During the four days I spent in West Virginia, I was repeatedly thanked for coming to support teachers from out of state, though mostly people seemed a bit surprised that I cared. Perhaps it was because I arrived at the exact moment that most of the national media was leaving town following the first – false – announcement that an agreement had been reached.
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Socialism Beyond Borders
by Hilary Wainwright December 3, 2018 |
In an age of transnational corporations and global finance-driven speculation, socialist strategy is doomed if it focuses exclusively, or even primarily, on any individual nation state. Yet, at the same time, popular struggles for control over nation states are an essential part of a necessarily international strategy. This is my starting point in responding to Costas Lapavitsas (in the pages of Red Pepper) and his call for socialism to ‘start at home’.
Self-Organized Yellow Vest Protest Movement Exposes Inequality and Hollowness of French Regime
by Richard Greeman December 3, 2018 |
Ignored by Emmanuel Macron, distorted by the media, courted by the Right, snubbed by the Left, the self-organized mass movement known as the Yellow Vests is seriously challenging the political and economic order in France.
An Ecosocialist Path to Limiting Global Temperature Rise to 1.5°C
by Richard Smith November 28, 2018 |
Richard Smith argues for an emergency plan to meet the climate emergency and "do what the science demands before it's too late." This is an abridged version of a paper that will appear in the March 1, 2019 special issue of Real-World Economics Review.[1]
November 1918: Revolution in Central Europe
by Nicholas Vrousalis November 21, 2018 |
The end of World War I in November 1918 signaled the collapse of two bastions of feudalism: the Hohenzollerns in Germany and the Habsburgs in Austria-Hungary. Victory for the Entente therefore meant victory of the western bourgeoisie over the militarism of central Europe. In the words of Otto Bauer, the First World War was “the greatest and the bloodiest bourgeois revolution in the history of the world.”
Being Asian American in an Era of Extreme Inequality
by Sudip Bhattacharya November 19, 2018 |
Anjana Bhattacharya couldn’t sleep the night before our interview because of the pain gnawing at her knees. The pain had gotten worse over the previous week and it stemmed from the several years of having to stand 12 to 14 hours a day for work.
“They don’t allow you to sit down,” she said, referring to the store managers.
UPS Vote No Activists Take Over Big Dallas Local
By Alexandra Bradbury November 15, 2018 |
Reformers in the Teamsters have the wind at their backs. A rank-and-file slate swept to victory November 10 at Local 767 in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, the largest UPS local in the South.
Review: The Political Theory of Che Guevara
by Sean Ledwith November 15, 2018 |
Renzo Llorente. The Political Theory of Che Guevara. Rowman & Littlefield International, London, 2018. 196 pp., $39.95 pb.
The iconic Alberto Korda image of Che Guevara captured at a political event in Havana in 1960 continues to cast a spell over the imagination of the global left. In the wake of the wave of revolutions that erupted across the world one year after his execution in 1967, t-shirts and posters carrying the photo were de rigueur for rebels with and without a cause. In this century, the legend of Che has been re-fuelled by the resurgence of the radical left in the form of the anti-capitalist movement and its electoral manifestations such as Syriza and Podemos. The publication of his youthful Motorcycle Diaries in 2003 sparked another slew of biographies and movies that propagated the paradox of revolutionary chic.
What's Left in Latin America?
By Jenny Pearce November 8, 2018 |
The victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) in Mexico’s July 2018 presidential election has led many to hope that a left is again resurgent in Latin America. His success bucks the recent trend in a region where the threat of ‘Castrochavismo’ has been used relatively effectively by the right to attack the left, which has sustained widespread electoral setbacks in the face of significant failings in government. Accusations of authoritarianism, economic mismanagement, corruption and even violence overshadow commitments to redistribution and social change.
João Pedro Stedile on the election results in Brazil and the way forward
By People's Dispatch November 6, 2018 |
The devastating victory of extreme right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s presidential elections on October 28 left many across the world shocked and wondering how someone who openly preaches hate and violence could have won. Claudia Fanti, an Italian journalist, spoke to João Pedro Stedile of the national board of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), about the elections and the way forward for the left in Brazil.
50+ Years in the Labor Movement (And Still Going)
An interview by Andy Piascik
by Jane LaTour November 5, 2018 |
On Activism, Voting, and Responsibility
by John Halle November 4, 2018 |
As most of us know, the history of left politics has had its share of sharp, even profound disagreements.
In the Aftermath of Communism
by Bennett Muraskin November 2, 2018 |
Kristen Ghodsee, Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth Century Communism, Duke University Press, 2017, 227 pages. $24.95
Kristen Ghodsee, an American academic with family roots in Latin America and the Middle East, has written a strange, but fascinating book, combining history, personal anecdotes and short stories. Her overriding theme is that the imposition of free market capitalism and parliamentary democracy on the former Soviet satellites in Eastern and Central Europe came at too high of a social cost, a conclusion that will be shared by the typical reader of New Politics. However, her favorable assessment of certain aspects of the old Communist order may raise eyebrows.
Brazil: The Collapse of Democracy?
by Alfredo Saad-Filho October 30, 2018 |
Brazil will elect its new President on 28 October 2018. Since the judicial-parliamentary coup that removed elected President Dilma Rousseff, of the Workers’ Party (PT), the new administration (led by her former Vice-President, Michel Temer) has advanced its agenda of neoliberal ‘reforms’. The economic crisis has continued unabated, and the campaign for the destruction of the PT has intensified, leading to the imprisonment of former President and PT founder Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.1
Anchoring an Argument
by Scott McLemee October 30, 2018 |
Scott McLemee considers Leo R. Chavez's Anchor Babies and The Challenge of Birthright Citizenship, which makes clear how little has been added to the stock of anti-immigrant rhetoric over the past century.
Reports of the forcible separation of parents and children at the border by U.S. immigration authorities tell only part of the story of the violence now being directed against hard-won norms of civil society.
Why I'm Not Voting Green in New Jersey
by Stephen R. Shalom October 29, 2018 |
The case for voting for Green candidate Howie Hawkins for governor of New York is a strong one and were I a New Yorker (I live in New Jersey), I would do so.
Journalists Are Calling Trump’s Caravan Claims ‘Evidence-Free’: It’s Worse Than That
by Domenica Ghanem October 25, 2018 |
As the GOP’s fears of a progressive wave in November grow, Donald Trump has made it his personal mission to make everyone else afraid, too.
He Got the Story
by Michael Hirsch October 23, 2018 |
Seymour Hersh. Reporter: A Memoir. Knopf, 2018. 368 pp.
Writing in 1940, George Orwell opined in a review of a Bertrand Russell book that “we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” Much the same can be said about the more than fifty-year career of journalist Seymour Hersh, whose pioneering exposés of the lies of the Great Powers report and affirm facts that follow Orwell’s dictum.
Hard Questions in Israel-Palestine
by Stephen R. Shalom October 22, 2018 |
Jamie Stern-Weiner, ed. Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine's Tought Questions. OR Books, 2018. 518 pp.
The fact that, after fifty years of Palestinian support efforts, the Israeli occupation is more entrenched than ever should inspire some intellectual humility among those hawking solutions to the conflict, notes Jamie Stern-Weiner in the introduction to his edited collection Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions. It is humbling as well to read through the volume, with more than seventy essays and rejoinders by more than fifty different authors, from almost every one of which something new can be learned.
The Enduring Importance of Arthur Miller: The Price and The Hook
by Andy Piascik October 20, 2018 |
Seventy-two years after his initial Broadway success with All My Sons and 14 years after his death, Arthur Miller continues to cast a long shadow over theater in the United States. His plays are staples of high school drama clubs, college and university theater departments and regional theaters around the country, and his best-known works – Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, All My Sons, A View From the Bridge and After the Fall – have been revived many times on Broadway.
Nicaraguan Government Attacks and Arrests Opposition Leaders; Nicaraguans in U.S. Demand Their Release; Call for General Strike
October 15, 2018 |
The following statement was issued by Nicaraguans living in the United States.
On the morning of October 14, 2018, Nicaraguan citizens in use of their constitution rights gathered to march peacefully and protest the Ortega regime and to demand the release of all political prisoners. Protestors were met with violent repression and an assault by the police.
Solidarity with Nicaragua: The Long View from Canada
by Lori Hanson October 15, 2018 |
The essay below was originally delivered as an oral presentation on the panel “Solidarity in the 21st Century” as part of a conference on The Future of the Left in Latin America held on October 5-6 at the New School in New York City. The conference was sponsored by Dissent, The New School, NACLA, and the Open Society Foundation.
The Collected Writings of Stanley Heller
by Stan Goff October 11, 2018 |
Stanley Heller, The Uprising We Need. Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2017. 332pp. $5.99 on Kindle.
Apart from the many valuable insights contained inside The Uprising We Need, Stanley Heller’s collection of articles published over the period between 2003 and 2017, the book is a fascinating look back through that fourteen-year span in which so much has happened. There is a tendency in our isolated, consumer-disciplined culture to focus on the shiniest thing out there right now with little reference for how that particular thing got there in the first place.
How NGOisation Provides Cover for the Murder of Shack Dwellers
by Jared Sacks October 9, 2018 |
In South Africa ten members of a militant shack dwellers organisation have been assassinated in the past six years. Yet many progressive organisations have distanced themselves from these militants. Jared Sacks exposes the complicity of a mainstream NGO that could have played an important role defending the movement against these political assassinations. Sacks argues that when movements refuse co-optation, repression, including assassination, become necessary to maintain power.
MST Open Letter on Brazil Election
by the MST National Board October 9, 2018 |
Comrades and Friends of MST (Landless Rural Workers' Movement) around the World,
We would like to share some of our views on this delicate moment of Brazilian politics in the last week of the election campaign:
Marx Turns 200: A Mixed Gift
by Rafael Bernabe October 8, 2018 |
A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx
By Sven-Eric Liedman
Translated by Jeffrey N. Skinner
Part of the Marx 200 series
Verso Books, 2018, 768 pages, $40 hardcover.
AMID AN OUTPOURING of discussion and new works marking the bicentennial of Karl Marx, Sven-Eric Liedman’s imposing A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx is a mixed offering. The “life” part is a success; the “works” portion is not.
Wars In The Middle East Since Trump
by Ali Kiani October 5, 2018 |
Following his new sanctions instituted against Iran, the dismissal by Donald Trump of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal is the continuation of the capitalist logic of militarization of the Middle East that was escalated by the last Bush administration and which has brought genocide and disastrous humanitarian crises to the region.
Cancel Kavanaugh - Walkout October 4th
October 1, 2018 |
CANCEL KAVANAUGH. WALK OUT AGAINST PATRIARCHY.
WE ARE SURVIVORS, BELIEVE US.
Trump Administration Declares Me an Anti-Semite
by Alan J. Singer September 30, 2018 |
I was born a Jew, had a bris and Bar Mitzvah and attended Hebrew school afternoons and Sundays from the age of 7 to 13. I went to schul with my grandfather on holidays and in 1967 I volunteered to defend Israel in the Six-Day War. But I never got to go to Israel then and since the early 1970s, I have refused to visit because of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Gangster Politics
by Stephen Eric Bronner September 29, 2018 |
In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels referred to the state as “the executive committee of the ruling class.” Reflecting the collective capitalist interest in maintaining its accumulation process, capable of forging compromises among competing sectors of its own and other classes, this committee was also meant to enforce legal norms, contracts, and other rules of the game.
"They Count on You Not Knowing"
East Bay DSA Blows The Whistle On Corporate Dem Donor Class
by Steve Early September 29, 2018 |
Wealthy Bay Area investor David Crane is a leading promoter of the neoliberal agenda within the California Democratic Party. A former advisor to Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Crane is a widely-published critic of state and local tax initiatives, publicly-funded health care, public education, public employees and their pensions. He raises lots of money for “courageous” candidates willing to put “citizen interests” ahead of such “special interest” causes.
Have No Fear: Defending The NFL Players Protests from Its Defenders
by Jason Goldfarb September 26, 2018 |
The most popular defense of the NFL players protest argues that Colin Kaepernick, as well as those who have joined him, are not protesting the National Anthem or American identity in general, but only police violence. In kneeling at the start of every NFL game, the players perform a respectful nod to the military while simultaneously calling for a re-thinking of minority status in America.
A Legacy of Virtue the Government can’t Silence: The Case of Shahidul Alam
by Andy Heintz September 23, 2018 |
The job for media pundits and intellectuals is often to question black and white narratives that are, in reality; washed in greys. But there are other times when things aren’t so complicated. There are times when one side clearly stands for inclusivism, creativity, empathy, mercy, mirth, humor, compassion and an unabashed zeal for the act of living, while the other side represents grim, cynical, self-interested raw power perpetuated by those who use violence to cover their insecurities, fears and incapacity to see that one’s reason for living on this earth has nothing to do with the allure of power and control. The arrest of renowned photographer Shahidul Alam by the Bangladeshi government is one these times.
Ecosocialism’s Greatest Challenge: The Color-Line and the Twenty-First Century Ecoleft
by Ted Franklin September 20, 2018 |
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.” —W.E.B. Du Bois
Shortly before protesters gathered around the world on the eve of the Global Climate Action Summit, an ecosocialist friend commented on the pointlessness of engaging in more “feel good” marches. Something struck me as horribly wrong about this casual dismissal of mass actions in which we take to the streets to bear witness to the mounting opposition to global ecocide.
Life of a Salesman
by Joel Schalit September 19, 2018 |
Marine Le Pen’s partner had just left the country. A Jew of Algerian background, Louis Aliot had been dispatched to Israel to raise funds for the Front National (FN).
Indefensible: Idlib and the left
by Leila Al-Shami September 14, 2018 |
This text was contributed to Freedom by Leila Al-Shami: British Syrian activist and writer, co-author (with Robin Yassin-Kassab) of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. Leila’s blog on popular struggles, human rights and social justice from an anti-authoritarian perspective can be found here.
The 2018 National Prison Strike: A Movement Making its Mark
by Dr. Toussaint Losier September 11, 2018 |
On August 21st, forty-seven years after the assassination of key movement organizer and theoretician George Jackson, prisoners across the country have once again begun mobilizing. Ranging from sit-ins to work stoppages, boycotts to hunger strikes, their actions have followed a nationwide call for sentencing reform, improved living conditions, greater access to rehabilitative programming, and an end to what strike organizers call “modern day slavery.”
Why Graduate Unionization Matters Even More in the Age of Janus
by Ethan Ake-Little September 10, 2018 |
With the start of the new academic year underway, students and instructors will again enter into a millennia old relationship built on mentorship, trust and mutual respect. However, this school year, instructors will be walking into a very different classroom not because the this relationship has changed, but because the Supreme Court has signaled it does not politically support the casue of teachers advocating for working conditions that strengthen this bond.
French Labor’s Historical Defeat; U.S. Teachers’ Surprising Victories
by Richard Greeman September 10, 2018 |
As the French get ready for the “rentrée” – the annual back-to-school/back-to-work day following the August vacation – social peace appears to reign in the land. The long-expected militant strikes and struggles against the neo-liberal counter-reforms introduced by President Macron early last Spring have failed to materialize. Surprisingly, the Macron government successfully force-marched its anti-labor, anti-welfare, pro-business agenda through parliament with little effective resistance by the unions and Left parties. Meanwhile, in the U.S., a wave of spontaneous teachers’ strikes spread from West Viriginia to other conservative ‘Red’ states, winning significant victories and surprising the media and the labor leadership. The contrast is surprising.
Brazil’s Racial Capitalism at a Turning Point
Rising Militarization after Two Decades of Workers’ Party Government
by Rhaysa Ruas da Fonseca September 9, 2018 |
In February, I published an article in the International Marxist-Humanist reporting that the political scene was horrible in Brazil. Five months ago, I had in my mind how fascism was growing quickly under the hegemony of identity politics, especially with social movements’ fragmentation, and the increase of anti-communist thought, with slanders against Marx as totalitarian, Eurocentric and colonial. I said that all of this, in addition to the legacy of almost 15 years of Workers’ Party government that ended via an institutional coup d’état in 2016, was leading to the destruction – ideological and material – of the left.
Shenzhen Jasic Technology: Towards a Worker-Student Coalition in China
by Jenny Chan September 8, 2018 |
Last month students and recent graduates from more than a dozen mainland Chinese universities stood up in solidarity support with workers of Jasic Technology, a private company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The student activists include those from the Peking University, Tsinghua University, Nanjing University, and Sun Yat-sen University. They wore t-shirts with the slogan “unity is power” printed in bold red. They produced videos of public speeches and peaceful demonstrations in front of the Jasic factory in the Pingshan District of Shenzhen City, a key node of globalized production in South China. They tweeted open letters and blogs and photos via social media. In response, Jasic management retaliated against workers who initiated to establish a democratic union since this May and refused immediate re-instatement of dismissed workers, triggering waves of rights defense protests and social justice campaigns. As of writing, 14 workers were currently still being detained by local authorities, and 50 students were forcibly taken by the riot police, crushing the worker-student coalition.
Workers say no to Vietnam’s ‘Special Exploitation Zones’
By Angie Ngoc Tran August 31, 2018 |
On Sunday, 10 June 2018, thousands of people took to the streets in major Vietnamese cities—Nha Trang, Binh Thuan, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City, among others. Academics, independent journalists, and overseas Vietnamese signed petitions to join in their protest against the Draft Law on the 99-year lease of the three Special Administrative and Economic coastal zones in Vietnam. Workers, too, went on strike in two industrial zones in Long An and Tien Giang provinces. These collective actions led to a concession from the government: it would delay the National Assembly’s ratification of the Draft Law to its next meeting.
Don Trudell 1940-2018
by Kent Worcester August 31, 2018 |
There is no way that I am qualified to write a proper obituary for Don Trudell, a longtime member of the British IS/SWP who taught history and media studies at the American School in London (ASL) when I was a student there. I do not know where he was born, or went to college, or even his full name. The last time we spoke was in the early 1980s, and the last time I spent any significant amount of time in his company was when I was still in high school. Although I dined at his house a couple of times, and chatted with him after class on innumerable occasions, I can’t say that we ever became friends. But he was a singular individual and he left an indelible impression on how I think about the world.
Two Tributes to Jesse Lemisch
by Marcus Rediker and Suzi Weissman August 29, 2018 |
New Politics sponsor Jesse Lemisch died on August 25, 2018. He will be greatly missed as a radical historian, a friend, and a tireless fighter for socialism (and history!) from below.
Here are memories from two friends.
Globalists vs. Internationalists
by Ayan Meer August 24, 2018 |
Quinn Slobodian. Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Harvard University Press, 2018. 381pp.
Neoliberalism is dead, if it ever existed at all. Centrists and so-called moderates dismiss it as nothing more than a slur bandied around by leftists. On the left on the other hand, neoliberalism is at times portrayed as mere free market fundamentalism, or simply as a return to capitalism as it was intended, before the post-war social democratic hiatus. Thatcher and Reagan, the thinking goes, along with Milton Friedman and his “Chicago Boys”, wanted to unleash the full power of free markets’ self-regulating force.
The Unbearable Centrism of Mainstream Documentaries
by Daniel Clarkson Fisher August 24, 2018 |
The Obamas’ deal with Netflix is the culmination of a worrisome turn in contemporary documentary.
Since the announcement in May of Former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama’s multi-year production deal to produce narrative and documentary films and series with Netflix, there has been remarkably little conversation about it. Admittedly, there isn’t any work to evaluate just yet, but the news does raise enormously important questions in and of itself.
Marx and Marxism in Berkeley in 1968
by Loren Goldner August 24, 2018 |
Berkeley (California) was probably a unique political-cultural milieu in the U.S. in the 1960s, both before and after 1968. It was part of the larger political-cultural scene of the San Francisco Bay Area from 1945 onward. The Bay Area at the time was a relative backwater in the U.S., compared to the East coast. The area had, however, seen one of the biggest general strikes of the 1930s, when the Communist Party-influenced ILWU (International Longshore Workers Union) helped bring San Francisco to a halt in 1934, including mass street battles with the police.
How Prisons Serve Capitalism
by Dan Berger August 23, 2018 |
I once asked a class at a prison in Washington State how they would describe the relationship between capitalism and incarceration. “They get you coming and going,” someone quickly offered.
A Marxist theory of music: it’s all in the groove
by Kate Bradley August 23, 2018 |
Much analysis of modern music focuses on lyrical content, but how can we understand modern musical forms? What relation do they have to the capitalist world in which they’ve developed? To answer these questions Kate Bradley interviewed Mark Abel, author of Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured Time.
In Memoriam: David McReynolds, 1929-2018
by Ed Hedemann August 20, 2018 |
Early Friday morning, socialist, photographer, and lifetime War Resisters League member David McReynolds — committed pacifist + socialist — passed peacefully at the age of 88. David was on WRL staff for a large part of his life and remained within our community long, long after.
Presente.
As written by WRL Member Ed Hedemann.
The Fires This Time and Their Implications for Ecosocialists
by Richard Smith August 17, 2018 |
“Deindustrialization.” That’s a word you virtually never hear in the debate around global warming. Not surprising. It’s a word that’s loaded with negative implications: economic collapse, mass layoffs, falling living standards. Who wants to think about those, let alone think about this as a strategy of suppressing CO2 emissions?
Mexican Independent and Democratic Auto Unions Form a New Federation
by Jeffery Hermanson August 14, 2018 |
Mexico’s auto workers are for the first time forming a national federation in what is a very significant development both for Mexican labor and for Mexican society as a whole. Ten organizations representing over 25,000 Mexican workers have committed to the new organization.
NYC DSA's Endorsement of Cynthia Nixon: A Reply to Dan La Botz
by Paul Garver August 14, 2018 |
I appreciate Dan La Botz' well-reasoned article, but do not agree with his conclusion.
As usual, Dan's argument is judicious and clear, courteous to other points of view. Such civility is essential to maintaining the health and vitality of a diverse big tent organization like the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA).
Youth and Our Future: An Era of Superficial Outrage Politics?
by Jack Zhang August 14, 2018 |
Many would like to believe that this American period of rampant national-conservatism is nothing more than a short stay in Republican purgatory. It is a reassuring idea that in a few years, as today’s progressive youth becomes a large part of the electorate, the United States will become a shining example of tolerant and progressive prosperity. Just as neo-conservatives envision a global American hegemony built on capitalism and military strength, some progressives have adopted a belief that the United States is destined to reach national political moksha with strong welfare, a prosperous middle class, and minority rights; the nasty racists and homophobes, the “deplorables”, will soon be outnumbered so vastly in the face of common-sense political ideology that the right will simply cease to exist. Unfortunately, this prophecy has proven a myth for millennials—and the nascent Generation Z doesn’t appear to have better prospects.
A Massacre, Not a Coup: A Response to Misinformation on Nicaragua
by Mary Ellsberg August 14, 2018 |
For the past 3 months, progressive websites and journals have run articles that paint a picture of the crisis in Nicaragua that is dangerously misleading. Many of these articles have been circulated among people on the left who were in solidarity with Nicaragua and the FSLN during the 1970s and 1980s but haven’t kept up with what has happened over the last 30 years—particularly since 2007, when Daniel Ortega returned to the Presidency and has been there since. I’d like to take a moment to correct some misconceptions about the current crisis in Nicaragua.
Return of the Strike: The Teachers Rebellion in the United States: A Forum
by Jeffrey R. Webber August 13, 2018 |
A Forum on the Teachers Rebellion in the United States with Tithi Bhattacharya, Eric Blanc, Kate Doyle Griffiths, Lois Weiner. Edited and introduced by Jeffery R. Webber
Few anticipated a labour upsurge in the United States in early 2018, and fewer still expected a blaze to ignite among teachers in West Virginia, or for it to spread to Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, and Colorado. Ellen David Friedman poses one of the questions which immediately springs to mind: “why is this stunning revolt occurring where unions are weak, where labor rights are thin, and where popular politics are considered to be on the Right?”[1]
The Third Camp in Theory and Practice: An Interview with Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison
by Kent Worcester August 12, 2018 |
[Reprinted by permission from Left History 21.2]
Introduction
Joanne Landy (1941–2017) and Thomas Harrison (1948–) became socialists as teenagers and have remained involved in the democratic left ever since. They were active in the student protest movement at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s, where they met and became close friends and collaborators. During the 1970s, they became increasingly interested in the issue of labor rights in Central and Eastern Europe, and they worked to link democratic and social justice struggles in the Eastern Bloc with social movements in the United States, the West, and the Third World. Until Joanne Landy’s death in October 2017, they were co-directors of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD), which was founded in 1982. Initially, the organization was called the Campaign for Peace and Democracy/East and West, but with the end of the Cold War the title was shortened.
Siege and resistance in Gaza: an interview with Toufic Haddad
By Omar Hassan August 9, 2018 |
For more than 10 weeks, Palestinians have gathered in protest every Friday at the Israeli-Gaza Strip buffer zone, located in the perimeter of the 1949 armistice lines. Called by organisers the Great March of Return, the mobilisations have demanded an end to the crippling Western state-Israeli economic and political blockade of the Gaza Strip and that families expelled for generations from their homelands be allowed to return.
The Movement-Building Potential of Socialist Electoral Victories
By Cyryl Ryzak August 9, 2018 |
On June 26th, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated, against all odds, the incumbent Congressman from New York’s 14th district, a safe Democratic seat, in the party’s primary. Spectacular as it was to see a Democratic political boss (the “King of Queens”) humbled by a left-wing challenger, the real spoils of this victory do not lie in the House seat itself.
The Rebirth of Social Democracy in the U.S.
By Joe Allen August 2, 2018 |
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has emerged as the largest socialist organization in the United States since the collapse of the Communist Party (CP) in the mid-1950s. While Bernie Sanders’ ‘democratic socialist’ campaign for president in 2016 laid much of the groundwork for DSA’s growth, it was Donald Trump’s election to the presidency that boosted its membership from 6,700 in 2016 to around 48,000 members today.
Why Humanism Matters in the Fight Against Capital
by Peter Hudis July 31, 2018 |
Dehumanization is the word that best captures our present moment. How else to describe separating children as young as two or three from their parents and throwing them in cages and detention centers just because their families are fleeing severe persecution? It isn’t just about Trump; it’s also about the tens of millions in the U.S. who are avidly supporting his policies. How could this be happening?
Whither Korea?
By Young-ik Choi July 31, 2018 |
After the Singapore meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un, questions loom large. What is the path ahead for North Korea? What chances are there for a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula? South Korean socialists weigh in.
Race, Capitalism, and Resistance in the United States
by Ndindi Kitonga July 31, 2018 |
Introduction and My Experiences
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and protect one another other. We have nothing to lose but our chains”.
You may recognize this as the rallying cry for the Black liberation movement in the United States, as written by Assata Shakur.
Nicaragua in Pain
by Claudio Katz July 27, 2018 |
Translated from Spanish by Fred Murphy
Writing about Nicaragua is as painful and sad as it is indispensable. Memories of the Sandinista Revolution are still alive for the generation that lived through it. To remain silent would be an affront to those who took part in that memorable insurrection against Somoza.
An Israeli twist on homophobia and racism
by Yacov Ben Efrat July 26, 2018 |
At the mass rally held by the LGBT movement at Rabin Square on July 22, 2018, protesters not only demanded to be accepted as different, but also called for full equality. They cried out against the injustice caused by a government that excludes homosexual men from having children through a surrogate mother.
All Strikes of Public Sector Workers are Now Political Strikes
by Nelson Lichtenstein July 26, 2018 |
Left Voice speaks with Marxist labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein on the lessons of the Teachers’ Spring and the signs of a resurgent labor movement in the U.S.
The American Oligarchy: A Review
by Chris Wright July 24, 2018 |
Ron Formisano. American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Notes. Index. $19.95
Consumers of left-wing media are well aware that America is an oligarchy, not a democracy. Everyone with a functioning cerebrum, in fact, should be aware of it by now: even mainstream political scientists recognize it, as shown by a famous 2014 study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page. Nevertheless, it is important to continue to publicize the oligarchical character of the United States, in order to delegitimize the institutions that have destroyed democracy (insofar as it ever existed) and inspire people to take action to restore it. Ron Formisano’s book American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class (2017) is a valuable contribution to this collective project.
An Open Letter to the NAACP About Puerto Rico
Rafael Bernabe and Manuel Rodríguez Banchs |
The 109th annual convention of the NAACP more
Desperately seeking socialism: why the Soviet Union’s left-wing dissidents matter today
by Gabriel Levy July 22, 2018 |
The following text appeared on OpenDemocracy, and features a review by Gabriel Levy of Ilya Budraistkis’ book Dissidents Among Dissidents, a new collection of essays published in Russian in 2017 by Free Marxist Publishers. It was originally published on People and Nature.
This new collection of essays seeks to rebalance our understanding of dissent in the late Soviet Union, drawing attention to democratic socialists from the 1950s into the 1980s.
Cuba: note for a balance sheet of ten years of reforms
by Ariel Dacal Díaz July 21, 2018 |
I. Since, at the end of 2007, Raúl Castro called for a broad national debate, ten years have passed. It was a kind of "social catharsis" of all the problems of the country. This fact can be marked as the beginning of a transformation process that has affected all the spaces of economic, political, social and subjective life in Cuba.
War, Imperialism, and Class Polarization on a Global Scale
From East Asia to the Middle East and from South Africa to Europe
by Kevin B. Anderson July 20, 2018 |
Adapted from a presentation to the Chicago Convention of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization, July 13, 2018.
Recent Events Leave Brave Gaza Flotilla in More Danger
by Stanley Heller July 19, 2018 |
Right now four small boats are on their way to Palermo, Italy, to dare a crossing to besieged Gaza. Because of the rockets from Gaza on July 13 (whatever the true story behind their launch) the Gaza Flotilla 2018 is in even more peril from a cruel IDF puffed up on its own righteousness. In 2010 the Israelis killed ten on the Mavi Marmara and have often been brutal in captures since.
Notes on the Party, Reform, Revolution and the Myth of Spontaneity in Rosa Luxemburg
by Michael Hirsch July 16, 2018 |
This presentation was given at the June 30, 2018, DSA Lower Manhattan Branch meeting/picnic.
When I was in college and the Vietnam War was raging, I was president of the campus’s SDS chapter. I remember lunching with the head of our local Young Democrats. He was a decent enough liberal who also opposed the war but told me he could never be a radical because he didn’t believe in class struggle. I told him it was less a matter of what he and I believed than in what leading sections of the ruling class thought and did.
Political Education: Someone’s Done It Better
by Peter Drucker July 13, 2018 |
David Camfield. We Can Do Better: Ideas for Changing Society. Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2017. 168 pp.
The breathtakingly rapid changes in the capitalist world around us has left basic political education by the revolutionary left trailing behind.
Free the Children!
by Rocio Lopez July 12, 2018 |
2,342 refugee and migrant children were kidnapped at the hands of the state at the US-Mexico border between May and June. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a zero tolerance policy that separated mainly Central American refugee children from their parents, as migrant adults were criminally prosecuted with many thrown into federal prisons. Hundreds are toddlers under the age of 4 or even babies as young as 4 months old. The average age of the children is 8. The regime also lied and said that parents who asked for asylum at regular border crossings would not be separated from their children while they did exactly that.
A Call Center Coup: Ex-Teamster Boots Riley Tackles Telemarketing And its Discontents
by Steve Early July 10, 2018 |
When I was a union rep, one of my most challenging assignments was assisting a Communications Workers of America (CWA) bargaining unit at a Boston-area telemarketing firm. Most CWA members in New England had call center jobs at the phone company, with good pensions, health insurance, and full-time salaries. As service reps, they fielded in-coming calls from customers with problems, questions, or new orders to place. In contrast, the telemarketing staff only interacted with the public, on behalf of various clients, via out-bound calling. Like the workers depicted in Boots Riley’s hilarious new film, Sorry to Bother You, they made cold calls to people who did not want to bothered, at dinner time or anytime, with a pitch for a new product, service, or donation to a political cause.
