[Purpose: This blog entry in English is aimed at a particular small western audience; it provides several statements in the field of history/politics/economy, together with the references to the sources, upon which these statement do base]

The western propaganda machine

WW1/WW2 origins. The Hitler's secret backers.

The Cold War.

Historical types of socio-economical systems

• Primitive Communism
• Slavery
• Feudalism
• Capitalism
• Capitalism: [Modern] Imperialism
• Capitalism: Fascism
• Socialism
• Communism

The western propaganda machine

Sources

[Book] Edward L Bernays, "Propaganda", 1928. Full text: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/File:Propaganda.pdf.

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."

“The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation. Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspaper seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.”

[Book] Lippmann Walter, "Public Opinion", 1921.  Full text: http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2429/2487430/pdfs/lippmann.pdf

Short expose by Vigilant Citizen: 

Walter Lippmann, an American intellectual, writer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner brought forth one of the first works concerning the usage of mass media in America. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann compared the masses to a “great beast” and a “bewildered herd” that needed to be guided by a governing class. He described the ruling elite as “a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality.” This class is composed of experts, specialists and bureaucrats. According to Lippmann, the experts, who often are referred to as “elites,” are to be a machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the “omnicompetent citizen.” The trampling and roaring “bewildered herd” has its function: to be “the interested spectators of action,” i.e. not participants. Participation is the duty of “the responsible man”, which is not the regular citizen.

Mass media and propaganda are therefore tools that must be used by the elite to rule the public without physical coercion. One important concept presented by Lippmann is the “manufacture of consent”, which is, in short, the manipulation of public opinion to accept the elite’s agenda. It is Lippmann’s opinion that the general public is not qualified to reason and to decide on important issues. It is therefore important for the elite to decide “for its own good” and then sell those decisions to the masses.

“That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. . . . as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power. . . . Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.”
–Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

It might be interesting to note that Lippmann is one of the founding fathers of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most influential foreign policy think tank in the world. This fact should give you a small hint of the mind state of the elite concerning the usage of media.

[Book] Jacobson Steve, Mind Control in the United States (subliminal programming of the masses), 1985.

Full text: https://ia902308.us.archive.org/21/items/pdfy-6IKtdfWsaYpENGlz/Jacobson%20-%20Mind%20Control%20in%20the%20United%20States%20(subliminal%20programming%20of%20the%20masses)%20(1985).pdf

Author: Steven Jacobson, is a film technician experienced in subliminal techniques used in the communication media.

Chapters: Introduction by Antony C. Sutton - Nineteen Eighty-Four - Principles of Mental Programming -The Power of Music - T.V., Radio and Movies - Hypnosis and "Reefer Madness" - Information Control - Manipulation of Language - Monopoly of Mass Media - Mental Programming and Mass Media - The Power of Money - The Ruling Elite and "World Government" - Education as Propaganda - Communism - The Bible and Fundamentalism - Occult (Secret) Knowledge - Parapsychology - Drugs - The Secret of Marijuana - The Origin of Man - Powers of the Subconscious Mind - Kali Yuga - Conclusion - Postscript -Footnotes.

From the chapter "Education and propaganda":

Education of the young is used to condition them to what comes later, thereby eliminating the difference between propaganda and education [166]. Propaganda cannot work effectively without education. The mind is conditioned with vast amounts of information posing as "facts" and "knowledge" dispensed for ulterior motives [167]. Remember the first principle behind mental programming: distraction. With propaganda, distraction focuses attention on information that is false. Repetition of the false information imbeds it in your subconscious mind so that your acceptance of its truth and accuracy becomes a conditioned response, circumventing analysis. Therefore, you accept this information as true without thinking about it. This is especially true in school where there is pressure to accept what is presented as true because that is what is expected of you. Remember that your trust in the source of information determines whether or not you accept it. What people think can be controlled by controlling information. People can be led to believe something that is not true when that information is presented by an accepted authority.

[Book] Ulfkotte Udo, Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News, 2017.  

Author: Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor for the German main daily newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

Udo Ulfkotte has first hand knowledge of how the CIA and German Intelligence (BND) bribe journalists to write articles free of truth, facts, and with a decidedly pro-Western, pro-NATO bent or, in other words, propaganda. In his bestselling book Bought Journalists ("Gekaufte Journalisten"), Dr. Ulfkotte explains in great detail the workings of the US and NATO’s propaganda campaign and how a lack of compliance with it, on the part of a journalist, can cost a career. Dr. Ulfkotte says the corruption of journalists and major news outlets by the CIA is routine, accepted, and widespread in the western media, and that journalists who do not comply either cannot get jobs at any news organization, or find their careers cut short. In his 2014 interview Ulfkotte alleges that some media are nothing more than propaganda outlets of political parties, secret services, international think tanks and high finance entities.

Interview with Udo Ulfkotte: http://www.globalresearch.ca/editor-of-major-german-newspaper-says-he-planted-stories-for-the-cia/5429324:

• "I was taught to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public."
• "I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service." 
• "Most journalists from respected and big media organisations are closely connected to the German Marshall Fund, the Atlantik-Brucke or other so-called transatlantic organisations...once you're connected, you make friends with selected Americans. You think they are your friends and you start cooperating. They work on your ego, make you feel like you're important. And one day one of them will ask you 'Will you do me this favor'..."
• "When I told the Frankfurter Allgemeine that I would publish the book, their lawyers sent me a letter threatening with all legal consequences if I would publish any names or secrets – but I don’t mind."
• "[The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung] hasn't sued me. They know that I have evidence on everything."
• "No German mainstream journalist is allowed to report about [my] book. Otherwise he or she will be sacked. So we have a bestseller now that no German journalist is allowed to write or talk about."

