Neo-Malthusianism: Anti-Humanism, Misanthropy, and the Crisis of Capitalism

November 24, 2020 Janelle VelinaLeave a comment

The American Eugenics Society’s flashlight exhibit at the 1926 Fitter Families Contest, emphasizing the “overpopulation” of “defectives” in the American gene pool. Neo-Malthusianism: Anti-Humanism, Misanthropy, and the Crisis of Capitalism Janelle Velina24 November 2020LLCO.org Neo-Malthusianism is the notion that the world needs to be drastically depopulated and that “humans are a cancerous tumor eating up the world’s resources.” Its proponents …

International Workers’ Day 2020

May 1, 2020 Leading LightLeave a comment

International Workers’ Day 2020 1 May 2020LLCO.org It is a difficult time for the worker. On a day that we should be celebrating, organizing, and marching, many of us find ourselves feeling isolated from our comrades in the struggle. No doubt many planned May Day events and gatherings have unfortunately been canceled due to the lockdowns enacted by the bourgeoisie …

Combat Bourgeois Culture by Building New Culture

January 30, 2019 Leading LightLeave a comment

Combat Bourgeois Culture by Building New Culture Medved Pobedy 30 January 2019 LLCO.org …[W]e can only regard as achieved what has become part and parcel of our culture, of our social life, our habits… – V.I. Lenin, 1923 [1] Bourgeois Culture The entrenchment of capitalist hegemony throughout the world has led to the development of a reactionary and degenerate culture …

Comments on Agriculture and Food in Crisis

December 3, 2016 Leading LightLeave a comment

Comments on Agriculture and Food in Crisis (2010, Monthly Review Press) ed. by Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar. LLCO.org In the period between 2006 and 2008, a world food crisis emerged. Agriculture and Food in Crisis (2010, Monthly Review Press) is an anthology of articles describing the causes and effects of this crisis. The collection is edited by Fred Magdoff …

Americans, First Worlders waste food, Third Worlders starve

September 29, 2016 Leading LightLeave a comment

Americans, First Worlders waste food, Third Worlders starve LLCO.org Karl Marx described the proletariat as the dispossessed, as earning only enough to survive to the next day and having nothing to lose but its chains. However, this hardly describes the American, or the First World, working class. The First World working class doesn’t have chains to lose, rather what they …

Will First Worlders benefit from socialism?

September 6, 2016 Leading LightLeave a comment

Socialism will lead to a lower-material standard of living for First World peoples. First World peoples earn many times more than the value of their labor. They earn many times more than an egalitarian, socialist distribution worldwide would entail. First World populations get more than their share of the pie. They live off the labor of the Third World. Under socialism, First World populations will have to give up their privileges, their lives of luxury, based on extracting super-profits from the Third World.

Water and imperialism

August 2, 2016 Leading LightLeave a comment

Water and imperialism* LLCO.org Water is essential, in various ways, to all human activity. Water is something that humans, literally, cannot do without. Every human needs water in order live and to have a good life. Societies need water for the survival of their populations. Usable water, as a resource, is finite and distributed unevenly across the planet. Most societies …

Bangladesh: the holocaust in our water

August 2, 2016 Leading LightLeave a comment

Bangladesh: the holocaust in our water LLCO.org Water is one of the most basic things required for life. Seventy-one percent of the Earth’s surface is water. By weight, the average human body is about 65 percent water. Water brings life to animals, forests, crops, lands. Even though 97 percent of people in Bangladesh have access to water, only 40 percent …

Book review of Joshua S. Horn’s Away With All Pests

July 18, 2016 Leading LightLeave a comment

Book review of Joshua S. Horn’s Away With All Pests Prairie Fire LLCO.org As a Western surgeon who lived in revolutionary China from 1954 to 1969, comparisons with Norman Bethune, the famed Canadian doctor who gave his life for revolution, are inevitable. Those that Dr. Joshua S. Horn encountered, to his embarrassment, often made the comparison to Bethune, the foreign …

Africa in Crisis

March 22, 2010 Leading LightLeave a comment

Africa in Crisis: Hundreds of Millions Lack Access to Water, Suffer from “Sick Water,” and Food Shortages 22 March 2010 LLCO.org Africa, especially West and Central Africa, is in crisis. According to a recent UNICEF report, more than 155 million, roughly 40 percent of the population in West and Central Africa, lack access to potable water. This region of Africa …