ISSUE 3:

NOVEMBER 2020

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ISSUE 3 ARTICLES

POETRY AND ART

The Revolutionary

JOSHUA C. GOVENDER

 

Amidst Slumber

ANTON REGALA​

 

The Circus Comes (And Beckons!)

AZRIEL ROSE

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Jesus and Lenin Smoking Cigarettes in Hanoi

DYLAN PARSONS

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Leaves, or Salt

JACOB EDGAR

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Stock

JENSEN SAERE

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Walls

Working Class Prides

JOHN BEACHAM

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The Revolution is Coming

SANDY YU

 

Untitled Poem

JOHN SCHLEMBACH

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Nostalgiya

KONSTANTINOS DIMOPO

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Guillotine 2020

DUNC X

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Local 23

MICHAEL ARAUJO

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Self Portrait as Fragile Things

MARTINS DEEP

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Violence 2020

NICHOLAS HEACOCK

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Alone

A Sense of Being

No Country for the Poor

PRAKASH KONA

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1945 - 2020

Maduro

SINDYAN

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What Does R Stand For?

NICHOLAS HEACOCK

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A Made Up Dialogue Between Myself and Jürgen Habermas

Illusions by the Moonlight

SHANE BRANT

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Aureola

Leila Khaled

CHRISTIAN NOAKES

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Buffalo Nickel

Store Radio (2)

SUGAR LE FAE

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Smash Hindutva Fascism

Victory for Palestine 

REBEL POLITIK

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ISSUE 3 INTRODUCTION

Today, while the neoliberal state and the capitalist class remain infatuated with the hourly convulsions of obscure financial statistics, the tables and graphs produced by epidemiologists seem to tell an unrelated story—one both more clear and more devastating. Capital alone offers no salvation for the ravages of an uncontrolled pandemic. The dual logics of profit and accumulation are directly opposed to epidemiology, to virology, and to public health. And, as we are now able to juxtapose the pandemic impacts in the United States against those of the socialist states—against the examples provided by China, Vietnam, and others—we are able to see most clearly what has been true all along: that the neoliberal state and the capitalist class care nothing for the lives of the public. Profit and accumulation, rested atop a pile of corpses, are their only motivation. Capitalism has utterly failed public health and well-being.

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We are witnessing today what occurs when the neoliberal state comes up against a problem untethered from the logic of the market, and we are suffering all the more for it. Amidst the pandemic, amidst political upset, and amidst social uncertainty, capital accumulation continues both unabated and unfettered, concentrating the sum total of an unimaginable wealth into ever fewer hands.

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As the domestic politics of the empire descend into an ever greater absurdity, things like systematized racism, electoral uncertainty, and a complete dismantlement of public trust in the institutions of government work to create a maelstrom of friction. The empire itself sits upon the precipice of catastrophe, and still the needs of the working class remain unheeded. As the imperial state itself is contested among warring factions of the capitalist class, the needs of the working poor are increasingly neglected—the great masses left alone with no social sureties amidst death, illness, houselessness, and unemployment. We are left with a barrier, one we know all too well by now, between separated worlds: the world of capital on one hand and the world of life itself on the other.

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For those of us who try as we might to live our daily lives in the latter world, we are forced to face the palpable consequences of the whole capitalist system bearing incessantly upon us, intensifying by the hour: unemployment and underemployment, lack of or poor quality healthcare, unsafe working conditions, looming and ever increasing rents, stagnated wages, loss of social benefits, hunger and homelessness, state violence (both threatened and actual), sanctions and coups, and increasing social frictions grounded in a racism as old as capitalism itself.

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At this juncture, we are faced with such inhumanity that we would do well to recall Gramsci’s maxim: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” Amidst a disputed election, we know that neither US presidential candidate will change these first nature facts, nor will we find our saviors in the ruling classes of Western and Northern Europe. It is the responsibility of revolutionaries everywhere—those both within and outside of the imperial core—to provide not just a clear view of the catastrophe we face, but to guide society toward a just solution, to provide a diagnosis, and the hope for a cure. We are pessimistic because we see the vast martial and ideological arsenal of the ruling class; optimistic because we know it is the will of the masses that shapes history.

