Roland Boer's Blog, page 42

Out soon: Stalin: From Theology to the Philosophy of Socialism in Power

My book on Stalin will be published soon by Springer Beijing. This book was far more work than usual, since it required a a complete rebuilding of my categories of analysis, from the ground up. It has also provided the basis for my current project on ‘Socialism in Power‘. In other words, it is arguably the most significant study for the development of my thought.

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It is due out in October, but preliminary details can be found on the Springer website, here and on Amazon.

Endorsements come from...

United States War Crimes in Korea

With the Korean peninsula in the daily news, it is worth recalling a few facts behind the situation today.

Let us begin with the Korean War, with none other than an observation from the U.S. air force. General Curtis LeMay, head of the U.S. Strategic Air Force Command, openly admitted in an interview in 1984:

So we went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too …. Over a period of three years or...

Warming up for the second stage of socialism

Two items today as I rest after the ride across Belgium and Germany (basic account and pictures gradually being loaded here). The first is a report on the continuing program to lift the remaining 43.35 million (as of the end of 2016) Chinese people out of poverty by 2020. From 2012 to 2016, 13.9 million people have been lifted out of poverty annually, but it still requires another 10 million every year, or 20 people per minute, by 2020. Consider for a moment the scale of the project, or even...

A U.S. Cultural Revolution?

I am completely out of things for a while, cycling more than 1,000 km across Germany on the Mittelland Route (d4). But I did notice this intriguing Chinese take on what is happening in the United States, with statues being torn down, violent skirmishes, etc. The People’s Daily notes that more and more people in China are seeing what is evolving as a ‘Cultural Revolution‘, understanding the term as a wave of anger, violence and chaos.

China most confident and optimistic country in world – Ipsos survey

A big tick of approval for Xi Jinping and socialist democracy with this one. According to an Ipsos survey called ‘What worries the world – July 2017‘ the vast majority of those surveyed in China – 87% – believe their country is headed in the right direction.

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Other ones to note: Russians are far more confident than Australians, or indeed people in the USA or UK. As a spoiler, though, Saudi Arabians seem to feel pretty confident too. If you are into this sort of thing, burrowing into the repor...

Is China preparing to move to the second stage of socialism?

Word in the CPC for a while has been that preparations are under way for a transition to the second stage of socialism (the distinction was first made by Stalin in the late 1930s). Until now, China has been in the first or preliminary stage of socialism. But if you study Xi Jinping’s first volume of writings, The Governance of China, you will already find the terminology of ‘socialist modernisation [shehuizhuyi xiandaihu]’, and a ‘moderately well-off society [xiaokang shehui]’. Xiaokang is an...

90th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army

As Lenin and the Bolsheviks realised after the Potemkin Mutiny in 1905, any communist revolution needs a military wing. This could be either its own force, or a process of winning over significant parts of the existing armed forces – or both.

In China, what became the People’s Liberation Army began with the Nanchang Uprising, on 1 August 1927. This was a response to the anti-communist attack by the Guomindang (after their first alliance). So yesterday marks 90 years since that first event, th...

On Free Speech: Religion, Politics and Twelve Cartoons

More than a decade ago, in early 2006, I was a guest for a couple of months of Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland. The university is based in the capital city, Nuuk, on the milder west Greenland coast. For most of the time, I sat by a large window in a small house, writing and thinking, watching the ravens playing in the wind (I got to know them so well that I gave them names), the fishing boats running up and down the fjord, and the amazing black hills on the other side of that fjo...

Narratives of Catastrophe

This article was first published in an online journal called ‘State of Nature’. As is the way of online publishing, the journal no longer exists. So here is the article, updated and revised, on narratives of catastrophe:

Reports of catastrophe seem to be all around us. It may be the urgent matter of global warming and environmental collapse, or signs of the decline of the ‘West’, or of refugees flooding the last citadels of liberal democracy, of the Eurasian integration of China and Russia, o...

Marxism matters in China … even in schools

One of the realities of student life in China is ‘ideological education’. It is compulsory in middle school and in university. Obviously, such an approach has its benefits and problems. On the up side, I find that everyone knows the essential categories of Marxist analysis, socialism with Chinese characteristics, and so on. On the down side, many find it onerous, especially since it is a major feature of the gaokao, the university entry examinations. Or, as an article today in the Global Time...