Sept. 10 — It is a thoroughly reactionary development when demonstrators carrying U.S. flags march through a city asking the most hated impe
By Fred Goldstein
Such flagrant appeals to colonialism have not been seen since the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in China in 1989. At that time, the vast assembly of counterrevolutionary student protesters, many of them schooled in the U.S., displayed a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square in an open appeal for support from U.S. imperialism.
Parading through Hong Kong with U.S. flags in 2019 is the equivalent of displaying the statue of “Lady Liberty” in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Fred Goldstein, 84, died after a long illness on April 11, 2023. He is survived by his partner of 57 years, Naomi Cohen Goldstein, and their daughter, Lila Natalie Goldstein, as well as a daughter from a prior marriage.
Part of the revolutionary youth movement of the 1960s, Fred Goldstein was inspired by the rising liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as the struggle against racism in the U.S. While a student at City College in New York City, Fred was a founding member of Youth Against War & Fascism and in 1962 helped to organize the first demonstration in the U.S. against the war in Vietnam.
He was a dynamic speaker and teacher, as well as a tireless organizer who had a gift for connecting meaningfully with people. In spite of the great difficulties now facing the multinational working class and oppressed in the U.S. and around the world, he remained a revolutionary optimist to the end.
From a June 9, 2013, talk by Fred Goldstein at the Left Forum, a yearly event in New York City. The talk was focused on socialism and China
On the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China, read this important analysis by Fred Goldstein:
" China today is a new, complex and contradictory phenomenon in history. It has fundamental socialist structures alongside capitalist development and imperialist penetration. The leadership calls it 'market socialism' or socialism with Chinese characteristics.
"Only Marxism enables us to approach an analysis of China."
In the momentous political event that marked “Black August,” freedom fighter Jonathan Jackson, at the age of 17, burst into a San Rafael, Calif., courtroom, armed, to free his brother, George Jackson
By Fred Goldstein
August 7, 1970, shall go down in history as the day of the heroes of San Rafael. On that day, four courageous Black liberation fighters gave the world a truly awe-inspiring demonstration of revolutionary heroism and self-sacrifice in the struggle against the racist tyranny of U.S. imperialism. Their deed has already become an imperishable part of the revolutionary heritage of the Black Liberation struggle and of oppressed people everywhere.
Three of these heroes were prisoners of war — captives in the war of the master class against Black America. The fourth was a young revolutionary whose brother was being held prisoner in the concentration camp called San Quentin.
“We are revolutionaries,” they proudly proclaimed. “We want the Soledad brothers free by 12:30.” Their deed was performed for the people and for history.
From a June 9, 2013, talk by Fred Goldstein at the Left Forum
From a June 9, 2013, talk by Fred Goldstein at the Left Forum, a yearly event in New York City. The talk was focused on socialism and China in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008. Although the details of what is happening now are different, the social and economic forces have not changed. The conclusion is also unchanged: there must be a firm defense of China against every scheme by imperialism to undermine the socialist foundation that still exists there.
The issue of China is one of the most important questions of the 21st century for the working class and the oppressed peoples, as well as the hostile imperialist ruling classes of the world.
The destiny of the working class and all of humanity in the foreseeable future ultimately depends upon the thoroughgoing revival on a world scale of revolutionary Marxism and on the victorious struggle for socialism and communism — the only true application of Marxist revolutionary science.
Inasmuch as U.S. imperialism is the primary instigator of war and intervention, the wellspring of reaction and oppression, and the bulwark of world capitalism, in no place is it more important to fight for the revival of the struggle for socialism than in the United States.
During the Cold War and the struggle that put the USSR and China on one side and imperialism headed by Washington on the other side, revolutionaries used to characterize the conflict as a class war between two irreconcilable social systems.
There was the socialist camp, based upon socialized property, economic planning for human need and the government monopoly of foreign trade on the USSR-China side, and capitalism, a system of production for profit, on the other.
That the two systems were irreconcilable was at the bottom of the conflict dubbed the Cold War. In light of the current sharpening economic, diplomatic, political and military conflict between U.S. imperialism and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it is time to revive the concepts that were applied during the height of the Cold War. ...
To be sure, there has been a steady erosion of China’s socialist institutions. The “iron rice bowl” which guaranteed a living to Chinese workers has been eliminated in private enterprises. Numerous state factories and enterprises have been sold off to the detriment of the workers, and in the rural areas land was decollectivized.
One of the biggest setbacks for socialism in China and one which truly gladdened the hearts of the prophets of counterrevolution, was the decision by the Jiang Jemin CCP leadership to allow capitalists into the Chinese Communist Party in 2001. ...
But on balance, this capitalist takeover has not materialized. Chinese socialism, despite the capitalist inroads into the economy, has proved far more durable than Washington ever imagined.
It is not that Xi Jinping has become a revolutionary internationalist and a champion of proletarian control. But it has become apparent that China’s status in the world is completely connected to its social and economic planning.
The Democratic Party leadership has chained the progressive masses to a defense of U.S. ruling-class militarism as the price for impeaching Trump.
Tens of millions in this country and around the world justifiably want to see the right-wing bully, racist, misogynist bigot Trump brought down. But they are being forced to choose between Trump, who wants to blame his troubles on Ukraine, and the camp that wants to attack Russia.
This a completely false and dead-end choice.
This line of argument has been set forth by Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Adam Schiff and company, their lawyers and their corporate backers. The political masterminds behind this impeachment strategy have set up the proceedings to be especially harmful to the workers and the oppressed.