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As Evo Morales relates in the introduction to Vijay Prashad’s Washington Bullets, “It is likely that the world that will emerge from the convulsions of 2020 will not be the one that we used to know. Everyday, we are reminded of the need to continue our struggle against imperialism, against capitalism, and against colonialism. We must work together towards a world in which greater respect for the people and for Mother Earth is possible.”[1] It is in this spirit we hope that the third issue of Peace, Land, and Bread makes a lively contribution to the growing literature of rev- olutionary theory with which we confront—and construct—this coming world.

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Opening the issue, Taylor Genovese argues for a compelling reimagining of a communist morality with which to confront the new world. On page 38, Christian Noakes provides a poignant and striking account of dispossession, displacement, and community development; and on page 52, Sam Parry argues strongly for that we view the modern European Union as a new era in European imperialism, rather than a salvific force for global reparation. Our poetry and arts section, Poiesis and Physis, is the biggest it has ever been with over thirty pages of revolutionary art, writing, and poetry. And, as we continue to establish our journal as the leading voice of critical scholarship in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, we promise to ensure that revolutionary arts will always have a place alongside revolutionary scholarship.

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On page 101, Amal Samaha pays brilliant tribute to the late David Graeber with an innovative and groundbreaking synthesis of Graeber’s own writing with the work of Jürgen Habermas and Zak Cope in Innovators, Bullshitters, or Aristocrats: Towards an Explanation of Unproductive Work. Following Samaha, Lucas Huang writes a brilliant, must-read treatise on the intersection of idol culture and capital in Idol Empire: East Asia’s Pop-Music Industry and the Conquest of Creativity. And in our newest section, Litteratura Comunista, we present three masterfully written articles on the intersection of musical theory, literary analysis, film studies, and Marxism by Jackson Albert Mann, Mark LaRubio, and Sérgio Dias Branco; as well as a poignant review of renowned critical theorist Mackenzie Wark’s newest book, Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twentieth Century.

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In our biggest history section yet, Things Before: History and Materialism, we bring you articles by Joe Dwyer, John Forte, and our editor Ben Stahnke, as well as critical articles by Uma Arruga, and Donald Courter. In short, this issue of Peace, Land, and Bread is nothing short of Herculean. At almost 300 pages, issue three is our biggest issue yet.

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We on the editorial staff bring you PLB as a labor of love. As committed scholars and activists, Peace, Land, and Bread is part of our contribution to the great and lengthy history of revolutionary writing in the era of capital; it sits in concert with several hundred years of revolutionary publishing—publishing which has often been outlawed, and has seen editors and authors exiled, killed, or driven underground. We bring you Peace, Land, and Bread in this spirit: in the spirit of writing and research amidst dark times, of radical scholarship in the face of empire, and in the spirit of both pessimism and hope—pessimism that what we now face upon the eve of what might be the most troubling winter in a hundred years is nothing short of historic, and optimism that, as communists and as radicals, we shall persevere as we always have: through community, camaraderie, and connection—and overall with solidarity.

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Marx famously wrote that revolutions are the locomotives of history. We continue to walk the tracks placed before us—laying down our own tracks upon which the next generations will build ever farther—with Marxism-Leninism as our guiding light, as the science on which we ground our revolutionary work, our community, and our hope.

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ENDNOTES

[1] Morales, Evo. "Introduction to Washington Bul- lets," by Vijay Prashad. Washington Bullets. Monthly Review Press, p. 11, 2020.

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ISSUE 2:

SUMMER 2020

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ISSUE 2 INTRODUCTION

POETRY AND ART

Peace! Land! Bread! 

 

This was the unifying cry of the Russian revolutionaries that called for peace for the war weary, land for the landless, and bread for the hungry. It is hard to say if Vladimir Lenin could have predicted just how relevant those words would be some 103 years later. But, in 2020 we once again find ourselves in a position that was not unfamiliar to the Bolsheviks. 

 

Peace is threatened by imperialist conflicts. Land is being bought, sold and exploited by capitalist industries which leave the land barren through unsustainable agricultural and mining practices. Food security is threatened by capitalist trade wars, overexploitation and climate change which drives wide-spread hunger and displacement affecting an estimated 810 million people.[1] We also find ourselves governed by an incompetent political class, under the cloud of a global pandemic and experiencing the resurgence of Fascism.[2] Everywhere you look, it seems, the early-20th century is repeating itself and the writings of Lenin and Marx seem more and more relevant.