Operation "Mockinbird"

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

Operation Mockingbird is a CIA project to subvert the original mission of the news media, to control corporate media for its own purposes.Operation Mockingbird began in the 1950's and was organized by Allen Dulles and Cord Meyer. The CIA spent today's equivalent of one billion dollars a year hiring journalists from Corporate Media including CBS, The New York Times, ABC, NBC, Newsweek, Associated Press and others, to promote their point of view. The original operation reportedly involved some 3,000 CIA operatives and hired over 400 journalists.

Former CIA Director William Colby: “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”  

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Source: Spengler Oswald, "The Decline of the West". Vol. I: Form and Actuality. Vol. II: Perspectives of World-History (One Volume Edition 1932, originally published 1918-1922).

On the role of the Western press as a tool for controlling the population by the powers of money:

English: http://www.reillyjones.com/two-american-traditions.html

Man does not speak to man; the press and its associate, the electrical news-service, keep the waking-consciousness of whole peoples and continents under a deafening drum-fire of theses, catchwords, standpoints, scenes, feelings, day by day and year by year, so that every Ego becomes a mere function of a monstrous intellectual Something. Money does not pass, politically, from one hand to the other. It is turned into force, and its quantity determines the intensity of its working influence. Now the press campaign appears as the prolongation - or the preparation - of war by other means... Today we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. Democracy has by its newspaper completely expelled the book from the mental life of the people. The book-world, with its profusion of standpoints that compelled thought to select and criticize, is now a real possession only for a few.

What the dynamism of our Press wants is permanent effectiveness. It must keep men’s minds continuously under its influence. Its arguments are overthrown as soon as the advantage of financial power passes over the counter-arguments and brings these still oftener to men’s eyes and ears. At that moment the needle of public opinion swings round to the stronger pole. Everybody convinces himself at once of the new truth, and regards himself awakened out of error. With the political press is bound up the need of universal school-education, which in the Classical world was completely lacking. In this demand there is an element - quite unconscious - of desiring to shepherd the masses, as the object of party politics, into the newspaper’s power-area.

The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty. And the other side of this belated freedom - it is permitted to everyone to say what he pleases, but the Press is free to take notice of what he says or not. In lieu of stake and faggots there is the great silence. The dictature of party leaders supports itself upon that of the Press. The competitors strive by means of money to detach readers - nay, peoples - en masse from the hostile allegiance and to bring them under their own mind-training. And all that they learn in this mind-training, is what it is considered that they should know - a higher will puts together the picture of their world for them. This is the end of Democracy.

Russian: https://aftershock.news/?q=comment/4445662#comment-4445662 Кампания в прессе возникает как продолжение (или расширение) войны иными средствами, и ее стратегия — все эти бои сторожевых охранении, отвлекающие маневры, внезапные нападения, штурмы — отшлифовывается в течение XIX в. до такой степени, что война может быть проиграна еще до того, как раздался первый выстрел, потому что ее к этому времени выиграла пресса.

Перед воздействием этой духовной артиллерии мы сегодня до такой степени безоружны, что почти никто не способен внутренне дистанцироваться, чтобы составить обо всей чудовищности этого действа ясное представление. Воля к власти в своем чисто демократическом обличье завершила создание своего шедевра тем, что с беспримерным подобострастием льстит самоощущению свободы в объекте. Либеральное буржуазное чувство гордится упразднением цензуры, этого последнего ограничителя, между тем как диктатор прессы погоняет рабскую толпу своих читателей бичом своих передовиц, телеграмм и иллюстраций. С помощью газеты демократия полностью вытеснила книгу из духовной жизни народных масс. Книжный мир с его изобилием точек зрения, принуждающим мышление к выбору и критике, сделался по преимуществу достоянием лишь узких кругов. Народ читает одну, «свою» газету, которая ежедневно в миллионах экземпляров проникает во все дома, уже с утра пораньше околдовывает умы своими чарами и самим своим внешним видом обрекает книги на забвение; а если та или другая книга все же в поле зрения попадет, предпринятой заблаговременно критикой газета их действие выключает.

Что есть истина? Для толпы истина — это то, что приходится читать и слышать постоянно. Пускай где-то там сидит себе, собирая основания, ничтожная горстка, с тем чтобы установить «истину как таковую», это останется лишь ее истиной. Другая, публичная истина момента, которая лишь и имеет значение в фактичном мире действий и успехов, является сегодня продуктом прессы. Истинно то, чего желает она. Ее командиры создают, преобразуют, подменяют истины. Три недели работы прессы — и весь мир познал истину**. Ее доводы остаются неопровержимыми до тех пор, пока имеются деньги на то, чтобы безостановочно ее повторять... Динамика прессы желает долговременных воздействий. Она желает держать умы под прессом постоянно. Ее аргументы опровергаются, как только у контраргументов отыскивается большая денежная сила, которая и принимается с еще большей частотой доносить их до всех ушей и глаз. В тот же миг магнитная стрелка общественного мнения повертывается к более сильному полюсу. Всяк тут же себя убеждает в новой истине. Происходит внезапное пробуждение от заблуждения...

