Essays by Charles Andrews
Handel and the Slave Trade
Audiences love to stand and sing along when George Frederick Handel’s oratorio Messiah gets to the Hallelujah chorus. In the past few years, a new note has sounded from the New York Times down through tiers of liberals and progressives: you must always keep in mind that Handel invested in the slave trade. And each musician and listener today must make up for that ... Read more
This article was published Dec. 10, 2024 by New Worker.
Does Shawn Fain Make You Vomit?
Read one answer published by New Worker.
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Election 2024: A Single Payer Healthcare Group’s Revealing Pivot
Kamala Harris backtracked on her momentary past support for Medicare for All. How did the advocacy group Healthcare Now respond? Read the article published on Sept. 14, 2024 by New Worker.
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Trotsky’s Comintern Conspiracy:
The Case of Osip Pyatnitsky
This review of the book by Grover Furr emphasizes the lessons for today that we should draw from history. Read the review published on Oct. 1, 2024 by New Worker.
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Project 2025 Does Damage Control,
Still Has Executive List
Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation's 922-page recipe for open capitalist dictatorship under Donald Trump. It turns out that a huge part of the U.S. population has heard of Project 2025, and they don't like it. Project 2025 made the mistake of being candid. The liberal ruling class knows better. Read the article published on Aug. 3, 2024 by New Worker.
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China's Health Officials
Look To U.S. Health Insurance Capitalists
The antagonism between U.S. and Chinese capitalism does not prevent the capitalists of both countries from cooperating to suck the blood of Chinese and U.S. workers. The American Chamber of Commerce in China brought a group of China’s health officials to the U.S. The purpose? To sell them on the profits to be made out of the Medicare Advantage ripoff. Read the article published Aug. 31, 2024 by New Worker.
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A Routine Report on China's Economy
Many U.S. congresspersons, governors, and so on denounce “communist China,” but the Western business press has no problem reporting plain facts just as it does for any other capitalist country. The statistics come from the PRC government. Meanwhile, apologists for the Communist Party of China prattle on about a “socialist market economy.” Read the article published on Aug. 2, 2024 by In Defense of Communism.
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Vietnam 1967, Gaza 2023: They Point to the Future
The massive protest movement against the U.S. war on Vietnam in the 1960s and ‘70s did not trigger a revolution, nor come close to one. The same is true of the protest movement against the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza. But comparison of the two draws an arrow that points to it.
This short article explains two developments that power the U.S. protests of the genocide in Gaza. It was published June 3, 2024 by New Worker.
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UAW’s Shawn Fain: Feisty Collaboration
or Class-Struggle Economics?
From the Democratic Party to “left” media like the Guardian, UAW chief Shawn Fain is the newly-anointed labor leader. Fain will tell you that it takes a fight to win something: he is a practitioner of feisty class collaboration. Read the article published on April 15, 2024 by New Worker.
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Multipolaristas' Dugin Maneuvers Through BRICS Contradiction
"Aleksander Dugin, a propagandist for Putin’s great-Russian imperialism, has had to maneuver through one of the contradictions within the BRICS association – the unity and contention between China and Russia…" This article was published on May 23, 2024 by In Defense of Communism, an international website edited in Greece.
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Airliners Fall Apart in the Sky –
What Is a Communist Solution?
Airliners have lost parts and suffered equipment malfunctions one week after another. What is going on with Boeing and the airlines? This essay examines outsourcing and the failure of government oversight. It asks: after eliminating the profit motive, what is a communist solution to making and maintaining airliners? The essay was published on March 23, 2024 by New Worker.
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China Plunders Congo, Exploits Miners –
'Anti-imperialists' Approve
Late in January 2024 Sinohydro Corp and China Railway Group Limited re‑negotiated their plunder of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). For their 68% holding in Sicomines, a joint copper and cobalt mining venture with the DRC, the two Chinese corporations will pay a pitiful royalty of 1.2% on gross sales. An examination of the class antagonisms involved was published Jan. 31, 2024 by In Defense of Communism, an international website edited in Greece.
PDF
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Zionist Repression, Harvard's Claudine Gay,
and Capitalist Democracy
Israel's genocide in Gaza brings Zionist repression of people who speak out in the U.S. Here is a class analysis of how this happens in a "democracy." Among other points, the article documents that Harvard president Claudine Gay comes from the ruling capitalist class of Haiti. It was published on Dec. 31, 2023 by New Worker.
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China’s Stock Market: A Lesson on What Socialism Is Not
Late in January the Chinese government arranged for its state-owned companies to put as much as $282 billion into the falling stock market. Why does a “socialist” economy have a stock market? A brief analysis was published on Feb. 10, 2024 by New Worker.
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Joti Brar’s Tantrum About the Imperialist Pyramid
Joti Brar, a leader of the CPGB M-L and the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, worked up a froth over a simple analogy. This brief note, published by New Worker on Oct. 31, 2023, lays out the how and the why of her long article.
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Who Understands Civilization – Xi's CPC or Working People?
What is the class analysis of civilization? This essay gets a start on the question by looking at why the Communist Party of China celebrates Confucian civilization. It was published on October 16, 2023 by In Defense of Communism, an international website edited in Greece.
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PDF
Socialism Is a Series of Communist Projects
This article was published on Sept. 26, 2021 by In Defense of Communism, an international website edited in Greece. "How can we get to communism and leave exploitation behind forever? History shows that the two big challenges are first, revolution to achieve state power, and second, traversing the entire road to communism. ..."
