William Z. Foster on Mao Zedong

(from William Z. Foster's History of the Three Internationals, 1955)

The Role of Mao Tse-tung

The great leader of the Chinese Revolution possesses many of the qualities of leadership that characterized Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. A man of resolution, initiative, and boundless energy, Mao is a brilliant theoretician, an exceptional organizer, and a very powerful leader of the masses in open struggle. These were the qualities that enabled this creative Marxist genius, in the face of prodigious difficulties, to lead the more than half a billion of the Chinese people to decisive victory.

Mao's theoretical work ranges over a vast scope. It sums up to an adaptation of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism to the specific conditions prevailing in China, a monumental task which he has done with profound skill and thoroughness. The basis of this work was a Marxist evaluation of the character, over the years, of the developing Chinese Revolution - his differentiation of the new-type bourgeois democratic revolution from the old type, and the establishment of its relationship to the socialist revolution, constitute major contributions to the general body of Marxist theory. Mao also paid close attention to the Marxist analysis of class forces in China and the relation to each other of democratic forces in united-front movements, his work in this respect being one of the classics of Communist political writing. Classical, too, are Mao's writings on military strategy and tactics, in the situation of a guerilla army gradually growing into a mass military force and carrying on the struggle in the face of a vastly stronger enemy. Splendid also is Mao's development theoretically of the leading role of the small Chinese proletariat especially in the midst of the vast sea of peasants. Another of Mao's many theoretical achievements was his skilled utilization of the three principles of Sun Yat Sen, which are widely popular among the masses, as part of the minimum program of the Communist Party, thus taking over the democratic traditions of the famous Chinese bourgeois revolutionist. Brilliant also were his innumerable polemics with every sort of deviator and enemy. Mao's theoretical work extended not only into the fields of economics, politics, and military strategy, but also into literature, and philosophy. His work On Contradiction is a comprehensive, profound and popular exposition of the Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge.

Mao is also a splendid mass organizer and administrator. He is not one merely to throw out broad slogans; he also knows how to go to the masses and organize them to realize these slogans. His works are filled with consideration of the most detailed questions of organizational work, in the building of the Communist Party, the people's army, the trade unions, and all other organizations of the people. And it is all written in the simplest of language. A classical example of this is his work On the Rectification of Incorrect Ideas in the Party, dealing with such errors as "the purely military viewpoint, extreme democratization, non-organizational viewpoint, absolute equalitarianism, subjectivism, adventurism, etc." Mao himself, born in 1893 of a poor peasant family in a village of Hunan, has had a hard life as a worker, soldier, student, and political leader. He is, indeed, a true son of the Chinese people, living their lives, knowing their thoughts and needs, and speaking their political language.

In the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, all of whom were fighters as well as great thinkers and organizers, Mao is also a superlatively good general, whether in the economic or political struggle or on the field of military battle. Along with Chu Teh and other leaders, Mao made the "Long March;" he was a noted guerilla fighter as well as tactician, and he took personal part in innumerable military campaigns. Mao's greatest political achievements have been in the sphere of direct leadership of vast masses of the people in different struggles against oppressors of every type.

When the Chinese people won the leadership of their country, there were very many elements in the capitalist world who said with final assurance: "Well, maybe it is not so bad after all; China is a vast, impossible chaos, and the Communists will break their necks trying to organize and govern it." But this was only wishful thinking, typical capitalist underestimation of the revolutionary abilities of the Chinese Communists, and especially of their great leader, Mao Tse-tung. Now such remarks are rarely heard. Already, the Chinese Communists, with Mao at their head, have clearly demonstrated that they can organize and lead forward their huge people. This adds just one more to the many "impossibilities" that they have accomplished in their epic struggle for freedom.

[I put this article up on the web for the first time, as far as I can tell. It has now been added to the William Z. Foster Archive at the MIA as well.]

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The Fourth of July: A Marxist-Leninist look at the Revolution of 1776

Since the 4th of July (Independence Day) is approaching, I thought I would post up the writings of two important communists from the United States, William Z. Foster and Harry Haywood, who have made major contributions to the application of Marxism-Leninism to proletarian revolution in the U.S. The conditions for the proletarian-socialist revolution were set, or at least set in motion to a considerable degree, by the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1776 and its sequal, the American Civil War and Reconstruction.

