Poumatica

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“Stalin proclaims the happiness of the people, distributes decorations, photographs, watches, with both hands and has his picture taken kissing little girls of all the old races of Asia….The widows of dead aviators thank him, the entire press is nothing but praises for the “beloved leader”, “the wisest and greatest of all ages”…Everything revolves around the new Imperator cult. And never will the paean of praise attain a higher pitch of exaltation than the day after the leader has massacred his oldest comrades in struggle, the men who had worked with Lenin.” (’From Lenin To Stalin’, Monad Press, New York,1973, p.82. Via Des Derwin)

The past in the present

*Paul Mason: Interviewing Karl Marx on the economic crisis.

*Orwell’s Indian birthplace has been declared a protected site. (See here for background.)

*Christopher Hitchens: A nice cup of tea. (See also Freemania: “Tea, like modesty, irony and imperialism, is something that we Brits understand far better than Americans do (indeed, we have our imperialism to thank for our tea expertise). Perhaps the USA would benefit from the establishment of a Campaign for Real Tea, to promote this simple, vital but apparently not self-evident truth.”)

*Victor Serge: Tunisia, A Restless Winter Walk. Beautiful.

*CLR James: Haiti: The Black Jacobins

*David Rosenberg: ‘The Battle of Cable Street’ – 75 years on

*Louis Proyect: Rethinking the question of a revolutionary program (love the photo illustrating the post)

*Carl Packman: Internal bickering versus “whistling in the dark” (citing Paul Mattick); The Independent Labour Party and the scourge of left wing politics; A reply to Jim Jepps.

*Paddington: We want our teachers back!

*Tony Pinkney: Masters of the universe: Paul Lafargue on the present banksters’ crisis.

*Luisa Passerini, Lance Thurner: Memory, history, and activism on the Mexican border:

*Andrew Stone: the state of history teaching in British schools today in the latest issue of International Socialism journal. [H/t Snowball]

*The Resolute Reader: Karl Kautsky’s The Agrarian Question

*Owen Hatherley; Why have you come to Murmansk?

*American Leftist: Anarchism in the city; Serge’s Unforgiving years.

*Sasha Abramsky: A house of books (on Chimen Abramsky)

*David Osler: The right to sell socialist newspapers (“have no time for the RCG’s peculiar brand of nutty semi-Stalinist third worldist ultraleftism. But this development will surely worry everybody who has ever stood outside a shopping centre or an industrial workplace trying to flog revolutionary socialist agitprop.”)

*River’s edge: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine an Armani stiletto, stamping on a human face, forever.”

*Kellie Strom: A stain on a wall: Erich Kastner in Tunisia.

*Jim Denham: Police spies in our midst.

*Histomatist: Journalists and Revolution: The Case of Arthur Ransome

From the archive of struggle

Mostly from the latest Entdinglichung dose:

* Raya Dunayewskaya: The Evolution of a Social Type (1953)
* Max Shachtman: The People’s Front. The New Panacea of Stalinism (1936)
* Tony Cliff: Mao and the Workers (1967)

* Isaak Dashkovskij: Letter to Sapronov (1929)
* Tom Bramble: War on the waterfront (1998)
* Albert Meltzer: I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels: Sixty Years of Commonplace Life and Anarchist Agitation (1995)

* Workers Liberty, Nr. 7, Juni 1987; Nr. 12/13, August 1989; Nr. 14, Juli 1990; Nr. 16, Februar 1992
* John McIlroy: The roots of Blairism (1995)
* Sean Matgamna: Ernest Mandel 1923-95 (1995)
* AWL: In memory of Jo Walker and David Hague (1995); The Orange Order and its Catholic counterparts (1995)

* Philipp Krantz: Geshikhe fun sotsyalizm : der amf far glaykhhay in di gezelshafen un melukhes fun ale un naye tsayen (1920)
* Socialist Party of America (SPA): Report by the Executive Committee, National Lettish [Latvian] Organization, SP to the National Convention (1912);  Report Submitted in Behalf of the Jewish Socialist Agitation Bureau to the Socialist Party(1912)

* Rosa Luxemburg: Order Prevails In Berlin (1919)

* Ramon Fernández Jurado: Walter Schwartz. Un hermano alemán nos ha dejado (1982)

*Albert Meltzer: Notes on anarchism (198?)

*George Orwell: Notes on nationalism (1945); Poetry and the microphone (1945); Antisemitism in Britain (1945)

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