Lessons and not Myths about the Portuguese non-model
Maria Manuel Rola, Adriano Campos, and Jorge Costa July 10, 2018 |
Jacobin published on June 9 an essay by Catarina Príncipe under the title “The Portuguese Myth.” We’ve deeply appreciated her thoughts on the political changes in the country since 2015, considering it was written by a spokesperson for a minority current inside the Left Bloc, a status Príncipe failed to mention. This should have been stated, for transparency’s sake, since Príncipe offered an alternative political resolution and a competing list for the leadership of the Party in 2016, which were defeated.1
Rohini Hensman Analyzes the new "Second Camp Anti-Imperialism"
by Joey Ayoub July 8, 2018 |
Rohini Hensman. Indefensible: Democracy, Counterrevolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism. Haymarket Books, 2018. 400 pp.
Rohini Hensman starts off her book with two simple questions: How has the rhetoric of anti-imperialism come to be used in support of anti-democratic counterrevolutions around the world? And what can we do about it?
Taking on Dirty Power in Richmond, California
by Michael Hirsch July 3, 2018 |
Gayle McLaughlin. Winning Richmond: How a Progressive Alliance Won City Hall. Hard Ball Press, 2017. 306 pp.
On August 6, 2012, an elephantine plume of black smoke rose over Richmond, California, sending some 15,000 people suffering from respiratory distress to area hospitals. Most of the city’s 110,000 inhabitants received “shelter-in-place” warnings to stay indoors and tape their windows shut to avoid breathing the deadly fumes. The smoke came from a massive fire at Chevron’s giant fuel-processing facility in the city, caused by slack maintenance and slacker management oversight. It wasn’t the first or the last mishap at the refinery. Since 1989, 14 such eruptions have been reported. In Richmond at least, the enemy has a name and a besmirched face.
Marx, Our Contemporary
by Tony Smith July 3, 2018 |
No one should underestimate the changes in the social world occurring since Marx’s day, or overestimate to what extent we find ready-made answers to contemporary issues in his writings. Nonetheless, Marx’s analysis uncovers essential features and defining tendencies of capitalism far better than alternative frameworks.
A 99Rootz Organizer's Story
by Pacita Rudder June 21, 2018 |
Driving down Route 99 highway, miles upon miles of flat land sprouting grapes, nuts, lemons, and tomatoes line the stretch of land next to the hot asphalt. Highlighted within this landscape of farmland and truck filled, busy highways are youth. Strong, beautiful, Black and Brown young people unapologetically organizing amidst big agriculture and quiet towns. They are organizing for a Central Valley that provides all its residents with what they need to be whole. These young people, full of wisdom and fire, are ready to reclaim the region as their own, creating from the soil rich land a movement that pushes forward their vision of a California for all. At the center of this energy and youth-led, transformative movement is 99Rootz.
On the Mass Protests in Iran, Revolutionary Socialism, and International Solidarity
by Frieda Afary June 18, 2018 |
Below is the text of Frieda Afary’s presentation to a group of international labor activists on June 10, 2018.
Alex Pareene: Pundit of the Century
by Nick Oltmann June 17, 2018 |
Alex Pareene, first of Wonkette, then Gawker, then Salon, then back to Gawker, then a stillborn First Run Media project, and now Splinter News is a great pundit.
Requiem for a Steelworker
Mon Valley Memories of Oil Can Eddie
by Steve Early June 16, 2018 |
In progressive circles in the upper midwest today, if you’ve heard the name Sadlowski, it’s probably because you were involved in the Wisconsin labor uprising of 2011, where you might have linked arms with AFSCME organizer and state capitol occupier Edward A. Sadlowski. Or maybe you applauded the electoral victory of his sister, Susan Sadlowski Garza, when she won a Chicago city council seat four years later, as a standard bearer for her union, the Chicago Teachers.
The Baqee Protest: A Way to Shock the Prince and His Billionaire Admirers
by Stanley Heller June 16, 2018 |
Saudi prince Salman dazzled Wall Street and the glitterati in his three-week U.S. tour this past March. The captains of finance (Stephen Schwartzman, Peter Thiel), tech (Gates, Bezos), politics (Trump, Clinton), and Hollywood (Disney’s Bob Iger, director James Cameron, Morgan Freeman) all met with him. “60 Minutes” did a fawning piece, as did NPR and the Atlantic. The New York Times printed two rapturous articles by Thomas Friedman. Finally, they had a marketable Saudi royal. Mohammad bin Salman was not the usual doddering nonagenarian, but a vigorous take-charge guy, who … get this… is going to let women drive!
Democracy and Ecological Crisis
by Nancy Holmstrom June 12, 2018 |
Last fall 15,000 scientists issued a second dire notice to humanity that we are on a collision course with the limits of our planet. They concluded, “To prevent widespread misery, humanity must practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual,” including “reassess[ing]... the role of an economy rooted in growth.” That means that we have to challenge capitalism; there is no capitalism without growth. Rosa Luxemburg’s statement on the eve of World War I that the choice is between socialism or barbarism was never more true. But today our struggle is about our very existence.
What Do We Really Want Policing To Be?
by Alex Vitale June 9, 2018 |
Brooklyn College sociology professor Alex Vitale’s provocative new book, The End of Policing, comes amid the national debate about deadly force by police and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. But Vitale — one of the country’s fiercest advocates of police reform over the past 25 years — thinks police killings are a symptom of a much broader issue. As the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn, he argues that police in recent decades have taken on a “warrior mentality” that is fundamentally incompatible with the ideal of equal justice. And he thinks the solutions typically advocated by progressives are not the real answer. Following are edited excerpts of Vitale’s recent appearance on the CUNY Book Beat podcast.
Revolution in a Warming World: Lessons from the Russian to the Syrian Revolutions
by Andreas Malm June 7, 2018 |
It doesn’t take much imagination to associate climate change with revolution. If the planetary order upon which all societies are built starts breaking down, how can they possibly remain stable? Various more or less horrifying scenarios of upheaval have long been extrapolated from soaring temperatures.
Roadblocks and possibilities: The Nicaraguan student insurrection
by Lori Hanson June 5, 2018 |
Canadian internationalist feminist Lori Hanson, who has been working in solidarity with rural Nicaraguans for more than 30 years, has just returned from Nicaragua. Jack Hicks interviewed her for New Socialist. Together, they crafted this piece based on the interview and an article Lori previously wrote for the Greek newspaper, AlterThess. The analysis of an emerging movement in Nicaragua is a work in progress for Lori, who continues to work with Nicaraguans on the deeper meaning of a 44 day-long uprising and the state violence that has accompanied it in April and May, 2018.
Developing Marx’s Mode of Production Theory
by Nancy Holmstrom May 29, 2018 |
It is not surprising that Karl Marx is having a comeback today, after the 2008 financial crisis, the growing awareness of capitalism’s propensity to crises and ecological problems, and the fact that global inequality has increased to an obscene degree – all of which Marx foresaw.
Une déclaration sur le voyage de Mélenchon en Russie
Sent by Olivier Delbeke May 28, 2018 |
This is a declaration signed by two French militants and a young Ukrainian left-wing activist describing the details of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's trip to Russia not long ago, and the scandal of the ignorance of part of the left under the pretext of anti-imperialism.
The Vision of the New Society in Marx’s "Capital"
by Peter Hudis May 27, 2018 |
Marx’s Capital has been heralded for many things, but providing an exhaustive account of a future socialist society isn’t one of them.
A Report from Barcelona
by Eric Chester May 26, 2018 |
Barcelona has once again become a center of radical politics. After decades of brutal repression under Franco, the Left has returned and the city is alive with political activity. Of course, the Left of 2018 is not the same Left that controlled Barcelona during the first months of the Spanish Civil War.
One Massacre, Many Partners in Crime
by Yacov Ben Efrat May 26, 2018 |
One hundred and seven Palestinians have been killed and more than 10,000 wounded by Israeli troops over the past seven weeks along the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel. The Palestinians stormed the fence and Israeli soldiers responded with live fire. On the bloodiest day, May 14, when the new American embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated, 61 demonstrators were slain. This massacre was not necessary: the IDF did not need to employ snipers to cut down young people who galloped toward the bullets, and Hamas could have prevented those youngsters from approaching the fence. A quiet protest would have been no less effective.
The Imperial Realignment of the Middle East
Trump and Netanyahu: Massacring Palestinians and Threatening War on Iran
by Kevin B. Anderson May 21, 2018 |
US President Donald Trump’s ripping up of the Iran nuclear pact, his shocking relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s equally shocking mass murder of peaceful Palestinian demonstrators has revealed the utter depravity of today’s rulers. Despite their sometimes chaotic and reckless appearance, however, these moves amount to nothing short of a breathtaking attempt by the US, with its Israeli and Saudi allies, to realign Middle East politics by creating an uncontested hegemony for the entire region. To this end, Iran must be crushed as a rival subimperialist power, Russia and Turkey dealt in or sidelined, and both the remainder of the Arab revolutions and newly resurgent Palestinian movement repressed.
Flush With Cash: Will Buffy the Bernie Slayer Win in Pro-Sanders District?
by Steve Early May 14, 2018 |
In a political culture shaped by big money, entrepreneurial candidacies, single-issue campaigning, and union dis-unity, you can run but not hide from crowded fields of Democrats. In many current primary races, they are all claiming to be “progressive,” even as they raise and spend millions of dollars competing against each other—money that might have been better spent on actual movement building?
No to Trump’s, Netanyahu’s, Bin Salman’s Imperialist War Drive Against Iran!
Support Progressive and Revolutionary Opposition to the Iranian Regime
by Frieda Afary May 13, 2018 |
For Iran, the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Nuclear Agreement will mean crushing sanctions and direct or continued indirect war declared by Israel and Saudi Arabia with U.S. support. For the Middle East, it will mean further destruction and regional imperialist competition. For the world, it will mean further division between the U.S. and the European Union and further global imperialist competition.
New York Taxi Drivers: Pushed To Suicide
NYC taxi drivers launch campaign to save their industry following suicides
by Skanda Kadirgamar May 13, 2018 |
Over the past four months, four New York City taxi drivers have been pushed to suicide in an industry that is becoming increasingly dangerous. In response to the recent deaths, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance has launched a campaign for regulation and released its own proposal to re-establish driving as a viable occupation.
Brazil: the snare of short-cuts
by Andressa Alegre May 13, 2018 |
Brazilian socialist Andressa Alegre spoke to Solidarity about the experience with the governments led by the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) between 2003 and 2016.
Trump’s Road to War — Why?
by the Steering Committee of Solidarity May 11, 2018 |
Donald Trump's withdrawal of the United States from the Iran nuclear agreement has set a path toward another Middle East war. It is not necessarily a war that will erupt right away or in the short term, and it may be averted if the United States is politically isolated and there’s a mass revival of an international antiwar movement. That’s what every sane person, and certainly every socialist and peace activist, should hope and work for.
New Eugene Debs Film Does the Socialist Proud
by Michael Hirsch May 8, 2018 |
A charismatic and militant labor leader, five-time Socialist Party presidential candidate, class-war prisoner jailed by the ostensibly liberal Woodrow Wilson administration for opposing U.S entry into World War I and a fiery, moral force in a corrupted era — Eugene Victor Debs was among the greatest orators this nation ever produced, yet no recording of his voice survives. And what a speaker he was! John Swinton, the late 19th century New York labor writer who as a young man heard Lincoln speak, likened Debs to Lincoln not just in intellect but in character. And unlike Lincoln, Debs could speak cogently to crowds for hours without notes.
The Merry Month of May
Mitch Abidor’s New Oral History Explores the Lasting Legacy of the Revolt that Shook France in 1968
by Richard Greeman May 7, 2018 |
Where Are the Riots of Yesteryear?
Why class still matters: a reply to Paul Mason
by Daniel Randall May 4, 2018 |
This article is a response to Paul Mason’s recent essay ‘Labour must become the party of people who want to change the world, not just Britain’, in which he argues that there can no longer be any privileged position for organised labour as an agent of socialist change. This reply will respond to that question specifically, leaving aside some other aspects of Mason’s essay, and argue that the working class remains the key strategic actor for overhauling capitalism.
Some Reflections on #MeToo
by Ida Picard April 26, 2018 |
#MeToo has seen countless people coming forward with experiences of sexual violence and harassment and has become central to conversations around gendered violence.
Lou Andreas-Salomé vs. The Patriarchy
Film Review
by Michael Hirsch April 21, 2018 |
Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Audacity to Be Free
Directed by Cordula Kablitz-Post, 1 hr. 53 min
Cinema Libre Studios, 2016
This biopic is not subtle. From its opening scene featuring a pyre of books and a frenzied crowd cheering as a manic speaker justifies the burning of Marx, Trotsky, Freud and “everything that is not German” followed by a romp through Lou Andreas-Salomé’s prodigiously intellectual life and her last days as a target of the Nazis, the film is as much about the pain of choosing a vaporous freedom as it is the flailing pursuit of fulfillment by a self-assertive, iconic woman.
The roots of Venezuela’s crisis and the lessons for the left
by Chris Carlson April 18, 2018 |
Collapsing wages, food shortages, and rampant inflation have led to growing hunger and desperation in Venezuela. Recent videos illustrate just how desperate the situation has become, as hungry people chase down livestock in the fields to butcher it for its meat, or skin dogs and cats on the streets of Caracas. Violent food-related protests have erupted in various cities around the country, and the looting of grocery stores is becoming more and more widespread. Meanwhile, thousands of Venezuelans are flooding across the borders into neighboring countries.
Anatomy of a Flop
by Stanley Heller April 18, 2018 |
Marx This Time
On the return of a Marxist political economy
by Stephan Hammel April 15, 2018 |
The path taken by political life around the globe since the end of the Cold War appears as if designed to crush the liberal optimism with which this period excitedly began. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism manifestly disturbs a concept of peace understood in terms of sovereign states. Economic disquiet persists nearly a decade after a financial crisis highlighted the epochal decline that had occurred in the world economy after the post-Second World War growth boom. American populism has seized the allegiance of vast masses, led to a spontaneous storming of Wall Street, emboldened proud neo-Nazis to take to the streets, and wracked the nerves of liberals at home and abroad as it saw Donald Trump descend an ill-advisedly gaudy escalator to the White House.
Intersectionality and Divergence
My Life in the LGBT and Labor Movements
by Donna Cartwright April 12, 2018 |
Looking back on nearly 25 years of involvement in the LGBT movement, and 45+ years in the labor movement, I am struck by the way those paths have crossed, intertwined and separated over the long term. This arc took me into unexpected territory, where queer identities, once deeply hidden and guarded, have achieved wide mainstream acceptance and support, while organized labor, once powerful and self-confident, now struggles to maintain its existence.
Christian Socialism-From-Above
by Noah Zazanis April 11, 2018 |
On March 19th, 2018, Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi signed into law the earliest abortion ban in the United States, restricting abortions after 15 weeks in the entire state. The day after, the Supreme Court housed debate on the legality of a California law regulating speech at anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, which required that they present information about affordable abortion, contraception, and prenatal care, and to display signs saying that they are not a licensed medical clinic, in cases where they are not. This has re-ignited debate over the appropriate stance for the left to take on abortion, and whether there is space on the left for anti-abortion views.
Massacre of Peaceful Gaza Demonstrators: An Israeli Crime Against Humanity
by Kevin B. Anderson April 10, 2018 |
On March 30, over 30,000 Palestinians – children, women, and men – gathered near the Gaza border with Israel. As they assembled several hundred yards away from the border fence, 18 peaceful demonstrators were gunned down by Israeli military snipers using live ammunition, with over a thousand reportedly suffering bullet wounds. Many of the demonstrators had come as whole families, with picnic supplies.
Postmodern Conservatism and Capitalism
by Matt McManus April 5, 2018 |
Conservatives today have been deeply critical of what is often called postmodernism. They have associated it with identity politics, political correctness, social justice warriors, relativistic “cultural Marxism” and a host of other evils. For some conservatives, post-modernism is signifies everything that is wrong with contemporary society. University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson has characterized it as “dangerous” and “radical” and dismissed important authors like Derrida as “charlatans.” The National Security Council has claimed that “postmodern cultural Marxism” (whatever that means) mobilizes opposition to Donald Trump. And right wing commentator Ben Shapiro has characterized Barack Obama the first “postmodern” President.
A Working Class Mayor Is Something To Be
by Steve Early April 3, 2018 |
Review: Winning Richmond: How a Progressive Alliance Won City Hall by Gayle McLaughlin. Hardball Press, 2018.
Well before the Trump era, U.S. presidents from both major parties failed to address urban problems or made them worse. Congress, state legislatures, and governors weren't much better. The job of fighting poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation shifted to the municipal level, where activist mayors have tried to mobilize the limited resources of local government on behalf of neglected constituents and causes.
An Inside Look at How Pro-Russia Trolls Got the SPLC to Censor a Commie
by Charles Davis April 3, 2018 |
“An Orwellian destruction of meaning and words — so many absurdities; absurdities stacked on absurdities,” Alexander Reid Ross told me. Fox News had just declared him the leader of a nasty smear campaign, aided by the “far-left Southern Poverty Law Center,” that aimed to make television personality Tucker Carlson and his guests out to be “fascists.” So far, so normal, but it was the specific charge that shocked and awed the communist author who once lived in Russia: “McCarthyism,” with white nationalists’ favorite host, and those who come on his show to agree with him, the victims.
Like Our Lives Depend On It
by Douglas Williams April 1, 2018 |
Teenagers in this country are under constant attack.
Whether it is their taste in music, fashion, or, it seems, simply wanting to attend classes without the fear of meeting their sudden death in a hail of bullets, there are always commentators who are willing to wag their fingers in disapproval. The demands placed on kids, when you think about it, are outrageous.
50 Years After 1968: Student Strikers Attacked Again
by Richard Greeman April 1, 2018 |
Not an April Fool’s joke. Here are the facts: Four days ago (March 29) the ultra-conservative Dean of the Montpellier University Law School was summoned to police headquarters, interrogated, hauled into court, and held over in jail for arraignment by the Chief Prosecutor – all on the complaint of nine student strikers, who claim to have been brutally assaulted with Dean Philippe Pétel’s active complicity while ‘occupying’ a school auditorium.
From Jackson to Richmond: How Radical Mayors Left Their Mark
by Steve Early March 30, 2018 |
Well before the Trump era, U.S. presidents from both major parties failed to address urban problems or made them worse. Governors, members of Congress, and state legislators didn’t perform much better. So the difficult job of fighting poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation shifted to the municipal level, where activist mayors have tried to mobilize the limited resources of local government on behalf of neglected causes and constituents.
An unforgettable five-day Freedom Fast culminates with 2,000-strong Time's Up Wendy's March through the Heart of Manhattan!
by the Alliance for Fair Food and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers March 26, 2018 |
A fast, when done in protest, is a call to arms. While eminently non-violent, it is a battle cry, issued in a whisper.
Beyond Fake News
by Richard Greeman March 25, 2018 |
1. “All Governments Lie”
As 1950s investigative reporter I.F. (“Izzy”) Stone famously stated: “All governments lie.”[1] Fake news has historically been the weapon of the rulers, especially when in need of excuses for military aggression.
Brazil: Marielle’s death was not just more of the same
by Giambatista Brito March 25, 2018 |
On 14 March, Marielle Franco, a city councillor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, of the Socialism and Freedom Party, was assassinated. In a piece originally published on the website of the Brazilian New Socialist Organisation (NOS) and republished here from the website Esquerda Online, Giambatista Brito argues that her death marked a new low in the country’s descent into political repression following the coup d’état of 2015. Translation by Max Leak.
Janus and the Rank-and-File Strategy: A Reply to La Botz
by Steve Downs March 24, 2018 |
Dan La Botz's article “Trump and the Labor Movement” in the Winter 2018 of New Politics is based on an oral presentation, with the limitations that go with oral presentations. For example, La Botz simplifies the plaintiff’s argument in Janus to the point of missing what is key and unique in it. He states, “The conservatives argue that the union forces workers to financially support political causes with which they may disagree, and so violates their free-speech rights.” This was the issue in the 1977 Abood case.
“60 Minutes” Airs Dreadful Segment on Prince Salman
by Stanley Heller March 24, 2018 |
Hopefully this piece will be a bit of help to those demonstrating against Prince Salman’s #TrillionaireTour of the U.S. (Aramco, the kingdom/Saudi family-owned oil company is valued at $2 trillion.) Another piece I wrote about Saudi Arabia and the colleges that take Saudi elite money is at The Nation.
History, Solidarity Come Alive in Unprecedented UIUC Strike
by James Anderson March 22, 2018 |
Amidst an upsurge of militancy among educators in places like West Virginia and the UK, graduate students in the US Midwest carried through the longest strike in University of Illinois history.
Crossroads and Country Roads: Wildcat West Virginia and the Possibilities of a Working Class Offensive
by Kate Doyle Griffiths March 21, 2018 |
The problem with leftist myths about Syria
by Loubna Mrie March 16, 2018 |
Why are voices on the left still justifying the Syrian regime's indiscriminate bombardment of Eastern Ghouta?
As the death toll in the Damascus' suburb of Eastern Ghouta reached nearly 700 in two weeks and continues to rise, many so-called progressive voices continue to justify the carnage.
A Labor-Based Movement For Medicare for All
by Michael Lighty March 16, 2018 |
Healthcare is the crossroads where the assault on workers meets the juggernaut of “crony capitalism.” That’s the term used by the mainstream neo-classical and Nobel prize-winning economist Angus Deaton to describe the coziness between the healthcare industry and its government “regulators.” In fact, Deaton argues, how healthcare is financed and delivered is a driver of inequality.
Max Blumenthal and the Streisand Effect
by Louis Proyect March 14, 2018 |
On the Southern Poverty Law Center website, this rather odd statement can be read:
Yesterday, Friday, March 9, we published an article entitled “The multipolar spin: how fascists operationalize left-wing resentment.” After receiving some concerns about the article from Max Blumenthal that evening, we took it down, pending further review.
The article was written by Alexander Reid Ross as a follow-up to earlier articles for SPLC titled “The Internet Research Agency: behind the shadowy network that meddled in the 2016 Elections” and “The far-right influence in pro-Kremlin media and political networks.” Subsequent to the removal of the latest, the other two have been removed as well.
A Socialist Case Against Climate Geoengineering
by Keith Brunner March 14, 2018 |
Since the 2015 UN Paris Agreement, climate geoengineering – the intentional large-scale manipulation of the earth’s natural systems – has shifted from the margins to the mainstream of climate policy discussions. The idea counts among its supporters both liberal technocrats and neoconservatives like U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, a notorious climate denier who sees geoengineering as an alternative to “forcing unworkable and costly government mandates on the American people.”
These Teachers Refuse to Be Weaponized
by Michelle Chen March 6, 2018 |
The call to “arm the teachers” started as another stink bomb President Donald Trump lobbed into the crowd at a conservative rally. But somehow, the concept cycled through the 24-hour news loop and, within a few hours, became a ubiquitous meme. Now, the morally repugnant idea of gun-toting teachers in America’s schools has taken center stage in the nation’s macabre debate on gun safety.
China Can't Save Capitalism From Environmental Destruction
by Peter Dolack March 4, 2018 |
A year ago at the World Economic Forum, China’s president, Xi Jinping, won plaudits from Davos elites for his commitment to open trade. Of course, because China’s economy is heavily dependent on exports, so-called “free trade” is in its interest, so President Xi’s stand was no surprise.
“A Troll at the Bridge”: Trump, Trumpism, and White Identity Politics
by Francis Shor March 3, 2018 |
The rise and rule of Donald Trump embodies much that is disturbingly new from his almost daily narcissistic rants on Twitter to his overt racist, misogynist, and xenophobic public pronouncements. On the other hand, there are historic roots to many of the positions articulated by Trump during his presidential campaign and adopted during his presidency.
Theoretical Lessons of the Russian Revolution
by Kevin B. Anderson March 2, 2018 |
Often, it seems that the legacy of the Russian Revolution of November 1917 lays like a dead weight upon the living. Everywhere voices are raised – from anarchists to social democrats and from liberals to conservatives – telling us that we need to jettison its legacy of authoritarian socialism, of prison camps, and ultimately, of economic and social collapse. At the same time, the left of today stands for grassroots democracy, opposition to war and imperialism, opposition to racial and gender oppression, and once we move to the left of social democracy, abolition of capitalism and of the state.
The “Inescapable Need and Possibility” of Third Cinema
Can a radical filmmaking tradition born of Perón’s Argentina reinvigorate activist cinema in Trump’s America?
by Daniel Clarkson Fisher February 27, 2018 |
When Karl Marx Was Young and Dashing
by Michael Hirsch February 26, 2018 |
Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx is the best buddy movie since George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969. It’s also among the most important films in decades, bringing to a mass audience not just the revolutionary ideas of Marx and his friend and collaborator Frederick Engels in the early days of modern capitalism, but an approach to politics and history that still has no peer. Charting the world as he saw it, Marx wrote: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.” Has anything changed?
Russiagate or Deep State? What Some Progressives Get Wrong on Russia
The bizarre denialism of some on the left and right about Russiagate doesn't bode well for the future of American politics
by John Feffer February 19, 2018 |
When it comes to the Russiagate scandal, progressives usually take one of two positions.
They either dismiss the scandal as a lot of hooey, a “nothingburger,” just a way for warmongers and the “Deep State” to revive a cold war between Washington and Moscow. Or they treat the scandal as just a means to an end, a way to cast doubt on the 2016 presidential election, implicate the administration in a variety of crimes, and ultimately impeach the president.
A Litmus Test for Detecting Syria Trolls
by Stephen R. Shalom February 17, 2018 |
The situation in Syria is incredibly complex, so it’s not surprising that there are conflicting interpretations of different pieces of information. But, sometimes, a claim is so clearly without merit, so obviously ludicrous, that those who promote it mark themselves, at best, as individuals wholly uninterested in examining evidence when a dubious claim conforms to their preconceived notions, or, at worst, as scoundrels.
The War is Far from Being Over in Syria
Syrian Corner talks with Gilbert Achcar about recent developments in the Syrian conflict
by Gilbert Achcar February 13, 2018 |
Gilbert Achcar is Professor of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London, as well as a well-known author focusing on the Middle East and the Arab World. He met with Syrian Corner during Syria Awareness Week 2018. Achcar posits that the Syrian conflict is far from over and that for Bashar al-Assad to establish a new political framework, an accord between the US and Russia is necessary. Achcar says the role of Iran in a future Syria is one of the key issues at stake, and discusses the Turkish war against the PYD, the regional role of Saudi Arabia, the international peace conferences for Syria, the recent demonstrations in Iran, and the new US foreign policy for the Middle East in the interview below.
Solidarity with the Metalworkers Strike in Turkey!
by Devrimci İşçi Partisi-Revolutionary Workers’ Party February 9, 2018 |
Hands off the metalworkers’ strike in Turkey!
Government ban means AKP despotism serves the bosses!
International solidarity with metalworkers of Turkey!
The AFL-CIO Convention: Beginning of the End or Steps toward a New Beginning?
by Cyryl Ryzak February 9, 2018 |
From October 22nd to the 25th, 2017, the AFL-CIO held its quarto-annual convention in St. Louis, Missouri. The choice of city was, if not intentionally, appropriate.
Behind Turkey’s Attack on the Afrin Kurds: Imperialist Machinations in the Middle East
by Ali Kiani February 7, 2018 |
The danger of nuclear war is present today more than ever with Trump’s threats against North Korea and Iran. Without precedent in US history, the president openly states that he is willing to wage war and destroy a nation for US interests, disregarding his allies’ wishes. Trump not only follows the advice of his buddy Benjamin Netanyahu about the Iran nuclear deal, but he also announces that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. He remains ahead of schedule on the opening of the US embassy there as well as cutting off funding for Mahmoud Abbas for a Palestinian state, unless he bows to Israel and respects Trump. At same time, his military commander General Jim Mattis announces that the US should be ready for war at any moment.
Training: Neither Politics nor Education
by Benjamin Y. Fong February 3, 2018 |
As an employee at a large state university, I have to attend a myriad of trainings, on everything from fire safety to preventing workplace discrimination. The mood at these trainings is typically sour, the participation minimal and perfunctory, and the information provided mostly inadequate to the topics discussed. I know what P.A.S.S. stands for, but that knowledge is not going to make me any less terrified if I ever have to use a fire extinguisher. That being said, at least I know what the purposes of these trainings are: to give a false sense of security, to prevent lawsuits, to feed the bureaucratic apparatus, etc. They’re excruciating to sit through, but their existence makes enough sense.
In Latin America: A New Left, A New Marxism?
An Excerpt
by Jeffrey R. Webber February 3, 2018 |
This is an excerpt from Webber's article From Nuestra América to Abya Yala: Notes on Imperialism and Anti-imperialism in Latin America across Centuries in the newest issue of Viewpoint.
Fossil Fuels and Toxic Landscapes - Issue Launch and Panel
by Editors January 31, 2018 |
Solidarity with Afrin, al-Ghouta, Idlib Against All Military Attacks
by the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists January 29, 2018 |
We, the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists, oppose the various military attacks on Afrin, Idlib and Eastern Ghouta and support all the innocent civilians in Syria. . . There has been a consensus between all the international and regional powers on the necessity to liquidate the revolutionary popular movements initiated in Syria in March of 2011 . . .
How to Legalize Marijuana in New Jersey
by Stephen R. Shalom January 23, 2018 |
The victory of Democrat Phil Murphy in the New Jersey gubernatorial election this past November makes it quite likely that recreational marijuana will be legalized in the Garden State. Public opinion in the state has clearly been ready for a change in the drug war model of prohibition – with even Murphy’s Republican opponent having called for decriminalization.
Solidarity with the popular protests in Iran!
by the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists January 18, 2018 |
We, the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists, support the popular protests in Iran and call on progressives in the region and throughout the world to stand in solidarity with them as well. We believe it is an absolute necessity to build regional and global solidarity with anti-authoritarian struggles for democracy, social justice and equality, and to oppose patriarchy, racism, sectarian or homophobic discrimination and prejudice. We hope that the current protests in Iran will force the Iranian regime to withdraw its military and financial support for the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and to end its reactionary interventions in the region. We also hope that the efforts by some elements to inject anti-Arab chauvinism into the movement will be rejected in order to reach out to grassroots struggles across the region.
The Iran Protests: The Revolution is Dead. Long Live the Revolution!
by Behnam Amini and Fouad Oveisy January 13, 2018 |
An Alternative to the Politics of “National Security” Emerges
Days of protests in Iran have caught statesmen, analysts and observers by surprise, even though the anti-austerity and anti-establishment sentiments behind this primarily working-class revolt have been brewing for years. All the same, surprise is not a common reaction across the media.
“Smitten Gate," a Brutal Anti-war Novel
by Stanley Heller January 12, 2018 |
The author himself lets you know at the start that this book is going to be very harsh. After the end of the chapter titles, Stan Goff writes, “Warning to readers who have experienced violent trauma or sexual assault. This book contains portrayals of extreme violence, including combat, murder, and rape.” His purpose is not to titillate, but to reveal. There are some brief loving sexual passages, but the descriptions of sexual violence and killings are there to repel you.
Future History: Women’s Revolt Sparks Global Revolution
by Richard Greeman January 5, 2018 |
The Future Historians’ International Study Group and Collaborative Writing Project has obtained the following excerpts from the 2117 high school history book “Then, Now and How.” The title of this chapter is “#MeToo and the origins of today’s egalitarian society.”
For more information, go to http://futurehistorians.org/
What's behind the protests in Iran and what can you do?
by Owen Tudor January 4, 2018 |
Many protests were about basic economics – unemployment or low pay, high prices for basic foodstuffs like eggs – but there have also been reports about political aspects to the protests.
To The People of the World
by the Worker-communist Party of Iran January 4, 2018 |
Since Thursday December 28 the Iranian people have engaged in extensive protests against the government of religious despotism in Iran. These protests have continued in full force in tens of Iranian cities, from north to south and from east to west of the country. The protests started with slogans against poverty, rising prices and unemployment, and in no time attacked the entire Islamic Republic as the prime destroyer of people’s lives.