Here is what the Communist Party USA founder and leader William Z. Foster says about the U.S. American Revolution in his History of the Communist Party of the United States:

'The American Revolution of 1776, which Lenin called one of the "great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars," began the history of the modern capitalist United States. It was fought by a coalition of merchants, planters, small farmers, and white and Negro toilers. It was led chiefly by the merchant capitalists, with the democratic masses doing the decisive fighting. The Revolution, by establishing American national independence, shattered the restrictions placed upon the colonial productive forces by England; it freed the national market and opened the way for a speedy growth of trade and industry; it at least partially broke down the feudal system of tenure; and it brought limited political rights to the small farmers and also the workers, who were mostly artisans, but it did not destroy Negro chattel slavery. And for the embattled Indian peoples the Revolution produced only a still more vigorous effort to strip them of their lands and to destroy them.

'The Revolution also had far-reaching international reprecussions. It helped inspire the people of France to get rid of their feudal tyrants; it stimulated the peoples of Latin America to free themselves from the yoke of Spain and Portugal; and it was an energizing force in the world wherever the bourgeoisie, supported by the democratic masses, were fighting against feudalism. The Revolution was helped to success by the assistance given the rebelling colonies by France, Spain, and Holland, as well as by revolutionary struggles taking place currently in Ireland and England.

'The Revolution was fought under the broad generalizations of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, which called for national independence and freedom for all men. It declared the right of revolution and the dominance of the secular over the religious in government. But these principles meant very different things to the several classes that carried through the Revolution. To the merchants they signified their rise to dominant power and an unrestricted opportunity to exploit the rest of the population. To the planters they implied the continuation and extension of their slave system. To the farmers they meant free access to the broad public lands. To the workers they promised universal sufferage, more democratic liberties, and a greater share in the wealth of the new land. And to the oppressed Negroes they brought a new hope of freedom from the misery and sufferings of chattel bondage.

'The Constitution, as orginally formulated in 1787, and as adopted in the face of powerful opposition, constituted primarily the rules and relationships agreed upon by the ruling class for management of the society which they controlled. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments of the Constitution, providing for freedom of speech, press, and assembly, religous liberty, trial by jury, and other popular democratic liberties, was written into the Constitution in 1791 under heavy mass pressure.

'Great as were the accomplishments of the Revolution, it nevertheless left unsolved many bourgeois-democratic tasks. These unfinished tasks constituted a serious hendrance to the nation's fullest development. The struggle to solve these questions in a progressive direction made up the main content of the United States history for the three-quarters of a century. Among the more basic of these tasks were the abolition of slavery, the opening up of the broad western lands to settlement, and the deepening extension of the democratic rights of the people. The main post-revolutionary fight of the toiling masses, in the face of fierce reactionary opposition, was aimed chiefly at perserving and extending their democratic rights won by the Revolution.

'It was a great post-revolutionary political rally of these democratic forces that brought Jefferson to the presidency in 1800. Coming to power on a program of wresting the government from the hands of the privileged few, Jefferson sought to create a democracy based primarily upon the small farmers, but excluding the Negroes. From this fact many have drawn the erroneous conclusion that his policies were a brake on American industrial development. Actually, however, by the abolition of slavery in the North, the opening up of public lands, the battle against British "dumping" in America, and the extension of the popular franchise, all during Jefferson's period, the growth of the country's economy was greatly facilitated.

'The extraordinary rapidity of the United States' economic advance in the decades following the victorious revolution was to be ascribed to a combination of several favorable factors, including the presense of vast natural resources, the relative absence of feudal economic and political remnants, the shortage of labor power, the constant flow of immigrants, and the tremendous extent of territory under one government. Another most decisive factor was the immense stretch of new land awaiting capitalist development, the opening up of which played a vital part for decades in the economic and political growth of the country. It absorbed a vast amount of capital; it largely shaped the workers' ideology and also the progress and forms of the labor movement; and it was a main bone of contention between the rival, struggling classes of industrialists and planters. As Lenin, a close student of American agriculture, noted, "The peculiar feature of the United States ... the availability of unoccupied free land" explains "the extremity and wide and rapid development of capitalism in the United States"' (pp. 16-18).

