This report was originally published in WW1330, which can be found here
Open and honest debate
Last weekend saw the first Winter Communist University, conducted under the broad heading, ‘After the US presidential election: consequences and considerations’.
The CPGB’s Communist University has been a regular feature of the leftwing summer for more than 30 years, but this was our first winter event. Although something of an experiment and held online because of the lockdown, it was successful at a number of levels. Attendance at the sessions ranged from 50 to 135 comrades. The fact that it was online allowed comrades from all over Britain and further afield – in the United States, Ireland, Norway, Turkey and the Netherlands – to take part in our discussions and share their ideas and experiences.
Not only were the talks and introductions of a high level, but the contributions and questions from the audience greatly enhanced the serious and comradely atmosphere. There was real debate and disagreement, and the participation by comrades from a variety of positions, including Trotskyists and left communists, added to the range of ideas we heard
1. America in turmoil
The sessions began with a talk by Donald Parkinson from the American magazine, Cosmonaut, on ‘The crisis in the United States and the prospects for the left’. In his introduction Donald outlined some of the political, economic and public-health features of the current crisis, emphasising levels of political violence and polarisation not seen in the US since the 1960s. He particularly drew attention to the significance of the confrontation between the forces of the state and the Black Lives Matter movement, along with the growth of the far-right currents which took part in the ‘march on the Capitol’.
The continued deindustrialisation of the American economy and the severe contraction of expectations about the future of the ‘American way’, especially amongst the young, have had a major impact since the financial crash of 2008. The crisis in bourgeois politics, comrade Parkinson suggested, was especially acute, as revealed in the challenges to ‘mainstream politics’ from the very different campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Moreover, Trump’s successful electoral mobilisation and the continuing strength of his support base in the 2020 presidential election shows that this political crisis has not been resolved in any way.
In both Donald’s opening contribution and the discussion that followed much of the focus was on the nature of Sanders’ politics and the failure of the left to develop a political voice for the working class. Comrade Parkinson argued that the Sanders’ campaign had found an echo amongst some unions and sections of the working class, although he stressed the severe limitations of Bernie Sanders’ ‘socialism’. However, his electoral campaigns had stimulated growth in membership and support for the Democratic Socialists of America, creating a movement where Marxists could intervene and find an audience for revolutionary ideas.
The American left had been incapable in responding to the Sanders campaign and the various political currents that had arisen since 2016. Thus supporters of the Jacobin magazine uncritically tailed Sanders, whilst others, such as the Marxist Centre, ignored the Sanders movement and concentrated instead on local campaigns, ‘base-building’ and direct action rather than politics as such. Donald Parkinson and other comrades from the US who contributed to the session were clear about the bourgeois nature of the Democrats, and how its power structures ensured that Sanders would never be nominated as presidential candidate. Those in control of the Democrats wanted a candidate who could beat Trump and they stressed unity at all costs. Similar moods influenced sections of the left, who argued that the current ratchet to the right was a precursor to fascism and, in effect, called for a popular front and a vote for Joe Biden as the lesser of two evils.
Given the January 6 events in Washington, much of the discussion turned on the nature of the Trump movement and how far it represented the danger of fascism. Most comrades rejected this analysis, arguing that fascism had arisen historically as a counterrevolutionary movement only when the working class posed a serious threat to the constitutional order and the capitalist system: despite the depth of polarisation and the increasing opposition to the status quo, the US was not yet at that stage.
Taking up a theme that would emerge in other sessions throughout the weekend, comrade Parkinson argued that American Marxists needed to campaign for an independent, class-based, mass socialist party. The limitations and failure of the Sanders campaign had left many in the DSA adrift and looking for an alternative, socialist strategy. He concluded by stressing that relying on spontaneous movements and hyper-activism were not the ways of creating an alternative for the working class. Whilst Marxists would continue to work in the DSA, their strategy was a 12-step programme to “break Democratic addiction” and build instead a party committed to the minimum and maximum revolutionary programme of classical Marxism.
2. A system in crisis
Hillel Ticktin’s session on ‘Systems and hegemons: can relative decline be reversed?’ provided a useful overview on the nature of contemporary imperialism. Hillel began by defining the concept of decline and outlining the historical development of capitalism in its imperialist phase. He highlighted the significant differences in the form that the export of capital takes in early 21st-century imperialism and the changing methods of political and economic control deployed by the world hegemon, the United States.