Hugo Blanco: The Future Is Indigenous
by Ted Hamilton January 2, 2018 |
On a gray Saturday afternoon in Lima, Peru, this past April, I received a phone call from Hugo Blanco, veteran guerilla and survivor of multiple death sentences. “You wanted to talk?” he asked. “Come over now.” An hour later, after a ride through the city’s torturous streets, I was in the plaza in front of his house, an unpretentious single-level in a middle-class neighborhood north of the colonial center. I knocked and collected myself; I hadn’t actually expected him to respond to my request.
The Workers of the World Do Need to Unite
An interview with Steve Early
by Mohsen Abdelmoumen December 28, 2017 |
Mohsen Abdelmoumen: You have written a book about the city of Richmond, California, where you live, prefaced by Senator Bernie Sanders: Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City. This book shows us the experience of this city that has won struggles such as raise the local minimum wage, defeat a casino development project, challenge home foreclosures and evictions, and seek fair taxation of Big Oil and Big Soda. Can we say that the Richmond experience should inspire progressive activists in other cities around the world?
Walter Benjamin and the Political Practices of the Alt-right
by Matt McManus December 27, 2017 |
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin was one of the great analysts of liberal capitalism during a time when its days seemed numbered and fascism was ascendant across Europe. Much of his work is taken up with looking at how the cultural products and processes characteristic of a civilization are reflective of the inner psychic and spiritual tensions roiling beneath the surface of hegemonic ideologies.
Right Hooks
by Michael Hirsch December 26, 2017 |
David Neiwart, Alt-Right: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. Verso Books, 2017.
Think of this book as a basket of deplorables. It’s thick on illuminating descriptions of renascent white nationalists, gun-enamored militia poseurs, conspiracy-theory mongers, Ku Klux Klansmen and women, Christian Identitarians and proto-Nazis benefitting from and legitimized by the sordid presidency of Donald Trump. It’s thin on explaining why such phenomena persist or have arisen as political thuggery in 21st-century America.
Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists – Founding Statement of Principles
by the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists December 23, 2017 |
We are an alliance of Middle Eastern socialists opposed to all the international and Middle Eastern regional imperialist powers and their wars, whether the U.S., Russia and China or Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. We also oppose other authoritarian regimes such as Assad’s in Syria and El Sisi’s in Egypt as well as religious fundamentalism whether of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood. Although the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah consider themselves gradualists and oppose the Jihadism of Al Qaeda and ISIS, all of these organizations share the goal of establishing a state based on Shari’a Law and preserving the current capitalist order.
US vs Free Syrian Army vs Jabhat al-Nusra (and ISIS)
History of a hidden three-way conflict
Michael Karadjis December 19, 2017 |
The US administration has annexed the Syrian conflict to its own war on terror. It has tried to impose its battle on Syrians so that they will abandon their own battle against the tyrannical discriminatory Assadist junta. … [but] the war on terror is centred around the state; it is a statist conception of the world order which strengthens states and weakens communities, political organizations, social movements, and individuals… In the record of this endless fight against terrorism there has not been a single success, and thus far three countries have been devastated over its course (Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria).”[1]
– Yassin al-Haj Saleh, former Syrian Communist dissident who spent 16 years in Assad’s dungeons
Introduction
This article deals with a specific aspect of the US role in the Syrian conflict: its drive to co-opt the Free Syrian Army (FSA) into a proxy force to fight only the jihadist forces of Jabhat al-Nusra (now Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, or JFS) and the Islamic State (ISIS/Daesh), while giving up their fight against the Assad regime.
Marx’s Capital After 150 Years: Revolutionary Reflections
by Kevin B. Anderson December 17, 2017 |
What does it mean to celebrate and concretize for today Marx’s greatest work, Capital, Vol. I? Such a discussion is terribly important at this juncture, when we are in a new situation where even some sectors of the right have started to attack neoliberalism. The Brexit vote in the UK, the large vote for Le Pen in France despite her eventual defeat by a neoliberal candidate, and above all, the Trump campaign have placed on the agenda a new form of right-wing populism with neofascist overtones that breaks with some key features of neoliberalism, such as free trade pacts, somewhat more open borders, and “humanitarian” intervention. At the same time, Trump as president has put forth an incoherent agenda that contains major continuities with neoliberal austerity and old-style militarism, above all in the attempt to gut Obamacare.
The Campus Antifascist Network’s United Front Against Fascism
by Bill Mullen, Aaron Jaffe and David Palumbo-Liu December 17, 2017 |
Since Donald Trump’s election in November, 2016, more than 150 university campuses in North America have been postered or fliered by white supremacist, neo-Nazi, or white nationalist groups. Most common have been flierings by American Vanguard, a Neo-Nazi formation with paramilitary characteristics, and Identity Europa, a self-proclaimed white nationalist fraternity founded by a former acolyte of Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Academic Freedom Goes to Court
by Scott McLemee December 16, 2017 |
Peaceful protest carries no guarantee against violence. In mid-May, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, came to the United States to meet with Donald Trump, who had made haste to congratulate him on winning a referendum in April. Its provisions would – according to the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe – undercut “the model of a democratic presidential system based on the separation of powers” and thereby “risk degeneration into an authoritarian presidential system.”
Why should we care about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
by Mikael Omstedt December 16, 2017 |
In the early hours of November 27th, employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) woke up to a world of contested allegiances. Advocated by Senator Elizabeth Warren and set up by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, CFPB was created in 2011 as an independent Federal agency tasked with protecting consumers in the financial sector. Since it was this sector’s predatory exploitation of low-income racialized communities that triggered the subprime mortgage crisis, this agency was intended to regulate finance across consumer services like mortgages, student loans, and credit cards. As such, the founding of the agency received large support from consumer groups and their Democratic allies in the Federal administration. Republicans, for their part, dutifully (and unsurprisingly) rendered the agency as another burden on the “free” market.[i] Such conflicts are hardly news and government employees are in this sense always in the precarious position that their jobs might be discarded with every new administration. Rarely, however, do these conflicts take the absurd character we could witness the following few days.
Standing Up for Palestine: BDS More than Ever!
by the Steering Committee of Solidarity December 12, 2017 |
IF THERE WAS any “Israel-Palestine peace process,” Donald Trump torched it with his December 6 announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the transfer of the U.S. embassy to that bitterly contested city. But there are two more important underlying realities.
A Greek Tragedy Foretold
by Bennett Baumer December 5, 2017 |
Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment
By Yanis Varoufakis
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017
And The Weak Suffer What They Must?
By Yanis Varoufakis
Nation Books, 2016
Along with French economist Thomas Piketty, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is making economics sexy again. Journalists enjoyed snapping photos of Varoufakis, clad in a black leather coat, commuting to the finance ministry’s offices on his Yamaha motorcycle. But his short tenure in the Greek government was marked by clashes with the country’s creditors and ultimately with the leadership of Syriza, the left-wing party that came to power in Greece in early 2015.
Punitive Neoliberalism in Puerto Rico
by Rafael Bernabe December 4, 2017 |
Isolating the situation of Puerto Rico is one of the mechanisms used to seek acceptance of the austerity policies that are now being imposed on the Island.(1) If the crisis is seen as the result of actions by Puerto Ricans or their government — if the responsibility lies, exclusively or fundamentally, in Puerto Rico — then it is logical that it bears the consequences of its own deeds or misdeeds, painful as they may be.
John E. Chiaradia, 1926 – 2017: Political Activist
by Ribelli André Chiaradia December 2, 2017 |
John E. Chiaradia was a longtime reader and sometime contributor to New Politics.
How does one come to political activism? Are we influenced by the times, by our personal experiences, by some innate quality within us, or are each of these just the necessary ingredients of activism? John (Giovanni) Emilio Chiaradia left Italy as a child, a political refugee from mid-20th-century Italian fascism. His family escaped the turmoil engulfing their country for the welcoming haven of the United States, landing in New York City and eventually settling in central California. There they were once again confronted by nationalist politics and uprooted from their home. They were compelled to leave California following the bombing of Pearl Harbor as John’s mother, Antoinette, was not yet a naturalized citizen. In the wake of the war, the US government deemed all non-naturalized people from Axis countries, and even citizens in the case of Japanese Americans, to be potential threats to national security. They were commanded to vacate a 100-mile exclusion zone from the west coast. The family was forced to leave what few possessions they had and return to the Bronx.
Business warms to Corbyn: getting our bearings in a new political world
by Colin Wilson November 28, 2017 |
It is now seven months since Theresa May called a general election with the aim of increasing her majority and the Daily Mail published a front page headlined “Crush the Saboteurs”. The spring of this year, as regards parliamentary politics, seems like another world.
The House Resolution on Yemen is a Stinker
by Stanley Heller November 21, 2017 |
Congress was given a chance to stand up for basic humanity and the Constitution, but instead chose to lay an egg, a rotten one at that. It rejected a chance to use the War Powers Act to halt U.S. collaboration with Saudi Arabia’s ruthless war and siege tactics in Yemen. Instead it passed a resolution that could have been written by the Saudi kingdom’s lawyers and publicists.
Lone-Wolf Terrorism: A Symptom of the Deepening Social Crisis
by David Rosen November 19, 2017 |
On November 5, 2017, 26-year-old Devin Kelley killed 26 people and injured 20 others attending Sunday church services at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, TX. This small, unincorporated community is 30 miles southeast of San Antonio and, in 2000, its population was but 362 people. Sadly, Kelley is the latest, but not the last lone-wolf terrorist to engage in the mass killing of Americans.
A New Green Uniform for Latin America's Armies?
by Gavin O'Toole November 17, 2017 |
When the decorated “Hero of the Republic of Cuba,” General Ramón Espinosa Martín, rallied his forces in the province of Camagüey in September, it was against an enemy far more dangerous than those he had faced in the Escambray mountains in 1958 during the Cuban Revolution or even in Angola in 1975 resisting US and South African intervention. This enemy was nature itself.
Post-Modern Trumpism and Loneliness: The Rise of Vulgar Authoritarianism
by Matt McManus November 13, 2017 |
Loneliness
In Hannah Arendt’s pioneering book The Origins of Totalitarianism, she criticized the failure of many to understand the appeals of fascism to modern citizens. She wrote that many observers gave fairly rote justifications for its rise and appeal in an apparently advanced and enlightened country like Germany, the birthplaces of Goethe, Kant, and Beethoven. Some claimed that it was the depressed economy that was responsible. Others in the German context pointed to defeat and humiliation in the First World War. Some reactionary conservatives claimed it was declining moral standards and the collapse of religiosity. And Arendt accepted that many of these might have something to do with it. But her ultimate explanation was far simpler and yet strangely more acute. Modern Germans were lonely.
Comfort With Misogyny? Neoliberal Feminism, Reality TV Shows and Politics
by Rabah Omer November 13, 2017 |
One of the issues that received much discussion after the elections last winter was the fact that an overwhelming number of women voted for Trump despite his misogynistic commentaries and vulgarity. Some analyses espouse that Trump's women voters are victims of sexist and misogynistic views ingrained in the American culture. They, according to the analyses, perceive sexual harassment or misogynistic remarks as an unfortunate behavior that men do and women can tolerate or ignore. While that explanation is truthful it does not highlight some deeper dimensions of the phenomenon. Obviously, Trump's misogynistic remarks were downplayed by his women voters beyond the description "unfortunate." Why were these remarks downplayed ? It seems that in the current media programming in the U.S such remarks are normalized and even exalted.
Herman Axelbank, Max Eastman, and the Documentary “Tsar to Lenin”
by Dan La Botz November 10, 2017 |
The Russian Revolution, the only—if only briefly—successful workers’ revolution took place in the era of photography and film, consequently thousands of hours of film footage from the revolutionary period existed. In the late 1920s, as the revolution’s red star was fading, a Russian-born man decided to collect as much as possible of the existing film—some of it shot by individuals, some by governments, some by new agencies, some by who-knows-who. Eventually, over 50 years this man collected some 271 motion picture film reels. He was a fanatic. Glad he was.
Whither Catalonia? An interview with Josep María Antentas
by Josep María Antentas November 8, 2017 |
Dan La Botz, a co-editor of New Politics, interviewed Josep María Antentas, teacher of Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and anticapitalist activist.
DL: The Catalan independence movement and its suppression by the Spanish state have garnered the attention of the world. What has been your attitude toward the question of Catalonia?
JMA: My traditional position is the defense of the right to self-determination, with the idea that when a group wises to exercise this right its position must be made specific. In the current situation and since the independence movement began in 2012, the defense of a “Yes” vote has a more democratic content than the “No” vote, which is associated exclusively with the reactionary defense of the Constitution and the political regime.
Is Socialist Revolution Possible – Or Even Necessary?
A Debate
by Bennett Muraskin, Michael Hirsch, and Barry Finger November 6, 2017 |
Bennett Muraskin:
I look at the world for many decades now and do not see evidence that the class struggle is alive and well, except to the extent that workers are on the losing end. But even more than that, it does not appear that the class struggle is playing a key role anywhere in the world. All of the major conflicts are being fought on national, ethnic and/or religious grounds. In these conflicts, whether they are in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Niger or even Catalonia, workers line up with their tribe.
Weinsteins in the Workplace: Will Unions Be Part of the Solution Or the Problem?
by Steve Early November 4, 2017 |
The exploding national debate about workplace harassment of women by powerful bosses or male co-workers is a great opening for unions to demonstrate their importance as one form of protection against such abuse.
Unfortunately, when unions are not pro-active on this front in their dealings with management or, worse yet, allow bullying or sexual harassment among staff or members, their credibility and appeal as a sword and shield for women (or anybody else) is greatly reduced.
After 121 Years, the First Indigenous Singer Performs at Brazil’s Teatro Amazonas
by Fernanda Canofre (Translated by Liam Anderson) November 3, 2017 |
On 23 August, Djuena Tikuna [2] became the first indigenous singer to perform on the stage of the Teatro Amazonas [3] (“Amazonas Theatre”) — a bastion of European culture in the middle of the world’s largest tropical forest.
Wholly Dedicated to Socialism From Below
by Aaron Amaral October 27, 2017 |
THE DEATH of Joanne Landy earlier this month is a profound loss to the socialist and internationalist movements.
The Complete Guide to China’s Leadership Re-shuffle
What to look out for, what to expect, and what it will mean for China’s future
by Jack Hazlewood October 25, 2017 |
This article was received before the official announcement of the new leadership. - DL
In a highly choreographed ritual, seven suited men will this Wednesday stride onto a stage in Beijing, hair dyed jet black, led, naturally, by Chinese President Xi Jinping. What to the casual observer appears to be a rigid, inconsequential ceremony is in fact the unveiling of the most powerful political body on earth.
Game Tape Analysis: Why Catalonia Represents All of Us
by Samantha Wasek October 24, 2017 |
At the southern tip of Europe, stretching out its two hands of Ceuta and Melilla to reach Africa, Spain usually goes unnoticed. Our news hardly ever makes world headlines; it’s simply not impactful enough. Over the past month, however, my adopted homeland has been enveloped in one of the most controversial events of the decade, and finally our dirty laundry is being hung out to dry on the international clothesline. The threat of Catalonia breaking away from Spain is juicy. It’s the political equivalent of a marriage gone wrong, complete with steepled-finger scheming, mutual resentment, and fittingly, bouts of domestic violence. But it also serves to show how the choices and actions of politicians turn a prominent issue in need of discussion into a roiling turmoil. The question of Catalonian secession is the result of the thoughtless, petty political practice that is ubiquitous in governments around the world, but that should have no place in the future of governance.
Police Are the Problem, Not the Solution
by Michael Hirsch October 21, 2017 |
Alex S. Vitale. The End of Policing. Verso Books, October 2017. 272 pp.
Do we need the police?
Brooklyn College sociologist Alex S. Vitale poses that question vividly in his The End of Policing: Are the police guarantors of social peace or its disruptors? Is the force’s mandate to serve the public equally and fairly, or to act as social-control agents, protecting property and its few owners at the expense of the many?
Open Letter to the People of the United States – from Puerto Rico, a Month after Hurricane María
by Manuel Rodríguez Banchs and Rafael Bernabe October 20, 2017 |
Dear Friends:
By now you have surely heard about the catastrophic impact of Hurricane María in Puerto Rico, as well as the slow and still inadequate response by U.S. federal agencies, such as FEMA.
A month after María, dozens of communities are still inaccessible by car or truck. Close to 90 percent of all homes lack electricity. Half lack running water. Many of Puerto Rico’s 3.2 million residents have difficulties obtaining drinking water. The death toll continues to rise due to lack of medical attention or materials (oxygen, dialysis) or from poisoning caused by unsafe water.
The Misrule of Global Capitalism: Book Review
by Martin Oppenheimer October 20, 2017 |
Dale L. Johnson. Social Inequality, Economic Decline, and Plutocracy: An American Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 240 pp. Index, Appendix. $159
Social Inequality is not for the faint-hearted. It covers the major political-economic issues of our time, from the structural changes in the economics of capitalism, to class structure, the imperialist state, and the distortions of capitalist culture. The author, a veteran scholar-activist of the New Left generation who now lives in Costa Rica[1], ends with a plea for resistance to our oligarchic “hegemon” and suggests a series of tactics to help us on the road.
Venezuela: Maduro Constantly Rearms His Enemies
by Fabrice Andreani October 19, 2017 |
The political crisis that has been shaking Venezuela for months is at the heart of a war of information and propaganda, which is even inviting itself, albeit for other purposes, into the French political debate. Beyond binary discourses, we wanted to take the risk of complexity with Fabrice Andreani, doctoral student in Lyon-II University, who is working on the Bolivarian revolution. [CQFD]
Some Lessons of the Hurricane
by Rafael Bernabe October 6, 2017 |
(Normally my writing, especially when facing new situations,is the result of discussions with my comrades. But these days we are practically incommunicado. That’s why even more than in other cases, this article is entirely my responsibility. And, at the same time, I write with incomplete informatioin, the result of the same lack of communication, and therefore everything that I write is, even more than usual, subject to future correction. - RB)
Crises raise new, sharp problems that unveil and accentuate both the admirable and the negative aspects of the societies they affect. They also pose new tasks and offer new perspectives on already established plans. The case of Puerto Rico and the effect and response to the strike by Hurricane María is no exception.
Trump’s Nuclear Threats Against North Korea and Iran Pose Existential Crisis for Humanity
by Kevin B. Anderson October 1, 2017 |
U.S. President Donald Trump crossed to new stage in the annals of warmongering in his United Nations speech of September 19 when he declared, “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” This threat to incinerate an entire nation of 25 million people amounts to nothing less than genocide. At the UN itself, the speech was met with stunned silence, with one major exception, vigorous applause from the militaristic Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Puerto Rico: Belonging To, But Not Part Of
by Ed Morales September 29, 2017 |
“We’re American citizens. How can Trump turn his back on us?” This is one of the pleas I’m hearing over and over again about the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico caused by Hurricane Maria. While it is a distasteful display of colonialist racism that the Trump administration takes its time to decide how much help Puerto Rico deserves, after pulling out the stops for Miami and Houston, ostensibly because there’s not “a really big ocean” separating them from Washington, it’s kind of par for the course. Our citizenship has always been second-class.
On Reforms and Revolutions
Non-Reformist Reforms Will Mean Nothing If They Don’t Build Autonomy As Well
By Antje Dieterich, Daniel Gutiérrez, and Victor Hertzfeld September 27, 2017 |
This August a hundred years ago, Lenin began to pen The State and Revolution in exile once more following a crippling defeat. Just one month prior, workers had risen and laid siege to government posts, but didn't know what to do beyond that. History didn't come down from above and give them a revolutionary society. This became obvious after the government sent troops to quell the uprising. The Bolsheviks, for their part, were caught off guard, and the workers’ movement underwent yet another cycle of repression.
No Trump, No War, No Way!
September 22, 2017 |
From the Steering Committee of Solidarity
If it weren’t frightening, it would be funny: “Big Twit Calls Out Rocket Man,” as Donald Trump ramps up his insults and threats of war against North Korea. Let’s look at some of the issues behind the antics and escalating rhetoric.
It’s really impossible to assess the chances of an actual war on the Korean peninsula, but while it may be a low-probability event its consequences would be utterly catastrophic. All the establishment media, of course, breathlessly consider whether the North Korean regime and its “beloved leader” Kim Jong-un are a direct threat to the United States -- as if U.S. imperialism didn’t threaten North Korea and a whole bunch of other countries. It’s simply taken as given that rich and powerful states have an inherent right to self-defense and security, and others don’t.
Concession Fatigue in Connecticut
by John O’Connor and Louise Williams September 12, 2017 |
For the third time in eight years, public sector workers in Connecticut have voted for concessions. State employees have sacrificed a total of $7 billion to close budget deficits in 2009, 2011, and now 2017.
Racist Societal Views of The Black Male Body
And Appreciating My Black Body for What It Is
by Patrick Jonathan Derilus September 11, 2017 |
This work is a creative nonfiction work which highlights the imperialist white supremacist capitalist colonial gaze of the Black male body, conventional beauty standards, systemic weightism, and instances of subversion against these oppressive norms in appreciating my body for the way it is.
Social Democracy Is Good. But Not Good Enough.
Joseph M. Schwartz and Bhaskar Sunkara September 7, 2017 |
We need a socialism that goes beyond capitalism. And not just for moral reasons.
John Judis has all the right intentions. He’s looking at the resurgence of openly democratic socialist currents in the United States with a mix of excitement and trepidation. Excitement, because he knows how desperately the country’s workers need social reforms. Trepidation, because he worries that the new left might fall into the familiar traps of insularity and sectarianism.
A Tale Of Many Cities: Potholes in the Road To Municipal Reform
by Steve Early September 2, 2017 |
Juan Gonzalez. Reclaiming Gotham: Bill de Blasio and The Movement to End America’s Tale of Two Cities. New York: New Press, 2017.
There is no better role model for aspiring radical scribes than Juan Gonzalez. The country’s leading Latino journalist is cohost of Democracy Now!, a former columnist for the New York Daily News, and twice winner of the Polk Award for his investigative reporting. Not many veterans of campus and community struggles in the Sixties and workplace organizing in the 1970s later moved into mainstream journalism with such distinction, Gonzalez has managed to combine daily newspapering with continued dedication to the cause of labor and minority communities.
Why Socialists Shouldn’t Believe In Human Nature
by Dalton Winfree August 30, 2017 |
Let’s set the scene.
You just had dinner with your family and argued about the viability of the creation of socialism in the United States while fighting off their tired and false rebuttals of human nature as your uncle Steve got broccoli stuck in his teeth. Exhausted from the argument in a way that only your family can cause, you head to your home and get ready for bed. A notification appears on your phone that a new article from Jacobin.
On the Conditions of Ignorance
by Jeremy Mele August 24, 2017 |
In a recent article from Politico, a new poll was discussed that suggests that nearly half, 49 percent, of Trump supporters believe that he won the popular vote in the 2016 election. (He didn’t; he lost by nearly three million votes.) Spurred on by Trump’s claims that millions (!) of people voted illegally in the election, this portion of Trump’s base have been lied to and misled by a politician they think they can trust. What are we to make of this?
From Russia With Love: Lenin's Letter to American Workers
by James H. Williams August 23, 2017 |
Theodore W. Allen’s Work on the Centrality of the Struggle Against White Supremacy
by Jeffrey B. Perry August 23, 2017 |
Theodore W. “Ted” Allen (1919-2005) was an anti-white supremacist, working class intellectual and activist. He developed his pioneering class struggle-based analysis of “white skin privilege” beginning in the mid-1960s; authored the seminal two-volume The Invention of the White Race in the 1990s; and consistently maintained that the struggle against white supremacy was central to efforts at radical social change in the United States. Born on August 23, 1919, in Indianapolis, Indiana, he grew up in Paintsville, Kentucky and Huntington, West Virginia and, after moving to New York City, lived his last fifty-plus years in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.
The End of Islamic Liberalism?
by Daniel Johnson August 22, 2017 |
Cihan Tuğal, The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism (Verso, 2016).
In the short time since the 2016 publication of Cihan Tuğal’s The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism, Turkey has endured an attempted coup, nearly a year of rule under a state of emergency, the widespread repression of dissent through imprisonment and mass firings of teachers and civil servants, and a (likely fraudulent) referendum that has institutionalized the autocratic rule of President Tayyip Recep Erdoǧan. Yet, unbelievable as it may seem, these developments are part of a continuum rather than a rupture, and Tuğal’s book is essential—if not unproblematic—reading for understanding contemporary politics in Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.
Racism -- North and South
by Richard Greeman August 22, 2017 |
A well-researched article by John Eligan in the Aug. 18 N.Y. Times goes beyond denouncing the symbolic racism of Charlotteville’s Confederate statues to expose the more pernicious structural racism embedded in the separate-but-unequal physical segregation of the city. (See “In Charlottesville, Some Say Statue Debate Obscures a Deep Racial Split.”) [1]
Ironically, this segregation was imposed, not during the rise of the KKK in the 1920s, but during the 1960s under the progressive guise of ‘urban renewal.” It was then that the vibrant, relatively prosperous, historical black neighborhoods like Charlotteville’s Vinegar Hill were deliberately razed, left long vacant, and ultimately replaced by soulless public housing and institutional projects.
Building Resistance on Trump Island
by Jane LaTour August 16, 2017 |
In Staten Island, one union local is propelling a growing labor-community alliance deep in New York’s Republican recesses.
How Did We Go from the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement to the Destruction of the Syrian Revolution and the Global Rise of Racist Authoritarianism?
by Frieda Afary August 15, 2017 |
Comments presented at the July 14 launch of the Coalition for Peace, Revolution and Social Justice at a public meeting at the Westside Peace Center, Culver City.
How Should the Left Respond in Venezuela?
Interview with Carlos Carcione
by Lance Selfa and Carlos Carcione August 15, 2017 |
Following recent elections that were widely boycotted, a Constituent Assembly charged with rewriting the Venezuelan constitution met in early August. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro called for the Constituent Assembly in May, proposing it as a solution to the crisis that Venezuela has faced in recent years. The U.S., the right-wing opposition in Venezuela and the Washington's European and Latin American allies denounced the Constituent Assembly as an undemocratic power grab. When the "Constituent" convened, the Trump administration announced new sanctions against Venezuela.
DSA Convention: Mapping a Strategy, Avoiding Dead-Ends
by Jack Suria Linares August 13, 2017 |
After reaching 25,000 members, DSA held its largest bi-annual National Convention with the hopes of creating the political clout necessary to shift the country toward a socialist vision that exceeds that of social-democratic capitalism. The four days reenergized old chapters and allowed new chapters to recognize the potential of a national organization. Overall, DSA has effectively begun resurrecting the socialist movement in the United States. All DSA members should be proud of this achievement. We should, however, be cautious in overestimating the outcomes of the convention. For behind the great rejuvenation that occurred in Chicago there were also ideological and structural currents that may limit DSA in the long run.
So, about this Googler’s manifesto
by Yonatan Zunger August 11, 2017 |
On August 5 a Google employee named James Damore published a 3,500 word manifesto entitled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” in which he agued the biological inferiority of women, making them incapable of being equally talented computer engineers. First circulated internally among Google’s thousands of employees, the manifesto was posted in its entirety on the web by Gizmodo on August 5. Google fired Damore, the manifesto’s author, on August 7.
On August 5, Yonatan Zunger, a former Google employee who had only recently left the company, wrote a response to Damore, published by Medium, which we republish here. - DL
The Founding Fathers: “Neoliberals” Avant le Mot
by Chris Wright August 10, 2017 |
“Who is to blame for the election of Donald Trump?” It’s a question that was asked more than a few times after November. We’re all familiar with the answers that were given: James Comey, the electoral college, the DNC’s leaked—not hacked—emails, the characteristically shameful performance of the mainstream media in its focus on personalities rather than substance, the stupefying incompetence of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the elitist insularity and corruption of the Democratic Party, etc.
The Venezuelan Constituent Assembly Election--What's at Stake?
by Anonymous August 8, 2017 |
On Sunday 30 July, so-called elections took place to a so-called Constituent Assembly in Venezuela. It is important, for the future, the revolution, and democracy, not to fool ourselves about the meanings of the words being used here.
For all Venezuelans, there can be no doubt: what was elected today has nothing in common with a sovereign constituent assembly. By “a sovereign constituent assembly.” we mean one which exercises power.
Bolsheviks and Beyond: Revisiting John Reed's "Ten Days that Shook the World"
by Michael Hirsch August 8, 2017 |
Argentine Workers’ Fight to Keep Jobs at Pepsi Plant Becomes a National Cause
by Mira Craig-Morse July 24, 2017 |
The story of the workers of a PepsiCo factory in Vicente Lopez, Buenos Aires, Argentina may be slightly confusing to those in America where it seems normal for a factory to close, as many did in the financial crash of 2008, without the workers organizing, despite losing valuable employment in a harsh economy. Yet the actions of the nearly 700 laid-off workers since PepsiCo, the second largest food and beverage corporation in the world, decided to move their production to another city south of Buenos Aires, could teach American workers a thing or two.
The State of the Left in Latin America: Ecuador and Bolivia After the Pink Tide
by Linda Farthing and Thea N. Riofrancos July 24, 2017 |
As rightwing governments take power in Argentina, Brazil, and elsewhere across the region, Ecuador’s leftwing Alianza País (Country Alliance, AP) and Bolivia’s Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Towards Socialism, MAS) and Bolivia have managed to hold onto power.
Who Are These Anime Nazis, Anyway?
by Nick Oltmann July 19, 2017 |
On the very off chance you haven’t heard, Angela Nagle has come out with her first book: Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Best known for her essays, often on the alt-right, in outlets like Jacobin and The Baffler, the socialist left has been anxious to dive into what appears to be the first book on the alt-right written by one of us — myself included. Ms. Nagle first caught my attention last year with her incredibly insightful essay “The New Man of 4chan,” and I’ve been reading her regularly, and eagerly awaiting this book, ever since.
Venezuela: for sale to the highest bidder?
by Mike Gonzalez July 19, 2017 |
The Bolivarian revolution led by Hugo Chavez from 1999, opened a new chapter in the global struggle for social justice. For anti-capitalists across the world, his ‘21st century socialism’ pointed ahead to a new kind of power, defined in the Bolivarian Constitution as “participativa y protagonista” – a participatory democracy in which the people were the active subjects.
It is hard to reconcile that hope with the realities of Venezuela today. The spokespersons of the new State continue to proclaim their revolutionary credentials. Yet they oversee a society in profound and worsening crisis, where hunger has reappeared in a country which just four years ago was congratulated by the U.N. for its virtual elimination of extreme poverty. The right wing media – nationally and internationally – have taken great delight in publishing photographs of food queues marshalled and overseen by armed National Guards. The supporters of Chavismo instinctively refuse to believe the images. But the social crisis they symbolize is real.
The Venezuelan Dilemma: Progressives and the "Plague on Both Your Houses" Position
by Steve Ellner July 15, 2017 |
In recent weeks, a number of Venezuelan specialists on the left side of the political spectrum have published and posted pieces that place them in an anti-Chavista, “ni-ni” position that consists of “a plague on both your houses” with regard to Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition. Certainly, at this moment the Chavistas are playing hard ball; the options available to them are limited.
Rosa Luxemburg in China: Ninety Years of Ups and Downs
by Xiong Min July 15, 2017 |
In recent years, Rosa Luxemburg’s name has gradually become more prominent in Chinese academia. A number of influential academic journals have even opened up research columns paying tribute to the revolutionary theorist, nearly a century after the first discussion of her work in China. This should be regarded as a second revival of the research on her in China. Compared with the other leading figures in the history of the international communist movement, whether worldwide or just in China, the present "Rediscover Luxemburg" phenomenon is unique. Regarding other leading figures, there have not been so many ups and downs.
The Return of the Public Execution
by Dalton Winfree July 14, 2017 |
The videoed executions of Philando Castille, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and the many, many other heroes whose lives were ended by State violence and class war have resurrected an old ghost of capital punishment in the developed Western World: Public Executions.
French Elections Install a New Political Order, But Is It Built on Sand?
by Kevin B. Anderson July 10, 2017 |
At one level, France’s 2017 elections were a huge triumph for global capital. A young and very modern neoliberal candidate, Emmanuel Macron, won huge majorities for his new political party, On the Move (En Marche), in both the presidential and the legislative elections. At another level, however, Macron’s pathway forward is fraught with challenges, both from a long stagnant economic and a restive French public, many of whom stayed away from the final round of voting.
