QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ

A Left-wing reading group in the form of a podcast 🐒📚
Presented by @ajmal_khalqi and @Jkowcu

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

Now is of course a crucial time for anti-racist education but what is necessary is not merely introspective contemplation on privilege but clear understanding of the history/structure/workings of racism, imperialism, whiteness, racial capitalism and the white supremacist state...

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

Happy Birthday Friedrich Engels, a great fighter, teacher and friend of the working class!

'The *first* to say that the proletariat is not *only* a suffering class' but that this misery 'drives it forward irresistibly and compels it to fight for its ultimate emancipation'

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

Situating the Russian Revolution in the context of the struggle of the Third World, this lecture by @vijayprashad gives a powerful insight into the global significance of 1917.

https://t.co/1Fcg2RPYwB

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

The anniversary of the October Revolution. The torch of proletariat revolution alight for world emancipation.

In the Words of a comrade, 'The wedding of Marxist theory and the mass workers movement represented the greatest event in the history of the liberation of mankind.'

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

On 25th October 1917 (Julian) the Petrograd Soviet, guided by the Bolsheviks, uprose, beginning a popular revolution to establish the world's first workers' state. A strike against monarchy, exploitation and capitalism. An advance for the oppressed/exploited all over the world.

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

Today also marks the anniversary of the Black Panther Party, founded in Oakland on the 15th October 1966 as the Black Panther Party for Self Defence. An incomparable formation of revolutionary diligence, political education, community embeddedness and militancy.

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

In today's context of Labour's cowardly support for the 'spycops' bill, ensuring impunity to undercover police officers, its a timely reminder of the unqualified barbarism representatives of racial capital will go to. Sowing deceit, and war, violence has always been their crop.

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

On 15th October 1987, Burkina Faso's revolutionary president Thomas Sankara was assassinated. A Marxist-Leninist, Pan-Africanist and feminist, unclassified documents reveal direct French involvement, to halt the country's anti-imperial struggle and restore neo-colonial relations.

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

Famously, his government's official fleet was made up of Renault 5s (the cheapest car at that time on sale in BF). In but a few years the revolution made monumental strides in improving literacy, combating violence against women, easing civil strife and ending poverty. He was 37.

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

Since blue labour nonsense is making an unwelcome resurgence, here's an episode where we covered the different shades of labour nationalism. After the election fallout we examined (berated) the family/faith/flag faction and, read some poems for hard times.
https://t.co/hQCSPU0LmM

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

It was the most egregious case in a US interventionism involved in over 70 coups.

Ralph Miliband offers a lucid depiction of its revelation of US power, the forces entrenched in capitalism's defence, fascism and the state, and parallels with Europe.

https://t.co/UfTWHaQdnG

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

On September 11th, 1973, the elected government of Chile, led by popular president Salvador Allende, was overthrown in a brutal coup. Orchestrated by the CIA.

Under the new regime thousands were tortured, mutilated and killed. Hundreds of thousands were exiled/imprisoned.

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

It concludes our initial exploration of radical learning, the relationship of theory to practice, place of Marxism within history/socialism and early genesis of Marx's thought

Next we'll turn to readings on race, anti-racist formations and imperialism...

https://t.co/AAk2kP7VQ9

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

If you're looking for some Sunday reading, both episodes of our reading of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme are up!

Or read ahead, our next text: Sivanandan's 'From Resistance to Rebellion' anti-racist struggles in Britain

https://t.co/I2t8pTlbFQ

https://t.co/JF1x12sifg

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

We ask :

Where does socialism stand in relation to the state?
What’s so bad about social democracy?
Why was Marx beefing anarchists?
Is nationalism an inevitable horizon of the worker’s movement?

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

EPISODE 5 🐒📚

🚨We're back from a hiatus with our next episode!🚨

We talk about Marx's theory of states, the limits of reform & the place of principles in politics. All this and more in our second episode discussing the Critique of the Gotha Programme.

https://t.co/JF1x12sifg

[Verso Books @VersoBooks]

Marxian economist, theorist and activist Ernest Mandel died on this day in 1995.

Mandel fought in the underground resistance against the Nazis during the occupation of Belgium and wrote 30 books including Late Capitalism, The Meaning of the Second World War, and Power and Money.

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

'Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to
say that it cannot be understood, it cannot become intelligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure
that we can discern the movements which give it historical form and content.'

-Wretched of the Earth

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

July 20th, birthday of Frantz Fanon (1925) A true giant of anti-imperialist struggle but also a much misrepresented figure. We will soon cover both aspects so get reading!

'Everything can be explained to the people on the single condition that you really want them to understand'

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

'The more the people understand, the more watchful
they become, and the more they come to realize that
their salvation lies in their own cohesion...'

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

'Weep, O my black beloved brother deep buried in eternal, bestial night.
O you, whose dust simooms and hurricanes have scattered all over the vast earth,
You, by whose hands the pyramids were reared
In memory of royal murderers...'

-from Patrice Lumumba: MAY OUR PEOPLE TRIUMPH

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

https://t.co/YHQVisOOfl

The words of Malcom X on Patrice Lumumba (born July 2nd.) The democratically elected president was killed by secessionist forces on the behest of Belgium and the US, shortly after the Congo gained independence.

The struggle is ever and always connected.

[QUESTIONS FROM WORKERS WHO READ @QFWWR]

His assassination was pivotal in the future of the Congo, and, the entire cold war. It marked a new brutal chapter of economic imperialism in a ruinous and exploitative history of colonisation and intervention which begun in 1884 under Leopold II's Belgium, and killed millions.