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 massively vaccinated starting in 10 days. Cuba is the first country in the world to vaccinate babies and...
Sep 24, 2021•7 min
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. Why we need a revolutionary party In the U.S., we live in a system based on oppression and exploitat...
Sep 19, 2021•1 hr 26 min
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 revolution entail, and how can we understand and practice them? It is precisely these questions that Pau...
Sep 18, 2021•17 min
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 Gorz in 1972. Gorz argued that global environmental balance, which is predicated upon non-growth (or ...
Sep 14, 2021•22 min
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 impossible to comprehend the current catastrophic situation for the people of that country. Read the ful...
Sep 12, 2021•10 min
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 through their unions. What is Critical Race Theory? Critical Race Theory is a practice of asking questio...
Sep 09, 2021•10 min
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 overthrow of the Soviet Union by reestablishing “the theory of revolutionary Marxism and the entire vi...
Sep 07, 2021•31 min
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 casualty rates were considered proof of bravery. The role of white working-class people in the struggle ...
Aug 31, 2021•18 min
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 tradition that stretches back to the early days of the revolution. Voluntary work is part of a collective e...
Aug 31, 2021•8 min
“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 the 2020 presidential election results, a necessary step before the inauguration of Joe Biden. The ...
Aug 28, 2021•38 min
“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 synthesize with Southern Black culture. He sheds light on the unique homegrown resistance that granted ...
Aug 25, 2021•13 min
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 in this continent, starved of authentic information by the imperialist news agencies, the name of Geo...
Aug 24, 2021•14 min
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 weekend party is different than teaching on a Wednesday when things have settled down a bit. Teaching in...
Aug 23, 2021•34 min
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 for routine and critical care. This suffering is not evenly distributed among the working class. Almo...
Aug 22, 2021•15 min
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 Latin America behind Brazil, which has a population of 211 million compared to Cuba’s 11.33 million....
Aug 20, 2021•6 min
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 Secretary Jen Psaki said, “A Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.” O...
Aug 20, 2021•10 min
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 party statement here: https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-statement-on-california-recall-election/
Aug 17, 2021•19 min
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 showed itself: either the U.S. imperialist occupation that began 20 years ago would be sustained litera...
Aug 15, 2021•7 min
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 and revolutionaries have taken bold collective action in pursuit of their freedom, threatening the ...
Aug 13, 2021•15 min
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 examination of the global class struggle as it has ebbed and flowed from 1945 until the present. We look at ...
Aug 10, 2021•41 min
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 within the constitutional parameters of bourgeois democracy--by receiving abundant funding from big in...
Jul 29, 2021•1 hr 20 min
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 can we as organizers learn from projects like the CIA’s Operation Gladio, which established an intern...
Jul 25, 2021•1 hr 12 min
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 of Biden-Harris, as well as the persistence of Trumpism, in light of the historical relationship bet...
Jul 25, 2021•1 hr 23 min
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 various tactics, their relative successes and failures, and what this means for the present moment. ...
Jul 24, 2021•1 hr 5 min
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 decades. Supporters of the Cuban revolution call this economic war a blockade, not an “embargo” like th...
Jul 20, 2021•13 min
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 for six decades. In April 2020, seven United Nations special rapporteurs wrote an open letter to th...
Jul 14, 2021•9 min
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 pandemic. Despite being in control of infections for many months, cases have been growing in recent wee...
Jul 12, 2021•15 min
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 shortages have greatly exacerbated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the island. No working pe...
Jul 12, 2021•4 min
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 “Black buying power,” as Jared Ball’s recent book puts it. Whatever form it takes, this ideology se...
Jul 11, 2021•33 min
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 king. People’s livelihoods and well-being are not considerations. A serious socialist program for hou...
Jul 09, 2021•13 min