W. Z. Foster also deals with this question in his Outline History of the World Trade Union Movement:

'With the [Revolutionary] war won, the bourgeoisie typically tried to have the people forget the glowing democratic principles and promises which it had outlined in the Declaration of Independence of 1776. Consequently, at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which was completely dominated by merchants and planters, the new rulers wrote a constitution that not only left substantially intact the monstrous system of Negro chattel slavery, but also accorded very few civil rights to the white working masses" (p. 98).

Also interesting is what Foster says in his heavy, 600 + page book, The Negro People in American History. People should reference this text if they can find it because it is very helpful in understanding the realtionship between the African American national quesiton and the American Revolution, as well as how the African American nation develops over time.

The discussion of Emancipation and Reconstruction is also dealt with all of these books by W. Z. Foster. People should also look to the great African American Marxist-Leninist theorist, Harry Haywood, who discusses it at length in Black Bolshevik and Negro Liberation. Haywood developed the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the African American national question in the U.S. with others in the Comintern, and after revisionism seized the CPUSA, he became a leader of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), an important organization in the pro-Chinese "New Communist Movement". Haywood, following in the footsteps of Lenin and Stalin, argued that African Americans made up an oppressed nation with the right to full equality throughout the United States and the right to self-determination in the Black Belt South, meaning Black people had a right to declare independence themselves if they chose to. The African American national question, now a central issue of the proletarian-socialist revolution for the multinational working class, was also an important aspect of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the U.S., and it really came forward as a continuation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution with the American Civil War between the feudal planter class in the South and the Northern industrialist bourgeoisie.

Here is what Haywood says in Negro Liberation:

'The Negro was not freed by the Revolution of 1776, nor was he fully freed by the Second American Revolution of 1861-77the Civil War and Reconstruction. The fact is that the first American republic contained a glaring flaw the institution of chattel slavery. This despite the aims so proudly proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence of man's inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Excluded from these "inalienable rights" was an important segment of the American people the Negro slave who, at the time, comprised one-fifth of the country's population.

'Thus, the new American national state created as a result of revolution got off to a false start. This "omission" was to prove almost fatal. The glaring ambiguity of a nation half free and half slave was recognized by the most advanced statesmen of the period, by Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, Samuel Adams, and others.

'It was the belief of the Founding Fathers that slavery would soon die out. Slavery was not particularly profitable, except in a very few areas. The tide of history turned with the industrial revolution in England and the various inventions, topped by the cotton gin, which created a world-wide demand for cotton. In 1789, when the 'Constitution was adopted, no one doubted that there would soon be an end of slavery. By 1818, when the debate began on the admission of Missouri, a new slavocracy had arisen which was demanding expansion into new lands.

'The compromises which the Constitution contained on the issue of slavery precluded the participation of the Negro in the first American republic. It prevented his democratic integration into the new national state. He was thus cheated of the fruits of the victory to which he had contributed in terms of 5,000 of his people in the revolutionary armed forces.

'But the constitutional compromises only postponed the issue of slavery. This issue was to flare up anew in the second decade of the nineteenth century and was to occupy the spotlight in American politics up to the end of the Civil War.

'The question of slavery, as Marx observed, was for half a century the moving power of American history. The issue was finally resolved only by the Second American Revolution - the Civil War and Reconstruction.

'Here again, for the second time, hope was held for the full integration of the Negro into American life as a free and equal citizen, for the consolidation of Americans, black and white, into one nation. But again the revolution was aborted, again the Negro was left outside the portals of full citizenship. The great betrayal of 1877, sealed by the Hayes-Tilden gentlemen's agreement, turned over the management of the South to the new Bourbon classes, who were given the chance to reconstruct that region "in their own way."

'Again the Negro was denied the fruits of the victory, which he had helped to win. Deserted by his erstwhile allies, he was left landless and at the tender mercy of the former slaveholders. Again, as in the Revolution of 1776, he was placed at the doorstep of full freedom only to have the door slammed in his face an unwelcome intruder. This second great defeat blasted his hopes for democratic absorption into American national life.

