Under capitalism the "release" of the labour of millions of miners engaged in extracting coal will inevitably cause mass unemployment, an enormous increase in poverty, and a worsening of the workers' conditions. And the profits of this great invention will be pocketed by the Morgans, Rockefelleres, Ryabushinskys, Morozovs, and their suites of lawyers, directors, professors, and other flunkeys of capital. – Vladimir Lenin, A Great Technical Achievement.
An estimated 20,000 people have died in Europe's worst heatwave in decades. EU states will spend €454 billion on militarisation in 2026, while committing just €15 billion a year to climate adaptation.
Details. Between June 22 and June 28, a historic heatwave swept across Europe. Preliminary estimates from climate scientists suggest over 20,000 heat-related deaths (zenodo.org/records/21083733) across the continent, though this figure has yet to be formally peer-reviewed.
Context. Climate scientists explicitly warned (pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/june_23_198…) state governments as early as 1988 that heatwaves of this intensity and frequency were coming, yet capitalist states systematically ignored them.
► The EU itself acknowledges (www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/costs-a…) it will need to invest €59-173 billion per year in climate adaptation until 2100 to protect agriculture, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Current committed spending stands at just €15-16 billion annually.
Important to Know. Capitalist states are fundamentally incapable of planning for ecological crises because they exist to secure capitalist profits (us.politsturm.com/climate-crisis). Upgrading public infrastructure yields no immediate returns, so the ruling class does nothing. Instead, they pour billions into destructive fossil fuel industries (www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/09/world-…) because mass extraction remains competitive and highly profitable.
► This contrasts with the speed at which capitalist states mobilise to protect and expand their capital. During the 2020 pandemic financial crash (apnews.com/article/2dbd3aa09c125d1ed8308dde26decbd…, the European Central Bank printed over a trillion euros to rescue collapsing private markets. This massive bill was then entirely offloaded onto the working class through soaring inflation and brutal austerity cuts.
► In contrast, the Soviet Union's consideration of nature naturally flowed from planned production. It established (us.politsturm.com/climate-crisis#the-communist-sol…) vast nature reserves as untouched scientific baselines to guide sustainable land use, launched large-scale afforestation projects, and minimised waste through the full use of materials – reusable packaging, glass bottle deposits, and paper recycling were standard practice.
As Europe's heatwave killed an estimated 20,000 people, capitalist officials and media turned to whether air conditioning is "selfish.”
Details. A recent record-breaking heatwave, which has claimed an estimated 20,000 lives in Europe, sparked intense debates on French social media after the far-right National Rally initially proposed a vague but populist plan of mass installation of air con – though this ended up being just a poorly thought-out plan for zero-interest loans. Opponents from the environmentalist left argue that it would produce even more heat, though some have since admitted its necessity. The Paris Mayor called “individual air conditioning is a scourge”.
► Debates are also going on beyond France. Good Morning Britain ran a programme on whether air con is selfish. Meanwhile the European Commission has decided to remain neutral in the debates, saying they prefer to focus on achieving “climate neutrality”.
► Western mass media have long been raising individual guilt for climate change. Back in 2019, a Guardian opinion article claimed that the human body can handle the heat without AC. A United Nations’ interview echoed anti-AC rhetoric in 2023, linking its damage to growing energy consumption. Later in 2025, a Time article reported that some people feel guilty for using their AC due to its potential climate damage.
Context. Just 20 fossil fuel companies are responsible for almost 35% of all energy-related greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and 90% of all emissions are caused by fossil fuel use. The capitalist system of production is the main cause of climate change because it prioritizes individual capitalist profits over long-term environmental consequences.
► The environmental impact of AC use is largely determined by the electricity source, with individual AC use remaining far less damaging and localized. France, a country where these debates were especially intense, generates most of its energy through nuclear power.
► In practice, debates over AC-use shift the guilt from the capitalist system to individual workers who are simply trying to survive the intensifying effects of climate change. This strategy was adopted long ago when British Petroleum popularized the idea of a “carbon footprint”, i.e. the individual impact that each worker has in damaging the environment. But even by this metric, it is acknowledged that the wealthiest cause far more damage.
We live in an age of commerce, when the bourgeoisie have no scruples about trading in honour or conscience. There are also simpletons who out of stupidity or by force of habit defend views prevalent in certain bourgeois circles. Yes, indeed! In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, measures. – Vladimir Lenin, “Who Stands to Gain?”