Бои, происходящие сегодня, сводятся к выхватыванию этого оружия друг у друга. Когда власть газет делала свои первые невинные шаги, ее ограничивали цензурные запреты, которыми защищались поборники традиции, а буржуазия вопила, что духовная свобода под угрозой. Ныне толпа спокойно идет своим путем; она окончательно завоевала эту свободу, однако на заднем плане, невидимые, друг с другом борются новые силы, покупающие прессу. Читатель ничего не замечает, между тем как его газета, а вместе с ней и он сам меняют своих властителей*. Деньги торжествуют и здесь, заставляя свободные умы себе служить. Никакой укротитель не владеет своей сворой с большей полнотой. Народ как толпу читателей выводят на улицы, и она ломит по ним, бросается на обозначенную цель, грозит и вышибает стекла. Кивок штабу прессы — и толпа утихомиривается и расходится по домам. Пресса сегодня — это армия, тщательно организованная по родам войск, с журналистами-офицерами и читателями-солдатами. Однако здесь то же, что и во всякой армии: солдат слепо повинуется и цели войны и план операции меняются без его ведома. Читатель не знает, да и не должен ничего знать о том, что с ним проделывают, и он не должен знать о том, какую роль при этом играет. Более чудовищной сатиры на свободу мысли нельзя себе представить. Некогда запрещалось иметь смелость мыслить самостоятельно; теперь это разрешено, однако способность к тому утрачена. Всяк желает думать лишь то, что должен думать, и воспринимает это как свою свободу.

И вот еще одна сторона этой поздней свободы: всякому позволено говорить что хочет; однако пресса также свободна выбирать, обращать ей внимание на это или нет. Она способна приговорить к смерти всякую «истину», если не возьмет на себя сообщение ее миру — поистине жуткая цензура молчания, которая тем более всесильна, что рабская толпа читателей газет ее наличия абсолютно не замечает.

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WW1/WW2 origins. The Hitler's secret backers.

Sources:

1. Preparata Guido Giacomo. "Conjuring Hitler: How Britain And America Made the Third Reich", 2005.
Full English text link: https://archive.org/details/ConjuringHitler

Giacomo Preparata was born 1968 in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in the United States, France, and Italy. He obtained a BS in Economics at the Libera University degli Studi Sociali (LUISS, Rome, Italy), an M-Phil in criminology at the University of Cambridge (UK), a Master's degree in Economics, and a PhD in Political Economy & Public Policy, both from the University of Southern California (USC, Los Angeles, USA).
From 2000 to 2008 Preparata was an Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Washington, USA. He worked as a research associate at the Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, California), and the research division of Bank of Italy's Department of Supervision and Regulation.
In 2005, as a visiting professor of economics and Fulbright Scholar at the University of Jordan, in Amman, he conducted research on Political Islam, terrorism and Islamic economics. At present (2012) he serves as a lecturer in criminology at Kwantlen Polythechnic University in Vancouver, Canada.

2. Docherty Gerry, MacGregor Jim. "Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War", 2014.

Gerry Docherty was born in 1948.  He graduated from Edinburgh University in 1971 and was a secondary school teacher by profession.  He taught economics and modern studies, developed a keen interest in the theatre and has written a number of plays with a historical theme including Czechmate in 1982, Montrose in 1993, and Lie of the Land in 2008. 

Jim Macgregor is a Scottish former GP. He was raised in a cottage in the grounds of Erskine Hospital for the War Disabled, and as a result developed a life-long interest in the origins of war. With Gerry Docherty, he is co-author of Hidden History a meticulously researched and documented rebuttal of the official narrative of the origins of World War I.

Overview of the book "Hidden History..."by Anthony C Black: http://www.globalresearch.ca/hidden-history-the-secret-origins-of-the-first-world-war/5600090: In short, far from “sleepwalking into a global tragedy, the unsuspecting world”, Docherty and Macgregor contend, the Greaet War “was ambushed by a secret cabal of warmongers” originating not in Berlin, but “in London”. ... 

What strikes one again and again whilst reading ‘Hidden History’ is the ring of truth that resonates from every page, from every revelation. That such a tiny, elite group of individuals, completely beyond democratic control, could determine the fate – and deaths – of millions should shock us. It should, but it doesn’t really. It doesn’t because we see the same phenomenon occurring now, repeatedly, before our very eyes. Indeed, the current state of ‘permanent war’ is, more or less, the unconscious condition of modernity itself.

Docherty & Macgregor have made a fine contribution here. They have gone beyond what David Irving so aptly labelled as the ‘court historians’, i.e. those historians essentially prostituted to elite / establishment consensus, and given us a glimpse of what it really means to write history. And if there is any lesson – or rather counter lesson – we can take from it, it is that we are doomed to repeat history only so long as we listen to those dedicated to obscuring and inverting it. In short, to those who lie to us.

 

3. Sutton Antony Cyrill: "Wall Street and the rise of Hitler", 1976.
Full English text link: http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_Hitler.pdf

Antony Cyril Sutton (1925–2002) was a British and American economist, historian, and writer.
Sutton studied at the universities of London, Gottingen, and California and received his D.Sc. from the University of Southampton. He was an economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution from 1968 to 1973. 

4. Higham Charles. "Trading with the enemy: An Expose of The Nazi-American Money-Plot 1933-1949", 1983.

Overview: For almost forty years the facts behind the extraordinary true story of Nazi-American wartime business relations have been buried in government files. Charles Higham, drawing his account from thousands of documents just released under the Freedom of Information Act, has given us a full-scale picture of the American businessmen who dealt with the Nazis right through World War II. Among those who traded on both sides of the war were certain executives of Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Chase Bank, the Texas Company, ITT, Ford, and Sterling Products. And helping them with their dealings were such USA government officials as a secretary of commerce, an assistant secretary of state, and ambassadors to France and Great Britain...."