'But a qualitative change had taken place in his status. Freed from chattel slavery by the uncompleted revolution, he -was now ready for the appearance of economic classes within his group, which under the conditions of segregation and imperialist oppression, necessarily served as driving forces for a movement of national liberation. The process of class stratification among Negroes was of necessity a slow and tortuous one, taking place as it did against the overwhelming odds of post-Reconstruction reaction. But proceed it did, so that the Negroes, who at the time of their release from chattel bondage comprised an almost undifferentiated peasant mass, had by the beginning of the twentieth century become transformed into a people manifesting among themselves the class groupings peculiar to modern capitalist society. Along with an increasing mass of wage laborers, there began to appear a class of small business people, with more or less well-defined capitalist aspirations. This class was to find its spokesmen among the educated middle class. The rise of a Negro bourgeoisie marked the appearance of a class which, striving to defend its own interests under American conditions, was destined to initiate an historical movement, which could only develop in the direction of national freedom. The process of class differentiation developing against the background of Jim-Crow oppression, and in conditions of continued majority concentration of Negroes in the Black Belt, thus formed the main objective conditions for their emergence as an oppressed nation.

'The advent of imperialism, the epoch of the trusts and monopolies, at the turn of the century, riveted the yoke of white ruling-class tyranny still tighter, with the result that the Negro was thrust still further out of the pale of American democracy into deeper isolation within his own group. The rise of a finance-capitalist oligarchy to dominant position in American economic and political life precluded the possibility of peaceful democratic fusion of the Negro into a single American nation along with whites. Thenceforth the issue of Negro equality could be solved only via the path of the Negro's full development as a nation. The Negro question had now definitely become the problem of an oppressed nation striving for national freedom against the main enemy, imperialism' (pp. 141-143).

Harry Haywood also deals with this in his autobiography, Black Bolshevik:

'The evolution of American Blacks as an oppressed nation was begun in slavery. In the final analysis, however, it was the result of the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution of the Civil War and the betrayal of Reconstruction through the Hayes-Tilden (Gentlemen’s) Agreement of 1877 . This betrayal was followed by withdrawal of federal troops and the unleashing of counter-revolutionary terror, including the massacre of thousands of Blacks and the overthrow of the Reconstruction governments which had been built on an alliance of Blacks, poor whites and carpetbaggers . The result was that the Black freedmen, deserted by their former Republican allies, were left without land. Their newly won rights were destroyed with the abrogation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and they were thrust back on the plantations of their former masters in a position but little removed from chattel bondage. The revolution had stopped short of a solution to the crucial land question; there was neither confiscation of the big plantations of the former slaveholding class, nor distribution of the land among Negro freedmen and poor whites. It was around this issue of land for the freedmen that the revolutionary democratic wave of Radical Reconstruction beat in vain and finally broke. The advent of imperialism, the epoch of trusts and monopolies at the turn of the century, froze the Blacks in the post-Reconstruction position; landless semi-slaves in the South. It blocked the road to fusion of Blacks and whites into one nation on the basis of equality and put the final seal on the special oppression of Blacks. The path towards equality and freedom via assimilation was foreclosed by these events, and the struggle for Black equality thenceforth was ultimately bound to take a national revolutionary direction. Under conditions of imperialist and racist oppression, Blacks in the South were to acquire all the attributes of a subject nation. They are set apart by a common ethnic origin, economically interrelated in various classes, united in a common historical experience, reflected in a special culture and psychological makeup. The territory of this subject nation is the Black Belt, an area encompassing the Deep South, which, despite massive outmigrations, still contained (and does to this day) the country’s largest concentration of Blacks' (pp. 231-232).

It is worth noting that Black Bolshevik contains an important epilogue, in which Harry Haywood looks at the "Black upsurge" of the 1960s and 70s in light of the national question and the role of Marxist-Leninists. That epilogue begins and ends with two quotes from Mao Zedong:

"The evil system of colonialism and imperialism grew up along with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the thorough emancipation of the black people" ("Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism")

And:

"The struggle of the black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers' movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class." ("Statement by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression").

Happy Independence Day!

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Explaining the new ML blog header

Left Spot suggested I explain the content of the new header graphic here on this blog, because maybe some of it is pretty obscure, or unfamiliar to some readers. So I'll do that briefly here, then folks can comment and I'll clarify if need be. I hope that maybe this will spark some good discussion. I tried to stylize and symbolize a balanced depiction of Marxism-Leninism and national liberation, both in the United States, where I live and work, and around the world. I would just want to add that the presense of any of this material does indicate my support and solidarity, it should not, however, be considered a total ideological endorsement.