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PDF
DSA Affirms It Is a Subsidiary of the Democratic Party
Things are rough these days for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). This article was published on August 20, 2023 by New Worker.
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PDF
China’s Publicists in the West: Always Forget Class
This short article pays special attention to the Friends of Socialist China group and to the class concept of civilization.
The article was published on July 17, 2023 by New Worker.
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PDF
Material Forces that Turn Socialism into Capitalism
The Soviet Union and China proved that people can build socialism. They also showed that apparently firm socialist countries can fall to capitalism – from within and from the top of the communist party. Should we give up on socialism, or shall we solve a problem: how do we keep on the communist road to a society of no rich and no poor?
This article was published on April 8, 2023 by In Defense of Communism, an international website edited in Greece.
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PDF
Global Warming, the Environmental Movement
and Socialism
"More than most controversial issues, the environmental problem requires attention to the back and forth between class interests and our powers of production, the productive forces." This article was published on Oct. 19, 2022 by Marxism Leninism Today.
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Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and Xi Jinping's Report to 20th Congress
"Facts count more than words… However, for those persons still wedded to evaluating the PRC by its words, let us look at how Xi Jinping's report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) uses 'Marxism' and 'Marxism-Leninism.'" This article was published on Oct. 22, 2022 by In Defense of Communism, an international website edited in Greece.
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Media Lauds Fidelity CEO
Who Destroyed Good Pensions
This "appreciation" of the damage done to countless lives by a financial capitalist was published on April 28, 2022 by CounterPunch.
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Want Democracy?
Then You Need a People's Dictatorship
This brief commentary was published on Jan. 20, 2021 by In Defense of Communism, an international website edited in Greece. "A mob was permitted, even helped, to take over the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021. No government can allow that sort of thing and survive. ..."
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Was the Soviet Union in Stalin's Time
an 'Experiment'?
This letter was sent to Jacobin magazine after it published a tirade against the Soviet Union in its socialist period. As usual with these screeds, it was cast as a study of Joseph Stalin.
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Apple’s Profits and Foxconn Workers’ Wages
Every few years someone compares Foxconn workers’ wages with the price of an iPhone. Perhaps the most recent of these studies is…
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Not Populism, Not Socialism, but Communism Will Get It Done
This essay was published on May 31, 2020 by In Defense of Communism, an international website edited in Greece. "The ruling classes of developed countries get a lot of pushback these days from the masses they hold in contempt..."
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PDF – with endnotes
Trump, You Lost. Now Go!
Get the leaflet here.
COVID-19, Capitalism, and Socialism
– Two Brief Observations
The public health response to this virus around the world did not break down as capitalism versus socialism…
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There Is No Socialism Without a Communist Party
This essay was published by Marxism Leninism Today. "More people in the U.S. have a favorable attitude to socialism today than two, five, or ten years ago. However, communism – the organized movement that will overthrow capitalism and create a socialist order – has not kept up with the turn to socialism..."
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PDF
Barack Wrote Me a Letter
Barack Obama wrote a letter in support of Joe Biden for president. The letter and brief comments on it were published Aug. 19, 2020 by Marxism Leninism Today.
A Note on Carlos Ghosn and Global Capitalism
The Ghosn-Nissan-Renault affair is a clash over the profits sweated from hundreds of thousands of workers. With globalization, the battle of capitalist interests becomes global, too. Published Jan. 7, 2020 by Dissident Voice.
Corporate and “Progressive” Democrats Threaten Medicare Itself
Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal toss out the model Congressional bill for Improved Medicare for All (H.R. 676) and sneak a deadly "buy-in" into their legislation. Published March 1, 2019 by Dissident Voice.
The Government Shutdown Makes You Think About Socialism
Published Jan. 13, 2019 by Dissident Voice.
Trade, Trump, and Us
An exposé of Trump's international trade position. The left should not support globalization, and it has a working-class answer to it. Published March 31, 2017 by Marxism Leninism Today.
The Disintegration of Bourgeois Democracy
A long view of the developments leading to the U.S. presidential campaign of 2015-16, this essay explains a great deal about the Donald Trump presidency. Published Sept. 3, 2016 by Marxism Leninism Today. PDF
"A must read piece putting the decline of democracy into context." – Connolly Youth Movement
The Leninist Moment of the Sanders
Presidential Campaign
An examination of the clash between the Sanders campaign and the Democratic National Committee over database access, published Dec. 25, 2015 by MRZine. National media soon buried the revealing incident.
The Doctor Will See You Now. First, Your Copay.
This analysis of the erosion of health security under the Affordable Care Act and its effect on the struggle for improved Medicare for All was published April 29, 2015 by MRZine.
Senator Sanders and the Impossibility
of Reviving Democratic Party Liberalism
Published Dec. 9, 2014 by MRZine.
It Was a Good War – But Whose Good War?
This brief class analysis of World War Two, triggered by a book by Jacques Pauwels, was published Nov. 16, 2015 by Marxism Leninism Today.
Professor Piketty Fights Orthodoxy
and Attacks Inequality
(This was the first Marxist review of the popular book by Thomas Piketty. It was published March 19, 2014 on the website Marxism Leninism Today.)
Thomas Piketty. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. $39.95.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty has caused a stir, which it deserves. Capital 21, as we will abbreviate the title, grapples with a prominent current issue: outrageously unequal incomes and wealth. It is a data-rich, wide-ranging investigation over 570 pages of text written in the smooth, often ironic, and occasionally elevated French manner. It breaks with ...
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