Excerpts in English: http://whale.to/b/higham_b.html.

Excerpts in Russian: http://masterok.livejournal.com/954689.html

Full text in Russian: http://modernlib.ru/books/hayem_charlz/torgovlya_s_vragom/read/

The Cold War.

Operation "Unthinkable"

Summary

Operation Unthinkable was a code name of two related plans by the Western Allies against the Soviet Union. The plannings were ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff at the end of World War II in Europe.

The first of the two assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany in order to "impose the will of the Western Allies" on the Soviets". 

The hypothetical date for the start of the Allied invasion of Soviet-held Europe was scheduled for 1 July 1945.  The plan assumed a surprise attack by up to 47 British and American divisions in the area of Dresden, in the middle of Soviet lines. This represented almost half of the roughly 100 divisions available to the British, American and Canadian headquarters at that time. The plan was taken by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible due to an anticipated 2.5 to 1 superiority in divisions of Soviet land forces in Europe and the Middle East by 1 July, where the conflict was projected to take place.The majority of any offensive operation would have been undertaken by American and British forces, as well as Polish forces and up to 100,000 German Wehrmacht soldiers.

When the odds were judged "fanciful", the original plan was abandoned.

Sources

1. Scans of the original documents of operation 'Unthinkable': http://web.archive.org/web/20101116152301/http://www.history.neu.edu/PRO2/

2. Translation of full text of "operation unthinkable" to Russian: http://www.coldwar.ru/bases/operation-unthinkable.php

3. Summary analysis of operation "Unthinkable": http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Operation_Unthinkable

Comment

The existence of the plan of operation Unthinkable serves as one of indirect confirmations that one of the major goals of unleashing of the WW2 by Anglo-American financial elites was to destroy the successful example of an economical system, alternative to capitalism - that is the USSR. The 3rd Reich, even though eqiopped up to the teeth by Britain Empire and USA, failed to perform this task. Therefore, immediately after WW2 new plans for destorying USSR were designed, operation "Unthinkable" one of them. 

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USA plans of nuclear bombing the USSR during the cold war

Source: Широнин Вячеслав. "Агенты перестройки. Рассекреченное досье КГБ", 2010. Глава 1, Ядерные игры: [Shironin Vyacheslav. "Agents of Perestroika. Unclassified KGB dossier", 2010. Chapter 1, "Nuclear games"] Full text (Russian) link: https://www.e-reading.club/book.php?book=148246

Statement:

It is proven by documents, that in addition to the existing before 100-year ago plan , the USA government has developed two new scenarios. Having dropped atomic bombs onto Japan and investigating the consequences of the atomic strikes on the environment , USA were developing plans of such strikes against USSR. The 1st document in a long series of projects aimed against USSR  is the so-called Memorandum 329. It was signed in USA on Sep 4, 1945, i.e. on the very next day after the official end of the World War II. The memorandum set out the following task:

«Select about 20 of the most important targets, suitable for the strategic atomic bombing in USSR and on the territory it controls». The explanation of the reason for choosing specifically these 20 targets pointed out that "The 20 most profitable objectives for attack by atomic bombs are considered to be a selection of mixed industrial areas containing the highest proportion of research and development centers, specialized production facilities, and key government or administrative personnel. This selection would exploit the maximum capabilities of the [nuclelar] weapon..". Further followed the enumeration - Moscow, Gorkyi, Kuibyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Kasan', Leningrad, Bakou,  Taskkent, Chelyabinsk, Nijnyi Taguil, Magnitogorsk, Perm, Tbilisi, Novokuznetsk, Groznyi, Irkutsk, Yaroslavl. The millions of the soviet peoples were doomed for death.

The pilot scheme of the Memorandum 329 were clarified in the further plans of the creation and accumulation of the nuclear weapons by USA. For example, the plan "Dropshot" assumed using 300 nuclear bombs and 29 000 tons of "conventional" bombs to be dropped onto 200 goals in the 100 soviet cities.

Was enlarged the geography of the bombing plans. The experimental plan "Pincher" [1946] envisioned attacking the USSR using the bases in Turkey, Italy. Clearly, the governments of these countries were not let into the secret plans of the Washington. The "Broiler" plan [1947] involved the usage of the bases in England, Egypt, India, Japanese islands Ruku. Such was the possible scale of the "hot" wars.

The confirmation of the Shironin's claims from original US military docs, the memorandum 329:

Source:  The American Joint Intelligence Committee and Estimates of the Soviet Union, 1945-1947. Full text link: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/summer00/art06.html

Nuclear War Planning

The next JIC estimate of the Soviet Union, JIC 329, written only two months after the official cessation of hostilities against Japan, focused on Soviet vulnerability to a limited attack with atomic weapons. ...

The 20 most profitable objectives for attack by atomic bombs are considered to be a selection of mixed industrial areas containing the highest proportion of research and development centers, specialized production facilities, and key government or administrative personnel. This selection would exploit the maximum capabilities of the weapon, produce the quickest, most direct, and certain effects on the Soviet Union's immediate offensive capabilities, and achieve the greatest impact against her latent offensive power.