Comrade Ticktin focussed on the developing rivalry between the US and China and how that indicated the relative decline of American imperialism. The US drew China into the world market and assumed it could be ‘controlled’ as a protégé. But the expansion of Chinese economic and political power has gone much further than US capitalism wanted and, although the Biden presidency will be more subtle in its containment strategy than Donald Trump’s, it is now too late for the US to control China.
The central theme of Hillel’s talk was the relationship between the concept of decline and transition in Marxist political economy and the importance of the monopoly form in contemporary capitalism. Although the 1917 revolution had changed the whole aspect of the global economy and politics, the failure of the revolution to spread and consolidate internationally, resulting in a Stalinoid form in the USSR, had stalled the process of transition. The form of transition, proto-planning and monopoly remain present in capitalism, but the next step in the process of transition to socialism is still to be taken. Politically and socially the justifications for the existence of capitalism and the rule of a capitalist elite have withered away, comrade Ticktin argued, and will continue to appear more threadbare in an era of global crisis parallel to the great depression. This period is characterised by low or zero profits, increasing monopolisation, falling living standards in the developed economies and increased immiseration in the developing world.
The discussion that followed considered a wide range of issues, including the long-term impact of Covid on the world economy, the nature of US-China rivalry and the possibilities of war, and the political impact of decline in the advanced capitalist countries. Comrade Ticktin agreed that, whilst there was a form of great power rivalry between the US and China, nuclear war between them was unlikely. Although, despite its relative decline, the US was still the dominant military power, given the inter-penetration of the two countries’ economies, it would be more prepared to make concessions to China than fight a ‘traditional’ imperialist war.
Other comrades argued that, although China was integrated into the world economy, the tendency was for the creation of regional trade zones and rivalries between the main capitalist blocs. Jack Conrad was sceptical as to whether China could become the world hegemon in place of the US: China would not become an advanced capitalist economy with the US leaving it alone, while it pursued this course. Britain, for example, was shifting towards open hostility to China and comrade Conrad saw conflict ahead.
The key role of the working class was central to this discussion. If the capitalist class was showing signs of decline, whilst capitalism itself was over-ripe for transition, could the working class carry out its historical role of transforming society globally? If capitalism was facing a fundamental economic and ecological crisis, did the failure of the socialist revolution to date point to the mutual exhaustion of both classes and a future of barbarism?
All comrades agreed that the absence of the working class as the bearer of the socialist project in the contemporary world was a key factor in what had become the permanent crisis of the capitalist system. How the left reacts to this situation and whether it can build an international working class movement to end the stalemate and transform society remains the decisive issue.
3. The continuing ethnic cleansing of Palestine
Given the ongoing witch-hunt and the attempts to identify anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, Ilan Pappé’s session was a timely reminder about the nature of Zionism as a settler-colonial movement, whose historic and contemporary aims, following the pattern of European colonisation since the 17th century, are to replace one population in Palestine with another.
In reviewing the history of Zionism since the 19th century comrade Pappé showed that ethnic cleansing of the existing Palestinian population was an inevitable outcome of the Zionist project from the outset, although the real programme of replacement was not possible until the formation of the Israeli state in 1948. He set the creation of this state in the context of British imperialism’s changing priorities in the Middle East following World War II, with the first phase of ethnic cleansing in the urban areas taking place under the British occupation of Palestine. The result was that by 1949 around 50% of the Palestinian population had been expelled from their homes. The imperialist powers accepted the Israeli narrative and supported this form of state-building as being in the great powers’ interests in the region.
The 1967 war gave the Israeli state its final pretext to occupy the whole of Palestine – the so-called West Bank – and complete its colonisation project. However, this opportunity also brought dangers in the shape of the increased Palestinian population now under Zionist control. Dealing with this democratic and demographic problem became the central issue for successive Israeli governments. They did this by disguising ethnic cleansing and displacement of the Palestinian population by ‘settlers’ as a series of peace agreements and a process to create a two-state solution, such as the 1995 Oslo Accords.