 

Marxism is often turned to as the solution when capitalism becomes strained following events such as pandemics. In her book, Laura Spinney argued that it was hard to decouple the revolutionary wave that swept the globe and the effects of the devastating 1918 Spanish Flu.[3] In 1920 Soviet Russia became the first to implement a fully centralised public healthcare system, resulting in the development of the first flu vaccine.[4]  In Ireland, the election of socialist Sinn Féin, the formation of the Limerick Soviet and the sitting of the first Dáil Éirean saw an end to colonial rule and greater rights for the ethnic Irish working class (discussed in David Swanson’s article, page 123). More recently, nationalisation is used to prevent capitalist businesses such as Virgin Australia from collapsing. Perhaps most excitingly, we are seeing people reckon with deep-rooted racism, anti-semitism, and social injustice following the Black Lives Matter protests and the ongoing economic strain of COVID-19. 

 

Many contemporary issues are examined through the Marxist-Leninist lens in the July issue of Peace, Land and Bread. The coronavirus pandemic, capitalism, and the potential for reform is thoughtfully discussed in Maya Bhardwaj’s article (page 15). Decolonisation and imperialism also features prominently in this issue during Zhong Xiangyu’s piece (page 36) and during the exciting interview with Pulitzer Prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen (page 81), in which Viet discusses the story behind his debut novel The Sympathizer with Quynh Vo. Rainer Shea discusses the troubling rise of fascism in his article on America’s imperialistic economic system (page 29). 

 

Although Peace, Land and Bread is a scholarly, peer-reviewed publication, it is our firm belief that revolutionary thinking throughout history has  been expressed through art and literature. In our second issue, we continue our tradition of including artwork and poetry, addressing themes ranging from Black Lives Matter, religion, police brutality, revolution, American imperialism and LGBT+ rights. 

 

The articles and art work presented in our July issue contribute to some of the biggest conversations happening on a global scale. Importantly, these articles shed light on how Marxism-Leninism is best suited to cope with the big issues facing us as a species. We hope these peer-reviewed, scholarly articles will aid our readers in understanding the world around them in the context of communism, and suggest new avenues of debate and thinking. 

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References

1. The State of Food Security and nutrition in the world. (2020). United Nations report. Retrieved 18th of July 2020 from http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi

2. Copsey, N. The Radical Right and Facism. (2018). Published in The Oxford Handbook on the Radical right. Oxford University Press.

3. Spinner, L. Pale Rider: the Spanish Flu of 1812 and how it changed the world. (2017). PubliPress Publishing.

4. Barberis, I; Myles, P; Ault, S; Bragganzi, N; Martini, M. (2016). History and evolution of influenza control through vaccination: from the first monovalent vaccine to universal vaccines. JPMH. 57(3)

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ISSUE 1:

SPRING 2020

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ISSUE 1 ARTICLES

POETRY AND ART

ISSUE 2 INTRODUCTION

Peace! Land! Bread! 

 

This was the rallying cry of the Bolsheviks that united the disparate revolutionary factions of Russia in the early part of the twentieth century. Peace for the war-weary; land for the landless; and bread for the hungry.

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Now, in the early part of the twenty-first century—as fascism mutates and reemerges in the form of right-wing nativisms sweeping the globe, entrenched within and complementing the structures of capital—communism once again stands to oppose it: to fight the global darkening at the hand of endless imperial war, climatological and economic dispossessions, and of pervasive food insecurity.

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In addition to the greater aim of communist revolution, communists today remain committed to the cause of public awareness and scholarship. Lenin roused the jaded Russian proletariat by showing them that a better society could be built with his call for peace, land, and bread.

 

Today, we work to rouse the exploited and exhausted workers of the world and to show them that the twenty-first century demons of capital can be fought with communism. Peace, land, and bread must once again be our rallying cry—the rallying cry of socialists everywhere.

 

In Solidarity,

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Peace, Land, and Bread Editors

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© 2020