From Occupation to the General Strike

By a CT-WSA member

With several months of preparation and one month of action, Occupy Wall Street has accomplished what years of conventional activism has failed to do–spark a populist political awakening against the ruling class. The 99ers have captured the imagination of regular Americans from every background and point of view, unified by a general disgust with the upper 1% who have run our economic, political and social areas of life into the ground. The defiant occupation of public space in the heart of the capitalist system has not only inspired us, but challenged our sense of complacency in the age of crisis. Read more

Posted on October 16, 2011

Filed Under Economy | 1 Comment

An American Fall

By Steve Fake

The Arab Spring and European Summer have now inspired a wave of demonstrations in the U.S. as well. It may well prove to be the most significant wave of protests the nation has seen in many years.

The occupation of Wall Street began on September 17th and quickly mushroomed into dozens of occupations around the country – and all of this before the long planned major occupation in D.C. that began on October 6th.

The timing is propitious. Forty-nine percent of likely voters “think neither party in Congress represents the people,” according to the conservative polling agency Rasmussen.

Read more

Posted on October 9, 2011

Filed Under Economy | 5 Comments

Kicking the Bosses’ Ass Means Breaking the Bosses’ Law

Tacoma and Seattke rank-and-file members of the  the International
Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) are showing us the way.
Faced with arrogant bosses and a boss-controlled legal system, they
have declared that the only way to effectively fight back is to fight
back HARD!
Read more

Posted on September 16, 2011

Filed Under Labor | Leave a Comment

Venezuela from Below

Review: Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle by Rafael Uzcategui (See Sharp Press, 2010)

By Tom Wetzel

In her essay Latin America & Twenty-First Century Socialism (published as  an issue of Monthly Review last year), Marta Har­necker presents a description of “some features” of a decentralized, self-managed socialism based on direct democracy in workplaces and neighborhoods — a picture congenial to libertarian socialists. She also pro­vides an interpretation of the Bolivarian Movement — the movement led by Hugo Chavez — that suggests it is embarked on a transition to this kind of socialism in Venezuela.

Rafael Uzcategui’s book marshals a lot of evidence to challenge that interpretation. Uzcategui argues that a continuation of capitalism is a more likely outcome of the Chavez government than a transition to socialism. Uzcategui also rejects the right-wing fantasy of “Castro-style Communism” being set up in Venezuela. Read more

Posted on September 6, 2011

Examining a Ghost: A Young Anarchist Reflects on Bookchin

By Cam Mancini

I have recently been reading Murray Bookchin. AK Press put out a wonderful collection, titled Post-Scarcity Anarchism, of ten of his works, including essays and discussion pieces on them, and a collection of letters and observations. Bookchin is a touchy topic with some, because as most are aware, he moved away from anarchism later in his life, supporting what he called “communalism.” None-the-less, all of these texts are from no later than 1970, when he was in his prime as an anarchist and, I contend, a leading theorist of the time. In the first three essays of the collection (“Post-Scarcity Anarchism”, “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought”, and “Towards a Liberatory Technology”), he would define the revolutionary need for an ecological perspective, and not without controversy.

Read more

Posted on Aug. 18, 2011

Mottoes and Watchwords, part II

By Nate Hawthorne

A Discussion of Politics and Mass Organizations, Part 2 of 2

Read more

Posted on June 21, 2011

Mottoes and Watchwords

By Nate Hawthorne

A Discussion of Politics and Mass Organizations, Part 1 of 2

Read more

Posted on June 17, 2011

Mommy, What Was Hunger Like?

By Don Smith

I was at dinner with friends the other day and the subject of poverty and hunger in Africa came up. One friend of mine is working with a non-profit charity that collects money for children in Sierra Leone who are going hungry. The work she does is admirable and she understands it’s just a band-aid of sorts. Sierra Leone has a ton of its own problems aside from hunger, particularly because of the warring factions involved in the diamond trade there and attendant refugees, child soldiers, destroyed landbases, warlords, and other effects of the commodification of what are essentially pretty rocks (a bitter irony in itself—that a rock has come to mean more than human lives, a livable environment, etc.).

Read more

Posted on May 21, 2011