Going clockwise from the left, the Little Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong) is first. This book was the textbook for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, and serves as an excellent manual on how to conduct a revolutionary struggle (here is a neat site about the red book). It is a symbol of Mao Zedong Thought.

Next is Paul Robeson, one of the greatest mass leaders in American history. He was an actor, a singer, and an athlete, awarded the Stalin Peace Prize (the Soviet version of the Nobel Peace Prize) in 1952 for his leading role in the formative years of the Civil Rights Movement and his devotion to the defense of peace and opposition to imperialism throughout the world.

Beneath and to the right of Robeson is Frantz Fanon's great book, The Wretched of the Earth. This book, written by a Black psychologist, trained in France and heavily influenced by Marxism, not to mention an active participant in the Algerian Revolution, is essential for understanding the relationship between oppressor and oppressed and structures of colonial dominance and resistance. This is a book that a lot of influence upon me in my formative period when I was first studying the theory and practice of the Black Panther Party, who were heavily influenced by this book (along with the works of Kwame Nkrumah and Maoism) because of its insistanc that the lumpenproletariat should be the leading force in national liberation struggles. (See the wikipedia article on Fanon's major book.)

Next is Harry Haywood, the great African American Communist. He was a leading theorist in the CPUSA regarding the national question in the United States. His most important contribution is the development of the theory of an African American national territory in the Black Belt South based on the understanding of the Marxist line on the national question developed by Lenin and Stalin (see the section on Haywood in my article on the National Question for more this). He wrote several important theoretical works, the most important of which is Negro Liberation. His autobiography, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist is a very important critical and self-critical look at the CPUSA from its foundations to beyond WWII. He is also important as a founding figure of the antirevisionist movement in the United States as he struggled against rising revisionist currents in the CPUSA, with whom he eventually broke to join with the young Maoist groups of the New Communist Movement (see also the wikipedia article on Harry Haywood).

Following the picture of Haywood is a painting of Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Revolution and the most important Marxist-Leninist theorist following Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. He is particularly important for developing the theory and practice of national-democratic revolution as a step toward socialist revolution, for developing the Marxist theory of People's War, and for developing and leading the struggle against modern revisionism. He enriched the Leninist theory of proletarian revolution in his formulations of the mass line, the united front, and the continuation of class struggle under socialism. His philosophical contributions, namely his work on dialectical materialism, are an incredible weapon in the hands of Marxist-Leninist organizations struggling to build a revolutionary movement to fight for socialism. He continues to be a great inspiration for poor and oppressed people all over the world.

After Mao, we see someone inspired by Maoism to fight people's war - a female People's Liberation Army soldier in Nepal, where today the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is leading the New Democratic revolution. I always thought that was such a beautiful and inspiring picture, the way the traditional blanket she is wrapped in to protect her from the early morning cold as she keeps watch contrasts to the sleek, black M-16 that has been liberated from the enemy. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) are one of the most important and challenging forces in the Communist Movement today.

Che Guevara is next. Che, in my opinion, embodied the proletarian internationalist spirit. Born in Argentina, Che met the remarkable revolutionary leader Fidel Castro in Mexico and set out with him and handful of others to fight a victorious guerrilla war on U.S. imperialism's doorstep. After serving for a time as chief economist for Socialist Cuba, he set out to the Congo and then Bolivia to help other countries kick imperialism off of their soil. He was summarily executed by a FBI agent when he was captured while fighting with guerrillas in Bolivia. He continues to inspire the revolutionary and radical youth all over the world (check out the Che Guevara Archive).

Next we see a map of the Southern United States, highlighting the Black Belt. Not only is this where I live and where I grew up, but this is also the historically constituted territory of the African American Nation in the U.S., forged through the lengthy process of slavery, the betrayl of the national-democratic revolution of Reconstruction, and frozen in place by the rise of monopoly capitalism. It is the area of the greatest concentration of African American's in the U.S. The demand for self-determination for African Americans in the Black Belt is perhaps the most important demand for the proletarian revolution in the United States, as it is the source of genuine equality for African Americans, which in turn is the basis for real Black/white working class unity. Read the Comintern resolutions of 1928 and 1930 on the Black Belt Nation.