The Soviet cities selected for atomic bombing in JIC 329 were Moscow, Gorki, Kuibyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibrisk, Omsk, Saratov, Kazan, Leningrad, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk, Nizhni Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Molotov, Tbilisi, Stalinsk, Grozny, Irkutsk, and Yarolavl. JIC 329 was the likely basis for the earliest known nuclear war plan against the Soviet Union.

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Source: Weiner, Tim. "Blank Check: The Pentagon’s Black Budget". New York: Warner Books, 1990.

Citation:

By the mid-1950s, more signs emerged that the executive office, even headed by a war hero, was losing control of its military. Throughout the year, President Eisenhower and Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining tried to get some kind of information from Curtis LeMay at SAC as to what his actual strategic bombing plan was. In October 1955, LeMay finally briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The shocked attending members learned that LeMay’s plan called for the instantaneous destruction of 645 military targets, 118 cities, and 60 million people in the Soviet Union. LeMay had not drawn up his plan as defensive, in accordance with the official U.S. policy of massive retaliation. A firm believer in first strike, LeMay said, “I’m going to knock the shit out of them before they get off the ground.”

Comment

The existence of the plans of nuclear bombing of USSR, developed immediately after the end of WW2, is another indirect confirmations that one of the major goals of unleashing of the WW2 by Anglo-American financial elites was to destroy the successful example of anti-capitalist economic system - the USSR. 

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Historical types of socio-economical systems

Main socio-economical types of society: Primitive Communism, Slavery, Feudalism, Capitalism, Imperialism, Fascism, Socialism, Communism [the latter - not implemented abstraction so far].

Sources:

Ray Nunes [Communist party of New Zealand] "From Marx to Mao – and After" (An introductory study course on working-class ideology,  for individuals and groups,  in a series of 7 easy-to-read pamphlets). 

Part 1: Historical Materialism: Understanding and Changing the World.

Part 2: Marxist Political Economy: Economics for All.

Part 3: Imperialism - A Popular Outline.

Part 4. The State and the Struggle for Socialism.

Part 7. The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

Big Soviet Encyclopedia.  

Samir Amin: The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism, 2014.

Encyclopedia Britannica.

Primitive Communism[along R. Nunes, Part 1]

Definition: Primitive Communism: The primitive communal form of human society organization in the called hunter-gatherer societies, from early man till the ancient civilizations. It was based on the common labor, common ownership of the means of productions (hand tools) - and common consumption of the results of the labor.

The level of the productive forces was still very low, and so there was no surplus product, no individuals could appropriate it and turn it into private property in the means of production. Thus there was no exploitation of man by man, and therefore no economic classes of exploiters and exploited.

Development of the more advanced production tools and techniques led to decline of the primitive communism. With more advanced productive forces regular surpluses were possible in production. Regular exchange of products also developed, first between tribes or communities and then within them, a system of production of things for sale, commodities, leading to the break-up of tribal society and a separation into families, each with its own head and each with its own means of production. Mostly, clan leaders within tribal society stood at the head of groups of families, constituting themselves a kind of tribal nobility. They appropriated to themselves the main means of production - the land; herds of sheep, goats and cattle; and tools. Thus was born private property and with it, the division of society into classes, one of which owned means of production and used them to exploit those who had none. It was on the basis of a higher productivity of labour that slavery arose. Only when it became possible for a slave to produce more than the cost of his own upkeep could slavery become economic and be a source of wealth to the slave-owner.

Slavery

Definition: Slavery: The form of organization of human society which allows widespread ownership of humans by humans for economic exploitation.

The slaves are another mean of production. The war is the main method of acquiring new slaves - war prisoners become the slaves of the winners. In the slavery-based society for the first time appear antagonizing classes - slaves and slave-owners. 

The slaves themselves had no incentive to make full use of new methods of production. They received nothing in return for their labour except hardship. Slave revolts became more and more frequent. While ‘antiquity did not know any abolition of slavery by a victorious rebellion’, the rebellions of slaves and subject nations seriously weakened the slave societies and finally left them (Ancient Rome, e.g.), unable to resist external invasions.

Sources: R. Nunes Part 1: Historical Materialism: Understanding and Changing the World.

Feudalism

Definition: Feudalism: The social system of which main characteristics are:

• The main mean of production - the land - is kept in the property of the ruling class - nobility.
• The main productive force - the peasantry - uses the land of the feudal, paying to the feudal the rent for the land.
• The peasant families conduct somewhat autonomous (from the feudal) ecomony on the land, which they rent from the feudal for generations.

For the feudal, the peasants were worth not themselves (as slaves were), but in the combination with the land on which they worked.

In the Western Europe the feudal system was functioned approximately from fall of Rome ( V AD) till the Industrial Revolution (XVII AD).

There was frequent conflict between the main classes of feudal society, the landowners, (usually nobles) and the serfs or, if serfdom had died away as in Britain by the 14th century, the small peasants. The exploitation of the serf-peasant masses by the landowning aristocracy gave rise to frequent peasant uprisings right across Europe. To increase his wealth, the landowner constantly encroached on the peasant’s own time to work on his personal holding, demanding, backed by force, ever greater labor services and special taxes, intensifying his exploitation.

With greater production under the new system, trade increased, leading to the growth of new towns as trading centers. The towns played an ever more important role in feudal society, becoming havens for runaway serfs and centers of the new, developing industries out of which capitalism was born.

