Remembering Che Guevara on the 53rd Anniversary of his Death, by Yanis Iqbal

Image by ccboca via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
October 9, 2020

On 9 October, 1967, Che Guevara – one of the greatest revolutionaries ever known – was murdered in Bolivia under the orders of Washington. This death was foreseeable. In 1966, Che Guevara had left Cuba to wage an anti-imperialist struggle in the South American nation of Bolivia. The plan was to establish a mother column led by Che in Bolivia, with further guerrilla columns branching out from the main unit to enter the neighboring countries of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru, thus creating a continent-wide revolutionary front. This anti-imperialist plan of action was based on the way Vietnam heroically resisted the full-blown onslaught of American hegemony. As Fidel Castro put it, “In the same measure in which Vietnam resists, the revolutionary liberation movement will grow in other parts of the world. Other fronts of the struggle for liberation will open throughout the world in direct proportion to Vietnam’s resistance.”

Luxury Eco-Communism: A Wonderful World is Possible

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

Socialist Project – Left Streamed
August 23, 2020

This film is very much not a utopian vision of the future. In fact, the very different strategies of utopian and materialist thinking for imagining the future are discussed in the first part of the film. Instead of a utopia, the film presents a wide variety of issues, suffering and problems experienced by people, whose common source is the capitalist system itself. It then presents a vision of how things could be very different in each case, without the systemic priorities of the world capitalist system. This gives us a very different viewpoint upon ecology, technology and human flourishing.

Marx in the House: Episode 3: Rent Gap + Episode 4: Disinvestment

Image by Matt Brown via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Space Babies on Jul 23, 2020

Marx in the House is a series that explores gentrification and housing from a Marxist perspective. In this episode we take a look at how the rent gap is the fundamental theoretical component explaining gentrification. We look at how Ruth Glass spotted and theorized the rent gap first and how Neil Smith elaborated on it.

Marx in the House: Episode 1: Intro: Gentrification and Housing + Episode 2: Exchange Value

Image by rdesign812 via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Space Babies on Jul 9, 2020

Marx in the House is a series that explores gentrification and housing from a Marxist perspective. In this episode we take a look at the movement of capital, the ridiculousness of landlords, how it’s necessary to organize and the fundamentals of capitalism and the role of the state.

Aspects of Russian Communism and Why Communism in the West Would Be Different, by Gaither Stewart

Image by J Duval via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
June 17, 2020

“A civilization reveals itself as fruitful by its ability to incite others to imitate it: when it no longer dazzles them it is reduced to a mere collection of odds and ends and vestiges of former worldly greatness. The successive attempts of Napoleon and Hitler to create a world empire failed, as the United States of North America has failed in our time because any initial attraction they might have exerted on the conquered transformed into resistance and hate as a result of their genocidal policies or military occupation and/or exploitation of the resources of the conquered lands instead of gradual absorption and acceptance of different peoples and the furthering of local cultures.” (Paraphrased from Cioran’s Histoire et Utopie)

Chris Hedges: The Student Uprising in Paris in May 1968

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on May 16, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to author and translator, Mitch Abidor about the student uprising in Paris in May 1968.

Caleb Maupin: What is the Lumpenproletariat? + Will Griffin: What Are The Principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism?

by Caleb Maupin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Caleb Maupin (website)
Caleb Maupin (Facebook Page)
May 10, 2020

“Well also within the working-class, Marx talked about you have the lumpenproletariat and what the lumpenproletariat is, is people that are part of the working class but they’re never really allowed to be part of the working class. Their income comes from criminal activities mostly. They’re barely employed, they’re barely surviving, they’re desperately poor and they’re just completely locked out.” — Caleb Maupin

When The Revolution Comes by Gaither Stewart

Image by Giorgia Colletti via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Previously published August 8, 2011
April 21, 2020

The Historical Gastonia Textile Mill Strikes Are Not Forgotten

When in the early part of this millennium I was writing a rather surrealistic novel, ASHEVILLE, about the town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina where I started out my life, I ran into the story of the Asheville-based self-professed Communist writer, Olive Tilford Dargan, of whom I had never heard before. Visiting then her gravesite in the little known Green Hills Cemetery in West Asheville and researching her and her activities I fell into a gossamer review of early 19th century labor struggles in the good old U.S. South.