On Listening to Seymour Hersh Ramble about His "Inside Knowledge about Syria"
by Stanley Heller July 9, 2017 |
Journalist Seymour Hersh was interviewed by Aaron Maté of the Real News Network on June 26 after he wrote an article called "Trump's Red Line."
Electoral Politics is a Socialist Priority, But It’s No Common Denominator
by Michael Hirsch July 3, 2017 |
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is singular on the left as being both a broad radical socialist organization, encompassing left social democrats, Marxists and even a smattering of anarcho-syndicalists, combined with a strong face toward electoral politics. But an electoral orientation per se is not and cannot be the common denominator of our work. It is true that without an electoral face, any political organization is hamstrung and those on the left who argue that support for any Democrat anywhere is treasonous paint themselves into a corner. Electoral politics on the level it can be rationally conducted is worth doing. That, for me, is not in dispute. Its place in our work is what is problematic. Thinking in terms of power is about more than electioneering.
US enforces its No Fly Zone over Rojava, leading to World War III…Or Not
The continuation of six years of genocidal war
by Michael Karadjis July 3, 2017 |
For the first time in the six-year Syrian war, the US shot down an Assadist warplane on June 18, in defence of its allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US-backed military and political front dominated by the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG). Assadist warplanes had carried out the highly unusual act of bombing the SDF in the town of Ja’Din, near Tabqa in Raqqa Province.
Polish Video Tribute to Joanne Landy
by Piotr Niemczyk July 1, 2017 |
This video in honor of Joanne Landy was made at the request of Piotr Niemczyk, an activist in the 1980’s in the Polish independent peace group “Freedom and Peace.” It was shown at an event in New York City on June 1, 2017, honoring Joanne Landy.
On the Exploitation of Outrage
by John Halle June 26, 2017 |
Over the past few years, the following sequence has occurred often enough to have become a familiar pattern.
How to Go Forward from June 8th
A Report from Great Britain
by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty June 23, 2017 |
The 8 June election result has re-energised Labour’s activist base and helped put basic working-class demands back on the agenda. The increase in turnout among young voters, and the huge Labour lead among young voters, signal a major shift in British politics. All of this opens up a new period of Labour revival and recomposition.
Accelerating Imperial Decline: Trump’s America in the World
by David Finkel June 14, 2017 |
[The following article was written as a contribution to Solidarity’s pre-convention discussion.]
Foreign policy elites are freaking out:
“President Trump has accomplished an extraordinary amount in a short time. With shocking speed, he has wreaked havoc: hobbling our core alliances, jettisoning American values and abdicating United States leadership of the world. That’s a whole lot of winning — for Russia and China.”
Those are the lamentations of Barack Obama’s national security advisor and ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice (New York Times, Saturday, June 3, 2017, “To Be Great, America Must Be Good.”)
The French Election
by Richard Greeman June 10, 2017 |
The good news this May was that French voters rejected far-right Marine Le Pen by a two-to-one margin in the second round of the Presidential election.
The bad news was that France ended up electing Emanuel Macron, an efficient technocrat who consciously incarnates French capital’s need to eliminate the "French exception" and level the wages, rights and benefits of the French common people down to the average of the European Union (which includes Romania and Bulgaria).
Russia, the Supposed New Cold War, and Russiagate
A Letter of Engagement to the Broad Left
by George Fish June 7, 2017 |
Fellow socialists and leftists, it is time to dispel that illusion that somehow Putin’s Russia of today is somehow positively connected to the USSR of yesterday. That simply is not the case.
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance condemns Trump's Paris Agreement withdrawal
by the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance June 7, 2017 |
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance condemns Trump's announcement to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.
Can “Corporate Free” Candidates Win?
by Steve Early June 5, 2017 |
Since 2004, members of the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) have won ten out of the sixteen city council and mayoral races they have contested in their majority minority city of 110,000.
Logic of the Bomb
by Chris Gardner May 24, 2017 |
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) or “Mother of All Bombs” was dropped in Afghanistan at a time of great international tension. Sarin gas had filled Syrian hospitals with civilians, threatening to draw Russia, the United States, and their allies into direct war. U.S. warships retaliated by striking one of Assad’s air bases while Donald Trump shared dessert with China’s President Xi Jinping. Hot on the heels of their meeting, Trump (erroneously) declared that another set of warships were en route to intimidate North Korea and its allies. Alarming rates of Syrian and Iraqi civilian causalities from coalition airstrikes were dominating headlines and before the dust had settled, the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S.’s mighty arsenal incinerated an ISIS encampment in eastern Afghanistan.
Beyond Anger: Immigrants and Trump's Presidency
by Rabah Omer May 19, 2017 |
To understand Trump's ascendance to presidency, instead of looking into the structure of the society, we need to look into the software of the society; the way people operate culturally.
It has been three months since the inauguration of President Trump and the nation still is engaged in agonized self-scrutiny to fathom the ascendance of Trump to the highest office in the country. Some explanations blamed it on the establishment’s inability to read and respond to electors’ interests. Other arguments deplored the Democratic Party for clearing the way for Hillary Clinton despite her trust problem. Other opinions maintained that Hillary Clinton did not speak to young voters, African Americans and working class. She was also censured for not addressing the real grievances; that is the economic concerns of the public. Clinton criticized the FBI for releasing the letter eleven days before the Election Day. Some explorations highlight the large number of people who sat at home and did not vote.
Statement of a New Peace Coalition in Los Angeles
by the Coalition for Peace, Revolution, and Social Justice (CPRSJ) May 17, 2017 |
The Coalition for Peace, Revolution, and Social Justice (CPRSJ) aims to resist capitalism, imperialism, and authoritarianism in the Trump era. We are helping to develop a thoughtful, multidimensional, and proactive opposition to the intensifying authoritarianism that has become evident around the globe, as exemplified by Donald Trump in the U.S., Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Xi Jinping in China. We oppose NATO and U.S. imperialism because they underpin capitalist-militarist hegemony around the globe. In general, we target rampant class oppression, imperialism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, nativism, Islamophobia, and environmental destruction.
May Day: Born in the USA
by Michael Hirsch April 30, 2017 |
For generations, May Day, the International Workers Day celebrated by working people in more than 200 countries, was ignored in the United States, the country of its origin. In fact, the annual holiday is as American as cherry pie, commemorating as it does the 1886 nationwide general strike in which U.S. trade unionists — largely foreign-born — walked off the job in support of an eight-hour workday.
The Democrats Delivered One Thing in the Past 100 Days: Disappointment
by Cornel West April 24, 2017 |
The time has come to bid farewell to a moribund party that lacks imagination, courage and gusto
The distinctive feature of these bleak times is the lack of institutional capacity on the left – the absence of a political party that swings free of Wall Street and speaks to the dire circumstances of poor and working people. As the first 100 days of the plutocratic and militaristic Trump administration draw to a close, one truth has been crystal clear: the Democratic party lacks the vision, discipline and leadership to guide progressives in these turbulent times.
IVAW Statement on Syria Strikes
by IVAW National April 17, 2017 |
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) condemns in no uncertain terms the bombing of Sharyat airbase in Syria six days ago by Donald Trump’s administration. As veterans of the unending and expanding wars conducted over the last 16 years, we know intimately that U.S. military intervention exacerbates and further militarizes conflicts overseas and that the people who pay the greatest price are the everyday people of occupied nations. We also know that this is not the first time our military has been used in the Syrian conflict. U.S. bombs have been dropped on Syria under both the Trump and Obama administrations, resulting in more than a thousand civilian deaths.
The Imperialist Logic Behind Trump's Attack on Syria
And the Assad Regime's War Crimes
by Kevin B. Anderson April 15, 2017 |
Within a few days in April, the Trump administration pivoted away from its nearly open support for the Assad regime to a military attack on it. This was followed by harsh language against Russia, the setting off of a huge bomb in Afghanistan, and the dispatch of an aircraft carrier armed with nuclear weapons toward North Korea.
Building the Infrastructure for a Strong Left
by Alexander Kolokotronis April 10, 2017 |
Alex Kolokotronis is a 1st year PhD student in Political Science at Yale. He self-identifies as a libertarian socialist and is interested in studying anarchist movements, post-state forms of governance and public power, and associationist self-managed socialism. He is the co-founder of Student Organization for Democratic Alternatives (SODA), a group dedicated to implementing participatory budgeting and participatory democracy at the university level. Participatory budgeting is a directly democratic process by which ordinary people get to deliberate and decide how to allocate a designated budget. He previously worked in Worker Cooperative Development with Make the Road New York and the New York City Network of Worker Cooperatives.
No to Assad’s Brutality, No to Isis, No to U.S. and Russian Bombing and Military Forces in Syria, For a Revival of the Arab Spring
by Campaign for Peace and Democracy April 9, 2017 |
We are horrified by the relentless, cruel attacks of the Assad regime, aided by Moscow and Tehran, on the Syrian people. For sheer brutality the butchers in Damascus have few equals in the world today. But we also wholeheartedly condemn U.S. bombing and military forces in Syria, which will kill innocent people and contribute nothing towards a just solution to the Syrian conflict, while at the same time serving to deepen the reactionary U.S. military presence in the Middle East and reinforce Assad’s rhetorical claim that he is defending the Syrian people against Western imperialism, hollow though that claim may be.
Strategic Thinking and Organizing Resistance
by Kim Scipes April 3, 2017 |
The first few weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency has seen an amazing explosion of mobilizing to oppose him and his administration on oh-so-many levels. And that has been heartening.
But it is not enough.
Materialism and Feminism: An Interview with Johanna Brenner
by Johanna Brenner March 31, 2017 |
George Souvlis: By way of introduction, could you explain what personal experiences strongly influenced you, both politically and academically?
Johanna Brenner: I grew up in a staunchly liberal family and remained politically liberal until I joined the movement against the Vietnam war, where I was introduced to anti-imperialist politics and then Marxism and “third-camp” socialism. In the late 60’s I was part of the student left that turned toward organizing the working-class. I was a student at UCLA. We organized student support for a teamster wildcat strike and we had a group called the Student Worker Action Committee that published a newspaper, Picket Line, where we covered different worker and community struggles in Los Angeles. I was rather slow to embrace feminism, but in the 1970’s I got involved with a socialist-feminist group called CARASA (Coalition for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse) which began in New York City. Some friends and comrades formed a Los Angeles branch of CARASA and we were able to connect to radical women of color doing community organizing around sterilization abuse in LA. From that point on, I have been deeply immersed in Marxist-feminist theory and politics.
Beyond The Democratic Primary: A Reply to Daniel Moraff
by Kim Moody March 28, 2017 |
In his article calling on socialists to run in Democratic primaries, Daniel Moraff argues that some of the barriers to running candidates in Democratic primaries, such as money and incumbency, also apply to third parties. So they do. He points to the fact that socialist and community organizer Debbie Medina got 40.56% of the vote in the 2016 NY State Senate race in Brooklyn’s 18th District as opposed to 13% for a Green candidate for mayor in Baltimore. So, it’s easier to run as a Democrat.
Debating the Revolution
by John Rose March 26, 2017 |
Book Review - John Riddell (editor and translator), To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921 (Brill/Haymarket, 2016), £39.99.
To the Masses is the last volume of a hugely ambitious project to make the proceedings of the (four) congresses of the Communist International held during Lenin’s time available in English. It’s an extraordinary achievement for John Riddell, a Canadian revolutionary socialist historian and activist.
Organizing Against Trump: An Interview
by Jason Schulman March 26, 2017 |
Jason Schulman is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, co-editor of New Politics, and author of Neoliberal Labour Governments and the Union Response (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
He spoke to Workers’ Liberty about the challenges facing the left in America under Donald Trump's presidency.
Learning From the Great Depression
by Michael Roberts March 26, 2017 |
Recently, the economics editor of the Guardian newspaper in the UK, Larry Elliott, presented us with a comparison of the Great Depression of the 1930s and now. In effect, Elliott argued that the world economy was now in a similar depression as then. The 1930s depression started with a stock market crash in 1929, followed by a global banking crash and then a huge slump in output, employment and investment. In that order. The number of bank failures rose from an annual average of about 600 during the 1920s, to 1,350 in 1930 and then peaked in 1933 when 4,000 banks were suspended. Over the entire period 1930-33, one-third of all US banks failed. But it was the stock market crash that was first.
We Are No Longer Scared: Non-Tenure Track Faculty at the University of Puerto Rico
by Antonio Carmona Baez March 13, 2017 |
The situation at the University of Puerto Rico is framed within a context of a 10-year economic depression and unsustainable debt crisis, which was meant to be remedied by the 2016 Puerto Rico Oversight Management Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), signed by President Obama, and its federal Fiscal Control Board (Junta de Control Fiscal, the word Junta in Spanish is politically charged). Similar to what was presented at the conference this weekend regarding Greece, South Africa and Mexico, the public university became, throughout the second half of the twentieth century, a vehicle by which many people have escaped poverty.
Who Can You Believe About the “White Helmets”?
by Stanley Heller March 11, 2017 |
Recently a group called the “Hands Off Syria Coalition” disrupted a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth in Grand Central Station that was done to honor the White Helmets group. The White Helmets, of course, are rescue workers in Syria, of whom 140 have lost their lives while digging out victims of the Syrian regime and of Russian bombs.
Can the Young Left be Taught Old Tricks?
by Conrad Sweatman March 9, 2017 |
On the curious collaboration between the cultural left and the economic right, and how to overcome it.
For all the hideous acts of Trump’s administration over the past six weeks there’s something of a silver lining to our current political moment: we’re now witnessing the emergence of what may well prove to be the most energetic and popular protest movement since the 1960s. And yet it’s worth wondering what, broadly speaking, this dissent will stand for apart from spirited opposition to Trump and his administration.
Overcoming Adjunctification & Contingent Labor
by María-Teresa Lechuga March 5, 2017 |
The neoliberal policies implemented since the 1980s in Mexico and around the world have worsened the conditions of academic workers, imposing labor flexibility and precariousness on most of the teachers in higher education. This new academic majority needs a political revival. The reorganization of this sector has become an urgent task for academics and their unions.
Western Sahara: An Albatross on African Union’s Conscience
by Nizar Visram March 1, 2017 |
At the twenty-eighth Summit meeting of the African Union (AU) held in Addis Ababa on 30 January 2017, Morocco’s readmission to the continental body generated heated discussion. At the end of the day the Kingdom of Morocco managed to win over sufficient member states on its side and it was allowed to join the fold unconditionally.
On Punching Nazis
by John Halle February 27, 2017 |
Over the past couple of weeks, social media has filled up with breathless accounts of far right leaders having gotten their comeuppance by being physically assaulted or, in a recent case, murdered in an act of domestic violence.
Fake News: from Satirical Truthiness to Alternative Facts
by Maggie Hennefeld February 19, 2017 |
In the wake of the 2016 election, Oxford Dictionaries declared “post-truth” to be the 2016 international word of the year.[i] The viral spread of fake news stories (such as the infamous “Pizzagate”[ii] scandal alleging that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta secretly ran an illegal sex trafficking ring out of a Washington D.C. pizzeria) no doubt helped to install America’s lunatic POTUS and his clown car of white supremacist cabinet members into the Oval Office.
The Progressive Movement is a PR Front for Rich Democrats
by John Stauber February 19, 2017 |
There is good news in the Boston Globe today for the managers, development directors, visionaries, political hacks and propaganda flacks who run “the Progressive Movement.” More easy-to-earn and easy-to-hide soft money, millions of dollars, will be flowing to them from super rich Democrats and business corporations. It will come clean, pressed and laundered through Organizing for Action, the latest incarnation of the Obama Money Machine which has recently morphed into a “nonpartisan non-profit corporation” that will ‘‘strengthen the progressive movement and train our next generation of leaders.’’
The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: A New Book on the Value of the Enslaved
by Ibram X. Kendi February 19, 2017 |
The author of The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is Daina Ramey Berry. Professor Berry is an associate professor of history and African and African diaspora studies and the George W. Littlefield Fellow in American History at the University of Texas at Austin. An award-winning historian, she is also a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Berry is a specialist in the history of gender and slavery in the United States with a particular emphasis on the social and economic history of the nineteenth century.
TIAA Accused of Land Grabs, Human Rights Violations, Environmental Destruction
by Nancy Holmstrom February 17, 2017 |
No one wants their retirement to be financed by companies involved in human rights violations and environmental destruction. But that is exactly what is happening to those of us with retirement funds invested in TIAA.
Trump and the Alt-Right (A View from Washington)
by Scott McLemee February 9, 2017 |
Donald Trump likes to think that he has not only won an election but “built a movement.” And to judge by his first week in the White House office, he has — just not in the way he thinks.
Syria and the Left
by Yasser Munif and Yusef Khalil January 31, 2017 |
Behind the humanitarian disaster of the Syrian civil war is a political crisis the Left urgently needs to understand.
The Syrian tragedy is a key moral and political question today. Yet it has not been easy for leftists around the world to decide where they stand on Syria.
Redeeming the revolution: A review of “October 1917 - Workers in Power”
by Doug Enaa Greene January 28, 2017 |
Fred Leplat and Alex de Jong, eds. October 1917 – Workers in Power. London: Merlin Press, the IIRE and Resistance Books, 2016. 256 pages
Nearly a century ago, the workers and peasants of Russia overthrew the Provisional Government and established the world’s first socialist republic. It was a seminal moment in human history. For the capitalists of the world, it was an event to be feared and they marshaled their forces to contain Bolshevism.
Women's March 2017: The Birth Of a New Women's Movement (?)
by Nancy Holmstrom January 26, 2017 |
I came back when the Women’s March in D.C. exhausted but thrilled, convinced that we are seeing the birth of a new women’s movement. Hearing about all the other Women’s Marches around the world only confirmed that impression. The size, the inclusiveness, the defiant but good-humored spirit and the progressive politics make me very optimistic.
I See America Marching Again
by Dan La Botz January 22, 2017 |
I see America marching again,
As we have marched so often.
Left of Death: The Socialist Case Against the Death Penalty
by Bryant Sculos January 20, 2017 |
On January 10, 2017, white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof was sentenced to death by a jury of his peers in federal court. He was deemed competent to stand trial multiple times, despite serious questions regarding his mental stability. He was afforded what, by all means, appeared to be a competent legal team to defend him against the charges stemming from the shooting of ten (killing nine) Black church-goers at Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Church in South Carolina on June 17, 2015, though Roof decided to abandon legal counsel at several points in the legal process. Roof was 21 years old at the time of the attack—barely old enough to legally consume alcohol and not old enough to even rent a car. He has expressed nothing resembling regret for his crimes, and in fact has remained steadfast in his justification for them. Assuming the psychological experts are right and Roof lacks any kind of relevant mental illness, I have no sympathy for Roof nor should anyone else. I even understand the visceral desire to want to see Roof suffer the ultimate penalty for his crimes.
Russia and the Left
by Stephen R. Shalom January 9, 2017 |
[Note: This article is forthcoming in the Winter 2017 issue of New Politics.]
What explains the enthusiasm in certain quarters of the left for Vladimir Putin and Russia? Why do some cheer on Russian bombing in Syria, dismissing out of hand the evidence from Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch1 that they are criminally targeting hospitals? Why do some try to justify Russia’s takeover of Crimea or its blatant intervention in Ukraine?
Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall…
by Michael Albert January 3, 2017 |
Trump is President. To avoid repeating the causes of Trump winning requires knowing what the causes were.
Statement on My Satirical Christmas Tweet
by George Ciccariello-Maher December 29, 2016 |
On Christmas Eve, I sent a satirical tweet about an imaginary concept, 'white genocide.' For those who haven't bothered to do their research, “white genocide” is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies (and most recently, against a tweet by State Farm Insurance). It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I'm glad to have mocked it.
The End of the “American Century”: Whither US Global Hegemony and the Indispensable Nation?
by Francis Shor December 20, 2016 |
“This is the end, my only friend, the end/Of our elaborate plans, the end/Of everything that stands, the end/No safety or surprise, the end.” - Jim Morrison, The Doors
Will Donald Trump’s ascension to the imperial presidency mark the nadir of the declension of the United States as the global hegemon? While Trump’s fantasies about “making America great again” do not explicitly rely on promoting the US as the “indispensable nation,” they, nonetheless, deploy strategies to resurrect the fossil fuel driven expansion of the military industrial state that marked the post-World War II period of US global dominance. Does Trump’s criticism of NATO and “nation building” suggest a less interventionist foreign policy, or does his commitment to white nationalism still augur a redeemer nation, primed to contest those who would challenge US global hegemony? Given the present contradictions of US global hegemony and the policies and posturing of a Trump and his proposed Administration, are we witnessing the end of the American Century and its institutional and ideological commitment to the US as the “indispensable” nation?
Standing Rock: Victory Celebrated, Struggle to Continue
by Nancy Romer December 11, 2016 |
Victory….for now
Should We Be Surprised “Anti-War” Gabbard Auditions for Trump?
by Stanley Heller December 4, 2016 |
After tens of thousands of young people rushed to the streets to denounce Trump’s election, “Sanderista” Tulsi Gabbard’s made different kind of headlines. She answered Donald Trump’s call and went to a vetting meeting. Yes, after the election all the Democrat pols gave the usual clichés about cooperation with Trump on certain matters, as if Trump were just some other Republican. That’s bad enough, but this was something more. Gabbard was actually looking to join the Trump Administration. She denies it. She ludicrously claims this was just a meeting to talk about Syria and the need for peace. As if “peace” was uppermost in Trump’s mind now. As if he wasn’t spending all his time visiting Alt-Right sewers and billionaire clubs to staff his cabinet.
On the Death of Fidel Castro - View of a Socialist Cuban Living Abroad
Stanley Heller interviews Sam Farber December 1, 2016 |
A refreshing, unconventional view, with none of the usual leftist idolizing of Castro. We talk about Fidel's popularity in Cuba among the older generation, his success in standing for Cubans against U.S. designs, the dictatorial power he seized and some of the huge moves he made in Africa, some good, some awful (Eritrea, Syria, Ortega's Nicaragua today).
A Diary of Protest for the Days to Come
by Michael Hirsch November 29, 2016 |
Sarah Jaffe. Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt. New York: Nation Books, 2016. 352pp. $26.99
One might be tempted to read Sarah Jaffe’s book with a kind of archaeological nostalgia, to look upon it as a remnant of a bygone-era when the left had confidence in the gains it was making, before a meteor named Trump struck earth.
Mazzocchi and the Moment
by Adolph Reed November 25, 2016 |
In recent months I’ve been thinking a lot, more than usual, of Anthony Mazzocchi, longtime official of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union, leading presence in the movement for occupational health and safety, and one of the very brightest lights of a serious working-class politics in the post-World War II era until his too-early death in 2002. Tony often observed, regarding capital’s revanchist attack on working people that has steadily intensified over the last four decades, that what we would now call the neoliberal Democrats had nothing to offer those who have been or fear being ground into the dust by the juggernaut. He cautioned that, if the left and the labor movement didn’t find ways to connect with that growing population of those hurting and to offer credible explanations of the sources of their condition and plausible strategies for fighting back, other, nasty and dangerous tendencies would. That perspective reflected a deeper view of politics that guided the thousands of us who, for nearly all the 1990s and most of the first decade of this century, struggled to articulate and advance an unambiguously working-class politics through the effort to build an independent Labor Party, of which Tony was the “Founding Brother” and animating force. In the 2015 issue of the Socialist Register, Mark Dudzic and I laid out an assessment of the state of the left and labor movement in the U.S. and the challenges that face us that is rooted in that perspective.
The Banality of Evil: Elites Close Ranks Behind Trump
by Richard Greeman November 25, 2016 |
Happy Thanksgiving! As we celebrate the America’s founding myth of the Pilgrim Fathers welcomed by the Indians, the National Guard, militarized local police and (unlicensed) security guards continue to brutalize unarmed Standing Rock Sioux Indians (and members of dozens of other tribes) protesting the construction of the unapproved Dakota Access Pipeline on their sacred lands and water sources.[1]
Reflections on the Election
by Stephen R. Shalom November 21, 2016 |
Post-election left analyses have accurately identified many of the immediate causes for our current debacle. Voter suppression, the Electoral College, the Democratic Party, the Clinton campaign, Hillary Clinton, labor leaders, hacked emails, FBI chief James Comey, Democratic primary voters who voted for Clinton, minority voters who didn’t turn out in sufficient numbers -- the list goes on. And all of these deserve blame. But I’ve seen very little self-reflection from the left. There have been some vigorous defenses of left actions, but little self-criticism and little to suggest that the same mistakes won't be repeated again.
Should Greens Go Local?
by Steve Early November 20, 2016 |
As Kermit the Frog, America’s most famous Muppet, says: “it’s not easy being green.”
Preliminary results of the Green Party’s latest national campaign confirm the reality of his observation. The Party’s much-touted goal was getting 5% of the vote on Nov. 8, so it could qualify for $10 million in federal funds for 2020 campaigning and maintain broad nationwide ballot access.
We Fight for Socialism over Barbarism
by Democratic Socialists of America (National Political Committee) October 16, 2016 |
How Trump Won: Seizing the Anti-Establishment Ground through Racial and Economic Nationalism
On November 8, voters in the United States narrowly elected an openly racist, misogynist and nativist candidate for president. Donald Trump succeeded in defining himself as an anti-establishment candidate who will end dynastic rule in Washington, D.C., by elites who care little for “forgotten Americans.”
The election of Trump and the struggle ahead
by the International Socialist Organization (ISO) November 15, 2016 |
1. The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States is a shocking and dangerous turn of events--not only for the U.S., but for the entire world. It is a decisive shift, representing the latest failure of center-right and center-left parties in the advanced capitalist countries in the wake of the Great Recession, opening the way for the triumph of a candidate who used right-wing populism to stoke racism, xenophobia and reaction.
Mass Incarceration and Its Mystification: A Review of "The 13th"
by Dan Berger |
When prisoners in Alabama last spring proposed a national strike to protest “prison slavery,” they called out the infamous clause in the Thirteenth Amendment. The amendment most known for abolishing slavery included a rider that sanctioned slavery “as punishment for a crime wherein the party shall have been duly convicted.”
Irish Anti-Colonial Solidarity with Indigenous People
Pauline Murphy November 15, 2016 |
#NoDAPL
In 1847 as a famine created by both climate and man was unleashing death and destruction across Ireland, a group of charitable people across the Atlantic ocean raised money for those affected. They raised 170dollars and these people who managed to raise such a considerable amount of money were themselves without any prosperity but gave what they had because they knew the hardships famine and opression brought, they were Native Americans of the Choctaw Nation.
Letter from Standing Rock
by Nancy Romer November 12, 2016 |
We arrived at the Standing Rock encampment late afternoon on Thursday as the sun was beginning to go down. Driving into the site was truly amazing: it is enormous! It is a village of about 500 (probably more) tents, vans, RVs, etc, some of them huge and housing dozens of people. Lots more people who are participating in the daily activities, as I am, are staying at the Sioux-run Prairie Knights Casino Hotel. The hotel and casino are enormous too.The land defining the reservation is vast and the scenery is beautiful, calm and wide. Thousands of people have participated in the protest since it started in the spring.
Build the Left to Defeat the Right
by the Steering Committee of Solidarity November 10, 2016 |
Like millions of people here and around the world, we woke up this morning dismayed and frightened that Donald Trump has been elected President. Whatever we each thought of the Democratic Party and of Hillary Clinton, none of us wanted to believe that a plurality of voters could bring themselves to vote for Trump. His victory is part of a global pattern of an ascendant, populist right, following in the wake of the similarly unexpected vote in favor of Brexit in the UK, and, like Brexit, it is being celebrated by right wing nationalist leaders in Europe like Marine Le Pen.
Letter to American Friends and Comrades
by Jim Denham November 10, 2016 |
Dear Friends and Comrades,
Today is a terrible one for America and the world.
Solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux and all the Struggles of Indigenous Peoples
by Black Workers for Justice November 8, 2016 |
The Black Workers for Justice support the struggles of the indigenous peoples to defend their land and treaty rights and their struggles for environmental justice. And in this moment we are in full support of the resistance of the Standing Rock Sioux to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). We call on all people to support them politically and materially.
Our Postwork Future: A Prospect to Win or to Lose?
by Bernard Marszalek November 5, 2016 |
Peter Frase. Four Futures: Life After Capitalism. New York: Verso, 2016. 160pp.
It borders on a disservice to characterize Four Futures: Life After Capitalism as a primer on contemporary political philosophy, since Peter Frase, the author, explodes any expectation of pedantry in his prose, or more importantly, in his approach to political theory, which he calls “social science fiction.”
Towards an Anarchist Money and Monetary System: An Interview with Nathan Cedric Tankus
by Alexander Kolokotronis November 5, 2016 |
Though conceived out of conversations concerning the Eurozone crisis in summer 2015, this interview with Nathan Cedric Tankus engages with heightened focus by the left on finance capita. Tankus is research scholar at the Modern Money Network, an organization committed to: “The creation and improvement of monetary and financial institutions governed by the public and directed in support of public purpose; The universal, enforceable and inalienable right of every person to participate in economic life in a manner consistent with basic principles of justice, fairness, equality and dignity; The security of individuals, families and communities, the development of autonomous, non-state entities and the flourishing of civil society as critical components of economic freedom” as well as principles of ecological sustainability and intellectual freedom.
Behind the Demonstrations in Morocco
by Richard Greeman November 3, 2016 |
On Wednesday, Oct. 26, the well-known Moroccan historian and human rights activist Maâti Monjib and five of his colleagues were hauled into the High Court at Rabat to answer charges of “attacks on national security” and “receiving foreign funds.” They are facing up to five years in prison for their activities as investigative journalists, human rights advocates and members of the “February 20th Movement” – the Moroccan version of “Arab Spring” of 2011.
Final Dispatch from Greece
By Dan Leahy November 3, 2016 |
A courageous Syrian collective challenges both ISIS and Assad in Raqqa
By Sarah Aziza October 30, 2016 |
Third Parties—My Personal Experience
by Anonymous October 27, 2016 |
I joined the Peace and Freedom Party under the guidance of leaders of the International Socialists (IS), including Mike Parker and Jack Weinberg, in 1967-68. This was my only real involvement in a third party. It was not only long ago, it was a different context: there was a large, lively left movement, which at the time appeared to be still growing (we hoped).
Thus the P & F was conceived of—and briefly was—a movement party. That’s why it may be worth a look back.
To get the party on the ballot in California, we had to get people to change their party registration, via a registrar, often from Democratic, to P & F. Some 107,000 did so in California, which was remarkable. The same year George Wallace used the same procedure to get an almost exact number of registrants for his party.
I recall an IS member, J.B., said to me “I just wish we had his demographics!” So true.
A Solid Trump Exposé That Gives Hillary a Pass
by Michael Hirsch October 27, 2016 |
John K. Wilson. Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire. New York: OR Books, 2016. 256 pp.
November 8 is show time. What will the time tell? The egregious Hillary Rodham Clinton will likely be elected president over the menacing tin pot Donald Trump. Clinton may be the shoddy Brand X, but corporate capital will sleep soundly in its bed with a Clinton presidency and even a Democratic Senate. Working families will be screwed again, but with more finesse than under a solipsistic Trump diktat. Sure, Hillary’s evasions and saccharine pronouncements pale in comparison to Trump’s Orwellianisms, his fabrications and the unsubtle subtext of his real stance, to “Make America White again.” No wonder Hillary will win. And by default.
Isn’t political life at the top grand?
President Clinton? 4 Big Battle Lines for Pushing Her to the Left
by Arun Gupta October 26, 2016 |
On October 6, 2008, an executive with Citigroup sent John Podesta, then co-chair of Barack Obama’s transition team, a list of possible cabinet appointments. There were still 29 days left in the hard-fought campaign. But the list, according to the New Republic, was almost entirely on the money; for who went on to fill senior posts in the Obama Administration, including Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, Eric Holder as attorney general, Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador, and Janet Napolitano to lead Homeland Security.