The causes of decline the feudalism: of the The growing middle class of the towns (middle because between the aristocracy and the peasants), the burghers or bourgeoisie, strove for independence from feudal rule. As trade and manufacture grew in importance, so too did the bourgeoisie. But their economic growth and hence their political strength, was constantly blocked by the special privileges of the nobles and the church - which was also one of the greatest feudal landowners. The new productive forces introduced in the towns included the system of manufacture - that is, simple co-operative labor in production instead of each individual working as an independent producer. Most laboring people, however, were serfs and peasants who were legally and traditionally tied to the land. To provide labor for manufacture, this connection had to be broken, and was. Also, manufacture needed foreign trade, overseas markets, but feudal economy was closed, more or less self-sufficient. Thus the productive forces more and more came into conflict with feudal restrictions, through which they had to push their way. During the 16th century capitalism underwent a rapid expansion, stimulated by the great explorations which vastly expanded trade and commerce. The bourgeoisie, enriched by this and by the slave trade and the development of manufacture, began to challenge the feudal monopoly of political power. In England they placed themselves at the head of the main force of discontented peasants and town artisans, pressing for the rights of parliament to determine taxation; and in the 17th century they challenged the absolute monarchy. They overthrew feudalism in two revolutionary civil wars: the first, the revolution of 1640 - 1649, when they executed Charles I, the second in 1688 when a constitutional monarchy was put in place, under control of parliament. Thus England was the first country to establish capitalism on a national scale. Later they were followed by France and all Europe.

Sources: Big Soviet Encyclopea's Feadlism entry, R. Nunes Part 1: Historical Materialism: Understanding and Changing the World.

Capitalism

Definition: Capitalism: The social-economical system of which main characteristics are:

• Production of commodities for the sale on the market
• Private ownership of the means of production
• The labor becomes a commodity on the market of the free labor force

In the capitalism the product is produced jointly by workers, but is appropriated privately by the owner of the means of production.

Historical emergence of capitalism: The growth of the bourgeoisie and its power during feudal times were accompanied by a forcible seizure of peasant lands carried out under a series of Enclosure Acts dating from Henry VII, which enabled big landowners to seize not only the common land used for pasture, firewood etc. by small peasants, but also small-peasant landholdings as well. The dispossessed peasants and their families were forced either into vagabondage, where their lives were forfeit (Henry VIII had 72,000 hung for being vagabonds), or into the towns and cities where they became the necessary labour force required by the urban bourgeoisie for the expansion of production in their factories. Thus, tens of thousands were turned into urban wage-labourers, without whom capitalism could not have grown and become the dominant system. This new class of propertyless urban workers had nothing to sell but their ability to work and, deprived of their own means of production, were forced to work for the new capitalist class, the owners of the means of production.

Vastly increased output and tremendous technological developments took place as a result of the social production of capitalism replacing the individual production of feudalism. ...

Internal contradictions of capitalism: The main classes of capitalism are, of course, the capitalists and the wageworkers, the proletariat. The wage-worker is no longer direct property as a slave, nor partial property as a serf. But still, he is a wage-slave, forced by the economic whip to sell his labour power, uncertain of his future, producing immense wealth for capital while being confined to wages which represent only the cost of his and his family’s upkeep. ...

There is a fundamental contradiction, underlying the social production relations which form the basis of the capitalist system. On the one hand, in modern industry, production is social. It is carried on socially, with thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of wage workers whose labour is interdependent (in multinationals frequently involving a number of different countries) and whose productive activities are meshed to produce a single marketable product such as an automobile. On the other hand, the producers do not own the product. This is appropriated by the owners of the means of production, whose wealth increases even while their numbers decrease. Thus, there is an insoluble economic contradiction between social production and private appropriation.

Definition: Surplus value: the difference between the value of the goods produced by the hired worker in a certain period and his wage for that period; the surplus value is the source of the capitalist profit; it is the value acquired by the capitalist for free, and it is the cause of growth of his capital. 

It is not difficult for the producers - the wage-workers - to see how to solve this contradiction, that is, how to turn private appropriation into the social appropriation which social production demands. It is done by placing the means of production under social ownership by nationalizing them under a system of working-class rule. In a word, by transforming capitalism into socialism. This is not to say that it is just a matter of passing a few laws. Modern history shows that the big capitalists will fight with all the means in their power - ideological as well as material - against even the possibility of socialist transformation, for the victory of socialism means an end to their existence as a ruling and exploiting class, along with all their power and privileges. ...

Sources: R. Nunes Part 1: Historical Materialism: Understanding and Changing the World.

[Modern] Imperialism

Definition: [The modern] Imperialism: the highest stage of the capitalism, characterized by formation of dominating monopolies. 

V.I. Lenin outlined the following main traits of the imperialistic stage of the captialism:

1. The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
2. The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy. 
3. The export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance.
4. The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves.
5. The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.

1. Formation of monopolies: The concentration of production has developed to such a stage that it creates monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life. Concentration also grows through mergers and takeovers, that is, through centralisation of capital. By ‘monopoly’ is meant a large-scale enterprise or group of enterprises, a few of which can and do dominate an entire branch of industry, commerce or finance

The basic stimulus to the development of production under capitalism is the hunt for profit. This is the motive that drives the capitalists to improve machinery and methods of production in both industry and agriculture. But the ‘free competition’ between capitalists that prevailed in the 19th century inevitably turned into monopoly capitalism from the turn of the century as the successful capitalists defeated their rivals or merged with them. Monopoly capitalism is the main essential feature of present-day imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. Monopoly itself holds back and hinders the development of the productive forces - due to suppression of competition. It is well known that the monopolists in one industry or other will buy up patents for improvements in order to suppress them and thus maintain high monopoly prices for their product. Even under imperialism, however, competition is not wholly abolished, and in certain non-cartelised spheres, international monopolistic competition is very sharp. 