The Israeli state’s success in propagating this myth internationally poses a major problem for Palestinians and those campaigning for the national rights of the Palestinian people, Pappé argued. The deliberate lies and conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism are just the most egregious example of this misinformation, along with arguments suggesting that the conflict in Palestine is essentially religious or is between two national movements with conflicting and equally legitimate claims to the same territory. Zionist claims that Israel is ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ are also used to deny the reality of the occupation and colonisation that produces an apartheid state.
The discussion that followed largely focussed on Ilan Pappé’s support for a democratic and socialist ‘one-state solution’, the nature of that state, the forces that existed to bring such a state into existence and the wider context of the Arab revolution. Comrade Pappé suggested that, although the third generation of settlers had become an established population, a non-Zionist Jewish nationalism was an oxymoron, since the claims of Jewish nationalism were those of colonisers. While some comrades argued that the Jewish Hebrew-speaking population had national rights that might be addressed through a federal arrangement, others emphasised that the essential dynamic for a democratic resolution of the Palestinian national question lay in the wider politics of the region and the perspective of a revolutionary transformation of Palestine and the Arab world more generally.
Given the history of the defeats inflicted on the Palestinian people, the relative strength of the Israeli state and the complex links between Israel/Palestine and the rest of the Middle East, it was clear the national struggle could not be won by the Palestinian movement alone, but, of necessity, had to be part of a much broader revolutionary process that swept aside both the Zionist colonising state and the reactionary monarchies and dictatorships of the Arab world.
4. The bankruptcy of left Labourism
Jack Conrad’s session dealt with one of the most important questions facing Marxists in Britain – the nature of the Labour Party and its official left. Comrade Conrad looked at the history of the ‘Corbyn project’ and the events that culminated in Labour’s election defeat in December 2019 and the election of Keir Starmer in 2020. These defeats, he suggested, had dealt a body blow to those on the left who put the election of a Labour government at the centre of their strategy for achieving ‘socialism’.
Developing the arguments advanced in the theses to be presented at the forthcoming Labour Left Alliance conference on the crisis in the Labour Party, comrade Conrad focussed most of his attention on the political and organisational weaknesses of the official left.1 The politics of the official left, as embodied in the 2017 election manifesto, were far from radical and really represented an essentially managed and reformed version of capitalism. The constitutional order remained intact and there was no challenge to the entrenched power of the state and the capitalist class in general.
Even so, if Corbyn had gained a parliamentary majority, he would have been faced with tremendous opposition from both within and without his party. The state machine would have sabotaged his programme, the United States would have applied all kinds of pressure to bring a Labour government to heel and the capitalist class would have actively worked to undermine even the most timid of reforms. All this assumes that Corbyn would even have been called to Buckingham Palace to kiss hands in the event of a Labour majority – the likely outcome would probably have been a Parliamentary Labour Party coup to overthrow the democratically elected leader and replace him with a pro-capitalist stooge, such as Keir Starmer.
The experience of Corbynism had exposed both the nature of the Labour Party as a bourgeois workers’ party and that it cannot become an instrument for achieving socialism though piecemeal reforms or capitalist legality. The last five years have shown that the left can advance and gain widespread support in the party, but that the bourgeoisie and their allies within the Labour movement will not countenance even reformist policies, unless we conduct a revolutionary struggle to achieve them. Despite the hopes of many ordinary leftwing members of the party, the official left is incapable of such a struggle.
This congenital unwillingness to fight is not simply the product of individual careerism or cowardice by individual left MPs or leading activists, comrade Conrad argued. It is a result of the reformist perspective of even the best left Labourites that the election of a Labour government is the central strategic goal and to which all else must be subordinated. It is this strategy which produces the calls for unity and the absolute priority given to maintaining the Labour Party intact.
These calls for unity reveal the symbiotic relationship between the official left and the Labour right. The role of the left is to attract socialists and hold out the hope of a future radical left Labour government: the role of the Labour right is to act as a safe ‘second eleven’ for capitalism and ensure that this never happens! In this way the left provides an invaluable cover for the right, the capitalist system and the constitutional order in Britain. What is crucial is the building of a Marxist party, a mass Communist Party that can transform the Labour Party into a permanent united front but does not depend on, or bank on, working inside the Labour Party.