Next is the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the strongest Marxist-Leninist group in the Middle East, Ahmed Sadaat. Long a prisoner under the supervision of British and U.S. guards in a Jericho prison, he was recently kidnapped in an Israeli raid on the prison after his election to the Palestinian parliament. Here is a great interview with Sadaat just before his kidnapping by Israel.

Next up is Huey P. Newton, co-founder and ideological leader of the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in 1966 in the wake of the Watts Riots, which revealed that many of the victories won in the Civil Rights Act were, in fact, formal rights, but rights with little meaning for poor African Americans living in the ghettos. Heavily influenced both by Marxism-Leninism and Maoist Thought, as well as by the national liberation struggles forging ahead throughout the underdeveloped world, the BPP took up arms against the police and put forward a 10 point program for the self-defense and self-determination of the Black community. Despite their problems and errors, their impact in develping a militant, anti-imperialist alternative pole to the bankruptcy of the reformism of the national bourgeoisie cannot be overlooked. Huey Newton should always be understood to have been a tremendous guiding light during an important formative period for Communist revolution in the United States.

We see, following Huey, a book - Stalin's Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, which is the most important collection of texts on the national question by the leading theorist of the national question within the Marxist-Leninist movement. This book, along with his study with the Comintern and five years in the Soviet Union as a member of the CPSU, had a great influence on African American Communist, Harry Haywood. Here is a link to the central text in that book, Marxism and the National Question. I think understanding this is essential to understanding Marxism-Leninism.

Next is a picture of your's truly, Comrade Zero, at an anti-NED (National Endowment for Democracy) demo in Washington D.C following the conference that founded the Venezuela Solidarity Network. The sign I'm holding reads, "Self-determination: endow this".

Below the anti-NED picture is a picture of William Z. Foster. Foster was a leader of the CPUSA who struggled for a correct line in the Party until his retirement. As a powerful trade-unionist, Foster probably did more for our class than anyone else in the history of this country. He also wrote two very important books, History of the Three Internationals, and History of the Communist Party of the United States.

To Foster's left we see a photo of Malcolm X holding a M-1 carbine - he was, like me, not a pacifist, and believed in getting freedom "by any means necessary". Arguably the most important figure in the Black Nationalist movement in the U.S., Malcolm was a leader in the Nation of Islam, until his pilgramage to Mecca. Then he broke with the NOI's founder, Elija Muhammed, over what he saw as the NOI's racism and bourgeois seperatism. He remained a firm Black Nationalist and a militant pole in the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties. He was outspoken in his demands for revolution, armed resistance, self-determination, and, in his later years, socialism. You can listen to his important speech, "Message to the Grassroots", here. His autobiography was a tremendous inspiration for me when I was in high school and just beginning to develp a little class consciousness.

On the other side of the Nepalese Maoist woman (discussed above), we see Vladamir Illych Lenin. And why is Lenin here? Though I would think that would be self-explanatory, I'll just give this little quote from his great pupil, Stalin:

Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular (Foundations of Leninism).

To be a Marxist today is to be a Leninist.

Next to Lenin, we see another female Guerrilla fighter. This time a member of Colombia's largest Marxist-Leninist group, the FARC-EP. The FARC, in the face of the most brutal dictatorship (which just so happens to be a recipient of tremendous amounts of U.S. military aid under the auspices of Plan Colombia), and the paramilitaries linked to it, is in the vanguard of the struggle for national liberation and socialism in Latin America, and they have been fighting a protracted guerrilla war since the late 60s. She is marching with her comrades in a military drill. They are all carrying AK-47s.

After the FARC, there is the famous photo of a Red Army soldier raising the red flag over the Reichstag in Berlin at the close of WWII. The Soviet Union, under the leadership of Stalin and with the heroic effort of the people of the USSR, was the leading force in the united front that defeated Hitlerite Fascism. The victory of the people of the world over fascism was one of the great moments of the 2oth century and has a tremendous impact on where we are today.

Last, but certainly not least, is a picture of members of the heroic Iraqi Resistance carrying Automatic Kaloshnikov assault rifles. The Iraqi Resistance is currently leading the national liberation struggle of the Arab people against U.S. imperialism and is on the leading edge of the struggle in the region. I believe Iraq will the Stalingrad of U.S. Imperialism.

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