Trump’s Temerism
by Elizabeth Mahony October 23, 2016 |
The night of the penultimate presidential debate I was at a screening of the Brazilian film Aquarius, which tells the story of a woman fighting a corrupt development company to remain in her apartment building. During the Q&A session with the director and force-of-nature actress Sonia Braga, a handful of demonstrators stood up, silently, holding “Fora Temer” signs to protest the government that has illegally installed itself in Brazil. Within sixty seconds Lincoln Center had the NYPD to escort them out, against Braga’s objections, and the Q&A continued with police watching from the edges of aisles.
The 'War' against Islamic State: A Military Strategy Doomed to Political Failure
by Joseph Daher October 21, 2016 |
The last terrible terrorist attack by the so-called “Islamic State” (also known as Daech) killed at least 300 people in Baghdad’s central shopping district of Karrada on July 2. It was the worst single car bomb attack in Iraq since U.S. and British led forces toppled the dictator Saddam Hussein 13 years ago and deepened the anger of many Iraqis over the weak performance of the security apparatus. This followed other terrorist attacks in the region and elsewhere. This put forward once more the question on how to answer and end the threat that represents Daech. The Western states led by the USA have shown that they consider Daech as the main enemy for the region of the Middle East and North Africa. Daech constitutes in the opinion of Western officials a source of regional and international instability, particularly with the terrorist attacks in West. However they propose to use the same elements that fueled the development of Daech to try to stop it militarily. This is therefore a recipe for defeat.
The End of Lulism and the Palace Coup in Brazil
by Ruy Braga October 20, 2016 |
In general, analyses of Brazil’s current political and economic crisis emphasize the economic policy “errors” of the government, inherited by President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT) from her predecessor, Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva. While it is true that certain federal policy decisions have interfered with the dynamics of the Brazilian distributive conflict, this focus on political regulation is far too narrow to illuminate the complexity of the current crisis. These explanations tend to obscure the changes in class structure that took place during the Lula era (2002-2010), and to overlook the impact of the international economic crisis. Indeed, such analyses fail to explain how the relationship between political regulation and economic accumulation not only failed to pacify class conflict but radicalized it.
On Scott Ritter’s Attack on the White Helmets
by Stanley Heller October 15, 2016 |
It’s painful to read Scott Ritter’s “The ‘White Helmets’ and the Inherent Contradiction of America’s Syria Policy” and see him joining the ranks of the conspiracists on Syria.
Black Liberation and the Abolition of the Prison Industrial Complex
By Rachel Herzing October 12, 2016 |
Rachel Herzing lives and works in Oakland, CA, where she fights the violence of policing and imprisonment. She is a co-founder of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex and the Co-Director of the StoryTelling & Organizing Project, a community resource sharing stories of interventions to interpersonal harm that do not rely on policing, imprisonment, or traditional social services. The following interview was conducted by the True Leap Publishing Collective.
Nicaragua’s Authoritarian Turn is Not a Product of Leftist Politics
By Jennifer Goett and Courtney Desiree Morris October 3, 2016 |
On July 29th, Sandinista President Daniel Ortega unseated 16 opposition members and 12 alternates from Nicaragua’s legislature, eliminating one of the few remaining obstacles to one-party rule. Days later, Ortega named his wife, Rosario Murillo, as his vice presidential running mate for the November elections. Political analysts inside and outside of the country see the move as an attempt to secure a line of family succession, as Ortega, 70, enters the final years of his political career.
Organizing Prisons in the 1960s and 1970s
Roundtable Discussion October 3, 2016 |
On the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison rebellion in 1971, Process speaks with seven scholars of the carceral state about prisoners’ organizing in the 1960s and 1970s and movements protesting mass incarceration today. This is the first of a three-part series, guest edited for Process by Jessie Kindig. Check out parts two and three.
Working Class Power & Feminism: An Interview with Alia Amirali
by Sara Jaffri September 28, 2016 |
Writer and labor organizer, Sara Jaffri, and left-wing political worker and the Punjab Deputy General Secretary of the Awami Workers Party, Alia Amirali talk organizing, feminism and class in Pakistan.
Why Is Puerto Rican Oscar López Still A Political Prisoner?
by Margaret Power September 28, 2016 |
Oscar López Rivera is the longest-held Puerto Rican political prisoner in U.S. history. He has now served 35 years in U.S. federal prisons, including 12 in solitary confinement. The movement calling for his release has intensified, broadened and strengthened in the last few years.
Rage for Aleppo and Syria
by Stanley Heller September 28, 2016 |
They say that generals usually prepare for the last war. This has happened to the peace movement, too. The anti-war coalitions in the U.S. and UK are acting as if this was 2003 and everyone need to focus on Western imperial adventures. Instead circumstances are quite different. The main carnage right now has little to do with “the Empire”. A dictator from a family dynasty is using his entire military, every weapon the country owns, to bring a nation to heel. He’s assisted (and in some ways commanded) by foreign powers, one semi-fascist, the other a theocracy. The larger anti-war organizations and coalitions have nothing to say or bleat “Our main responsibility is to criticize our own government’s abuses” or airily call for all foreign forces to stop intervening. (There are also the unspeakable organizations licking the dictator’s boot in the name of “anti-imperialism”.)
Some Left Arguments on the Election
by Stephen R. Shalom September 26, 2016 |
Several left arguments on the U.S. election frankly leave me baffled.
Fighting for Our Lives: #NoDAPL in Historical Context
by Nick Estes September 23, 2016 |
Little has been written about the historical relationship between the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the longer histories of Oceti Sakowin (The Great Sioux Nation) resistance against the trespass of settlers, dams, and pipelines across the Mni Sose, the Missouri River. This is a short analysis of the historical and political context of the #NoDAPL movement and the transformative possibilities of the current struggle.
The End of an Era: From Dependence to Self-Propelled Development
by Rafael Bernabe September 23, 2016 |
In 2006, the University of North Carolina Press published Puerto Rico in the American Century, a history of Puerto Rico since 1898, written by César J. Ayala and I.
Labour, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism
by Sabby Sagall September 21, 2016 |
Last April a row engulfed Ken Livingstone, former Labour mayor of London, and Naz Shah, Labour MP for Bradford West, following remarks they made about Israel and Zionism. They were suspended from the Labour Party, with Naz Shah having the parliamentary whip withdrawn. Shah has been reinstated, and though Livingstone has demanded that he too be reinstated, a decision has yet to be made by Labour’s National Constitutional Committee.
Aiding and Abetting Apartheid
Obama’s new military aid pledge to Israel will help further the country’s crimes.
by Stephen R. Shalom September 20, 2016 |
Ante-, anti-institutionalism
by Eli Nadeau September 17, 2016 |
In the clear, critical light of day, illusory administrators whisper of our need for institutions, and all institutions are political, and all politics is correctional…Politics proposes to make us better, but we were good already in the mutual debt that can never be made good. We owe it to each other to falsify the institution, to make politics incorrect, to give the lie to our own determination. We owe each other the indeterminate. We owe each other everything. (Moten and Harney 2013, 20)
The Right To Educate
by Nadia Elia September 16, 2016 |
The 2016-2017 academic year has just started in occupied Palestine, and with it come the hopes and dreams of young students, but also the daily challenges of walking to school past Israeli soldiers, or driving through checkpoints in the West Bank, or assigning a culturally and politically relevant curriculum in annexed East Jerusalem, where Israel is trying to impose an Israeli curriculum in Palestinian schools.
The Big Difference at Standing Rock Is Native Leadership All Around
by Sarah van Gelder September 15, 2016 |
This year’s massive buildup of resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline follows closely on the heels of the victory over Keystone XL pipeline, something often credited to feverish organizing by 350.org. But years before 350’s involvement, there was the Indigenous Environmental Network, which launched that movement and its “Keep It In the Ground” messaging. This time, with nearly 200 tribes unified behind the Standing Rock tribe’s opposition to the pipeline and more than 3,000 people gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, Native Americans are clearly leading the movement.
Challenging Intellectuals Who Justify Iranian Imperialism
Searching for Socialist Solidarity
by Omid Ranjbar, Azadeh Shurmand, Frieda Afary and Joseph Daher September 13, 2016 |
Below we print a summary of a longer article by two Iranian socialists who are opposed to Iran’s military intervention in Syria. Their article is followed by a response from Frieda Afary and Joseph Daher.
Class War by Other Means
Tennessee, Volkswagen, and the Future of Labor
by Chris Brooks September 12, 2016 |
In 2008, the governments of the city of Chattanooga, Hamilton County, the state of Tennessee, and the United States all collaborated to provide Volkswagen (VW) with a $577 million subsidy package, the largest taxpayer handout ever given to a foreign-headquartered automaker in U.S. history. The bulk of the subsidy package, $554 million, came from local and state sources. The federal government also threw in $23 million in subsidies, bringing the grand total of taxpayer money that VW received in 2008 to $577 million.
Reclaiming the Future
by Sølvi Qorda September 12, 2016 |
My most enduring memory of the student movement was of the power and the creativity that it brought. At Millbank, on Day X, in the university occupations. It was what some of us called a ‘magic moment’, where political space-time seemed to curve around us, where it felt that we might win, and that what we did mattered. While there was a degree of naive optimism that fueled that, there was also truth. Others had those moments during the 2011 riots, during 1968. Having that momentary power taken from you is painful – we don’t realise how little power we have until we glimpse it.
Solidarity Statement with September 9, 2016, Prison Strike
by Labor for Black Lives September 8, 2016 |
Labor for Black Lives – a multi-ethnic network of workers in solidarity with the movement for Black lives, against capitalist exploitation and racist injustice and all oppression – fully endorses the Prison Strike, to begin on September 9, 2016, in which prisoners across the United States are organizing to end prison slavery and mass incarceration. We join our voices and forces with those, including 800+ prisoner members of the IWW's Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), who say THIS STOPS TODAY.
The Left Face of the Putin Regime
Political resolution of the Sixth Congress of the Russian Socialist Movement
by the Russian Socialist Movement September 7, 2016 |
We reproduce here the political resolution of the Sixth Congress of the Russian Socialist Movement (RSD), which was held in Moscow on May 8 and 9, published on May 12 on the RSD website [1] with the following statement:“This is our analysis of current trends in the evolving political system of Putinism (the ”patriotic consensus“), its socio-economic course, its growing militarization, its fears in the face of social revolt, as well as the state of the forces opposed to the regime.”
The Politics of Che Guevara: A Review
by Mike Gonzalez September 6, 2016 |
Samuel Farber, The Politics of Che Guevara: Theory and Practice. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016. 192pp. $16.95
For two generations of activists, Ernesto Che Guevara has symbolized a kind of selfless heroism. His relative youth at his death in 1967 (he was 38) conserved his air of rebelliousness and the image of a man interested only in the struggle, rather than in power. Yet Sam Farber who acknowledges these qualities, describes him early in his new book, The Politics of Che Guevara, as “irremediably undemocratic”. The contradiction is striking and central to Farber’s critical analysis of Che’s life as a revolutionary.
What Does Black Lives Matter Want?
by Robin D.G. Kelley August 31, 2016 |
On August 1 the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a coalition of over sixty organizations, rolled out “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice,” an ambitious document described by the press as the first signs of what young black activists “really want.” It lays out six demands aimed at ending all forms of violence and injustice endured by black people; redirecting resources from prisons and the military to education, health, and safety; creating a just, democratically controlled economy; and securing black political power within a genuinely inclusive democracy. Backing the demands are forty separate proposals and thirty-four policy briefs, replete with data, context, and legislative recommendations.
Remembering Connie Crothers
by David Finkel August 31, 2016 |
Sometime in the late 1980s, as Against the Current was doing some cross-promotion with the European socialist magazine International Viewpoint, I was glancing through the list of U.S. subscribers to IV when a name jumped put at me: Connie Crothers.
This was interesting, because I had a wonderful duet recording “Swish” (1982) by jazz pianist Connie Crothers with the percussion giant Max Roach. (This was the inaugural recording of Connie’s New Artists label – an impressive debut!) I immediately wrote to Connie – this was back in the Middle Bronze Age, before we did everything by email – and soon heard back. Indeed, she was the same Connie Crothers and delighted to hear from ATC.
John Halle Replies to David Finkel on Politics
by John Halle August 30, 2016 |
In his useful and perceptive review of Empowering Progressive Third Parties in the United States, David Finkel claims that I endorse the "ultra-left conclusion of historian Eric Chester’s True Mission that the concept of a national labor party has always been a ploy to keep labor ensnared and subordinate to the Democrats."
Daraya
by Leila Al Shami August 29, 2016 |
Four years following its liberation, the predominantly agricultural town of Daraya, strategically located near the capital, has fallen to the regime. A deal was reached to evacuate the 4,000-8,000 civilians remaining from a pre-uprising population of 300,000. The local fighters who defended their town so courageously will go to Idlib and join the resistance there.
Urgent call to stop Turkish massacres in Rojava and Northern Syria!
by Kurdish Women's Relation Office (REPAK) August 28, 2016 |
Anti-imperialism and the Syrian Revolution
What's At Stake in a Critical Test for the International Left
by Ashley Smith August 28, 2016 |
The Syrian Revolution has tested the left internationally by posing a blunt question: Which side are you on? Do you support the popular struggle against dictatorship and for democracy? Or are you with Bashar al-Assad's brutal regime, his imperial backer Russia, his regional ally Iran and Iran's proxies like Hezbollah from Lebanon?
Tragically, too many have failed this test.
Burkinis and Bombs – What’s New?
by Richard Greeman August 28, 2016 |
This essay was originally written as a letter to the editor of La Gazette de Montpelier. Translated from the French by Nancy Holmstrom.
As a retired American historian, specialized in French civilization, and for the past 20 a resident at the Mediterranean costal town of Palavers-les-Flots, permit me to remind the mayors of our beach towns as well as the Prime Minister of the Republic, of a little historic fact forgotten by those who make an affair of state of modest women who wish to remain covered when they take their children bathing at the beach. This practice is nothing new. It was in almost identical dress that my grandmother and my aunts went bathing around 1900, without anyone being scandalized. (see the attached photo). On the contrary, in that period and up to the 1960s, the girl who wanted to present herself (except on nudist beaches) in a bikini risked being reprimanded by the police and given a ticket – as happened to a woman in a burkini yesterday at Cannes.
Richard Seymour's "Corbyn": Not Gloomy Enough?
by Ian Birchall August 25, 2016 |
Richard Seymour, Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. New York: Verso, $19.95. 256pp.
This time last year I believed Jeremy Corbyn was wrong to stand for the Labour leadership; he would, I thought, get a derisory vote and merely reinforce right-wing hegemony and the marginalisation of the Labour left. Since then the unexpected has happened, and perhaps we should all be a bit cautious in pronouncing on what is and is not possible.
Spain: Podemos MP on understanding transversality
By Juan Antonio Gil de los Santos August 25, 2016 |
When the 15-M movement broke out onto the streets across Spain in 2011, it didn’t coalesce into a series of political parties on either end of the political spectrum. In fact, there was a common declaration that stood out among all of the indignados: “They don’t represent us”.
The Left Hook: The Marxism of Sidney Hook
by Doug Enna Greene August 22, 2016 |
I. Introduction
When the politics of Sidney Hook, a public intellectual and philosopher, are remembered today, they are generally associated with a right-wing variant of social democracy which was compatible with both neoconservatism and McCarthyism.
Young People Are Ready For A Third Party
by Dr. Barbara Ransby August 22, 2016 |
According to a recent GenForward survey by political scientist Cathy Cohen’s Black Youth Project, based at the University of Chicago, young people across the board, dissatisfied with both the Democrats and the Republicans, are eager for a fundamental political change. That is the good news.
Syria is the World: On the Failures of Leftist Internationalism
by Joey Ayoub August 22, 2016 |
“But then came Syria, and my hypocrisy and the fragility of those ideals became exposed,” wrote Palestinian activist Budour Hassan in her latest brilliant piece entitled “how the Syrian Revolution has transformed me”.
UAW backs Kurdish solidarity call
by Mik Sabiers August 19, 2016 |
Unite has welcomed the backing from the 400,000 strong US union, the UAW, for the freedom of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party who remains imprisoned in Turkey.
From Solidarity to Trump: White Working-Class Culture in the Rust Belt
by Michael McQuarrie August 19, 2016 |
Before embarking on my current career, I worked as a labor organizer, mostly in West Virginia and Ohio. In the course of doing that work, I probably did two thousand “housevisits” with people I was attempting to organize. The purpose of these meetings was to understand people’s motivations and interests in order to assess how they would vote in a union recognition election (as the union president once said to the organizers: “I don’t care if you lose, I care if you can’t count”) and assess their leadership potential for either the union’s organizing committee or for management’s anti-union efforts.
Wave of Occupations Marks Step Forward for Black Lives Matter
by Ashoka Jegroo August 12, 2016 |
Activists in New York City seeking to defund the police have successfully occupied City Hall Park for a week and seen one of their demands met with the resignation of Commissioner Bill Bratton. While blocking roads and highways has been the tactic of choice for Black Lives Matter since it gained national attention two years ago, the recent deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile have sparked the resurgence of a tactic many thought had been left behind in Zuccotti Park.
The DNC’s Right Realignment
by Elizabeth Mahony August 9, 2016 |
On July 26, concurrent to the Democratic National Convention’s star-studded attempt to make everybody forget everything that transpired during the primary, New York Mag published a great piece on the Florida senatorial race. What they call “the second-strangest campaign of the season” is worth reading about for a few reasons; because the general election might be able to defeat Marco Rubio’s mercurial reentry into national politics and hand a rare Florida win to the Democrats; because Alan Grayson — the $16-million-tax-haven owner, who, policywise, lands on the left wing of the Democratic Party — is great entertainment; and because Grayson’s primary rival, Patrick Murphy, is a quiet, but powerful, signal of where the Dems are headed.
To Beat Trump, Clinton Brings Back Triangulation and the Politics of Fear
by Arun Gupta August 7, 2016 |
The enduring cliche of the 2016 election is a comment by Trump that provokes outrage, rebukes, and the declaration: “He’s gone too far.”
The Toxic Games
by David Finkel August 5, 2016 |
Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy. By Dave Zirin. Updated Olympics edition. Haymarket Books, 2016. 238pp. + notes and index. $17.95 paperback.
I celebrated with great relief back on October 2, 2009, when my hometown Chicago was the first city eliminated by the International Olympic Committee from consideration for hosting the 2016 games. The scale of the pillage, cronyism and social cleansing that “Mayor One Percent” Rahm Emanuel would have inflicted in the name of preparing for the party was horrible to contemplate. And I wasn’t wrong, as reporter David Haugh has shown in his piece of bidder‘s remorse, “In retrospect, losing 2016 Olympics to Rio a big victory for Chicago” (http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/columnists/ct-haugh-olympics-spt-0803-20160802-column.html).
A Challenge to the Green Party on Syria
by Stanley Heller August 5, 2016 |
The uprising and fighting in Syria have gone on for over five years and your platform doesn’t say a word about it. Delegates to this weekend’s convention, how about adding these five sentences?
Thinking About the Election
Michael Albert and Stephen R. Shalom August 4, 2016 |
As the U.S. election season proceeds, there is controversy, confusion, consternation, and sometimes recrimination. Below, in a question and answer format, we present our views on these matters, hoping to contribute to the discussion.
Erdoğan’s Counter-Coup Coup
by Esen Uslu August 2, 2016 |
When I was writing the following lines two years ago, I was almost able to see the smirk on the face of some of my comrades who would subsequently read them:
A Call to Action: Walk Out from the Democratic National Convention!
by Kshama Sawant July 26, 2016 |
A serious and wide-ranging debate has been taking place among Sandernistas in the two weeks since Bernie endorsed Hillary. And now with the Democratic Convention underway, the unresolved questions become more pressing by the day.
The 1898 Invasion of Puerto Rico and the Emergence of U.S. Imperialism
by Carlos Rovira July 25, 2016 |
For the many people who have engaged in the struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence, July 25 has a special significance. On that date in 1898, U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico, beginning a period of U.S. colonial domination on the island that continues to this day. The United States invaded Puerto Rico, along with the Philippines, Guam and Cuba, in the setting of the Spanish-American War. That war was the opening of what would be the menacing role and predatory nature of the U.S. capitalist class in the Caribbean, Latin America and the entire world.
For Jill Stein and Independent Politics
by Solidarity National Committee July 25, 2016 |
Bernie Sanders’ campaign for a “political revolution” lit up the 2016 primary election season like a meteor across the sky. Contrary to conventional wisdom that he’d peak and fade early, Sanders’ challenge to the Democratic party machine lasted throughout the primaries. Surpassing all expectations, he won 23 primary and caucus contests, raised an astonishing $222 million almost exclusively in small donations, and gathered over 1800 pledged delegates.
1936: Revolution in Spain
by Andy Durgan July 25, 2016 |
On 18 July 1936, part of the Spanish army, backed by the upper classes and the Catholic church, rose up with the intention of ending the country’s experiment in democracy and social reform (the Second Republic 1931-6). The resulting civil war would be one of the pivotal events of the 20th century. For some it was the rehearsal for the Second World War, for others the “last great cause”.
Fight the Right, Bernie or Bust? Slogans and Strategies
by Dustin Guastella and Jared Abbott July 24, 2016 |
As the US primary season closes we are faced with a bitter choice between an uninspiring Democrat and a shockingly popular racist demagogue. As such, writers on the Left are bracing for the general election and lining up behind one of two supposed “strategies”: Fight the Right and Bernie or Bust.
Why the Movement for Black Lives Is Shutting Down DC and NYC Police Union Headquarters
by Aaron Morrison July 22, 2016 |
Activists affiliated with the Movement for Black Lives and Black Lives Matter staged a sit-in Wednesday at police union headquarters in Washington, D.C., and New York City, as part of an action to demand police accountability in excessive force cases.
The (Almost) Coup in Turkey
by Joe Kenehan July 20, 2016 |
People in Turkey are no strangers to military coups. Following more than twenty-five years of single-party rule after the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, a coup in 1960 toppled the government of the Democratic Party. In 1971, 1980, and 1997 the military either overthrew or deposed sitting governments.
What Is The Next Left?
by Johanna Brenner July 20, 2016 |
No To The Military Coup!
True democracy can arise only from the people’s own power!
by Başlangıç July 19, 2016 |
On the night of July 15, the Turkish society watched a military coup attempt, live on TV. For some it was so difficult to make sense of it that they chose to interpret the whole event as “staged”, being a member of a society inclined towards conspiracy theories. How could one call this a real military coup?
Et Tu, Bernie?
by Robert Scheer July 15, 2016 |
What an embarrassment for Bernie Sanders and those, myself included, who thought he would not descend so cravenly into the swamp of political sellout.
The Arab Winter as "Morbid Symptom"
by Farooq Sulehria July 15, 2016 |
Gilbert Achcar, Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising. Stanford: Stanford Univeristy Press, 2016. 240 pp. $21.95.
The title of Gilbert Achcar’s latest book is derived from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born, in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”.
Black Lives over Broken Windows
Challenging the Policing Paradigm Rooted in Right-Wing "Folk Wisdom"
by Andrea J. Ritchie July 14, 2016 |
When protesters developed a platform to end police violence in the wake of the 2014 police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the first of their 10 demands was to end “broken windows” policing, the law enforcement paradigm marked by aggressive policing of minor offenses and heavy police presence in low-income Black communities.1
The Democratic Wager: why the Left must support the Syrian Revolution
by Nick Evans July 13, 2016 |
Jules Alford and Andy Wilson (eds.) Khiyana. Daesh, the Left and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution. Essays by Muhhamad Idrees Ahmad, Javaad Alipoor, Leila Al-Shami, Mark Boothroyd, Joseph Daher and Shiar Neyo, Sam Charles Hamad, Bodour Hassan, Michael Karadjis, Louis Proyect, Eyal Zisser. London: Unkant, 2016. 278 pp.
After Dallas: The Struggle Continues
July 12, 2016 |
Statement of the Steering Committee of Solidarity, July 8, 2016
Last night, during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas called in response to the killings of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile, one or more snipers shot at least a dozen police officers. As of now, five are dead, as is at least one suspect in the shooting. Before his death in a standoff with police, the suspect indicated that he was upset with police shootings and with Black Lives Matter, and that he wanted to kill white people. He said he was working alone, and has no connection to Black Lives Matter or any other organized group. Our comrades in Dallas report that protesters were just as surprised and frightened as the police when the shooting started, and at least one protester was shot.
The Need for A Democratic Transformation of the Criminal Justice and Police System
July 12, 2016 |
Statement of the DSA National Political Committee Statement on the Killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the Dallas Police Officers (July 12, 2016)
Democratic Socialists of America condemns the recent police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. These are the latest in the endless taking of black lives by the excessive and precipitous use of deadly police force. Despite the increased attention to these arbitrary killings by the militant protest of #BlackLivesMatter, the deaths of Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and scores of others go unpunished.
Black Community: Something More Is Required Of Us Now
by Michelle Alexander |
I have struggled to find words to express what I thought and felt as I watched the videos of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile being killed by the police. Last night, I wanted to say something that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. It finally dawned on me that there is nothing to say that hasn’t been said before. As I was preparing to write about the oldness of all of this, and share some wisdom passed down from struggles of earlier eras, I heard on the news that 11 officers had been shot in Dallas, several killed from sniper fire. My fingers froze on the keys. I could not bring myself to recycle old truths. Something more is required. But what?
Why Bolivian Workers Are Marching Against Evo Morales
by Emily Achtenberg July 7, 2016 |
Over the past two weeks, thousands of factory workers, miners, teachers, and health care providers have mobilized and blocked roads in La Paz and Bolivia’s other departmental capitals to protest the firing of 1,000 state textile workers. The workers were abruptly dismissed last month, when Bolivian President Evo Morales announced the closure of Enatex, the state-run textile company.
Orlando: Making Sense of a Mass Killing
by Jean Batou July 6, 2016 |
What could have brought Omar Matten, on the night of June 12, 2016, to coldly murder 49 patrons at Pulse, an Orlando Florida nightclub that catered to a mostly Black and Latino, gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) clientele? Primarily, his hatred of the LGBT people and the people of color he befriended discreetly at night, a hatred fueled by the hyper-masculinity, homophobia, and racism of his day work environment. He was an employee of G4S, a giant private military contractor, infamous for abuses against immigrants.
June Surprise: Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt Upholds Abortion Rights Against Restrictive Texas Law
by Elizabeth Rapaport July 4, 2016 |
Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt is a consequential decision, although far from a decisive victory for abortion defenders. Hellerstedt strikes down a Texas law that would have made legal in-state abortion in practice all but unobtainable for poor and rural women. The decision contains a number of surprises that will hearten supporters of reproductive rights. Surprise number one is that the swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, contributed the fifth vote. Kennedy is hardly a reliable supporter of abortion rights; but with his vote the Hellerstedt majority would have been secure even if Justice Scalia had lived to cast his reliable anti abortion rights vote.
With Friends Like These...
by Michael Hirsch July 3, 2016 |
Doug Henwood, My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency. O/R Books, 2016. 200 pages. Paperback, $15.
In introducing his 1959 novel Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs wrote that its title “means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.”
Spain: The Two-Party System Still Hangs On
by Jaime Pastor July 1, 2016 |
With abstention up by 4% from the last parliamentary elections in the Spanish state on December 20, 2016 (69.84% participation against 73.2%), the results of what we might call a “second round”, with the right wing Popular Party (PP) increasing its number of votes (600,000 extra votes and 33% of voters) and its number of seats to 137 (against 123 previously), and a Socialist Party (PSOE) which, despite losing 100,000 votes (22.7% of voters) and five seats, remains the second biggest political force in the country.
Sherrl Yanowitz: 1942 – 2016
by Jonny Jones July 1, 2016 |
Sherrl Yanowitz, who has died aged 74, was a lifelong revolutionary socialist and anti-racist fighter.
Making sense of the Brexit tide of reaction and the reality of the racist vote
by Andrew Flood June 30, 2016 |
The Leave / Brexit vote in the referendum came in the end as a surprise, a narrow win for Remain was expected. This may be because the core Leave vote was in the run-down white working class communities of the now desolate English and Welsh industrial zones. A population trapped in conditions of long-term unemployment and poverty who no one really pays much attention to anymore.
Beyond Bernie: Still Not With Her
by Kshama Sawant June 29, 2016 |
Since the June 7 California primary, the historic upheaval that coalesced around Bernie Sanders’ campaign has continued to defy the demands of the political establishment, but has also increasingly turned into a search for the way forward. After a powerful, yearlong mass campaign over the hostile terrain of a rigged primary, our political revolution is at a crossroads.
BDS: Discussing Difficult Issues in a Fast-Growing Movement
by Omar Barghouti June 28, 2016 |
Israel’s attacks on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and other human rights defenders living under occupation, such as Al Haq staff, have dominated the headlines in recent weeks, including the direct threats made by leading Israeli officials against BDS activists and in particular against the movement’s co-founder Omar Barghouti.
Brexit: A Victory for the Populist Right
by Barry Finger June 25, 2016 |
The British electorate issued a stunning rebuke to the establishment by demanding, by a surprisingly respectable margin, withdrawal from the European Union. Just weeks ago, this outcome was considered remote. For David Cameron and the Conservative mainstream, it was – or so it seemed – a clever gamble. Let the nativists of the right, the Tory backbenchers and the UK Independence Party bigmouths test their outsized claims to speak for Britain.
The People's Summit, June 17-19, 2016, Chicago: Movements + Elections = Progress
by Nancy Romer June 22, 2016 |
Three thousand Bernie Sanders supporters from all over the US gathered in Chicago to share ideas, hear about each other’s movements, learn about becoming “down-ballot” candidates, and collectively grieve. The Summit started by acknowledging that the Bernie Sanders for President movement suffered a loss: he will, very likely, not be running for President of the United States in 2016, either on the Democratic Party ticket or any other. While the Summit celebrated the joy of the movement, having a candidate to actually believe in, the shared energy of working so hard on concrete tasks like phone banking and door-to-door canvassing, meeting new friends and building new alliances, the big question hanging over the crowd was “Where do we go from here?”
Evo’s Bolivia: Ten Years On
by Linda Farthing June 22, 2016 |
This article is based on a talk given at the Left Forum in New York City, May 21, 2016.
Evo Morales’ government has suffered two significant electoral setbacks in the past year and is currently mired in scandal, which has put its long term projections – planned for up to 2025 - into question. Why is one of the America’s most progressive government’s stumbling at this juncture?
After Bernie—Electoral Strategy for the Left in 2016
By Steve Bloom et al. June 19, 2016 |
Now that Donald Trump, an overt racist, has wrapped up the Republican nomination for U.S. President, a chorus of voices is proposing a “left strategy” which can “defeat Trump” by electing the more covert racist, Hillary Clinton, whom the Democratic Party will almost surely be nominating.
An Eight-Point Brief for LEV (lesser evil voting)
John Halle and Noam Chomsky June 18, 2016 |
Preamble: Among the elements of the weak form of democracy enshrined in the constitution, presidential elections continue to pose a dilemma for the left in that any form of participation or non participation appears to impose a significant cost on our capacity to develop a serious opposition to the corporate agenda served by establishment politicians. The position outlined below is that which many regard as the most effective response to this quadrennial Hobson’s choice, namely the so-called “lesser evil” voting strategy or LEV. Simply put, LEV involves, where you can, i.e. in safe states, voting for the losing third party candidate you prefer, or not voting at all. in competitive “swing” states, where you must, one votes for the “lesser evil” Democrat.
All Cops Are Bastards, Even The Gay Ones
by Bahar Mustafa January 16, 2016 |
The Stonewall riots kicked off in protest against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. Especially after Orlando, we should resist the co-optation of Gay Pride and instead remember the revolutionary spirit of the queer and trans militants who fought against oppression and violence against them.
Third Camp Politics: An Interview with Phyllis and Julius Jacobson
by Kent Worcester June 16, 2016 |
[This interview was originally published in Left History, vol. 18, no. 1 (2014).]