Advanced Europe is commanded by a bourgeoisie which supports everything that is backward. The Europe of our day is advanced not thanks to, but in spite of, the bourgeoisie, for it is only the proletariat that is adding to the million‑strong army of fighters for a better future. It alone preserves and spreads implacable enmity towards backwardness, savagery, privilege, slavery and the humiliation of man by man. – Vladimir Lenin, Backward Europe and Advanced Asia.
Cuba’s government explains the restoration of capitalism by the “need not to settle for half measures” and the construction of “socialism with Cuban characteristics”. This echoes the rhetoric of Deng Xiaoping in China and the Gorbachev era in the USSR. Meanwhile, bourgeois economists warn of a repeat of "1990s Russia" on the island.
Details. The legalization of capitalism in Cuba is presented positively by the government and the leadership of the "Communist Party of Cuba". The Cuban CP’s stated goal is to “unleash the productive forces”, for which Prime Minister Marrero endorsed the market as "an instrument for the efficient allocation of resources".
► Former President Raúl Castro was already “recognizing that socialist planning does not exclude, but rather must incorporate and regulate, market rules”. A National Assembly deputy went further, warning against "settling for half measures".
► Cuba’s President Diaz-Canel claims the reforms “do not signify a renunciation of socialism, but rather a search for how to continue building it under the specific conditions of Cuba”, with the island’s ruling party explicitly adopting a special “Cuban socialism”.
► In an interview, he argued that “China and Vietnam are countries who are building socialism, like Cuba is”, and stated that Cuban officials have “studied China’s reform quite a lot, and we’ve used that as a benchmark for Cuba”. He explained that Cuba’s CP has a “deep relationship” with the Chinese CP and the two parties are in “permanent exchange”.
How were similar measures explained in the Perestroika USSR and Dengist China? Historically, similar measures were pushed by revisionists through reforms in the USSR’s "Glasnost and Perestroika" (Openness and Restructuring), the PRC’s "Gaige Kaifang" (Reform and Opening Up) and Vietnam’s "Doi Moi" (Innovation).
► Other revisionists have also used exceptionalism to justify the restoration of capitalism. CCP Chairman Deng Xiaoping coined the term “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. Whilst implementing liberalisation in 1982, Deng claimed that “we shall adhere to Marxism and keep to the socialist road. But [...] by socialism we mean a socialism that is tailored to Chinese conditions”. In reality, they meant capitalism.
► Cuban officials’ excuse of “productive forces” comes from Deng, who stated in 1980 that revolution “does not merely mean” class struggle, claiming that “the most fundamental” goal is economic development. The CCP relegated the end of capitalism to the distant future: “in order to build socialism we must first of all develop the productive forces, which is our main task”. Nowadays, under Xi Jinping, the CCP’s “five-year plans” are merely indicative guidelines to coordinate Chinese capitalists, rather than socialist development directives.
► Like Cuba’s government, Deng argued that “developing a market economy does not mean practising capitalism”. Chinese revisionists use bourgeois slogans, such as “to get rich is glorious”, and the metaphor that “it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”, to justify liberal policies. They explicitly advocate “taking advantage of the useful aspects of capitalist countries [...] in order to develop the productive forces.”
► Similarly to Cuban “decentralizing”, Mikhail Gorbachev argued in 1988 for “democratizing planning” and “economic autonomy” in his Perestroika reforms. He dictated that “plan-making [...] will begin within enterprises”, which were granted “self-regulation” to make their own decisions based on market signals – whereas “the State Planning Committee will have to give up detailed regimentation and day-to-day monitoring” of the economy. This permitted formerly socialist enterprises – coordinated across the central plan – to become independent, free to maximise profit and accumulate capital. Three years later, the Soviet Union was dissolved.
► Bourgeois economists have also noted the similarities between the Cuban “reforms” and the historical restoration of capitalism during the fall of the USSR. Liberal "shock therapy" in post-Soviet Russia caused life expectancy to fall by 6 years. After the USSR fell, the average income of the poorer half of Russians plummeted. It took until 2012 to recover to the levels already enjoyed under socialism four decades earlier, in 1972.
Context. The Cuban government recently adopted a package of 176 "reforms", legalising the capitalist economy that had already operated in practice for more than a decade. In previous years, Cuban authorities already cleared the groundwork for full capitalist restoration and tolerated the private sector taking over the majority of commerce.
► Social-chauvinists have lauded Cuba for following the PRC’s path, predicting the island’s capitalism will "succeed like Chinese capitalism". The PRC now has the 2nd most dollar millionaires in the world, whilst having a worse Gini inequality coefficient than the USA.
Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital. – Vladimir Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.
To expect science to be impartial in a wage‑slave society is as foolishly naive as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers' wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital. – Vladimir Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.
Trump warns America will end up in “squalor” under communism. Meanwhile, millions of Americans struggle to afford housing and food under capitalism.
Details. At the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference on June 26, 2026, Donald Trump warned of the alleged spread of “communism” within the Democratic Party.
Quote: “Communism is very easy to sell... I'll give free rent... everybody gets free food. Everything is free from this point forward... After two or three years, the country is a disaster area. The country fails. They always do.”
Context. The remarks followed recent victories by candidates backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. As we have previously reported, Mamdani is a Democratic Socialists of America member and Democratic Party politician backed by billionaire donors, not a communist.
► Trump escalated this rhetoric a week later at the 250th independence rally at Mount Rushmore: "Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9-11... You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both."
► This is part of Trump's broader campaign of portraying left-wing opposition as "communist," alongside expanded surveillance of left-wing movements, renewed efforts to justify repression by defining the broad "Antifa" label as domestic terrorists, and initiatives such as "Anti-Communism Week."
► Both Republicans and Democrats increasingly accuse one another of being "communists”, “socialists” and “stalinists.”
In reality, Trump's description bears no resemblance to socialism or communism. In the socialist states, workers were paid according to the quantity and quality of their work.
► Workers produced a surplus above their own needs, which under capitalism is seized by a parasitic capitalist class as private profit. Under socialism, that same surplus was returned to the workers who created it in the form of defence of their dictatorship from enemies within the country and abroad and social benefits – free healthcare and education, housing and cultural amenities, paid holidays and maternity leave, pensions, and state-funded childcare. Communism – society based on the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" – has yet to be achieved.
► Socialist states do not "inevitably fail" as Trump claims. Despite decades of economic embargoes, technological restrictions, and sustained military pressure from the capitalist world, the USSR transformed from a largely agrarian economy into the world's second-largest industrial power in a single generation.
► Meanwhile, the "squalor" Trump misattributes to communism exists under American capitalism. Around 745,000 Americans were homeless on a single night in January 2025, while 29 million cannot access quality healthcare due to cost, and 9 in 10 report a cost-of-living crisis.
► Trump's immediate evidence of "communism" was rent stabilisation proposals in New York. Yet rent controls already exist in capitalist countries such as Germany, which regulates rental prices while fully preserving private property, making it a standard bourgeois policy rather than socialism or communism.
"Europe", the states that call themselves "civilised", are now engaged in a mad armaments hurdle‑race. In thousands of ways, in thousands of newspapers, from thousands of pulpits, they shout and clamour about patriotism, culture, native land, peace, and progress — and all in order to justify new expenditures of tens and hundreds of millions for all manner of weapons of destruction. – Vladimir Lenin, “Who Stands to Gain?”
Politsturm International
Under capitalism the "release" of the labour of millions of miners engaged in extracting coal will inevitably cause mass unemployment, an enormous increase in poverty, and a worsening of the workers' conditions. And the profits of this great invention will be pocketed by the Morgans, Rockefelleres, Ryabushinskys, Morozovs, and their suites of lawyers, directors, professors, and other flunkeys of capital. – Vladimir Lenin, A Great Technical Achievement.
22 hours ago | [YT] | 128
View 2 replies
Politsturm International
An estimated 20,000 people have died in Europe's worst heatwave in decades. EU states will spend €454 billion on militarisation in 2026, while committing just €15 billion a year to climate adaptation.
Details. Between June 22 and June 28, a historic heatwave swept across Europe. Preliminary estimates from climate scientists suggest over 20,000 heat-related deaths (zenodo.org/records/21083733) across the continent, though this figure has yet to be formally peer-reviewed.
► Confirmed official figures are already severe. France (www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/03/deaths-franc…) recorded 2,025 excess deaths, Belgium (www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/2211911/belgium-reco…) 1,200, Spain (www.dw.com/en/europe-heat-wave-100-dead-spain/a-77…) over 1,000, and the Netherlands (nltimes.nl/2026/07/04/3500-deaths-recorded-netherl…) 480. Health authorities warn (www.internazionale.it/ultime-notizie-reuters/2026/…) that these numbers will rise as more regional data comes in.
► Despite temperatures soaring (www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/02/spain-…) past 40° Celsius, state governments provided no structural relief, leaving citizens entirely dependent on passive warnings as fatalities at home spiked 91% (www.internazionale.it/ultime-notizie-reuters/2026/….
