Stephen D. Shenfield | Author and Translator
Quora: Left against Leninism
- Published on 14 July 2020
- Hits: 779
For some time I have participated in the website quora.com. Participants ask one another questions, offer answers to questions proposed by others, and comment on others' answers. Those who wish also create spaces to attract people interested in different topics.
Many left-wing spaces have appeared on Quora in recent years, reflecting an increasing interest in alternatives to capitalism. However, I was concerned to discover that among them are spaces that deny, downplay, excuse or justify the slave labor camps, blood purges, man-made famines, and other atrocities committed by the Stalin and Mao regimes.
Fully automated luxury communism
- Published on 18 April 2019
- Hits: 1361
Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (Verso, 2019)
This is a very important book. It is due out in June.
Aaron Bastani, co-founder and senior editor at the alternative media organization Novara Media, argues that current technological advances are on the way toward overcoming scarcity and making ‘luxury communism’ – a society of abundance for all – possible for the first time. What Marx foresaw as the hypothetical result of further development of the productive forces is now rapidly turning into reality. On this basic point the author is in full agreement with the World Socialist Movement, although there is scope for debate over exactly when a society of abundance became or will become possible.
Pizzagate: pedophilia in high places?
- Published on 19 October 2017
- Hits: 4678
Over the winter of 2016--2017 a spate of stories appeared in the mass media about a scandal called 'Pizzagate'. The authors of these stories warned that 'far-right crazies' were spreading 'fake news' or 'fake conspiracy theories' about sexual abuse of children by highly placed pedophiles -- in particular, by prominent figures in the Democratic Party establishment such as the Podesta brothers (John Podesta was chairman of Hilary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign; Tony is a highly influential lobbyist).
Memoirs of Han Hing Quang. A long road traveled
- Published on 11 October 2020
- Hits: 427
Memoirs of Han Hing Quang: A Long Road Traveled
Translated from Vietnamese by his daughter Ai Hoa Han
The author was a middle-ranking cadre of ethnic Chinese origin in North Vietnam, where he worked for the Ministry of Foreign Trade in Hanoi and Hong Kong and served as an interpreter in official delegations to China and North Korea. From this vantage point he observed the deterioration in Vietnam--China relations that eventually led to the border war and his departure from Vietnam and resettlement in England, where he wrote these memoirs. He also describes his family background, his youth as a trader in medicinal herbs, and his activity in the Vietminh during the war against French colonialism.
Follow the link from the title to the file containing the full text of the memoirs with explanatory notes.
Letter from India: turning a deaf ear to misery and despair
- Published on 12 February 2021
- Hits: 77
Note: The author, Professor Pramod Ranjan of Assam Central University, wrote this essay in reaction to India's Budget for 2021-2022. The non-Indian reader needs to know that in Indian English a lakh is 100,000 and a crore is ten million.
As in most parts of the world, life was on a stand-still in India for the past almost one year, courtesy of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, the poor and the middle class are in a miserable state. Crores have lost their jobs and lakhs have faced savage reductions in their income. Amid this crisis, the Government of India presented its annual budget in Parliament on 1 February 2021.
Based on the statistics on global hunger, published by the UN during the lockdown, Oxfam had estimated that by the end of 2020, hunger linked to the lockdown may start claiming the life of six to 12 thousand persons every day. The naked dance of death has commenced and without much fuss, it is spreading over a larger and a still larger area. Deaths due to poverty far exceed deaths attributable to Covid-19.1