Phyllis Jacobson (1922-2010) and Julius Jacobson (1922-2003) were socialist activists in New York City from the mid-1930s through the first years of the twenty-first century. They were members of a radical generation that came of age during the great depression and embraced the language of socialism, communism, and Marxism. They were also the children of working class Jewish immigrants who grew up in the city’s outer boroughs. For their parents, the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the general strikes and mass uprisings that convulsed many countries after the war were all recent events. The near collapse of the global economy in the early 1930s confirmed for many of their cohort the basic assumption that capitalism was inherently impermanent. Adopting a socialist outlook in a period characterized by social upheaval and economic crisis was easy; the challenge had to do with selecting a suitable group or tendency from a fissiparous menu of options.
Orlando: We Will Not Be Silenced
by Gemma Short June 15, 2016 |
On Sunday 12 June, 49 people were murdered in an LGBT club in Orlando, Florida, in the largest mass shooting in US history.
At around 2am the attacker Omar Mateen entered the Pulse nightclub and opened fire; shortly after he took a number of people hostage, barricading them and himself in a bathroom. Police used an armoured vehicle to demolish the wall into the bathroom, before engaging in a gun battle in which Mateen was killed. 53 more people were injured in the attack. The victims ranged from 20 to 50 years old, and were apparently overwhelmingly from black and Latino communities.
Imperialism’s Junior Partners
by Patrick Bond June 13, 2016 |
On May 12, Brazil's democratic government, led by the Workers’ Party (PT), was the victim of a coup. What will the other BRICS countries (Russia, India, China, and South Africa) do? Will they stand by as the reactionaries who took power in Brasilia pivot closer to Western powers, glad to warm Dilma Rousseff's seat at the BRICS summit in Goa, India in five months’ time? Or take a stronger line, following the lead of Latin American progressive countries (Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and El Salvador)?
International Call to Support the People of Puerto Rico
United Against the Junta June 12, 2016 |
International Call to Struggle and for Solidarity against the Imposition of the Oversight Board (Junta) in Puerto Rico
We invite the international community and the Puerto Rican diaspora to join us in struggle and solidarity with Puerto Rico’s present situation.
2016 UFT election results: Some Good News, But A Great Deal Of Work Still To Do
by Kit Wainer June 9, 2016 |
The good news is that the MORE/New Action slate won the seven seats on the UFT Executive Board elected by high school teachers. Furthermore, voter turnout increased across the board from roughly 18% in 2013 to roughly 24% in 2016. Finally, the absolute number of votes for the opposition increased in every division. However, still less than one-quarter of UFT members participated in this election. And the slight increase in voter turnout benefited the ruling Unity caucus at least as much as it benefited MORE/New Action.
Strong headwinds are making France a stormy sea
by Léon Crémieux June 7, 2016 |
“The 49-3 is a brutality. The 49-3 is a denial of democracy.” Despite François Hollande’s opinions on this article of the French constitution in 2006, his government under Manuel Valls (who had himself been among the MPs proposing it be suppressed in 2008) used it to force through the unpopular law proposed by Minister for Labour Myriam El Khomri on May 10. This provoked an immediate reaction from the coordinating committee of workers’ and students unions calling days of national mobilisation and strikes on May 12, May 17, May 19, to continue on May 26 and June 14. [1]
Media Blackout As France Witnesses Biggest Revolution In 200 Years
by Sean Adl-Tabatabai June 7, 2016 |
As France prepare to host millions of visitors at the Euro 2016 Football Championships, a state of emergency has been extended in the country as it faces its largest protests in recent history.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens have taken to the streets in France, amounting to what some are calling the new French Revolution amid a total media blackout in Western news outlets.
Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Muhammad Ali
by Reginald Wilson May 7, 2016 |
I grew up in the Great Depression era and so I grew up with Joe Louis. That was my marker. If you walked down the street when he was having a fight, every radio in every house was tuned to that fight. You could hear the fight walking down the street, literally. So, of course, Blacks were very proud of him.
And certainly having Joe Louis as the heavyweight champion you felt thrilled on the one hand, but on the other hand you felt ashamed because he was a very humble man and didn't push against the barriers, which were much stronger then, of course. Still we thought that with his fame, he might have pushed harder against those barriers.
An Open Letter from Jill Stein to California Voters
All Hands on Deck! Two Ways To Build The Revolution in the CA Primary
by Jill Stein June 7, 2016 |
California voters have a chance to put us on the road to revolutionary change in the June 7 primary.
At this historic moment, as voters reject the Clinton and Trump campaigns with record high levels of dislike and mistrust, I ask not just for your vote for me, but also for your vote for Bernie. These votes are powerfully synergistic as we build an historic grassroots movement and a political vehicle to carry it forward.
The End of Europe
by Enzo Traverso June 4, 2016 |
The process of European unification is undergoing a deep crisis, certainly the deepest since it started at the beginning of the 1950s. In less than a year, the EU faced two major tests—first the Greek quarrel, then the refugee crisis — that revealed its true face: a mixture of impotence, unwillingness, egoism, arrogance and cynicism. It is not a pretty spectacle. No illusions can remain about this entity that, far from embodying the federal ideal, has become an empty shell, an object of shame and deserved sarcasm. Those who still ritually proclaim its virtues are the representatives of a highly discredited political elite who seem to no longer have any culture or values. The more they assert their belief in the EU, the more they disqualify it, even in the eyes of the millions of people who have never felt any sympathy for conservatism, nationalism and xenophobia.
Little Insurrections: A fond farewell to New York’s Peace Pentagon
By Frida Berrigan June 4, 2016 |
Nearly 20 years ago, as I left the War Resisters League, or WRL, offices in lower Manhattan for the first time, I noticed that my fingertips were covered in black soot and ink. My hands were full of tracts and leaflets, and I had been looking through nonviolence training materials for the last hour. I tried to rub the dirt off onto my jeans, but it wouldn’t budge and later even soap and water had to work really hard.
The Left of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) Unites to Form Platform A
by Platform A May 30, 2016 |
This is a translation of a statement by the Left Tendencies of the French New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) that are grouped under Platform A, originally published in La Izquierda Diario on January 27, 2016.
In the indicative vote taken at the NPA’s National Political Council meeting, the platform of the left tendencies came in first with 45% of the vote, beating those presented by François Sabado and Olivier Besancenot (38%) and Alain Krivine and Philippe Poutou (16%).
The NPA National Conference confirms the decision of its Third Congress [January 2015] to present an NPA candidate in the presidential elections. The text that follows defines the political framework of this candidacy.
This Is What Insurgency Looks Like
by Jeremy Brecher May 29, 2016 |
In a small church in the Albany, New York's low-income, predominantly African-American South End, forty people were gathered for a community meeting. They were organizing a protest against trains carrying potentially explosive oil -- dubbed by the residents "bomb trains" -- that were running through their neighborhood. City Counselor Vivian Kornegay told the group that many municipalities had opposed the bomb trains and other dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure, but had little power to protect their residents; it was up to a "people's movement" to do so. "What we want is for all of us to be free, healthy, and safe -- and for our planet to be a better place to live."
The French Stand Up
by Richard Greeman May 28, 2016 |
[Montpellier, May 26, 2016] “We’ve had enough” is the phrase on everyone’s lips as – against all expectations -- the wave of strikes, blockades, disruptions and mass demonstrations begun eleven days ago continues to develop throughout France. Indeed, in the past couple of days, two new strategic groups of workers have joined the protest. Technicians at France’s nuclear power plants are now cutting back on production of electricity, and the railroad workers have massively joined the street protests while cutting back on trains. Meanwhile, there are long lines at the gas pumps as petroleum workers continue to blockade France’s major oil refineries.
Brazil: the coup d’état – After the 1964 tragedy, the sad 2016 farce
by Michael Löwy May 23, 2016 |
Let’s call a spade a spade. What has just happened in Brazil, with the dismissal of the elected president, Dilma Rousseff, is a coup. A coup which is pseudo-legal, “constitutional”, “institutional”, parliamentary, anything you want, but a coup all the same.
New Jersey anti-BDS bill is an affront to the first amendment and basic human rights
by Stephen R. Shalom May 22, 2016 |
On May 9, 2016, the New Jersey State Senate approved by a vote of 39-0 S1923, a bill prohibiting the investment of state pension and annuity funds in companies that boycott Israel or Israeli businesses. One of the bill's sponsors was liberal stalwart and Democratic Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg. Among the co-sponsors were Democratic Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Republican Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. There is a similar bill in the Assembly, A925, still in committee. [Update: The bill was released by the Assembly committee on May 19, 2016.] Both bills are an affront to basic principles of human rights that many NJ liberals seem to support everywhere else in the world except when it comes to Israel-Palestine. And both bills are an affront as well to the First Amendment.
What’s Left of the Lesser Evil?: A Foreign Policy Critique
by Bryant Sculos and Maylin Hernandez May 21, 2016 |
The Question of the Lesser Evil
In a recent article for Counterpunch, Gary Leupp details the long history of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy record and concludes with the question: is the possibility of her winning the general election in November 2016 really that much less frightening than the possibility that Donald Trump does? Here, we want to explore a potential answer to that question.
The Foreign Policies of Sanders, Trump, and Clinton: America and the World In 2016 and Beyond
by Joanne Landy May 20, 2016 |
[This article will appear in the Summer 2016 issue of New Politics. Corrections since it was initially posted have been included.]
The world today is faced with crises on virtually every front, and any assessment of the foreign policy positions of the two major parties’ 2016 presidential candidates must be measured against how well they respond to these crises.
Women of DIP (Turkey) Persecuted
by Women of DIP May 18, 2016 |
Dear Comrades and Friends,
Six women members of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (DIP) of Turkey are being persecuted for their activity around the International Working Women’s Day. They are now being tried in court for support to and propaganda of terrorism simply because they have expressed solidarity with Kurdish women brazenly repressed and humiliated by security forces.
Borders: Refugees and Responders
by Dan Leahy May 14, 2016 |
This talk was given at the Washington State Council of Fighters Educational Convention for 350 Delegates in Spokane, Washington, on April 20, 2016.
True Confession: I’ve Lost that Bernie Feeling
by Michael Hirsch May 5, 2016 |
I’m not feeling the Bern anymore. The Bern has gone away. The Bern has turned to heartburn, if not yet reflux.
Challenges Facing the Left in Spain
by Dan La Botz and Hector Grad May 1, 2016 |
Podemos, meaning “We Can,” is one of the most exciting developments taking place on the left in Europe today. For years politics in Spain had been dominated by two parties: the conservative the People’s Party (Partido Popular or PP), headed by Mariano Rajoy, and the Socialist Workers Party of Spain (PSOE), led by Pedro Sánchez. But, in the last election held in December of 2015, the new left party Podemos won five million votes, fundamentally votes by the lower classes against the economic elites and their austerity plans. That represents 20% of the electorate, and 69 out of 350 seats in the house of deputies.[1]
C.L.R. James and the Race Question
A New Politics Forum
April 30, 2016 |
On March 25, 2016, New Politics sponsored a forum centered on its release of a never-before-published lecture by Afro-Trinidadian socialist C.L.R. James on Oliver Cox’s Caste, Class and Race.
Statement of Purpose for the Alliance of Syrian and Iranian Socialists
by the Alliance of Syrian and Iranian Socialists April 27, 2016 |
Five years after the beginning of the popular Syrian Revolution which demanded democracy and human rights, the Syrian revolutionaries have been decimated through the combined military force of the Assad Regime, the Iranian regime with its sectarian militias, Russian air strikes and military assistance on the one hand, and the ultra-terrorist ISIS and other Salafist – Jihadist organizations on the other hand. Nevertheless a partial reduction of airstrikes by Russia and the Assad regime in early March led to an immediate revival of mass protests of the democratic opposition across the country with banners such as the following in Idlib: “Our peaceful revolution is still in progress until toppling Assad and imposing justice all over Syria.”
International Conference of Agrarian Reform: Marabá Declaration
Who are we? People who struggle for territory
by La Vía Campesina April 27, 2016 |
(Marabá, April 17, 2016) We are more than 130 representatives of La Via Campesina member organizations and allies from four continents, 10 regions and 28 countries of the world. We are here in Marabá, Pará, Brazil, to analyze, reflect and continue our collective processes to develop our ideas, proposals, and alternative projects for confronting the offensive of global capital against the peoples and natural goods of the countryside, coasts and seas. More than anything, we come together to struggle for our territories, and for a different kind of society.
Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Interview with Daniel Tanuro, Ecosocialist
by Daniel Tanuro April 25, 2016 |
More than 130 of the leaders of the world’s nations are about to sign the Paris agreement on climate change. New Politics had the opportunity to interview Daniel Tanuro, the founder of Climate and Social Justice, a Belgian based environmental organization and author of Green Capitalism: Why it Can't Work. Tanuro’s writings on ecosocialism are well known to those in the European ecosocialist movements. New Politics co-editor Dan La Botz had an opportunity to interview Tanuro about the Paris agreement at the Swiss Solidarity Spring University.
Detroit Chassis in Avon averts strike by accepting temp workers in union
by Olivera Perkins April 24, 2016 |
AVON, Ohio – Less than a day before temporary workers at the Detroit Chassis plant on Chester Industrial Parkway were scheduled to strike, the company agreed to their request to join a union.
The plant is staffed by about 60 workers – all of them temps -- who make between $9.50 and $11.50 an hour, according to workers helping with the organizing effort to have the UAW represent them. The workers want permanent full-time employment and better wages and benefits. Their duties include assembling axles for the F-650 and F-750 trucks being made at Ford's Ohio Assembly Plant in nearby Avon Lake.
Impeachment and Rural Violence: Two Faces of the Same Class Struggle
João Pedro Stedile April 17, 2016 |
The vote on impeachment, which is in a decisive week, makes clear the interests of the ruling classes and their inclination to reverse the losses from the global economic crisis. It is the class struggle carried out in government offices.
The Left's Failure on Syria
by Louis Proyect April 13, 2016 |
On February 27th of this year, an article appeared by scholar and journalist Idrees Ahmad titled “Aleppo is our Guernica — and some are cheering on the Luftwaffe,” a timely analogy with the Spanish Civil War.
The Tightening Vise in Turkey
by Joe Kenehan April 8, 2016 |
On March 11, 2016, a Turkish prosecutor dropped a complaint against officials for failing to take adequate security measures both before and after the bombing of a peace rally in Ankara that killed more than 100 on October 10, 2015. Two days later, suicide bombers struck in Turkey’s capital city for the third time in five months. A car bomb was exploded in the downtown neighborhood of Kızılay, killing 36 and injuring many more. As with other recent attacks, the government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) quickly suggested the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was responsible for the attack.
Q & A with Angela Walker, Socialist Party USA candidate for Vice-President
by Jim Brash April 7, 2016 |
TNS: First question, why were you chosen to be Mimi Soltysik’s running mate?
Mimi reached out to me about the campaign following my run for County Sheriff in Milwaukee. He said that he’d followed my campaign and really liked the fact that we took a very grassroots, people-centered approach. He felt that I would make a good running mate based on work I was involved in in Milwaukee, and the fact that I ran for sheriff unapologetically as a socialist.
The Case of Kumar Gunaratnam: Democracy is at Stake
by Sumanasiri Liyanage April 5, 2016 |
The case of Kumar Gunaratnam (KG) is a typical example of justice turning into its opposite. The Kegalle magistrate gave his verdict on March 31 imposing one year imprisonment and Rs. 50,000 fine on Kumar Gunaratnam for violation of immigration law, i.e., overstaying visa.
It appears to be a simple technical issue. Mr. Noel Mudalige, an Australian citizen, was granted visitor visa to enter Sri Lanka. After a month, he refused to go back and expressed his willingness to stay in Sri Lanka even requesting dual visa status as a first step. He was arrested and the police filed a case against him for defying immigration law of Sri Lanka. Hence, one may argue that the verdict given by the Magistrate is absolutely valid and legal. However, the real story behind this case has revealed time and again the true nature of the Sri Lankan democracy in its neoliberal phase.
Questions to Oklahoma Green Party about Its Endorsement of Bernie Sanders
by Jim Brash March 28, 2016 |
Interview by Jim Brash of North Star Editorial Board, February 26, 2016
Questions posed to Rachel Jackson, State Facilitator, Green Party Oklahoma Cooperative Council about their endorsement of Bernie Sanders
1. Is the endorsement of Bernie a tactical move?
Our endorsement of Bernie Sanders in the Oklahoma Democratic Primary accomplishes two goals: 1.) to find a way to participate electorally given our state’s repressive ballot access laws, and 2.) to build a base to strengthen our efforts to reform those ballot access laws.
Should Cuba Remain a One-Party State?
by Samuel Farber March 27, 2016 |
The one-party state is a very controversial question that few of the left-wing critics of the Cuban regime have been willing to address. What follows is an attempt to explore, from the left, some of the issues around this topic.
Towards Progressive Politics in the Middle East
Problematica in conversation with Gilbert Achcar
Abbas Shahrabi Farahani and Gilbert Achcar March 24, 2016 |
Recent mass movements in Middle Eastern and North African countries, despite their defeats and failures, showed prospects and possibilities of a progressive change or a progressive mass organization in the region. Fulfillment of these possibilities requires concentrating on attaining a comprehensive, critical knowledge of the region’s social, political, economic and cultural mechanisms and relations. To achieve these initial goals, Problematica has started a series of interviews with progressive or leftist Middle Eastern and North African intellectuals, activist and MENA scholars. In this interview over Skype, we have put some questions to Gilbert Achcar, Marxist intellectual and scholar of Middle East Studies and Professor of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. He has published in 2013 The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising. A sequel will be coming out soon under the title of Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising.
On the Brussels Attacks
by International Viewpoint March 24, 2016 |
The following statement was made by the Revolutionary Communist League-Socialist Workers Party (LCR-SAP) of Belgium following the attacks in Brussels.
The LCR-SAP condemns in the most energetic fashion the cowardly terrorist attacks that were perpetrated on 22 March in Brussels. No political or religious motivation can be an excuse for these heinous crimes. The LCR-SAP expresses its support and its profound solidarity with all the innocent victims of this blind violence.
Sanders and the Democrats: a Reply to Jason Schulman
by Barry Finger March 21, 2016 |
There is much to admire and learn from in Jason Schulman’s article “Bernie Sanders and the Dilemma of the Democratic ‘Party.’,” not least of which is Jason’s implicit insistence that the base of any future American left is composed of people who are currently in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and in its best elements represented by the Sanders’ insurgency. Obvious as this might be to readers of New Politics, this is still a disputed opinion on the radical left in America. We – Jason and I – both look forward to that movement developing a breakaway consciousness as it confronts an implacable Democratic establishment proudly wedded to the status quo.
New York City Has the Power to Do Better than de Blasio’s Housing Plan
by Samuel Stein March 20, 2016 |
On Tuesday, March 22, the New York City Council is expected to pass Mayor Bill de Blasio’s housing and zoning plan, which permanently ties the creation of a relatively small amount of not-that-affordable housing to the massive co-production of luxury housing.[i] It is being sold as the best we can do with the tools that we have. It is not. Instead, it puts to work the most lucrative and least effective tools available, and locks the city into repeated cycles of gentrification and displacement.
Mexican Education: A Mere Simulation
by Robert Joe Stout March 19, 2016 |
Like many countries trying to wedge their way into economic prosperity Mexico has affirmed an emphasis on education but in practice has negated its importance. Recently passed constitutional reforms relegate educators to temporary employment controlled by the federal government and private investors who have little or no interest in universal coverage or academic excellence. A huge portion of federal money designed for education goes to administrative personnel and is not subject to audit.
In Oaxaca, Teachers Won’t Give Up the Fight
by Eric Larson March 19, 2016 |
Oaxaca’s education workers build on the struggles of 2006 to fight corporate-driven education reforms.
Ten years ago, one of the most radical unions in the hemisphere, the Sección XXII of Mexico’s National Education Workers’ Union (SNTE), led a vibrant movement against the state governor’s heavy-handed rule in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
How to Put America Back to Work
by Jean SmilingCoyote March 17, 2016 |
For most of human history, people could directly get from Nature the resources they needed to survive. It was your skill in hunting, fishing, gathering, and sometimes farming that earned your living. People could even leave their group permanently for unoccupied land. Now, a cordon of laws and landowners stands in the way of people who need these natural resources. It is one’s success in pleasing the powerful people which gets one money to use to buy these resources, including a secure shelter of one’s own. These people pretend to represent Nature in selecting who is fit to survive and who isn’t. Because they don’t use Nature’s rules, they make wrong choices. We are all trapped in the money economy. Even the bush pilots serving the remote villages of Alaskan subsistence hunters, bring supplies from the money economy of the outside world.
Protest Against Closing Down the Lukács Archive!
by Zsuzsa Hermann March 14, 2016 |
[This petition was sent to us by Zsuzsa Hermann. György Lukács (1885-1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, aesthetician, literary historian and critic. Best known for his essay collection History and Class Consciousness (1923), he initiated the tradition of "Western Marxism." In 1919 he was the Hungarian Minister of Culture of the government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (March–August 1919).]
‘Dalit movement has to see itself as part of a class-wide movement’
by Vivek Chibber March 8, 2016 |
Reservation is an issue that only affects a small proportion of Dalits, says sociologist Vivek Chibber.
The ferment on campuses across the country following Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the recent crackdown on free speech at Jawaharlal Nehru University have drawn international attention, with many academics, students and activists across the world expressing solidarity.
Long Live the Syrian Revolution!
by Stephen R. Shalom March 7, 2016 |
When the head of al-Nusra declared back in November that the Free Syrian Army didn't exist, journalist Rami Jarrah went to north Aleppo and asked people what they thought about that and found that despite the claims of al-Nusra and some leftists who should know better, the FSA was still around.
Berta Cáceres: ‘We are being targeted’
by Geraldina Colotti March 7, 2016 |
“We are being targeted for contract killing ordered by the judiciary and the armed forces. Our lives are hanging by a thread.”
Sandy Boyer, International Socialist, R.I.P.
Determination in the Cause of Justice
by Joan McKiernan March 6, 2016 |
[Sandy Boyer, a veteran socialist, radical journalist and treasured contributor to Socialist Worker and New Politics (see his review in our current issue), died last month after a short illness. Joan McKiernan, a longtime comrade and friend, offered this tribute to Sandy that speaks so well for all of us at NP and SocialistWorker.org.]
SANDY BOYER, socialist fighter, died last week. His death is a loss to all the working-class struggles and the social justice movements in the U.S., Ireland and, indeed, the world that he was involved in.
Whether it was Teamsters or teachers in the U.S., political prisoners in Ireland, Puerto Rican independence activists, Palestinian solidarity campaigners or the Black Lives Matter movement, Sandy was tirelessly exercising his brilliant organizing skills on their behalf.
Navigating The Storm
Countering the Confederate "Spring": the Assault on Black Political Power in Jackson, MS
by Kali Akuno March 4, 2016 |
France's New Anti-Capitalist Party, Seven Years Later: Project, Reality, Questions
by Pierre Rousset February 29, 2016 |
The following piece was written for Kojkkino, the theoretical magazine of the Greek organization DEA. Though quite long, it does not claim to cover all sides of the question. Indeed, it’s the kind of article that is never really finished and that has to be constantly reworked and supplemented. Its main objective is to stimulate collective thinking about the lessons of the successes and failures of the NPA from its birth to the present day.
Radical Left organizations in Europe have tended to focus their attention on the major political and electoral experiences that have stood out in the recent period – beginning with Syriza in Greece, Podemos in the Spanish State and the Left Bloc in Portugal, and often also including Die Linke in Germany, Rifondazione Comunista in Italy, the Red-Green Alliance in Denmark (RGA) and others. This is entirely justified. Still, other attempts at “doing something new” merit analysis, even where their successes were fewer or shorter-lived. They provide food for thought about a broader range of national contexts.
Help Needed to Produce Rosa Luxemburg's Complete Works
by the Editorial Board of Rosa Luxemburg: Compelete Works February 28, 2016 |
The effort to issue The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg has reached a critical phase, and we appeal for your help in enabling future volumes to be published.
The Complete Works was inaugurated in March 2011 with the 600-page Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, the largest collection of her correspondence ever published in English. Volume I of the Complete Works, entitled Economic Writings 1, was published in 2013 and contains the first full English translation of one of her most important books, Introduction to Political Economy, as well as eight newly-discovered manuscripts on anthropology, economic history, and the theory of crises. Volume II, entitled Economic Writings 2, was published in 2015 and contains a new translation of The Accumulation of Capital and the Anti-Critique.
#FeelTheBe…trayal?
by Bryant Sculos February 28, 2016 |
A while ago, I wrote a piece here that, among other things, argued that if Bernie Sanders were to lose the Democratic primary he should not, as he has promised several times to do, support Hillary Clinton for President. Many people on the Left, most recently Chris Hedges in an article for Truthdig, have argued that this promise makes Sanders a wolf-in-sheep’s clothing for the Left, and that he will inevitably betray the movement supporting him and the ideals he has campaigned on. For Hedges and others, this promise (along with running as a Democrat) is precisely why the Left should not be supporting Sanders and his campaign at all. While I disagree with Hedges that we should not support Sanders because of this promise, we should absolutely be wary of the likely possibility that he will keep this terrible promise; Sanders if anything has a tendency to keep his word. This is what he is known for, after all—being the rare honest politician.
Liberal Red-Baiting
by Doug Henwood February 27, 2016 |
The Sanders campaign has certainly sharpened the contradictions, hasn’t it? It’s been very clarifying to see Hillary Clinton and her surrogates running against single-payer and free college, with intellectual cover coming from Paul Krugman and Vox. Expectations, having been systematically beaten down for 35 years, must be beaten down further, whether it’s Hillary saying that to go to college one needs some “skin in the game,” or Rep. John Lewis reminding us that nothing is free in America. A challenge from the left has forced centrist Democrats to reveal themselves as proud capitalist tools.
Let Them Drink Salt Water
by Andrew Smolski and Jason Allen February 24, 2016 |
“Emphasizing with serious concern the urgent need to address the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels”
- Paris Agreement, 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties
The Stockholm Resilience Center, an internationally recognized research center on sustainability, considers Earth to have nine planetary boundaries. Staying within these boundaries is key to species survival and ecological sustainability. One of the boundaries is climate change, which is forecasted to produce high global sea level rise. The effect will be that coastal life in general for the species will be highly degraded.
Can a Woman Worker Become Mayor of Juarez, Mexico?
by Kent Paterson February 23, 2016 |
Antonia Hinojos Hernandez is in a race against time. Known to her friends as “Tonita,” the Ciudad Juarez mayoral hopeful has until March 7 to gather nearly 30,000 signatures from eligible voters so her name can appear on the June ballot as an independent candidate.
A former line worker at a border assembly plant, or maquiladora, Hinojos does not have the infrastructure of a political party, lacks money to pay signature collectors and is missing the endorsements of influential people and media outlets.
An Open Letter to Rep. John Lewis
by Douglas Williams February 16, 2016 |
Representative Lewis,
Yesterday, you stated the following about Bernie Sanders’s record on fighting for civil rights in the 1960s:
“I never saw him. I never met him. I was chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for three years, from 1963 to 1966. I was involved with the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, the march from Selma to Montgomery and directed (the) voter education project for six years. But I met Hillary Clinton. I met President (Bill) Clinton.”
We are going to ignore the fact that Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl, or that you once stated to a Clinton biographer that, “[t]he first time I ever heard of Bill Clinton was the 1970s,” or that it has already been well-established that Sanders worked with the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) at the University of Chicago in the 1960s. We are also going to leave aside the fact that every mention of Bill Clinton in your book Walking With The Wind described an instance that he opposed some policy that you cherished.
Instead, we are going to talk about another person that you never saw or met.
#BlackLivesMatter and #Fightfor15
by Stephanie Luce February 12, 2016 |
It may be that in 20 or 30 years we will look back to 2015 as the year that things really began to change in the U.S. This was the year we saw the intersection of the movement for higher wages and Black Lives Matter really begin to crystalize.
Sanders, Strategy and "The Left": Behind the Fist Pump
by John Halle February 12, 2016 |
Bernie Sanders’s dropping the hammer on Clinton’s cozying up to the vile genocidaire Henry Kissinger was one of the fist pump moments of the campaign. That’s recognized by pretty much everyone now, so I don’t need to say much about it here.
Adolph Reed on Sanders, Coates, and Reparations
by Adolph Reed February 5, 2016 |
The following is a segment from Doug Henwood‘s Behind the News, January 21, 2016. Henwood is interviewing Adolph Reed. Audio link here.
DH: We’ve got Ta-Nehisi Coates citing the call for reparations and finding Sanders guilty of hostility towards reparations. What do you think of his critique?
AR: I read the thing in The Atlantic and it’s so utterly empty and beside the point, I can’t even characterize it.
The Flint Disaster: Why Doesn’t Black Health Matter?
by H. Jack Geiger, MD February 3, 2016 |
The lead-poisoning disaster in Flint, Michigan is more than a shocking public health failure. It is an assault on human rights – a recognition that has been largely absent from most discussions of how and why this could have happened in the advanced industrial democracy of the United States. It is arguably the largest discrete violation of its type since the infamous and grossly unethical Tuskegee syphilis medical study of the last century. The water poisoning in Flint was finally forced into official recognition by a brave and stubborn pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, who documented what was really happening to Flint’s vulnerable children and other residents.
Is an Injury to One an Injury to All? Some Critical Thoughts on Trade-Union Internationalism Today
By Katy Fox-Hodess January 29, 2016 |
The necessity of working-class internationalism must surely be one of the left’s most invoked truisms, providing the semblance of a solution to the problems facing embattled workers and governments of the left. But too often the concept is deployed in vague, even contentless ways. The global economic crisis has put the issue of ‘internationalism’ into greater focus – particularly, perhaps, in Europe, where political and monetary union is in question as never before.
Film Review: The Price We Pay
by Michael Hirsch January 28, 2016 |
The figure of a gryphon, the legendary feral, clawed, winged creature that nests above the one-square mile City of London, Britain’s financial industry (akin to Wall Street, but with its own legal authority, too) is an apt symbol for an untrammeled center of global capital. A creature of prey, it is redolent as the guardian of ill-gotten, even murderous gain. What else is the financial center of the United Kingdom, which introduced the tax-free zone that modeled capital flight around the world? The City predates the Cayman Islands or Switzerland as tranches for tax avoidance and is a main locus for starving the welfare state.
We Are All Flint
Statement from SxSW Experiment January 28, 2016 |
In Flint, Michigan children … and their families, too … have been systematically poisoned by water adulterated with high levels of lead as the result of the state’s gross negligence and wanton disregard of the health, safety and welfare of the people.
Ending Anti-Black State Violence
Opal Tometi January 18, 2016 |
In 1992, the world witnessed African American Rodney King being brutally beaten by Los Angeles policemen. In 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Black immigrant from Guinea, was shot 19 times by five New York City policemen outside his apartment. Sean Bell was shot to death by NYPD in 2006 on the morning of his wedding. And just in 2014, Officer Darren Wilson murdered Mike Brown in broad daylight in the city of Ferguson, Missouri.
Ellen Meiksins Wood: A Marxist who put Class at the Center of Her Analysis
By Andrew Coates January 15, 2016 |
Ellen Meiksins Wood, the wife of former Canadian New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent, has died of cancer at the couple’s Ottawa home at the age of 73.
She was a noted intellectual figure on the international Left, whose studies of class, politics and political ideas influenced several generations of thinkers and activists.
What’s At Issue in the Siege of Madaya: Mass Starvation, or a Few Fake Pics?
By Michael Karadjis January 14, 2016 |
Throughout the world, people have been shocked by the scenes of starving people in the Madaya concentration camp in southern Syria, besieged by the Assad regime and its allied death-squad Hezbollah (which has invaded Syria from Lebanon). Some 40,000 people are trapped, besieged and starved as a weapon of war by the dictatorship which has used every conceivable means to maintain its power over the last five years; people are reported to be eating grass, insects and cats and dogs.
Yet it appears that the main task confronting leftists – i.e., opponents of exploitation, oppression and injustice, advocates of a “another world is possible” – is once again to find whatever excuses, whatever obfuscation, whatever mitigation they can on behalf of the tyrannical fascist regime responsible.
The End of Progressive Hegemony and the Regressive Turn in Latin America: The End of a Cycle?