Caleb Maupin: Social Democracy: What It Is and How Communists Relate To It

Image by nunavut via Flickr

with Caleb Maupin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Caleb Maupin (website)
Caleb Maupin (Facebook Page)
April 17, 2020

“When Lenin came back from exile to Russia that was in its revolutionary crisis, he urged the Bolsheviks to stop calling themselves Socialists and Social Democrats because he didn’t want them to be confused with the sellout parties of the Second International. The parties that had supported World War I and sold out the revolution. So the Bolsheviks started calling themselves Communists to distinguish themselves from the parties of the Second International.” — Caleb Maupin

Coronavirus Pandemic, Economic and Political Crises, and Revolutionary Situations by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.

Image by Hunter Desportes via Flickr

by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published on imperialismandthethirdworld, Apr. 7, 2020
April 8, 2020

The novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) is devastating the lives, cultures, mass psychologies, and economies of countries around the world. Here, I will not reproduce the damages it has inflicted in various countries. The news media are overflowing with such information. In this article, I will briefly outline the developing politico-economic effects, crises, and consequences of this pandemic.

How Communist Cuba is on the World’s Frontlines Against Coronavirus

Image by duncan c via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

goingundergroundRT on Mar 30, 2020

We speak to Dr. Helen Yaffe, author of We Are Cuba! How A Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World. She discusses Cuba’s international medical effort against Coronavirus, from sending doctors to many countries abroad, to its drugs for COVID-19 treatment and vaccine development, the history of Cuba’s ‘Army of White Coats’ and medical internationalism, why the United States and Western powers view Cuba as a threat, Cuba’s Interferon Alpha-2b drug which could aid the fight against Coronavirus, the US blockade of Cuba, allegations of Cuba being a dictatorship and more!

Chris Hedges: American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Mar 28, 2020

Chris Hedges talks to D. D. Guttenplan, editor of The Nation, about the great investigative journalist, I. F. Stone. Guttenplan’s biography of Stone is entitled, American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone.

Will Griffin: Bernie Did Not Make Socialism Popular, Capitalism Did!

Image by Chris Piascik via Flickr

by Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Peace Report
March 27, 2020

“As Marxists, we understand that it is the material conditions that create our reality. It is the material conditions, the objective material conditions in which we understand, we analyze and that is where we go forward to create strategies and tactics to change society and to understand society.” — Will Griffin

The Potential For An Anti-Imperialist Revolution by Rainer Shea

Image by Hunter Desportes via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Mar. 14, 2020
March 25, 2020

Since the beginning of colonialism, there’s existed a category of middle class people who’ve shared certain economic and social interests with the capitalist class. These interests consist of the wealth, security, and opportunities that one receives while benefiting from imperialism. And since these benefits are shared both by the property-owning class, much of the working class, and even some of the poor within the core imperialist countries, the rich have been able to keep most of the people in these countries opposed to socialist revolution.

The 2020 Coronavirus Economic Crash and The Crisis of Capitalism by Rainer Shea + Richard Wolff: This Is Like Nothing Ever Experienced

Image by Francis Clarke via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Mar. 17, 2020
March 18, 2020

The global economic crash that we’ve entered into is going to be more disastrous for capitalism than was the case for the Great Depression. This is because now, the system has no way to stabilize itself amid the widespread impoverishment and loss of profits that will ensue. After the Great Depression, the United States and the other core imperialist countries moved towards welfare statism, neutralizing the class conflict that had been arising amid the crisis. But no such fix will come during this even greater shock to the system.