International Women’s Day

Alexandra Kollontai

First Published: Mezhdunarodnyi den’ rabotnitz, Moscow 1920;
Translated: Alix Holt 1972;
Transcribed: Tom Condit for marx.org, 1997;
Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.

Marxists Internet Archive

A Militant Celebration

Women’s Day or Working Women’s Day is a day of international solidarity, and a day for reviewing the strength and organization of proletarian women.

But this is not a special day for women alone. The 8th of March is a historic and memorable day for the workers and peasants, for all the Russian workers and for the workers of the whole world. In 1917, on this day, the great February revolution broke out.^[2] It was the working women of Petersburg who began this revolution; it was they who first decided to raise the banner of opposition to the Tsar and his associates. And so, working women’s day is a double celebration for us.

But if this is a general holiday for all the proletariat, why do we call it “Women’s Day”? Why then do we hold special celebrations and meetings aimed above all at the women workers and the peasant women? Doesn’t this jeopardize the unity and solidarity of the working class? To answer these questions, we have to look back and see how Women’s Day came about and for what purpose it was organized.

THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD 1942-1943: HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND IMPORTANCE

Jacques Pauwels

1942: After aerial bombardment has almost totally cleared their path into the city of Stalingrad, German troops make their way through the ruined suburbs. Almost every standing building in Stalingrad served as a firing point for Germans or Soviets, forcing house-to-house combat. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Awar against the Soviet Union was wanted by the industrialists, bankers, large landowners and other members of Germany’s upper class, the “elite” of the land. That was one of the reasons, and arguably the paramount reason, why they had enabled the coming to power of Hitler, a politician of whom it was widely known that he considered the destruction of the Soviet Union as the great task entrusted to him by providence. Hitler’s so-called “seizure of power”(Machtergreifung) was in reality a “transfer of power,” and this transfer was orchestrated, logically enough, by those who, behind the democratic façade of Weimer Germany, ensconced in the army, judiciary, state bureaucracy, diplomacy, and so forth, wielded power, namely the upper-class.

80th Anniversary of Soviet Red Army breaking siege of Leningrad

Harsh Thakor

Countercurrents | January 20, 2023

80 years ago, Soviet troops battled to open up a narrow corridor to the besieged city of Leningrad. A railroad was constructed through it in literally two weeks and supplies started reaching a city that had been bled dry.

The Red Army only had to traverse a distance of 15 km. Stillt this short distance was at the cost of the lives of thirty thousand Soviet soldiers.

This turn of events played major role in shaping the destiny or determining the path of the Great Patriotic War.

Courage and endurance scaled heights almost unparalleled in history in withstanding and overpowering an oppressor.

On the occasion of Che Guevara’s death anniversary JoP remembers him with great reverence. Your revolutionary spirit continues to inspire us, Comrade Che!

Listen to this beautiful song:

Our Che: 50 years after his execution

Ike Nahem

MR Online | October 09, 2017

[Fifty five years ago today (October 09, 1967), Comrade Che was murdered by the CIA in Bolivia. A hero of the world proletariat, Che continues to live in our memory and through our struggles against imperialism and capitalism. JoP republishes this post from 2017 to commemorate the death anniversary of the great revolutionary Che Guevara.]

This is an updated, re-edited version of my 2007 essay written for a Celebration of Ernesto Che Guevara’s life held in New York City in commemoration of the 40^th anniversary of his execution, attended by 300 people. —Ike Nahem

Che Lives!

Che died defending no other interest, no other cause than the cause of the exploited and the oppressed of this continent. Che died defending no other cause than the cause of the poor and the humble of this earth.

—Fidel Castro, October 18, 1967

On October 9, 1967, the highest levels of the United States government transmitted orders to CIA-operative Felix Rodriguez who passed them on to Washington’s flunkies in the Bolivian military regime. The orders were to murder Ernesto Che Guevara—a wounded combatant captured in battle. They proceeded to display Che’s mutilated corpse to gawking journalists and selected spectator-voyeurs before burying his remains in what they planned on forever being a secret, unmarked grave.