Jack’s critique of official Labour leftism prompted a good debate on the historic role of the Labour Party as a bourgeois workers’ party and the type of alternative that Marxists should pose. Some comrades who took a left communist position argued that Labour will always hold back a genuine socialist movement and that its history in the 20th century shows its role as an auxiliary capitalist party. The Attlee government – for many on the Labour left the model for their politics – was pro-imperialist and acted to reform, not transform, capitalism. For these comrades, Labour was a purely capitalist party that could play no part in the struggle for socialism.
Other contributions took up this theme by questioning whether we could build a revolutionary alternative to Labour, given the nature of political consciousness today. Were these demands directed solely at existing left groups or could they find a wider hearing?
Tony Greenstein suggested that the conditions are not right for a revolutionary party, given the defeats of the last 30 years and the decomposition of the working class. To avoid a complete rout, especially when we are faced with a move to the right politically, we need to rally the best elements of the Corbyn movement and build a socialist campaign embracing comrades both inside and outside the Labour Party. Alan Gibson agreed with Jack Conrad that the wider class struggle was reflected in the Labour Party and it was necessary for Marxists to engage with the movement as it exists. But, he argued, we should not simply support left-reformist positions or argue that Labour could become a united front of a special kind. Instead, our explicit aim must be to destroy Labour as an organ of reformism within the working class movement.
In support of comrade Conrad, Mike Macnair and Moshé Machover argued that the demand for a united front of a special kind was a prescriptive, not a descriptive, demand. The Corbyn movement was another front in the class war and, as such, it was worth taking part in this struggle. However, Moshé argued, those disappointed leftwingers who are leaving the party and trying to set up a Labour Party mark two will only succeed in building yet another left-reformist obstacle in the road to real revolutionary politics.
What was good about this discussion was the searching nature of the questions posed by all comrades who took part. While we could correctly criticise the official left for its failures and refusal to fight, comrades also asked why the revolutionary left had failed to grow in any significant numbers as a result of the crisis in left reformism. Given the clarity of its analysis and programme, why is Labour Party Marxists not a much stronger force in the party?
In summing up, Jack Conrad responded to the criticisms of the left-communist and Trotskyist comrades by arguing that that the Corbyn influx into Labour had been a real movement of the working class and that to stand aside when the bourgeoisie and their Labour allies were organising against it was to abstain from the class struggle. Marxists had to join the fight, not stand aside.
However, left Labourism was not the road to socialism, and neither is a halfway house or a Labour Party mark two. Given the nature of the political, economic and ecological crisis that we are facing, this is not the time for confused politics or partial, watered-down demands: the central aim must remain the building of a mass Marxist party committed to a revolutionary programme. Although the Labour Party and the trade unions are important sites of struggle, it is important not to put all our eggs in one basket. Whilst the analysis and strategy of the LPM comrades was correct and their interventions – both at Labour conferences and throughout the party more generally – have been very effective, the growth of the forces of Marxism in the party has been minimal. However, the revolutionary politics of Marxism remain the only realistic programme and strategy for the working class in the era of fundamental capitalist crisis.
5. The Middle East after the US elections
In a joint session comrades Moshé Machover and Yassamine Mather considered the impact of a Biden presidency on the changing politics of the Middle East. Comrade Machover looked at both Israeli internal politics and foreign policy. Internally he showed the relationship between the superficially individual impact of Netanyahu and Trump and the underlying objective processes. There had been a continuing shift to the right and the extreme colonial-settler position had been strengthened throughout Israeli society. However, although left Zionism was dwindling away, Likud was also fragmenting, and Netanyahu faced increasing opposition from the right, as he faced yet another election.
In terms of foreign policy, although the recent alignment between Israel and various Arab states was presented as a new development – a parting gift from Trump to his strongest supporter Netanyahu – Moshe suggested that these ‘new’ relationships were largely a formalisation of existing, albeit undeclared, connections and were obtained in return for various diplomatic and military benefits given to the UAE, Morocco and Sudan by the US. Despite Saudi Arabia’s unofficial, though rather open links to Israel, the kingdom has not joined the list of countries establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
For comrade Machover the most interesting feature of this process were the “dogs that didn’t bark” – namely the reaction of the Arab masses. He argued that 20 years ago we would have expected widespread and large demonstrations throughout the Arab world supporting Palestine and opposing links with Israel. Palestine was the central issue and a symbol of the exploitation and domination of the Arab world by US imperialism. Now the Palestinian question has receded as a means of mobilising the Arab masses, and the dictatorships and monarchies in the region can ignore the dire situation facing the Palestinian people. In the short term this position will not change.