By Massimo Modonesi January 13, 2016 |
We offer the following translation in the wake of the legislative elections in Venezuela on December 6, 2015 which saw the right-wing Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (Democratic Unity Roundtable, MUD) decisively seize control of the National Assembly from the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV), and the recent election to the Argentine presidency of conservative candidate Mauricio Macri, formerly the neoliberal mayor of Buenos Aires, who defeated the Kirchnerist candidate Daniel Scioli, a figure himself on the Right of Peronism. The present essay by Massimo Modonesi was written prior to those events, but it grapples with a question that has only become more pressing in their aftermath: Whither Latin America?
U.S. Workers & Puerto Rico's Crisis
by Rafael Bernabe January 12, 2016 |
PUERTO RICO HAS been in the news lately, particularly the financial news. The possibility that its government may default on part of its $73 billion public debt has drawn the attention of Wall Street analysts. The New York Times has deemed the situation worthy of several editorials.
The Truth About Charlie: One Year after the 7 January Attacks
By Karima Bennoune January 8, 2016 |
Two French Islamist gunmen of Algerian descent entered a newspaper office in Paris a year ago today and gunned down a generation of Europe’s greatest political cartoonists – many from an anarchist, anti-racist tradition – along with their co-workers and those protecting them, who also included people of Algerian descent. In case anyone is confused about the politics of this – it was a far right attack on the left.
"What we've achieved so far": An Interview with Jeremy Corbyn
By Hilary Wainwright and Leo Panitch January 2, 2016 |
Leo: Your remarkable campaign for the leadership not only doubled the party membership but galvanised some 400,000 people overall to associate with the party. This is frankly unheard of anywhere in terms of party mobilisation on the left in recent decades. What do you think this reflects about the possibilities for a new politics, not only in Britain but more broadly – especially in Europe?
Jeremy: I think our campaign excited people who were very depressed by the election result and very depressed by the analysis that was being offered at the end of it, which was essentially that Labour wasn’t managerial enough and we had to be better managers in order to do better in the future. I only really got on the ballot paper because of a combination of people – from those who just absolutely wanted an alternative to be put, to those who thought that there ought to be a democratic debate in the party. This kicked off the social media campaign that encouraged others to get involved.
Connecting Anti-Austerity and Climate Justice Policies
By Asbjørn Wahl December 26, 2016 |
Humanity is currently faced with a number of deep and challenging crises: economic, social, political, food, and—last, but not least—the climate crisis, which is threatening the very existence of millions of people on this planet. These crises have many of the same root causes, which go to the core of our economic system. Strong vested interests are involved. Thus we are facing an interest-based struggle.
Turkey’s Elections: Crisis Continues – And This is Not the Worst Outcome
by Onur Kapdan December 23, 2015 |
The November 2015 snap elections in Turkey have given back to the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) the parliamentary majority that it lost just a few months ago, in the June 2015 elections. However, the election results can neither resolve the crisis of Turkey’s authoritarian and neoliberal order, which is being challenged by the spirit of Gezi Park and new developments in the Kurdish movement nor obscure its complexity.
Urgent Action for Imprisoned Iranian Teacher Unionist
By International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI) December 21, 2015 |
Mahmoud Beheshti Langroodi has been on hunger strike in Evin prison since November 26, 2015. His health has severely been deteriorated but he has refused to stop his hunger strike.
In a statement from Evin Prison on December 2, 2015, Mr. Beheshti Langroodi announced: “I hereby declare: I, Mahmoud Beheshti Langroodi, who have spent 25 years of my life teaching children of this land, and have more than 15 years of trade union activities in support of our esteemed teachers, have been on hunger strike since Thursday, November 26, 2015 (Azar 5, 1394), to protest against an unjust verdict of “9 year imprisonment” by Judge Salavati in a trial that lasted a few minutes, hoping that authorities, especially judicial authorities, after hearing my cry for justice, take actions ‘to vacate the prison sentence until a judicial review by a competent court with a jury is conducted publically’.”
On Racism and Revolution: An Interview with Cuban Activist Norberto Mesa Carbonell
By Luisa Steur December 19, 2016 |
Since 1959, the Cuban revolution has been dedicated to racial equality. In a country where slavery was abolished only in 1886, the revolution offered many black Cubans their first access to land and education, through the new universal egalitarian policies, and an explicit commitment to eliminating racial discrimination. Even critical scholars argue that though it falls short of racial democracy, Cuba has done more than any other society to eradicate racial inequality.
Yet since Cuba’s “Special Period” began in the early 1990s, resources have been severely limited. Market-oriented reforms have come at the price of rising inequalities, which are not color-blind: racial tensions have increased substantially. To counter this trend, several black artists and public intellectuals have created a vibrant anti-racist activist scene, partly attached to the government-sponsored “Regional Afro-descendant Articulation of Latin America and the Caribbean, Cuban Chapter” (abbreviated in Spanish to ARAAC).
Podemos, the 15M Indignados Movement and the Radical Left in Spain
Antonio Martínez-Arboleda December 17, 2015 |
In this article I will analyze the current situation of the Left in Spain, ahead of the forthcoming December 20, 2015 General Elections, by considering how four of its political actors (United Left, Podemos, The Municipalist Platforms and Anti-capitalist Left) have shaped their strategies and agendas in response to the political changes that the 15M Indignados movement brought about.
More Than Equality: Reasons To Be a Feminist Socialist
Equality? Feminist socialism has something better in mind: using power to transform hierarchies
by Hilary Wainwright December 14, 2015 |
I want to talk about feminist socialism, rather than socialist feminism. As a student in Oxford I directly witnessed, and participated in the first conference of the Womens' Liberation Movement, held in Ruskin College in 1970. My whole world was shaken. My vision of the world up to that point was very hierarchical. For women it meant climbing up the hierarchy: being in there, getting up there, and so on.
The way feminism emerged at that point completely turned that over. It challenged those hierarchies, fundamentally.
Paris Deal: Epic Fail on a Planetary Scale
Danny Chivers and Jess Worth December 13, 2015 |
The Paris Agreement is being hailed as a great success. But will it deliver climate justice? After two weeks of tortuous negotiations – well, 21 years, really – governments announced the Paris Agreement. This brand new climate deal will kick in in 2020. But is it really as ‘ambitious’ as the French government is claiming?
The Graphic Juggernaut
by Kent Worcester December 12, 2015 |
Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg, Kate Evans, Verso, 2015, paperback, $16.95
Capitalism and Climate Change: The Science and Politics of Global Warming, David Klein (author) and Stephanie McMillan (editor and illustrator), Amazon digital services, 2015, eBook, $2.95
Gene Basset’s Vietnam Sketchbook: A Cartoonist’s Wartime Perspective, Thom Rooke, Syracuse University Press, 2015, paperback, $24.95
My War, Szegedi Szüts, Dover, 2015, paperback, $12.95
The graphic lit juggernaut rolls on. Even as DC and Marvel crank out superhero comics at roughly the same pace they have for the past twenty or thirty years, trade publishers and university presses are issuing nonfiction narrative art on a scale that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Back in the day, the four books under review would have represented a significant percentage of like-minded cartooning to appear in any given season. Now practically every publishing house under the sun boasts a new graphic novel line or at very least a fistful of titles aimed at the words-and-pictures market.
Black Lives Matter is Not a Civil Rights Movement
It's a Human Rights one
Opal Tometi and Gerald Lenoir December 10, 2015 |
Black Lives Matter is often called a “civil rights” movement. But to think that our fight is solely about civil rights is to misunderstand the fundamental aspirations of this movement. Today, on International Human Rights Day, we recognize the current struggle is not merely for reforms of policing, anymore than the Montgomery Bus Boycott was simply about a seat on the bus. It is about the full recognition of our rights as citizens; and it is a battle for full civil, social, political, legal, economic and cultural rights as enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Puerto Rico and the Fiscal Crisis
A view from the Puerto Rican diaspora
By Manuel E. Melendez Lavandero December 3, 2015 |
Puerto Rico is undergoing a profound fiscal crisis. Our country is besieged by the big interests of Wall Street’s credit agencies and vulture funds, which as they’ve done in other parts of the world, such as Spain, Greece and Argentina, only seek an uncontrolled increase in their profits. These profits come at the cost of great sacrifices to working people, which include drastic cuts to social services that will have a special impact on education and health care.
In order to impose their inhumane demands, they use their powerful influence within government structures, in the courts and in the mass media to guarantee payment of the immoral and odious debt, with no concern for the deterioration of our quality of life and the elimination of hard-won labor rights. They establish, de facto, a dictatorship of oligarchic and monopoly capital over the whole of society, the working class majority stripped of the financial resources needed to insure a dignified subsistence.
Paris Climate Accord: Crime Against Communities
By Grassroots Global Justice December 1, 2015 |
A broad alliance of leaders from communities on the frontline of the climate crisis have traveled to Paris to speak out against the proposed global climate agreement, saying that it falls far short of what is needed to avoid global catastrophe.
With more than 100 delegates from dozens of climate impacted communities across the US and Canada, the It Takes Roots delegation is calling on world leaders to come out of Paris with an agreement based on real solutions.
Hollande called on to lift ban on climate protests at COP 21
November 30, 2015 |
An international coalition of NGOs, civil society groups and political figures such as Naomi Klein and Susan George have called on the French president to lift the ban on protests during the COP 21 climate talks in Paris, which began on November 30th.
Following November’s terror attacks in Paris, the French government has imposed a temporary state of emergency that has prevented any protests from taking place in France. The local coaltion of NGOs and trade unions in in France, Climat 21, had planned a series of protests in Paris before, during and at the end of the climate talks which have now been banned.
Building a Sex Workers’ Trade Union: Challenges and Perspectives
by Morgane Merteuil November 29, 2015 |
It is a far from straightforward decision to found a union in a sector in which such an organisation has never existed before. For the most part, trade unions today have a (long) history: it may not be rare for workers to join a union, but it certainly is for them to participate in one’s founding and initial building. It is acutely challenging when the work itself to be organised is not entirely legal; when most of the workers are migrants in very precarious situations, who are regularly arrested and deported; when the legal context overlooks, and contributes to, high levels of violence and exploitation; and when, as if all of this was not enough, those who should be showing solidarity are on the other side, fighting to increase the criminalisation of the workers’ activity.
No to ISIS--No to Imperialism--Solidarity with the Victims!
by Pierre Rousset and François Sabado November 29, 2015 |
The November 13 attacks in Paris: the terror of the Islamic State, the state of emergency in France, our responsibilities
November 13 represents a change in the national and international political situation. The Islamic State (IS, Daesh) has struck again; and even more strongly. In January, the targets were the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, police and Jews. This time, it was the youth of the country that was the target. They did not kill just anyone, just anywhere: they attacked young people, young people in all their colours, whatever their origins, their religion (if they had one), their political beliefs. At least 130 dead, over 350 wounded - at the very least a thousand direct witnesses of the carnage. Many of us have relatives among the victims and, if not, we have friends who have. The shock wave, the emotion, is profound.
Bernie Sanders’ Political Revolution
by Sandy Boyer November 23, 2015 |
Even a somewhat cynical 71 year old socialist like me could be thrilled to see Bernie Sanders talking about the need for an American political revolution on MSNBC. To be honest, I’m not sure that I ever expected to see a leading presidential candidate say we need a revolution on prime time TV.
When Bernie Sanders says we need a political revolution, he’s mostly talking about turning many thousands of new people out to vote. That would obviously be a very good thing. It’s just not enough to win the meaningful social changes that would add up to a political revolution.
ISIS in Syria: Stop the march to war – There are alternatives
by Peter Tatchell November 22, 2015 |
Militant Islamic State fighters parade on military vehicles along the streets of Raqqa (Reuters)
In the wake of the murderous massacres in Paris, the demand for violent retaliation against Islamic State (IS) is gaining momentum. David Cameron now plans a renewed bid to secure parliamentary approval for UK air strikes against IS in Syria.
At one level, this is an understandable reaction to the fascist-like tyranny and brutality of IS. But understandable reactions and effective reactions are often two different things. The desire for retribution, no matter how seemingly justifiable in response to the slaughter of so many innocents, is not a sound basis on which to frame political and military policy.
ISIS Carnage in Paris Portends Repression in Europe and Intensified War in Middle East
by Kevin B. Anderson November 21, 2015 |
The despicable ISIS attacks on Paris and elsewhere have unleashed intensified war and imperialist machinations over Syria and Iraq, as well as repression of immigrants and renewed Islamophobia. Can the left oppose the carnage on all sides without losing sight of its emancipatory aims?
New Hampshire SEIU Breaks from International--Endorses Bernie
by Steve Early November 20, 2015 |
They don't put the slogan “Live Free or Die” on New Hampshire license plates for nothing!
There has been an inspiring statewide local union response to SEIU's predictably short-sighted headquarters embrace of Hillary Clinton. This Sanders endorsement comes from public workers who know Bernie well because they live and work just across the Connecticut River from Vermont--or, in some cases, are Vermonters themselves.
Solidarity with the Victims of Terrorism--No to War and Racism
November 20, 2015 |
The following statement of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) was published on the International Viewpoint website on November 18, 2015.
The horrific attacks that took place in Paris on Friday night left 129 dead and 352 wounded – including more than a hundred in critical condition. This indiscriminate and reactionary violence, sparked nationwide – but also worldwide – astonishment, indignation and revolt. This weekend spontaneous solidarity rallies took place.
In Solidarity with the Victims of Paris, Beirut, Ankara, Baghdad
November 19, 2015 |
The statement below was issued by solidaritiéS Suisse, a Swiss socialist organization on November 15.
In the last few weeks, numerous countries suffered lethal ISIS attacks: on November 13, over 130 dead in Paris; on November 12, 45 dead in Beirut; on October 10, close to 100 dead in Ankara; on August 13, close to 80 dead in Baghdad… In all cases the targeted victims were civilians. We condemn these despicable and barbaric attacks and address a message of support to all who have been and continue to be victimized by them throughout the world.
"Alive As You And Me": The Songs of Joe Hill
By David Cochran November 17, 2015 |
Almost a century ago, the socialist journalist John Reed wrote of the Industrial Workers of the World, popularly known as the Wobblies, “Remember, this is the only American working-class movement which sings. Tremble then at the IWW, for a singing movement is not to be beaten.” On the other hand, the sheriff of San Diego complained of his jails filled with Wobblies, “I do not know what to do. I cannot punish them. Listen to them singing all the time, and yelling and hollering, and telling the jailers to quit work and join the union.”
An Exchange of Views on the Situation in Portugal
Catherine Samary and Stathis Kouvelakis November 13, 2015 |
The following discussion was originally published in Internatonal Viewpoint
What will happen now in Portugal? Here we publish an exchange of views between Stathis Kouvelakis, leading member of the Left Platform in Syriza and now of Popular Unity in Greece, and Catherine Samary leading member of the Fourth International, from France. Thoughts on Stathis Kouvelakis’s text “From Greece, taking the risks into account: Some thoughts on the situation in Portugal“ “The risks are however immense and seem to me to outweigh by far the expected gains,” says Stathis Kouvelakis. What are what he calls “the three ways of summing up” this opinion? (His text is below.)
South African Students Win Reforms, Build a Movement
Heike Becker November 10, 2015 |
In South Africa students have been protesting for the past couple of weeks. Their immediate concerns are the intended hike of tuition fees, on average about 10%. Starting from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, they have demonstrated against the planned hikes. Students have occupied buildings on their campuses, held mass meetings, moved around the campus grounds, forced senior university administrators and university councils into negotiations. Campuses across the country have been brought to a stand still; this has happened at a crucial time of the South African academic year, just before the end of the year exams are about to start.
Ten Days That Shook The World
By John Reed (1887-1920) November 8, 2015 |
In celebration of the 98th anniversary of the Russian Revolution we are publishing this short extract from John Reed’s brilliant eyewitness account, Ten Days That Shook The World. Reed was a socialist journalist from the USA, who described the revolution as: “Adventure it was, and one of the most marvelous mankind ever embarked upon.”
This section is from the night before the insurrection of November 7th, 1917. The full text is available on Marxists.org.
The Protests in Lebanon Three Months After
A reading of police coercive strategies, emerging social movements and achievements
By Moe Ali Nayel and Lamia Moghnieh November 7, 2015 |
In response to the failure of the state to manage and dispose of accumulated trash, a series of protests erupted in Lebanon in August 2015 demanding the toppling of the Lebanese corrupt regime and the basic rights for water, electricity and a clean healthy environment. This article provides an overview of the strategies used by the state to dismantle the protest movements, a class reading of the social movements three months into the protests, and an analysis of the strengths and achievements of the demonstrations.
Comment on Recent Elections in Argentina
by René Rojas November 3, 2015 |
The Frente de Izquierda y los Trabajadores (the Left and Workers Front) or FIT went into last week's election with confidence. The new electoral alliance, comprised of the older and more doctrinaire trotskist formation Partido Obrero (Workers Party) or PO, the newer PTS (Socialist Workers Party), and the smaller IS (Socialist Left), hoped to build on recent electoral successes, including double digit tallies in a few provincial elections, and continue advancing along the ripples of youth and rank-and-file discontent against looming austerity and layoffs.
Behind Ciudad Juarez’s New Labor Movement
by Kent Paterson November 3, 2015 |
The Mexican and U.S. government first agreed to the creation of the maquiladora plants along the U.S.-Mexico border in 1965 and already by 1975 there were strikes for union recognition. Yet in the last 40 years, thanks to the cooperation of the multinational corporations and the U.S. and Mexican government virtually no group of workers has succeeded in organizing a genuinely independent labor union. Most plants have no unions. Some plants have unions run by lawyers and gangsters who are allied with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the government. A combination of legal chicanery, intimidation, and violence have been used to keep workers from organizing. Now, once again, after many years there are labor protests in Ciudad Juarez one of the major maquiladora centers across the border from El Paso Texas as reported by Kent Paterson of Frontera NorteSur News where this article originally appeared.- Dan La Botz
In a virtually unprecedented development, labor protest is widening in the maquiladora industry of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. While worker dissatisfaction or protest is nothing new in the foreign-owned border factories that produce goods for export to the United States, previous manifestations of discontent in the generally union-free industry have usually been confined to one company at a time.
Brazilian Activists Prosecuted for Giving Small Donations to Left-Wing Parties
By Raphael Tsavkko Garcia November 2, 2015 |
A still undetermined number of supporters, activists, and sympathizers of two Brazilian left-wing political parties, the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL, Partido Socialismo e Liberdade) and the Unified Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU, Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado), are being charged by the State Prosecutor's offices (Ministérios Públicos) of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo for having made small donations to these two parties during the 2014 elections.
One of the activists linked with PSOL, Lucas Mourão, being charged by the Electoral State Prosecutor's office (Ministério Público Eleitoral) of Rio de Janeiro, explained his case on his Facebook page on October 15. He says in 2014 he donated R$60 (about US$15) to the campaigns of Jean Willys and Tarcísio Mota, two PSOL candidates running for, respectively, Federal Deputy and Governor of Rio de Janeiro.
Katrina: 10 years after
by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington November 1, 2015 |
I was sitting in a small town Greyhound bus station when I first saw images from Katrina. Happenstance, in retrospect, was so apropos. Bus terminal stations throughout America (so often) being lachrymose warehouses for the poor, the vulnerable, the mentally ill, the psychologically worn down and the just plain penniless –hostels of the many with vagabond destinations. The station held any number of “the kinds of people” who knew what it was to go elsewhere, oftentimes meaning anyplace but the places they’re at. I sat among America’s disenfranchised classes.
My Week with Libertarians: An Accidental Socratic Socialist vs. Capitalism’s Euthyphros
by Bryant Sculos October 30, 2015 |
This story begins where all good stories do; I hit a bit of a rut with the second to last chapter of my dissertation, a dissertation which looks at the psychological aspects of capitalism that undermine arguments for global justice that are deeply entrenched in the liberal political-philosophical tradition. When I get stuck, I try to motivate myself by reminding myself how necessary this kind of demystifying critical scholarship is. Naturally, I usually turn to Fox News for such motivation. However, for whatever reason, I decided to look on Facebook for something that would piss me off and send me on a writing blitz.
Despite Protests, Guatemalan Elections Return the Military to Power
by Jeff Abbott October 28, 2015 |
Karl Marx once wrote, quoting Hegel, that history repeats itself, but he added “first as tragedy, and then as farce.” And history has repeated itself in Guatemala following voting in the second round of the country’s 2015 presidential election. Despite protests against corruption, Jimmy Morales, a former comedian who is backed by the same military forces that backed disgraced ex-president Otto Pérez Molina, easily won the presidency by a wide margin following the second round of voting October 25.
Building the Paris COP21 Climate Protest
by Alan Thornett October 27, 2015 |
The pace of climate change is relentless. The projected date for the arrival of a 2°C rise in the global average surface temperature over pre-industrial levels is coming down all the time. It’s now estimated to happen by 2038. The earth will warm by at least 4°C by the end of the century, possibly 6°C.
The results of this are catastrophic: intensifying extreme weather events – heatwaves, droughts, floods, water shortages, hurricanes and tornadoes. The sea level is rising as a result of the melting icecaps.
Film Review: “Suffragette”
by Barbara Winslow October 26, 2015 |
The movie Suffragette is the first feature film that dramatically depicts the monumental struggle for women’s right to vote in pre-World War I England. (Please erase from your memory the horrible, and I mean horrible, portrayal of suffragettes in the Disney monstrosity Mary Poppins.)
Directed by Sarah Gavron, with screenplay by Abi Morgan, the project also had the support and star power of Meryl Streep in a brilliant-as-always portrayal of Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the militant suffragette organization, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).
The Endurance of Race in a Postracial World: A Letter to Fanon
by Richard Raber October 26, 2015 |
Dr. Fanon,
I am writing you in regards to your book The Wretched of the Earth. Before discussing your book in detail, I would like to thank you for writing it. Evidently it was written with passion. This letter serves as a means to recognize the continued resonance your work holds amidst our ever-changing geopolitical realities. Moreover your work, particularly its emphases on structures of power as well as experiential learning has had a direct impact on me. Increasing my understanding of my position in this world, The Wretched of the Earth has influenced my decision to relocate to South Africa as a volunteer with the Rural Women's Movement I anticipate the perspective gained from this experience will be incalculable.
The Portuguese election: quicksand in the center, an emboldened left and a desperate president
Joao Camargo October 24, 2015 |
The Portuguese center-right ultraliberal government, which went “far beyond the troika” won a relative majority in the 4th of October general election. With 36.8% of the vote and 1.994 million votes, the previous governmental coalition (PSD and CDS) was the winner. In second place came the Socialist Party, with 32.4% and 1.746 million votes.
The Portuguese election: quicksand in the center, an emboldened left and a desperate president
Joao Camargo October 24, 2015 |
The Portuguese center-right ultraliberal government, which went “far beyond the troika” won a relative majority in the 4th of October general election. With 36.8% of the vote and 1.994 million votes, the previous governmental coalition (PSD and CDS) was the winner. In second place came the Socialist Party, with 32.4% and 1.746 million votes.
New Colonialisms and the Crises of Left Values
Raúl Zibechi October 22, 2015 |
When visibility is minimal because powerful storms cloud the perception of reality, it may be appropriate to enlarge one’s view, to climb slopes to look for broader observation points, in order to discern the context in which we move. In these times, when the world is crossing through multiple contradictions and interests, it’s urgent to stimulate the senses to gaze far and inside.
NYC Day of Climate Protests a Step Forward
by Nancy Holmstrom October 18, 2015 |
The last protest of the day of the New York City Climate Protests was at a Broadway theatre where Gov. Cuomo was scheduled to attend. It was a spirited demonstration complete with a little orchestra and playful costumes focused on persuading Cuomo to veto the Port Ambrose Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant off the coast of Long Island right near JFK airport. Opponents argue that it is very dangerous security risk, terrible for the environment, and would kill the chance for a 700-megawatt wind farm that would create 17,000 local jobs.
Beyond the Broad Left Party
Leandros Fischer October 17, 2015 |
The radical left strategy of working within broad left parties has suffered a major setback after SYRIZA´s capitulation. The answer to this crisis lies neither in continuing “business as usual,” nor in ignoring the question of political power. SYRIZA´s capitulation to the austerity diktat, the ensuing emergence of Popular Unity and the fresh elections looming ahead, have brought the question of organization for the radical left at the forefront of debate. SYRIZA, which used to be the prime example of left unity against austerity, is giving way to an increasingly fragmented political landscape of the Greek left, as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras declared his will to implement the new memorandum.
Postmodern Plotting in Ecuador? A Response to Guillaume Long
by Jeffrey R. Webber October 16, 2015 |
One of the tasks Guillaume Long sets himself in his recent interview with Jacobin is to refute the magazine’s recent coverage of Ecuador. In particular, the two recent pieces of note are an interview I conducted with Ecuadorian activist and intellectual Alejandra Santillana Ortíz and an article I wrote separately, reflecting on my most recent visit to the country. I was happy to learn of Long’s contribution to Jacobin on the current conjuncture in Ecuador. I expected a lucid articulation of the broad perspective advanced by the government of Rafael Correa for international consumption. Unfortunately, rather than a serious contribution to the ongoing debate, Long’s intervention is characterized to different degrees by evasion, caricature, and obfuscation. I will limit myself to a few instances in what follows.
A Global City, Emptied of Inconvenient Reality
October 16, 2015 |
The English translation of this article was originally published by International Boulevard
From Al Safir Al Arabi
Behind the violence shaking occupied Jerusalem, writes Haneen Naamnih in Al Safir Al Arabi, is a vast colonial enterprise slowly remaking the city.
“We lost a lot of good, beautiful people”: Demanding Justice in Turkey
by Daniel Johnson |
The October 10 Labor, Peace, and Democracy Rally in Turkey’s capital of Ankara was called to demand an end to the violent policies of the Turkish state. Organized by trade union federations and progressive organizations, the demonstration was also supported by the People’s Democracy Party (HDP), a leftwing pro-Kurdish party consistently demonized in recent months by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Turkey Massacre: The Culprit is the AKP!
October 12, 2015 |
Strikes, boycotts, marches and demonstrations were held throughout Turkey on Oct. 12 in protest against the massacre at the Labor, Peace and Democracy Rally in Ankara on October 10 that killed at least 97 people, with funerals of the victims being held one after another, daily Hürriyet reported.
Turkey’s leading labor unions and professional organization--the Confederation of Public Sector Trades’ Unions (KESK), the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK), the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB)—called for a nationwide strike and boycott for Oct. 12 and 13 to protest the massacre. The Revolutionary Workers Party has issued this statement. - Dan La Botz, Co-Editor
Statement from new Climate Space initiative about COP21
Climate Space October 11, 2015 |
Why we need to build alternatives and dismantle a process that will lock us into another decade of burning the planet.
Grace Lee Boggs: the life of an American r/evolutionary
Christian Høgsbjerg October 7, 2015 |
New Politics shares this post, written in June 2015 to celebrate the 100th birthday of Grace Lee Boggs, who passed away Monday Oct 5, 2015. See a film about her:
http://americanrevolutionaryfilm.com
Neoliberalism as the Agent of Capitalist Self-Destruction
Neil Davidson October 5, 2015 |
1
The neoliberal era can be retrospectively identified as beginning with the economic crisis of 1973, or, more precisely, with the strategic response of state managers and employers to that crisis. Previous eras in the history of capitalism have tended to close with the onset of further period of systemic crisis; 1973, for example, saw the end of the era of state capitalism which began in 1929. The neoliberal era, however, has not only survived the crisis which began in 2007, but its characteristic features are, if anything, being further extended and embedded, rather than reversed.
Fish in a Manmade Pond
by Will Solomon October 1, 2015 |
Economic oppression remains ubiquitous. In the West we are moving towards, or are already at, a condition of corporate governance enforced by the state apparatus. This is not capitalism as it is commonly understood— allowing for the ostensibly free pursuit of capital, an open market economy— nor is it democracy, or even sovereign nation states. It is a new corporatocracy, in which powerfully entrenched (international) corporations reign supreme, and define policy and economic planning in perpetuity.
Puerto Rico's Economic Crisis: Analysis, Alternatives and Solutions
September 28, 2015 |
Considering the harsh reality of austerity, New Politics is encouraged by the struggles against it. One place where this fight has taken place is Puerto Rico. There, colonial capitalism has forced a new massive migration from the island. More Puerto Ricans currently live in the Diaspora than in the country itself.
To understand this situation better we invite you to a talk with Rafael Bernabe, a socialist activist and member of the Working People's Party of Puerto Rico.
Beyond Reform vs. Rupture
Greece still has alternatives. What mix of compromise and confrontation could yield something better than more austerity?
by Nantina Vgontzas September 25, 2015 |
If nothing else, phase one of Syriza’s tenure has revealed the limits of reformism in a period of stagnation and global economic integration.
An Auto Worker Writes to the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles
by Denny Walker Crum September 22, 2015 |
The United Auto Workers union (UAW) has reached a tentative agreement with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and is presenting the proposed contract to its members for a vote beginning this week. The contract affects some 40,000 unionized hourly workers.
At the beginning of the economic crisis in 2007 the UAW agreed to let Fiat Chrysler establish two tiers, that is, workers doing the same job would have different rates of pay, with newer workers sometimes working for $17 an hour while more senior workers might earn as much $28 an hour. Such a system had been introduced earlier in the auto parts plants.
Turkey and its Kurds at War
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Personal Quest for Survival
by Sungur Savran September 19, 2015 |
The Kurdish town of Cizre, a settlement with a population of approximately 150 thousand souls in Southeastern Turkey, is now under siege by the Turkish armed forces and the so-called “special operation force” of the police for a second time, after a previous one-week long siege was lifted for an interlude of two days. Around-the-clock curfew is accompanied by power cuts and the interruption of all means of communication including mobile telephones and the Internet. The evidence that came out when the first round of siege was lifted attests to a terrible human drama. Over 30 civilians are dead, ranging from a 35-day old infant to a 75-year old man.
The Potential of Urban Agriculture
by Scott Szpisjak September 16, 2015 |
Recently the local food movement seems to have sprung up from nowhere. Yuppies are flocking to farmer’s markets and community gardens across the nation to help the environment and local farmers. But this movement is not at all inclusive; urban agriculture has often been actively suppressed amongst low income populations. This is not always the case, however, especially in times of economic crisis. For example, in the seventies, urban agriculture was promoted in New York’s Lower East Side as a productive way to use land that served no other purpose. But when the gentrification of SoHo spread in the eighties as the economy improved, land prices shot up and gardens which had been tolerated previously were bulldozed with nary a thought to the people who relied on them for access to healthy food.
What is the left supposed to do electorally?
by Matt Bruenig September 15, 2015 |
Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the UK Labour Party. As usually happens when the left scores an electoral victory, the center-left and others has made sure to inform Corbyn and his supporters that it is bad that he won and that he never should have tried to win. I am more familiar with this in the American context where every left-wing electoral effort is similarly cast as irresponsible. Given these attitudes, I am left to wonder what exactly people think the left is supposed to do electorally?
Jill Stein Campaign Seeks to Meet Matching Fund Goals
September 12, 2015 |
[The following item comes from the Jill Stein campaign for the Green Party presidential nomination.]
Now is the time to support a serious, independent, left candidate for Presidential in 2016. Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for President, is already garnering media attention, building support in social justice movements and frontline struggles and taking on the undemocratic Presidential Debate Commission.
Upcoming Discussion on Greek Elections and Socialist Strategy
Nikos Evangelos (Nicholas Levis) September 12, 2015 |
The Greek Drama of 2015: What Next?
a talk by Nicholas Levis (Nikos Evangelos)
The preliminary report of the parliamentary Truth Committee on Public Debt declared the entire Greek debt to be odious, unethical, unsustainable and illegal. Do they have a case?
Sunday, September 13, 2015
2:00 - 3:00pm
International Affairs Building, Room 409
Columbia University, Manhattan
Entrance at 118th Street and Amsterdam
Union-Backed "Fight For $15" Campaign Marginalizes Larger Struggle for Worker Power
by Arun Gupta September 11, 2015 |
Interview with Arun Gupta, journalist and a founding editor of New York City’s Indypendent newspaper, conducted by Scott Harris:
http://btlonline.org/2015/mp3/150918a-btl-gupta.mp3
It’s been almost three years since the movement for a living wage burst into protest, first in New York City and then in dozens of other cities and towns across the U.S.