Travelling in Pinochet’s Chile

Arriving a year after the brutal coup against the elected socialist government, GRAHAM HOLTON experienced first hand the all-encompassing oppression of the military dictatorship as he travelled — until he too was arrested as a leftist

Morning Star

IT has been nearly 50 years since the infamous coup in Chile on September 11, 1973. The world became aware of the heinous birth of Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’etat when the international television networks showed the Chilean air force’s Harrier jets attacking the Palace de La Moneda, the seat of government.

Truckloads of soldiers across the country arrested thousands of people, who wound up in 13 concentration camps where many were tortured and killed. Some supporters of the Popular Unity (UP) government sought refuge in embassies. Others went into exile.

The life of president Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected socialist president, ended that day. The Pinochet regime tore the fabric of Chilean society asunder, wrenching out the heart of the left. A sinister veil had fallen upon the country, like a plague of locusts devouring everything in its path.

Ten Years Ago, Chicago Teachers Gave Us All a Jolt of Hope

Alexandra Bradbury

Labor Notes | September 10, 2022

Chicago teachers marched in a mass rally on May 23, 2012, part of the ramp-up to their big strike that fall. Photo: Sarah Ji, loveandstrugglephotos.com.

On the tenth anniversary of the Chicago Teachers Union’s groundbreaking strike, we’re reissuing our award-winning book How to Jump-Start Your Union: Lessons from the Chicago Teachers. This is the new introduction.

If you feel like your union needs a jump-start—whether you’re a longtime shop steward or just started your first union job—this book is for you.

The impulse you have (“This union could be stronger and better, and I want to help change it”) makes you part of a long tradition—what we at Labor Notes affectionately call the trouble-making wing of the labor movement.

One basic principle unites us troublemakers. We believe democracy, meaning broad member participation at every level of the union, is the heart of union power.

Mikhail Gorbachev, a modern Judas

Nikos Mottas

In Defense of Communism | August 20, 2022

“My ambition was to liquidate communism, the dictatorship over all the people. I found friends that had the same thoughts as I in Yakovlev and Shevernadze, they all deserve to be thanked for the break-up of the USSR and the defeat of Communism”

 — Mikhail Gorbachev, 2000. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, the man who betrayed the dreams and expectations of his own people, has died at 91. His biological death bears little importance. In fact, in the consciousness and hearts of the working class people all over the world Gorbachev had died a long time ago, when he consciously decided to become the gravedigger of the first socialist state in human history, the Soviet Union. 

Gorbachev exposed: “My ambition was to liquidate communism”

In Defense of Communism | August 20, 2022

“My ambition was to liquidate communism, the dictatorship over all the people. Supporting me and urging me on in this mission was my wife, who was of this opinion long before I was. I knew that I could only do this if I was the leading functionary. In this my wife urged me to climb to the top post. 

While I actually became acquainted with the West, my mind was made up forever. I decided that I must destroy the whole apparatus of the CPSU and the USSR. Also, I must do this in all of the other socialist countries. My ideal is the path of social democracy. Only this system shall benefit all the people. This quest I decided I must fulfil.

I found friends that had the same thoughts as I in Yakovlev and Shevernadze, they all deserve to be thanked for the break-up of the USSR and the defeat of Communism.

Thou Gorbachev, just like Brutus!

Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | August 31, 2022

Gorbachev’s was a betrayer’s life. He has physically left this earth, hours back; but has kept kilometer posts of betrayal on a land years ago identified as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

He’s the person who led a band of betrayers to dismantle the USSR – Soviet Union. The biggest country in the world stretching from the Pacific to the Black Sea, from the Arctic to the Caspian Sea, with Tundra, Steppes and the Urals, was created with toil, blood and love of millions of toiling people coming from factories, workshops and farms. It was decades of struggle by the millions. This heroic people defeated armies organized by imperialists from around the world, and defied imperialist blockade. This courageous working people defeated the Nazi marauders.

But the Betrayer Band led by that person named Mikhail Gorbachev stabbed from inside – from inside the party, from inside the state machine.