow that sort of thing and survive.

Officials and public figures ranging from social-democrats like Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez through a broad range of conventional politicians and even continuing into the right wing condemned the action as a threat to democracy.

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Not Populism, Not Socialism, but Communism Will Get It Done

By Charles Andrews.

The ruling classes of developed countries get a lot of pushback these days from the masses they hold in contempt. The voters whom U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton insulted as “deplorables” went and put Donald Trump in the Oval office in 2016, daring to elect someone who was not a vetted ruler of capitalism. Then his near opposite, self-identified socialist Bernie Sanders, came back stronger than ever for the 2020 presidential primaries. Socialism has become a recognized political stance that cannot be red-baited off the stage.