► In the UK, authorities issued the second-ever red health alert (www.umbrellamedical.co.uk/2026/06/22/red-heat-heal…) for extreme temperatures, yet limited their response to standard public advisories (www.wmas.nhs.uk/heatwave-advice-during-red-heat-he…) on hydration and staying indoors, with no concrete emergency cooling measures implemented.
► This crisis is rapidly accelerating. Climate scientists explicitly warn (www.thelocal.com/20260611/silent-killer-extreme-he…) that global weather will only grow more severe. Extreme heat has already killed (gazettengr.com/heat-has-killed-200000-people-in-eu…) over 200,000 Europeans over the past four years alone.
Context. Climate scientists explicitly warned (pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/june_23_198…) state governments as early as 1988 that heatwaves of this intensity and frequency were coming, yet capitalist states systematically ignored them.
► Today, roughly 80% (www.cbsnews.com/news/europe-air-conditioning-deadl…) of European households lack adequate cooling, ageing rail networks buckle (www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/why-rails-buckle-in-…) under the heat, and schools and public hospitals regularly report dangerous overheating (www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/25/hospitals-…) that threatens vulnerable patients (www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/23/searin….
► The EU itself acknowledges (www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/costs-a…) it will need to invest €59-173 billion per year in climate adaptation until 2100 to protect agriculture, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Current committed spending stands at just €15-16 billion annually.
► These effects are not limited to Europe. Last month, heatwave temperatures in India hit 48°C. A recent demographic study (www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-health/…) confirmed that a five-day heatwave causes roughly 30,000 excess fatalities across the country, as millions of informal workers are forced to labour in deadly conditions (www.carbonbrief.org/daily-brief/indias-3400-heat-d…) with failing (carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/06/india-heatw…) power grids cutting off any access to basic cooling.
Important to Know. Capitalist states are fundamentally incapable of planning for ecological crises because they exist to secure capitalist profits (us.politsturm.com/climate-crisis). Upgrading public infrastructure yields no immediate returns, so the ruling class does nothing. Instead, they pour billions into destructive fossil fuel industries (www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/09/world-…) because mass extraction remains competitive and highly profitable.
► This contrasts with the speed at which capitalist states mobilise to protect and expand their capital. During the 2020 pandemic financial crash (apnews.com/article/2dbd3aa09c125d1ed8308dde26decbd…, the European Central Bank printed over a trillion euros to rescue collapsing private markets. This massive bill was then entirely offloaded onto the working class through soaring inflation and brutal austerity cuts.
► The same logic applies to imperialist warfare, where governments redirect public wealth to the military while claiming they cannot afford climate infrastructure. EU states will spend an estimated €454 billion (www.euractiv.com/news/eu-defence-spending-hits-e41…) on militarisation in 2026 alone – just days after the deadly heatwave, the United Kingdom announced (www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/jun/30/defe…) a further £15 billion surge (www.gov.uk/government/news/15-billion-new-funding-…) in military spending.
► In contrast, the Soviet Union's consideration of nature naturally flowed from planned production. It established (us.politsturm.com/climate-crisis#the-communist-sol…) vast nature reserves as untouched scientific baselines to guide sustainable land use, launched large-scale afforestation projects, and minimised waste through the full use of materials – reusable packaging, glass bottle deposits, and paper recycling were standard practice.
1 day ago | [YT] | 78
View 7 replies
Politsturm International
As Europe's heatwave killed an estimated 20,000 people, capitalist officials and media turned to whether air conditioning is "selfish.”
Details. A recent record-breaking heatwave, which has claimed an estimated 20,000 lives in Europe, sparked intense debates on French social media after the far-right National Rally initially proposed a vague but populist plan of mass installation of air con – though this ended up being just a poorly thought-out plan for zero-interest loans. Opponents from the environmentalist left argue that it would produce even more heat, though some have since admitted its necessity. The Paris Mayor called “individual air conditioning is a scourge”.
► Debates are also going on beyond France. Good Morning Britain ran a programme on whether air con is selfish. Meanwhile the European Commission has decided to remain neutral in the debates, saying they prefer to focus on achieving “climate neutrality”.
► Western mass media have long been raising individual guilt for climate change. Back in 2019, a Guardian opinion article claimed that the human body can handle the heat without AC. A United Nations’ interview echoed anti-AC rhetoric in 2023, linking its damage to growing energy consumption. Later in 2025, a Time article reported that some people feel guilty for using their AC due to its potential climate damage.