2. The role of the financial capital: Finance capital, concentrated in a few hands and exercising a virtual monopoly, extracts enormous and ever-increasing profits from the floating of companies, issue of stock, state loans, etc., tightens the grip of the financial oligarchies and levies tribute upon the whole of society for the benefit of the monopolists. 

3. The role of the export of the capital: The era of monopolies (imperialism) brings with it vast accumulations of surplus capital. The investment of this capital abroad becomes a pronounced feature as its owners seek high monopoly profits in colonial and dependent countries. 
As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will never be utilised for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists; it will be used for the purpose of increasing those profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward countries, profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap.

4. The Division of the World Among the Capitalist Cartels: Monopolies came into existence in the big capitalist countries out of competition, i.e. through struggle. A few big concerns which dominate a branch of industry arise, and to avoid mutual destruction come to an agreement between themselves as to prices, share of the market, amount of production and so on. But the home market is bound up with the world market which capitalism creates in its earlier stage. Consequently the process of monopoly struggle and agreement is extended to the world scene.

In the present period we find that in most of the advanced capitalist countries the monopolies are merged with the state to form state-monopoly capitalism. Citing V. Lenin: "We see plainly here how both private and state monopolies are interwoven in the epoch of finance-capital; how both are but separate links in the imperialist struggle between the big monopolies for the division of the world."

5. The Great Powers Divide the World: In the last 40 years of the 19th century, and particularly from 1880 to 1900, a great race to seize colonies took place between the major world powers. By 1900 the big powers had completed the seizure of all weak or unoccupied territories, including all Africa and Polynesia. This race was no accident but arose directly out of the growth of monopoly capitalism, when the ruling monopoly groups of each big power sought to assure for themselves control of areas where they would have exclusive access to markets, sources of raw materials and sources for investment of surplus capital. To deny these to their competitors was nearly as important as obtaining them for themselves. But the complete territorial division of the world meant that the world could ‘provide’ no more colonies for the big powers to exploit except through a redivision of the already-divided world. An understanding of this is essential to an understanding of the origins of the two world wars that have taken place in this century.

The Political Character of Imperialism: The transition from the earlier capitalism to imperialism was marked by a huge growth in the armed forces of the great powers. Their purpose was twofold - to suppress the working class internally and to seize and hold colonies abroad against the competition of the other imperialists.

Imperialism as Parasitic or Decaying Capitalism: Through the export of capital imperialism creates a class of bondholders, ‘coupon-clippers' or ‘rentiers’, people who are shareholders in companies in the colonies, semi-colonies and dependent countries. Profits from such foreign investments are so large that, even 
in the case of a great trading country such as Britain, they far exceed the revenue from foreign trade. States with large-scale investments of this type become in effect ‘rentier’ (bondholder) states. This is parasitism on a massive scale. But the very size of colonial profits turns attention away from maintaining technical progress at home and thus tends to reduce the rate of development of industries in the investing country. For this reason parasitism has been an important factor in the decline of a once-dominant Britain.

Bribing of the labor aristocracy and pro-socialist leaders by dominating capital: After Marx’s death capitalism soon developed into monopoly capitalism, imperialism, in which the plunder of the colonies was to yield immense profits to the monopolists of the big powers. The ruling class was able to use a small fraction of these profits to bribe an upper layer of the workers with extra pay and other concessions, forming them into a labour aristocracy (which, incidentally, is still with us.) Many of the leaders of the old European socialist and social-democratic parties became part of this grouping. They buried and distorted the revolutionary teachings of Marx and Engels on the state, asserting that a peaceful transition to socialism was possible. Lenin carried out an intense struggle against them, exposing their treachery to the working class, at the same time restoring the revolutionary content of Marxism. Mao Tse-tung has the done the same in this era in regard to the distortions and treachery of modern Soviet revisionism. 

Imperialism re-branded as Globalization: The post-war corporate alliance between the USA state and capital led to a global offensive – the replacement of European-Japanese colonial control and exploitation by US business and bankers.  Imperialism was later ‘re-branded’ as ‘globalization’. It pried open markets, secured cheap docile labor and pillaged resources for US manufacturers and importers.

Sources: Big Soviet Encyclopedia's Imperialism entry, V. Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism"(1916), R. Nunes Part 1: Historical Materialism: Understanding and Changing the World, Part 3: Imperialism - A Popular Outline, prof. James Petras

Rise and Decline of the Welfare State in America - Class Struggle and Imperial Wars as the Motor Force of US History.

Fascism [along Samir Amin]

Socialism

Definition: Socialism: Socialism is the 1st phase of the transition from capitalism towards the formation of the communism. Socialistic formation is established in the process of a socialistic revolution. Economic base of the socialism: the common (social) ownership of the means of production. Political base of the socialism: the rule of the working masses  (the dictatorship of the proletariat) with the guidance of the class of the proletariat, headed by the marxist-leninist party. Socialism is the social formation which excludes exploitation of man by man, which develops in the interests of increasing prosperity of the people and versatile development of each member of society.

Socialist society is still class society (unlike the [abstract] communistic formation), but with certain basic differences from capitalism. It is society under the rule of the working class, whose aim is to abolish exploitation and therefore to abolish classes. It is therefore a society in transition to a higher form - classless society.