Yassamine Mather looked at the impact of Biden’s election on the future of US-Iran relations. If Trump had won, she suggested, more sanctions would have been applied. Much attention has been focussed on the future of the nuclear deal and whether Biden can resume negotiations. Comrade Mather believed that any future negotiations will be drawn out and will be closely connected to attempts by the Iranian leadership to lessen the burden of economic sanctions, which, given the dire state of the economy, are the central issue for the stability of the Islamic Republic. The regime is facing considerable internal pressure from a restive young population (80% are under 25 years), who are resentful at the corruption at the top of the state and growing economic and social inequalities within Iranian society.
Yassamine also commented on the disastrous approach of the exiled left opposition to the regime. Many former members of the Iranian left were ‘critically supporting’ Trump and advocating ‘regime change’ by the US. Their politics merely echoed the human rights propaganda of various CIA front campaigns. Although many of the younger generation in Iran lack any strategy and are disdainful towards organised politics, comrade Mather saw hope in their willingness to question and to think.
In replying to the discussion comrades Machover and Mather considered the possibilities of a resurgence of the Arab Spring, the Kurdish question and perspectives for Palestine. Moshé likened the situation throughout the Middle East to geological fault lines that produce earthquakes – given that the underlying causes remain unresolved, the chances of renewed protests and widespread opposition remain high, but exactly when these will occur again remains uncertain. Yassamine commented on how the revolutionary traditions of the Kurdish people had been abused by their political leadership and manipulated by foreign intervention in the region. Despite Biden’s promises of a re-orientation of US policy, American imperialism and its local allies have no interest in democracy in the Middle East.
Both comrades argued that, although the struggles of the oppressed peoples and classes in the Middle East are interconnected, the position of the Palestinian and Kurdish peoples in particular show that it is only through a revolution encompassing the whole region that the national and democratic rights of these peoples can be truly upheld.
6. Party and programme
Mike Macnair’s session engendered a lively debate on what are perhaps the most important strategic issues for the socialist movement internationally. He began with an outline history of working class parties and politics, beginning with the Chartists in the 1840s and tracing the development of concepts of programme and party though the history of the International Working Men’s Association, the German Social Democratic Party and the Second International.
The common elements that Mike identified as significant were the various short programmes of minimum and maximum political and economic demands, and democratic forms of party organisation that combined the right for public debate and disagreement with an accountable party and parliamentary leadership. In its most successful and effective form – the pre-1914 SPD – this type of party and programme was the model that Lenin had in mind when he wrote What is to be done? in 1902.
The experience of the Russian Revolution and the exigencies of the civil war, party divisions over Brest-Litovsk and the managerialist reconfiguration of the Communist Party during the civil war produced a re-theorisation on the role of the party. Given this emergency situation and the analysis that the consciousness of the working class was unevenly developed, it was argued that the party could act on behalf of the working class. This position was also strengthened by the development of one-man management and the militarisation of the Communist Party during the civil war, comrade Macnair suggested. These tendencies were further consolidated during the factional struggle in the Soviet Communist Party from the early 1920s and were to find their way into the international communist movement through the decisions of the first four congresses of Comintern.
These increasingly bureaucratic forms, usually associated with the Stalinisation of the communist movement, were in turn further replicated in the subsequent organisational structures of the Trotskyist movement from the 1930s as the standard form of ‘democratic centralism’. In highlighting the importance of the 1919-21 period for the development of this form of bureaucratic centralism and party programme, comrade Macnair argued that the democratic centralism of the Bolshevik Party that took power in 1917 was very different from that of the civil war period. The banning of factions and the resulting loss of the sense of purpose of the political programme and party produced a very different political culture.
From this historical survey Mike drew a number of conclusions about the type of contemporary Marxist party and programme we need. He argued that the party was not an invisible alliance which could steer the unconscious masses; neither was it a top-down, Bakuninist vehicle for rousing the masses though strikes and demonstrations. The key issue for Marxists was the self-organisation and self-emancipation of the working class, as advocated by Marx from the 1840s and established organisationally in the First International.
Historically the labour movement had created parties, trade unions, cooperatives and networks to defend and advance their interests. As they grew in strength and political importance, especially as a result of the concession of universal suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, capitalism attempted to coopt these organisations into the state. As with political democracy itself, these parties and structures could thus act as both a medium for potential liberation and function as an agency of deception.