Context. Just 20 fossil fuel companies are responsible for almost 35% of all energy-related greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and 90% of all emissions are caused by fossil fuel use. The capitalist system of production is the main cause of climate change because it prioritizes individual capitalist profits over long-term environmental consequences.
► The environmental impact of AC use is largely determined by the electricity source, with individual AC use remaining far less damaging and localized. France, a country where these debates were especially intense, generates most of its energy through nuclear power.
► In practice, debates over AC-use shift the guilt from the capitalist system to individual workers who are simply trying to survive the intensifying effects of climate change. This strategy was adopted long ago when British Petroleum popularized the idea of a “carbon footprint”, i.e. the individual impact that each worker has in damaging the environment. But even by this metric, it is acknowledged that the wealthiest cause far more damage.
2 days ago | [YT] | 145
View 4 replies
Politsturm International
We live in an age of commerce, when the bourgeoisie have no scruples about trading in honour or conscience. There are also simpletons who out of stupidity or by force of habit defend views prevalent in certain bourgeois circles. Yes, indeed! In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, measures. – Vladimir Lenin, “Who Stands to Gain?”
3 days ago | [YT] | 164
View 8 replies
Politsturm International
Advanced Europe is commanded by a bourgeoisie which supports everything that is backward. The Europe of our day is advanced not thanks to, but in spite of, the bourgeoisie, for it is only the proletariat that is adding to the million‑strong army of fighters for a better future. It alone preserves and spreads implacable enmity towards backwardness, savagery, privilege, slavery and the humiliation of man by man. – Vladimir Lenin, Backward Europe and Advanced Asia.
4 days ago | [YT] | 177
View 2 replies
Politsturm International
Cuba’s government explains the restoration of capitalism by the “need not to settle for half measures” and the construction of “socialism with Cuban characteristics”. This echoes the rhetoric of Deng Xiaoping in China and the Gorbachev era in the USSR. Meanwhile, bourgeois economists warn of a repeat of "1990s Russia" on the island.
Details. The legalization of capitalism in Cuba is presented positively by the government and the leadership of the "Communist Party of Cuba". The Cuban CP’s stated goal is to “unleash the productive forces”, for which Prime Minister Marrero endorsed the market as "an instrument for the efficient allocation of resources".
► Former President Raúl Castro was already “recognizing that socialist planning does not exclude, but rather must incorporate and regulate, market rules”. A National Assembly deputy went further, warning against "settling for half measures".
► Cuba’s President Diaz-Canel claims the reforms “do not signify a renunciation of socialism, but rather a search for how to continue building it under the specific conditions of Cuba”, with the island’s ruling party explicitly adopting a special “Cuban socialism”.
► In an interview, he argued that “China and Vietnam are countries who are building socialism, like Cuba is”, and stated that Cuban officials have “studied China’s reform quite a lot, and we’ve used that as a benchmark for Cuba”. He explained that Cuba’s CP has a “deep relationship” with the Chinese CP and the two parties are in “permanent exchange”.
How were similar measures explained in the Perestroika USSR and Dengist China? Historically, similar measures were pushed by revisionists through reforms in the USSR’s "Glasnost and Perestroika" (Openness and Restructuring), the PRC’s "Gaige Kaifang" (Reform and Opening Up) and Vietnam’s "Doi Moi" (Innovation).
► Other revisionists have also used exceptionalism to justify the restoration of capitalism. CCP Chairman Deng Xiaoping coined the term “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. Whilst implementing liberalisation in 1982, Deng claimed that “we shall adhere to Marxism and keep to the socialist road. But [...] by socialism we mean a socialism that is tailored to Chinese conditions”. In reality, they meant capitalism.
► Cuban officials’ excuse of “productive forces” comes from Deng, who stated in 1980 that revolution “does not merely mean” class struggle, claiming that “the most fundamental” goal is economic development. The CCP relegated the end of capitalism to the distant future: “in order to build socialism we must first of all develop the productive forces, which is our main task”. Nowadays, under Xi Jinping, the CCP’s “five-year plans” are merely indicative guidelines to coordinate Chinese capitalists, rather than socialist development directives.
► Like Cuba’s government, Deng argued that “developing a market economy does not mean practising capitalism”. Chinese revisionists use bourgeois slogans, such as “to get rich is glorious”, and the metaphor that “it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”, to justify liberal policies. They explicitly advocate “taking advantage of the useful aspects of capitalist countries [...] in order to develop the productive forces.”