History of socialistic ideas: The first ideas of Utopian Socialism have been expressed in the works by T. Моr and T Campanella in the XVI-XVII, in the most detailed form were given by French thinkers Saint-Simon, Ch. Fourier,  and English thinker R Owen in the 2nd half of XVIII - 1st half of XIX century. They criticized the taints of the capitalism and called for establishing a socialistic society based on the the common ownership of the means of production, thinking to reach it via persuading the ruling class, changing the nature of man and creating the cooperatives. Although managing to foretell particular traits of the future formation, the Utopian socialists failed to link their theory with the revolutionary struggle of the working class people.

K. Marx and F. Engels have given the scientific definition of the socialism, and the reasons of inevitability of socialism to supersede capitalism, provided the main characteristics of socialism and its evolution. The theory of socialism was creatively developed further by V. Lenin in the new historic epoch, based on the generalization of the experience of socialistic construction in the first years of USSR. The implementation of socialism in USSR owes much to  J. Stalin, who has laid foundation 

Historical emergence of socialism: Socialistic formation arises as the result of the socialistic revolution, which resolves the main internal contradiction of the capitalistic society - between the social nature of production and the private appropriation of the products.

Social achievements of socialism:

Influence on the world history:

Decolonization. 

Formation of the world system of the socialism.

The causes of retreat of socialism: It may be said: Russia and China achieved socialism, but today they have restored capitalism. Does this not show that capitalism is a superior system? More is said on this subject in another section, but we must here answer: no; capitalism is outmoded, and there is nothing whatever wrong with socialism. It had immense achievements to its credit in both countries, and those in the face of unbelievable difficulties. But experience has shown that capitalism is a subtle, cunning and inveterate enemy of socialism and the working class. The capitalists were able to make a comeback in both countries through the emergence -strange as it seems - of a new bourgeoisie consisting of privileged, more highly paid bureaucrats, corrupted Party cadres, administrators, managers and professional people, separated from physical labour and standing above the mass of the workers. Bourgeois ideology too, made a comeback, not openly, but deceptively, still calling itself Marxism-Leninism. The Communist Parties in those countries came under the control of the new bourgeoisie and took the road of restoring capitalism.

Sources: Big Soviet Encyclopedia's Socialism entry, R Nunes Part 1: Historical Materialism: Understanding and Changing the World, Part 4. The State and the Struggle for Socialism.

Communism

Communism [Britannica definition: www.britannica.com/topic/communism]

Communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society. Communism is thus a form of socialism—a higher and more advanced form. Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists’ adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx.

Common Features of Different Social Systems  [along R. Nunes, part 1]

In the foregoing sketch of development we have spoken of Primitive Communism, Slavery, Feudalism, Capitalism and Socialism. Each of these social systems consists, like a building, of two closely connected parts, a ‘basis’ and a ‘superstructure’.

It is a common feature of human society in all periods of history that it can only exist by producing the necessities of life, such as food, clothing and shelter. In this very process of producing, people willy-nilly form definite relationships. These are called ‘relations of production’ or, more briefly, ‘production relations,’ and they concern how people stand towards the means of production; whether they own them in common, as under Communism, or whether one class owns them and can thus exploit another class as under slavery, feudalism and capitalism.

Whatever the epoch, these production relations form the foundation, the basis or economic structure of society. Under communism, primitive or advanced, the basis is classless, because the means of production are socially owned. Under slavery, the basis is the dominant production relations of slaveowners to slaves; under feudalism, it is those of feudal lords to serfs, and under capitalism, those of capitalists to workers. No country has reached the stage of advanced communism, which is based on infinitely more advanced productive forces than those of primitive communism. All that has existed so far until the comeback of capitalism under Khrushchev in Russia and Deng Xiaoping in China, has been the lower stage of socialism. During this period - a lengthy one, the task is to create an economy of abundance and people capable of overcoming the me-first ideology of capitalism

On the economic basis (the relations of production) a set of political and legal institutions grows up called the superstructure. It includes different kinds of governing bodies - democratic assemblies or monarch’s courts, for instance; the state with its armed forces, police and law courts; churches, academies and so on. A set of ideas in regard to politics, religion, law, art and culture, etc. also grows up which forms an ideological superstructure as part of the whole. The purpose of the superstructure is to reinforce the basis. For instance, the monarchy was an institution of feudalism which protected and reinforced the landowning rights of the nobility against the peasants, while the idea of the Divine Right of Kings gave further (ideological) reinforcement. Similarly, under capitalism the courts protect private property. This is because capitalism is based on private property. The idea of the Rule of Law (which happens to be bourgeois law, of course) gives ideological reinforcement.

The most decisive institution of the superstructure and the principal one on which the political power of a ruling class rests, is the state. In the imperialist stage of capitalism the monopoly capitalists have created a huge military-bureaucratic state machine as an instrument of suppression. In classless society there will be no state, for there will be no classes to suppress. Under capitalism different political parties may be elected to office in ‘democracies’. They may make some reforms, but they cannot and do not make any fundamental change to the basis. ...

In human society the basic contradiction is that between the productive forces and the production relations. It is this contradiction that is the motive force which pushes forward the development of society. In a class-divided society such as capitalism the basic contradiction manifests itself as a struggle between classes. New relations of production when they are established assist the productive forces to develop, but in time they become a barrier to the further growth of the latter. A conflict between the two develops and grows sharper until a point is reached where it culminates in a social revolution, when the old production relations are overthrown and replaced by new ones and society is reconstituted on a new basis. The old superstructure then undergoes big changes to bring it into line with the new basis.