To counter these tendencies, comrade Macnair argued that the contemporary workers’ movement needs a party with the best characteristics of the German SPD model: namely, a short, summary programme incorporating minimum and maximum demands; democratic centralism in place of the top-down bureaucracy of Stalinised parties or Trotskyist sects, and healthy democracy and debate rather than the hollowed managerialism of the contemporary workers’ movement.
Given the challenge that Mike Macnair had laid down to the current theory and practice of many far-left militants, the discussion that followed inevitably produced much criticism of his arguments. Whilst some comrades challenged specific aspects of his account of the Russian Revolution and the history of Comintern, the main thrust seemed to be more an affronted reaction to cherished shibboleths and sect orthodoxy than a real engagement with the questions he raised. Consequently, although Mike’s central arguments were often attacked, they were not successfully defeated in the discussion.
In defending the minimum-maximum programme against the advocates of the transitional programme, comrade Macnair argued that the history of our movement has shown that it is possible for the working class to be won to a revolutionary programme. The working class could develop a revolutionary political consciousness and overthrow the capitalist state and economic order, but this would not be achieved by the hesitant and timid politics of transitional demands or the equally cautious gradualism of even the most leftwing reformism. The role of the party for Marxists is to campaign for a revolutionary programme and to challenge the legitimacy of the current political and social order. This will be achieved through propaganda and the building of the alternative power and organisation of the working class as a potential ruling class.
Mike concluded by suggesting that the unification of those who self-identified as Marxists into such a party was feasible on the basis of a programme of working class political independence and commitment to republican democracy. That cannot happen through trading away principles and broad front lash-ups.
7. China and the west: crossroads of civilisation
Peter Nolan’s talk on the relationship between China and the west also aroused much debate. Peter began with an historical overview covering the longue durée from 1000 BCE, which highlighted the periods and points of convergence and divergence between China and the west. He suggested that these differing historical experiences and patterns of development have continued to shape Chinese society and politics, irrespective of the rapid social and economic transformation that has been undertaken since the late 1970s.
A key theme in this culturalist explanation of Chinese development was the long historical continuity of the bureaucratic structures of government and the strength of a Confucian ideology of the common good and social harmony. Nolan argued that the Chinese Communist Party had drawn from these ideas of “all under heaven for the common good” and so was able to legitimate and mobilise support for its rule by appealing to these traditions.
Peter’s presentation was generally uncritical about contemporary China’s achievements and compared its success in lifting the masses out of poverty with the failure of India to do the same through the established neoliberal policies of trickle-down economics. The west, he argued, was hostile to the rising power and influence of China: the US, in particular, was attempting to encircle China and contain its development as a global power. China’s Belt and Road initiative was not the traditional response of a great power to a threat, but a complex tapestry that aimed to build economic power and political influence in ways different from those employed historically by the west.
In the discussion that followed Nolan’s talk a number of comrades challenged the premises of his argument, suggesting that the Chinese Communist Party controlled the state and the economy through a bureaucratic dictatorship, which allowed billionaires to flourish whilst the rights of workers were trampled underfoot. Peter responded to those charges by arguing that the CCP had a depth of popular support amongst the masses based on its ability to deliver measurable improvements in living standards and ensure the stability of the state and society. He further argued that China was not just a capitalist economy, but functioned through an interaction of the state and the market. Thus, finance capital was tightly regulated and controlled by the state as part of an overall planning mechanism. To most of the participants in the discussion this seemed a form of state capitalism rather than any recognisable form of ‘socialism’, with or without ’Chinese characteristics’.
In drawing on his very considerable experience in China, Peter Nolan’s talk was useful in giving us an insight into the dominant ideology of the CCP and how it presents its rule in terms of historical continuity and the Confucian tradition of social harmony and universal benefit. What, however, remained unclear was its future trajectory, both internally and externally. For example, how far can the Chinese state maintain both its political stability and necessary levels of growth in the face of popular discontent and increasing levels of social and economic inequality? Can we foresee serious conflict and even future wars developing from the great-power rivalry between the US and China?
There were many such important topics raised in the discussion, which will no doubt receive further consideration at future Communist Universities.
James Harvey
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