► Similarly to Cuban “decentralizing”, Mikhail Gorbachev argued in 1988 for “democratizing planning” and “economic autonomy” in his Perestroika reforms. He dictated that “plan-making [...] will begin within enterprises”, which were granted “self-regulation” to make their own decisions based on market signals – whereas “the State Planning Committee will have to give up detailed regimentation and day-to-day monitoring” of the economy. This permitted formerly socialist enterprises – coordinated across the central plan – to become independent, free to maximise profit and accumulate capital. Three years later, the Soviet Union was dissolved.
► Bourgeois economists have also noted the similarities between the Cuban “reforms” and the historical restoration of capitalism during the fall of the USSR. Liberal "shock therapy" in post-Soviet Russia caused life expectancy to fall by 6 years. After the USSR fell, the average income of the poorer half of Russians plummeted. It took until 2012 to recover to the levels already enjoyed under socialism four decades earlier, in 1972.
Context. The Cuban government recently adopted a package of 176 "reforms", legalising the capitalist economy that had already operated in practice for more than a decade. In previous years, Cuban authorities already cleared the groundwork for full capitalist restoration and tolerated the private sector taking over the majority of commerce.
► Social-chauvinists have lauded Cuba for following the PRC’s path, predicting the island’s capitalism will "succeed like Chinese capitalism". The PRC now has the 2nd most dollar millionaires in the world, whilst having a worse Gini inequality coefficient than the USA.
5 days ago | [YT] | 119
View 34 replies
Politsturm International
Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital. – Vladimir Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.
6 days ago | [YT] | 186
View 6 replies
Politsturm International
To expect science to be impartial in a wage‑slave society is as foolishly naive as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers' wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital. – Vladimir Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.
1 week ago | [YT] | 218
View 8 replies
Politsturm International
Trump warns America will end up in “squalor” under communism. Meanwhile, millions of Americans struggle to afford housing and food under capitalism.
Details. At the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference on June 26, 2026, Donald Trump warned of the alleged spread of “communism” within the Democratic Party.
Quote: “Communism is very easy to sell... I'll give free rent... everybody gets free food. Everything is free from this point forward... After two or three years, the country is a disaster area. The country fails. They always do.”
Context. The remarks followed recent victories by candidates backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. As we have previously reported, Mamdani is a Democratic Socialists of America member and Democratic Party politician backed by billionaire donors, not a communist.
► Trump escalated this rhetoric a week later at the 250th independence rally at Mount Rushmore: "Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9-11... You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both."
► This is part of Trump's broader campaign of portraying left-wing opposition as "communist," alongside expanded surveillance of left-wing movements, renewed efforts to justify repression by defining the broad "Antifa" label as domestic terrorists, and initiatives such as "Anti-Communism Week."
► Both Republicans and Democrats increasingly accuse one another of being "communists”, “socialists” and “stalinists.”
In reality, Trump's description bears no resemblance to socialism or communism. In the socialist states, workers were paid according to the quantity and quality of their work.
► Workers produced a surplus above their own needs, which under capitalism is seized by a parasitic capitalist class as private profit. Under socialism, that same surplus was returned to the workers who created it in the form of defence of their dictatorship from enemies within the country and abroad and social benefits – free healthcare and education, housing and cultural amenities, paid holidays and maternity leave, pensions, and state-funded childcare. Communism – society based on the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" – has yet to be achieved.
► Socialist states do not "inevitably fail" as Trump claims. Despite decades of economic embargoes, technological restrictions, and sustained military pressure from the capitalist world, the USSR transformed from a largely agrarian economy into the world's second-largest industrial power in a single generation.
► Meanwhile, the "squalor" Trump misattributes to communism exists under American capitalism. Around 745,000 Americans were homeless on a single night in January 2025, while 29 million cannot access quality healthcare due to cost, and 9 in 10 report a cost-of-living crisis.
► Trump's immediate evidence of "communism" was rent stabilisation proposals in New York. Yet rent controls already exist in capitalist countries such as Germany, which regulates rental prices while fully preserving private property, making it a standard bourgeois policy rather than socialism or communism.
1 week ago | [YT] | 146
View 13 replies
Politsturm International
"Europe", the states that call themselves "civilised", are now engaged in a mad armaments hurdle‑race. In thousands of ways, in thousands of newspapers, from thousands of pulpits, they shout and clamour about patriotism, culture, native land, peace, and progress — and all in order to justify new expenditures of tens and hundreds of millions for all manner of weapons of destruction. – Vladimir Lenin, “Who Stands to Gain?”
1 week ago | [YT] | 182
View 8 replies
Load more