Tag: Stalinism

Somalia’s Destruction by U.S. & European Gov’ts, Big Business

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On December 2, 2025, U.S. president Donald Trump unleashed yet another racist rant, this time calling Somalis “garbage” and stating that their country “stinks.” This comes after decades of distortions and lies about Somali piracy, which in fact emerged from the collapse of Somali government and society, a nightmare created by the intervention of the wealthy families ruling the United States and European countries in particular. This is a good moment to review the horrific history of U.S. imperialism in Somalia, and the decisive role of successive U.S. administrations — Democratic and Republican — in that country’s destruction.

Intellectuals and Revolution

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“It is elementary that ‘a superior capacity for material production is the necessary basis for a superior cultural superstructure,’” Cannon writes in this 1961 letter. “Even the Cuban leaders, who don’t profess to be practicing Marxists, know that and are working night and day to improve productive capacities to provide the means for all the other things. But in my opinion, there is also merit in [Mills’] concern for ‘moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority,’ because it cannot be taken for granted that this will follow automatically from the reorganization of the productive system. This aim must be deliberately stated and consciously fought for all the time.”

A Visit with Sociologist C. Wright Mills

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The following is a 1961 letter and postscript by Socialist Workers Party (SWP) leaders George Novack and Evelyn Reed to James P. Cannon, who was then SWP national chairman, describing a visit by Novack and Reed with sociologist C. Wright Mills. What is striking in the exchange is the open-mindedness of socialist leaders at the time, the interest in finding common ground with fighters committed to struggle for a world of social equality and human solidarity. This attitude permeates the writings of Novack, Reed, and Cannon. It is the polar opposite of sectarianism. And it is central to Marxism and to the spirit of the Communist Manifesto, the founding document of the communist movement.

Lenin on Internationalism, Fighting National Oppression

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This is a selection of writings by Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin on internationalism, fighting national oppression, and the need for a voluntary union of soviet socialist republics. In recent posts, World-Outlook has referred to the fight Lenin carried out at the end of his life for a genuinely internationalist approach to ensuring such a voluntary union in the early years after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine this year, and Vladimir Putin’s distortions of Russia’s and Ukraine’s revolutionary history, give renewed importance to these issues.

The Muslim Peoples of the East and the Russian Revolution

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The end of the 20-year-long U.S. war in Afghanistan in August, and the takeover of the country by the Taliban, highlighted once again the worldwide political significance of the countries of the Islamic East. Are peoples in these countries condemned to permanent backwardness, as many believe, weighed down by reactionary religious ideology? Or can they be a revolutionary force in the fight to liberate humanity? What will it take to cement an alliance between working people of East and West? An article by John Riddell, with an introductory note by Mike Taber, take up these questions.