The Campaign “You Stink” Shakes the Sectarian Regime in Lebanon
by Joseph Daher September 6, 2015 |
Lebanon had experienced some major protests in early 2011 against the sectarian regime following the regional popular uprisings, but the movement unfortunately ended a few months later, especially after the sabotage of several religious and reactionary parties against the movement and with the complicity of leftist movements of Stalinist tradition.
Occupy Needs a Methodology: Review of Michael Gould-Wartofsky's "The Occupiers"
by Riad Azar August 31, 2015 |
Review of Michael Gould-Wartofsky, The Occupiers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Occupy was the largest political mobilization of my lifetime. The explosion of energy it produced gave the feeling of perpetuity, with thousands of volunteers supporting each other through donations of food and standing together in solidarity against the police. But as the encampments became rooted, many had to check their excitement with a growing sense of disillusionment. It was clear that the Occupy strategy, and how it played out in practice, was rife with weaknesses that were ultimately exploited by those who sought to destroy Occupy and the discourse that it created.
A Response to Jean Batou on Ukraine
by E. Haberkern August 30, 2015 |
Jean Batou’s article Putin, The War in the Ukraine, and the Far Right in Volume XV No. 3 of New Politics, despite briefly acknowledging in its final paragraphs the role of NATO in the Ukrainian crisis, basically echoes the party-line apologists for NATO and American imperialism.
George Bush (Still) Doesn’t Care about Black People
by Lawrence Ware August 30, 2015 |
I was sitting in a one-bedroom apartment watching the telethon for Hurricane Katrina when it happened. After a commercial break, Kanye West stood nervously looking like he was about to do something that would end his career. He was fidgety and sweating when he said it: “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.” It was a transcendent moment for Black America.
Bernie Sanders and #BLM: A Response to Dan La Botz
by Paul Street August 30, 2015 |
In a recent New Politics essay, Dan La Botz argues that “the debate between” Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and the Black Lives Matter (#BLM) movement is “one of the most important discussions of our time.” It is “a great debate about the priorities and the program of the American people” that “could lead to the construction of a new analysis and lay the basis for a new and broad social movement” that helps us “find a new way forward against both capitalism and racism” – “a new movement that combines the fight for greater economic equality with demand for racial justice, perhaps a movement for socialism.”
Lessons from Greece: Leo Panitch and Richard Fidler debate SYRIZA
Leo Panitch and Richard Fidler August 28, 2015 |
This is a video of a recent debate between Leo Panitch and Richard Fidler who discuss their differing socialist analyses of the politics of SYRIZA.
The debate was moderated by Susan Spronk.
The video is from Links: Journal for International Socialist Renewal but the debate was organized by the Socialist Project (Canada).
SOA Watch Calls for Protests as Anniversary of Ayotzinapa Events Approaches
by Arturo J. Viscarra August 27, 2015 |
One month from today marks the first anniversary of the horrific state crime perpetrated against the students of the Ayotzinapa teachers' college in Mexico.
On September 26 and 27, 2014, Mexican police attacked protesting students from Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero. The police killed six people, including three students and three bystanders. They forcibly disappeared 43 Ayotzinapa students, who remain missing.
May First/PeopleLink Under Attack!
MayFirst/PeopleLink August 26, 2015 |
May First/People Link is being attacked in a Denial of Service attack that is unprecedented in its length and viciousness. We have been fighting off this attack for over three weeks now.
We are convinced that the attack is political. We know how the attackers are targeting us, we know they are targeting the entire organization's systems and we know that they are carefully monitoring our responses because they are quickly adapting to every move our technologists make to return us to service.
The Iran Deal: Up, Down or Sideways?
by David Finkel August 25, 2015 |
(NOTE: For some background, see my previous article: www.solidarity-us.org/node/4058 in Against the Current, January-February 2014.)
AUGUST 19 -- Even while the rhetoric around the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran seems to be reaching reactor-grade “critical” level, signs are emerging that the fix just may be quietly in.
The Suruç Massacre and the Reigniting of an Old Struggle
by Alexander Kolokotronis August 22, 2015 |
On July 20 at least thirty-two people were killed and at least 100 people were wounded by an ISIS suicide bomber. The attack took place in the Turkish town of Suruç, which stands only thirty miles away from the Syrian border. The victims, members of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (SGDF), were part of a 300-person contingent en route to Kobanî to assist in reconstruction efforts. The group consisted of a number of Turkish and Kurdish anarchist and socialist youth. As such, the solidaristic venture represented a major effort to create further bridges between the broader Turkish left and the Kurdish left.
Interview with Mimi Soltysik, Candidate for the Socialist Party Nomination for President
by Mimi Soltysik August 17, 2015 |
The following is an email interview with Mimi Soltysik, a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Party USA. He is currently seeking the Socialist Party's nomination for the 2016 US Presidential election. This interview was originally published by The Hampton Institute.
Tell us about yourself and your politics.
Here’s the statement I made when I announced my intent to run for the Socialist Party USA's POTUS nomination. I think it fairly well captures who I am and where I stand politically:
What Happened in Ukraine?
by Samuel R. Friedman August 13, 2015 |
Ukraine went through mass mobilizations and a political revolution during November, 2014 – February, 2015. In this it resembles struggles in Tunisia and Egypt since 2010, and as in the Egyptian case, the outcomes of these struggles (to date) have sorely disappointed most of the left in the United States and, indeed, internationally. Unlike the Egyptian and Tunisian struggles, however, from its outset the struggles in Ukraine were seen in remarkably contrasting ways by different parts of the left. ([1]) Some have viewed the Maidan struggles as an illegitimate movement that supported US (or US/EU) imperialism and should thus be opposed. Others have viewed it more favorably.
Puerto Rico and the Philippine Example
by Stephen R. Shalom August 12, 2015 |
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Nelson Denis describes the horrendous economic situation in Puerto Rico and compellingly shows the source of the problem to be the continuing colonial exploitation of the island by the U.S. government acting on behalf of key U.S.
Ecuador’s New Indigenous Uprising
Marc Becker August 12, 2015 |
Ecuador’s Indigenous movements have launched an uprising to challenge the government’s opposition to bilingual education and its support for an extractive-based economy.
On August 2, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) began a march from the southeastern Amazonian province of Zamora Chinchipe that will arrive in the capital city of Quito on August 13. Upon its arrival, the Indigenous march will join a general strike called by the Workers United Front (FUT) in opposition to the government’s labor policies.
Bernie Sanders' Racial Justice Program
by Joanne Landy August 10, 2016 |
I don't support Bernie in the Democratic Party because I believe the key question in U.S. politics is building a political party that can defend the needs of the vast majority of the American people. As more and more people on the left agree, the Democratic Party is not and cannot be such a party; to my mind this constraint makes paramount the political independence of candidates, no matter how progressive their program.
Why I #StandWithPP
by Mia Kim Sullivan August 10, 2015 |
I wanted to write and let you know why I support the doctors and clinic workers of Planned Parenthood who help people obtain abortions, often at great personal cost.
The current call to defund Planned Parenthood has been coordinated with attack videos that are highly edited in order to demonize the doctors who were filmed. As David Cohen and Krysten Connon document in their book, “Living in the Crosshairs,” the personal nature of political attacks on abortion in this country have led to harassment, stalking, and violence against providers and their families.
Why We Commemorate August 9th and the Ferguson Uprising
by Michael McPhearson August 9, 2015 |
As those committed to social justice in St. Louis prepare to mark the August 9th killing of unarmed teen Michael Brown Jr. by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, we know that many in the region would like us to just go away. Enough already, they say. Why commemorate something so sad and wrong, anyway? Let’s just move on. But we’re at the beginning, not the end of this struggle. It’s not time to move on, and this day calls for reflection.
The Sun, the Rain and the Whip
by Sandy Boyer August 8, 2015 |
Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Basic Books, 2014. 528 pages. Paperback, $19.
“Changes that reshaped the entire world began on the auction block where enslaved migrants stood, or in the frontier cotton fields where they toiled...Enslaved African Americans built the modern United States, and indeed the entire modern world, in ways both obvious and hidden.”
-- Edward Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told
This vital and enthralling book reveals how U.S. capitalism was built on the torture of enslaved people. Edward Baptist quotes a Mississippi overseer telling his friends that “the whip was as important to making cotton grow as sunshine and rain.” The whip “might open deep gashes in the skin of its victim, make them 'tremble' or 'dance'...but it did not disable them.”
On the Puerto Rican Debt Crisis: A Reply to Krugman
by Ricardo R. Fuentes Ramírez August 7, 2015 |
Paul Krugman’s analysis of the Puerto Rican debt crisis has subtle problems, but with big policy implications. Overall, his piece hits key points that other economists continue to miss: 1) Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis is closely related to its economic depression, 2) the government patched up the problem with borrowing, instead of going to the root of it, 3) Puerto Rico’s low rate of labor force participation is not necessarily a result of welfare, 4) the situation is exacerbated by the Jones Act, 5) too much austerity can be self-defeating, and 6) it would be a terrible idea to give the hedge funds what they want (destroying the island’s education system in the name of fiscal responsibility). All of these points demonstrate Krugman understands the Puerto Rican case better than many Puerto Rican policy makers and economists. However, the subtle problems in his piece should be further discussed.
Online Attack against May First/People Link
Anti-Abortion hackers attack progressive web organization
by Editors August 6, 2015 |
May First/People Link is the organization that hosts the New Politics website. But it is more than a hosting platform: it is a membership-based political community that tries to use the Internet to advance progressive causes. It has now come under attack by rightwing anti-abortion hackers because it hosts the National Network of Abortion Funds. We express our solidarity with May First/People Link and with the National Network of Abortion Funds. Below is the statement sent by May First/People Link to its members on August 4.
What's the Big Deal?
The Iran Nuclear Deal in Perspective
by Stephen R. Shalom August 5, 2015 |
Of course Congress should endorse the Iran deal. The renunciation of the agreement by Congress would have disastrous consequences for the Middle East, empowering warmongers everywhere, but especially in Washington, Tel Aviv, and Tehran.
There are three motives driving opponents of the deal.
Jill Stein on Why She's Running for President - A Radio Interview
by Jill Stein August 5, 2015 |
Jill Stein is campaigning as a Green Party candidate for the 2016 presidential race. She says we need real solutions for the economic, social and environmental crises we face. But the broken political system is only making things worse. It's time to build a people's movement to end unemployment and poverty; avert climate catastrophe; build a sustainable, just economy; and recognize the dignity and human rights of every person.
Resisting the Marginalization of Democracy and the Fetishization of “the Candidate”
by Bryant Sculos August 4, 2015 |
In the United States, even more so since the advent of twenty-four hour news channels, there is a consistent fetishization of political candidates. Who is viable? Who is trust-worthy? Whose ideas best fit with the prevailing public opinion polls on certain issues at a given time? Who has the most attractive haircut or family? Who has the right skin color, gender, or business experience to win over key demographics?
Though few of us are under any illusions that this country is or has ever been a genuine democracy, it seems that even those people who are not convinced by the patriotic rhetoric of the purity of American democracy too often acquiesce to the “all of our hopes rest in a single individual or political party” approach to politics. If socialism means anything beyond mass resistance to capitalism, it should be resistance to this mindset. When we fetishize the candidate we marginalize true democracy, the cornerstone of socialism.
UAW Local Calls on AFL-CIO to End Ties to Police Unions
by United Auto Workers Local 2865 July 27, 2015 |
United Auto Workers Local 2865 representing 13,000 teaching assistants and other student workers throughout the University of California system, called on the AFL-CIO to end its affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA) in a resolution passed by its governing body on July 25. This is the union’s resolution passed by the union:
Statement:
We, UAW Local 2865, call on the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to end their affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations.
A Report on the Crises in Greece
by Gary Zabel July 26, 2015 |
While in Athens, I have gotten into the habit of ending the day by enjoying an iced coffee with cream in an outdoor cafe in a park about one mile from my hotel. It is there that I have been writing these dispatches. As I remarked in my first report, the park the cafe is in is filled with children, teenagers, young couples, the middle-aged, and old people until quite late. The cafe does not start to empty until after midnight.
July 25,1898: INVASION OF PUERTO RICO & THE EMERGENCE OF U.S. IMPERIALISM
by Carlos Rovira July 25, 2015 |
For the many people who have engaged in the struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence, July 25 has a special significance. On that date in 1898, U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico, beginning a period of U.S. colonial domination on the island that continues to this day. The United States invaded Puerto Rico, along with the Philippines, Guam and Cuba, in the setting of the Spanish-American War. That war was the opening of what would be the menacing role and predatory nature of the U.S. capitalist class in the Caribbean, Latin America and the entire world.
The Value of Protest
by Tim DeChristopher July 24, 2015 |
As a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, my first reaction to hearing about the Black Lives Matter protest at Netroots Nation was disappointment. This looks bad, I thought. Bad for Bernie, who is the only presidential candidate with any chance of challenging structural injustice. And bad for Black Lives Matter, who could easily be interpreted as shutting down progressive discussions about immigration and economic inequality to make people focus on their priorities. I’ve had my share of mistakes during protests, as have all the activists I respect most, so I certainly had some sympathy. But I thought their protest was just that: a mistake.
After Greece, Puerto Rico: Another Crisis Created by Capitalism
Saulo Colón and Daniel Vila July 23, 2015 |
On Monday June 29, the Governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro García Padilla, delivered a live message to the people of Puerto Rico stating that the government’s $73 billion debt is unpayable. The governor stated, “The public debt, considering the present level of economic activity, is unpayable”.
Puerto Rico’s Debt: A Conjunctural Overview
by Heriberto Martínez-Otero and Ian J. Seda-Irizarry July 20, 2015 |
In this brief essay we offer a general and immediate overview of the socioeconomic situation in Puerto Rico. We do it while recognizing that such an analysis is incomplete if the historical, institutional, and political dimensions within the uneven development of capitalism are left out. In this particular case we do not explicitly deal with the colonial relationship of the island with the United States or provide a structural analysis of the economy (these dimensions will be treated in a forthcoming comprehensive article).
Socialism from below
by Dan Swain July 17, 2015 |
Dan Swain discusses the contested ambitions and leaderships within our movements. This article was originally published in the Summer 2015 issue of the rs21 magazine.
Throughout the history of socialist movements and ideas, the fundamental divide is between Socialism-from-Above and Socialism-from-Below
Same-Sex Marriage: An Ambiguous Victory
by Peter Drucker July 13, 2015 |
In the summer of 1994, my partner and I happened to be on vacation in Stockholm for the Pride celebration, so we joined in. I remember it as a rather modest, subdued affair compared to the ebullient marches I remembered from New York and San Francisco. But what struck me most was the lesbian/gay federation’s emphasis on legal recognition for same-sex partnerships, at a time when Sweden banned sex in gay bathhouses. I thought these were upside-down priorities. Swedish same-sex couples would win in fact the right to register for partnership benefits in 1995, while the ban on bathhouse sex stayed on the books until 2004. What a curious country this is, I remember thinking.
The Catholic Church versus the IRA Hunger Strikers of 1923
by Lily Murphy July 11, 2015 |
In the Ireland of 1922, a civil war tore through the land and in its path it ripped apart families and friendships. It also created a deeper wedge in an unstable society where the church grappled for top position in an emerging new state.
The Irish Republican Army had fought a War of Independence against British rule for over three years and, led by the young enigmatic Michael Collins, it managed to push the British government to the negotiating table.
Bigotry 101: Why Haters Gonna Hate
by Michael Hirsch July 11, 2015 |
A review of The Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists, by Stephen Eric Bronner, Yale University Press, 2014.
The Crises of Colonial Capitalism: Video Interview on Puerto Rico's Debt
by Saulo Colón July 9, 2015 |
In this TeleSur interview with Rafael Bernabe, the spokesperson for the Puerto Rican Working Peoples Party advocates for a moratorium on the debt. Bernabe has written an extensive article in the current Summer 2015 issue of New Politics.
The Poverty of Hatred and the Hatred of Poverty: The Ideology of American Progressivism
by Bryant Sculos July 9, 2015 |
“Rich people are the fucking worst.” This is the premise and title of Sean Illing’s recent Salon.com article (June 22, 2015). While I agree with his sentiment, the argument that follows this provocative title leaves a lot—too much—to be desired. Illing is a self-professed progressive, and the purpose of his article was to discuss the various “new” ways the rich are expressing disgust for the poor or anyone who isn’t rich, in the context of the on-going drought in California. While I completely agree that “rich people are the fucking worst,” Illing misses the proper target of critique. Rich people do indeed suck. However, progressivism itself sucks, and here’s why: it misses the systemic root problem. The rich suck, because capitalism encourages them to suck.
Britain's End Austerity Now: Revival of Radical Political Left
by Aidan Harper July 9, 2015 |
On Saturday, June 20, a quarter of a million people marched in London from the Bank of England to the Houses of Parliament in order to protest against the Conservative government’s planned spending cuts to public services. This was the largest single demonstration against austerity to date and reflected to a degree the revival of a radical political left in Britain after decades in the wilderness.
IUF Statement: What Is Really at Stake in the Greek Crisis
July 7, 2015 |
The following is a statement on the Greek Crisis issued by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Association (IUF) on July 1, 2105.
A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of a democratic alternative to austerity. The Syriza government of Greece incarnates that alternative, which is why the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) have allied with the IMF to exorcise the challenge it represents. With few exceptions, political parties of every persuasion have tacitly or actively supported the anti-Syriza coalition.
A Response to Riad Azar on Sanders' Foreign Policy
by Joanne Landy July 6, 2015 |
I find it odd that my friend and fellow New Politics board member Riad Azar should center his criticism of Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy on Sanders’ supposed “irresponsible” “isolationism.”
It seems to me that a critique of Bernie’s foreign policy should begin by criticizing him for voting for the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution that paved the way for U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan, and for refusing to unequivocally condemn Israel’s shameful 2014 war on the people of Gaza. These positions might or might not be sufficient to preclude support for Bernie if he or someone like him ran as an independent -- to my mind that would depend on the overall dynamic and trajectory of the campaign -- but in any case they represent Bernie’s deep failure to consistently break with U.S. global imperialism and Israeli repression, and should form the central part of a critical assessment of his foreign policy stance.
Explaining Acquiescence
by Charles Post July 6, 2015 |
Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015)
All of us on the left are all too familiar with the capitalist offensive of the past forty years. Under the banner of “neo-liberalism” capital has rolled back almost every gain working people across the world have made since the 1930s. All sorts of public industries, services and institutions have been privatized, social welfare programs that protected workers from the worst insecurities of the labor-market have been rolled back or simply abolished and unions and working class political parties that had traditionally organized and represented working people have been severely weakened.
Sanders and the Middle East
by Riad Azar July 3, 2015 |
Regardless of one's views on whether or not the socialist left should support Bernie Sanders in his race for the White House, the momentum behind the self-described “democratic socialist” has been impressive. Beginning at 2% in April, his popularity grew to 14% in May and at last check was 32% in New Hampshire.
Assessing the Sanders Campaign
by Stephen R. Shalom June 29, 2015 |
How are we to assess the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign?
There are three reasons that one runs a candidate for president. One is the hope of winning, second is to influence other candidates to modify their views, and third is to use the campaign to build for the future, either educationally or organizationally.
Over 1,000 local union leaders and members back Bernie Sanders for President
by Steve Early June 26, 2015 |
Grassroots labor initiative urges Democratic primary support for Sanders by AFL-CIO and national unions.
Over 1,000 union activists from around the country today kicked off Labor for Bernie 2016.
The Meaning of the Election in Turkey
by Daniel Johnson June 25, 2015 |
In the weeks leading up to the June 7 parliamentary election in Turkey communities across the country were gripped with a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and fear. Though President Tayyip Recep Erdoğan was supposed to be above the fray of party politics, the former two-term prime minister and co-founder of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) made no secret of his hopes for an AKP victory, as he rallied and spoke continuously in the weeks and months before the election. 367 seats in the 550-member parliament would make possible Erdoğan’s desire to change the Turkish government from a parliamentary to a presidential system, thereby enhancing executive, and Erdoğan’s, grip on political power.
On Critical Theory, Value Theory, and So-Called Traditional Marxism
by Jason Schulman June 24, 2015 |
Werner Bonefeld, Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy: On Subversion and Negative Reason, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, 246 pp.
Electoral Amnesia in Argentina
by Todd Chretien and Claudio Katz June 24, 2015 |
[Introduction by Todd Chretien: In the run-up to Argentina's national elections in October, a scramble for power has divided the incumbent Peronista party into warring factions. Founded by Juan Perón in 1946, the Partido Justicialista ruled through sometimes radical nationalism, state intervention in the economy, clientelist patronage and control over trade unions, and the loyalty of sections of the bourgeoisie and an elite political class of bureaucrats.
Mexican President and his Party Victorious in Election; Left Divided and Defeated
by Dan La Botz June 14, 2015 |
Despite widespread disillusionment with the political system, an organized attempt to prevent the election from taking place in a few states, and continuing economic doldrums, President Enrique Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) were the big winners in the Mexican election, followed by the conservative National Action Party (PAN).
Sanders and Independent Politics
by Thomas Harrison June 14, 2015 |
Despite his relatively low poll numbers at the moment, Bernie Sanders’ bid for the Democratic presidential nomination is catching fire and will undoubtedly attract a great many more supporters in the months to come. For radicals, and especially for socialists in the “third camp” tradition (so called from the time of the Cold War, when our tendency stood for revolutionary opposition to both camps) this poses a challenge.
Tiananmen Mothers Urge Leaders to Take Historical Responsibility for June Fourth
by Tienanmien Mothers June 7, 2015 |
A quarter century has passed since the June Fourth Massacre that took place in Beijing, China’s capital, near the end of the last century. But the truth of this tragedy has to this day not been laid bare to the world, and the massacre victims, who have still not received justice, cannot rest in peace. This is a disgrace for the whole Chinese people, and a disgrace for all of civilized humanity!
Bernie Sanders as I've Known Him
by David McReynolds June 4, 2015 |
I haven’‘t had a chance yet to write up my own view of the Bernie Sanders campaign, but I want to give some background, going back to 1980, on what I know about the man.
In 1980 I was in Vermont trying to get on the ballot for the Presidential campaign - seeking the line of Liberty Union, a minor party which had hoped to become a ‘‘second party” in Vermont.
Liberty Union’s own history goes back to the late 1960’s when there was an effort in several states, at the height of the Vietnam War, to get alternative radical views on the ballot. The main base for this effort was in California, with the Peace and Freedom Party which, in 1968, nominated Eldridge Cleaver for President. (I ran for Congress in Lower Manhattan on that ticket that year, picking up the endorsement of the Village Voice and getting nearly 5% of the vote).
A Socialist FAQ on Bernie Sanders and the Left
by Alan Maass and Ashley Smith June 6, 2015 |
The following introduction is by the editors of SocialistWorker.org where this FAQ was originally published.
Bernie Sanders kicked off his campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination with a large and enthusiastic rally in Burlington, Vermont, on May 26.
Sanders’ candidacy has prompted discussion and debate among a left shaped by recent struggles such as Occupy Wall Street, the Chicago teachers strike, Fight for 15, Black Lives Matter and the climate justice movement. Many radicals, publications and organizations either support Sanders’ Democratic Party run outright or believe his campaign can be used to build the infrastructure for a stronger left. By contrast, SocialistWorker.org has argued Sanders’ campaign will serve to corral and co-opt the emerging left into supporting the Democratic Party--and make it harder, not easier, to build an independent, left-wing alternative.
Here, Ashley Smith and Alan Maass respond to some of the questions and disagreements posed by SocialistWorker.org readers during the course of the discussion so far.
EU’s Military Strategy to Deepen Mediterranean Tragedies
by Nizar Visram May 28, 2015 |
More than 800 migrants died on April 19 this year when their overcrowded boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the Libyan coast. The tragedy sent soaring this year's Mediterranean death toll which was by then around 1,500 – 10 times the deaths during the same period last year.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), between 23,000 and 24,000 migrants had tried to cross over to Italy since the beginning of the year, while just under 21,000 migrants made the same journey between January and April 2014. While the number of migrants rose to some extent, migrants perishing at sea have hit the roof.
The Sanders Campaign and the Democratic “Party”
by Jason Schulman May 27, 2015 |
I appreciate the nonsectarian tone of the piece on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign by my longtime fellow New Politics editorial board member and friend Barry Finger. I think he has a better, more sophisticated understanding of the peculiarities of the Democratic Party (DP) and the U.S. electoral system than do many on the radical left that refuse to support any DP candidate regardless of that candidate’s personal political platform. However, I think that Barry still suffers from certain misunderstandings regarding just how different the big two U.S. political parties are from political parties that exist anywhere else in the world, and this means there are defects in his suggestions as to how left-wing socialists should relate to the Sanders campaign.
Bernie Sanders is no Eugene Debs
by Howie Hawkins May 27, 2015 |
Bernie Sanders’ entry into the Democratic presidential primaries should be seen as his final decisive step away from the democratic socialism he professes to support. He will raise some progressive demands in the primaries and then endorse the corporate Democrat, Hillary Clinton. Nothing changes.
Sanders is violating the first principle of socialist politics: class independence. The socialist movement learned that principle long ago when the business classes sold out the workers in the democratic revolutions of 1848 that swept across Europe and parts of Latin America.
Campaigning With Bernie, Then and Now: Why Labor Should Give Sanders Strong Primary Election Support
by Steve Early May 27, 2015 |
When I first met Brooklyn-born Bernie Sanders, he was a pretty marginal figure in his adopted state of Vermont. It was 1976 and he was running, unsuccessfully and for the fourth time, as a candidate of the Liberty Union Party (LUP).
Never heard of it? Well that’s understandable because only Vermonters are still afflicted with its enduring flakiness. Liberty Union (LUP) was a radical third party spearheaded by opponents of the Vietnam War who had, like Bernie, washed up in the Green Mountain State as “the Sixties” subsided.
Further Reflections on the Sanders Campaign
by Barry Finger May 26, 2015 |
As proponents of independent political action, we believe that the Democratic Party is a deathtrap for progressives and that history has demonstrated time and again that progressive movements immersed in the DP are stripped of their potential political power. Nevertheless, we cannot judge the potential of the Sanders’ movement solely by our attitude towards the Democratic Party, any more than we can evaluate the Democratic Party by the enormous potential contribution an unshackled Sanders movement may yet contribute to fundamental political change.
Ireland Says "Yes" to an Equal Society
by Lily Murphy May 25, 2015 |
On May 23, 2015 Ireland finally threw off the shackles of a conservative Catholic past and voted in favor of social equality.
The Irish electorate was asked to vote in a referendum to include gay marriage in our constitution and we agreed in great numbers to this proposal.
Many young people who had to leave Ireland in recent years due to austerity, managed to make the journey back home to vote yes. They sailed home and flew home under the hash tag “home to vote” which lit up Twitter and many had aspirations of returning for good once the land of their birth shakes off its recessionary hangover, but for the meantime they can proudly boast they took part in creating a Irish society everyone can live in.
The Future of Podemos
Isidro López, Emmanuel Rodríguez, &Pablo Carmona May 21, 2015 |
Podemos can still change Spain for the better. But it won’t do so by chasing the political center.
The strategic debate inside Podemos has become a public issue. Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the Spanish party, even recently jumped into the discussionwith an article explicitly inspired by Antonio Gramsci. But beyond the direct leadership of the party, the strategy debate involves something that pertains to everyone — to the scores of people and social sectors who desire a profound transformation of the Spanish political reality.
Three Conferences and a Postscript
by Ethan Young May 17, 2015 |
Dan La Botz’s description of the Future of the Left/Independent Politics Conference makes another introduction redundant. Instead, I’ll add my own observations. I come from the other side of this discussion: I hold with the `inside/outside’ approach to electoral politics, as pushed by the late Arthur Kinoy, a radical lawyer who led the National Committee for Independent Political Action in the 70s and 80s. Putting it simply, I supported left independent Barry Commoner for president in 1980, and Democrat Harold Washington for mayor of Chicago in 1983. This year, I support Kshama Sawant and Bernie Sanders. I see no contradiction – in fact I think it’s the only approach that makes sense.
Electoral Guide 2016
by John Halle May 16, 2015 |
Any discussion of this subject needs to be based on the understanding that, at present, voting is carefully designed to, in Chomsky's words "reduce the population to apathy and obedience", putting us in a position where we are forced to demonstrate our fealty to the corporate state by actively endorsing one of its two anointed representatives.
The Only Article You Need to Read about the 2016 Election
by Arun Gupta May 14, 2015 |
This is the latest in a series of articles discusing the pros and cons of a Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic Party. Scroll down to find other articles. - Ed.
In the general election, the Democrats need the left to be silent about how bankrupt and corrupt the party is so it can gloss its rush to the right in a veneer of progressive rhetoric.
If you’re progressive or on the left, here’s your cheat sheet on how to participate in the 2016 presidential election, which is just 18 months away. If you live in one of the first states in the Democratic primary process, like Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, vote for Bernie Sanders. You can also sign an online petition for him, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you chance upon one of his campaign rallies and have nothing better to do, join the crowd.
But don’t do anything else. Don’t become a campaign volunteer, do phone banking, door knocking, get the vote, and certainly don’t send him a dime of your money.
Bernie Sanders Calls for Political Revolution Against Billionaires: Campaign Needs to Build Independent Political Power
by Philip Locker |
This is the latest in a series of articles discusing the pros and cons of a Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic Party. Scroll down to find other articles. - Ed.
Boldly calling for a “political revolution” against the “billionaires and oligarchs” who have hijacked the political system, Bernie Sanders has launched an insurgent campaign for President. The only self-described socialist in Congress, Sanders explained his decision to run to ABC News, saying “We need a political revolution in this country involving millions of people who are prepared to stand up and say ‘Enough is enough,’ and I want to help lead that effort.”
Bernie Sanders is a thoroughbred—why call him a stalking horse?
by Michael Hirsch May 12, 2015 |
Voltaire wrote that “the best is the enemy of the good," but he cited it as a foible and not a redeeming practice. Within hours of Bernie Sanders announcing his candidacy for the Democratic Party presidential nod on April 30th, in some warrens of the radical left, the long corrective knives were already out for the only socialist in Congress. Why? Because Bernie is just not good enough, they said. Criticism ranged from his being a faux socialist, a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton whose backing by the left would be a practical waste of a year that could be better spent building a movement. Politicking for a candidate who can’t win the nomination and who would be destroyed by corporate America and an avalanche of corporate funding if somehow he did was seen as a mug's game.
They would be wrong.
Bosnia - Sarajevo: The Women’s Court in the former Yugoslavia - Secularism is a Women's Issue
by Marieme Helie Lucas May 10, 2015 |
The Women’s Court on war crimes against women during the war in the 1990ies formally started in Sarajevo, Bosnia on May 7.
Women came together from all the corners of the former-Yugoslavia to participate in the Women’s Court in Sarajevo, to demand justice for the crimes committed against them during the wars and the enduring inequalities and suffering that followed.
Letter from Ireland: That Other Referendum
by Lily Murphy May 9, 2015 |
On May 22 this year, people in the Republic of Ireland will exercise their democratic right by going to the polls to vote on two proposals to change the constitution. The first proposal is to allow same sex couples the right to marry each other. It is a proposal that has created much debate across the nation but one in which many favour and looks set to pass comfortably. The second proposal is one which has sparked less of a debate and it is worrying.
Run, Bernie, Run!
by Ted Glick May 9, 2015 |
This is the latest in a series of articles discusing the pros and cons of a Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic Party. Scroll down to find other articles. - Ed.
“If you had a President who said: `Nobody in America is going to make less than $12 or $14 an hour,’ what do you think that would do? If you had a President who said: `You know what, everybody in this country is going to get free primary health care within a year,’ what do you think that would do? If you had a President say, `Every kid in this country is going to go to college regardless of their income,’ what do you think that would do? If you had a President say, `I stand here today and guarantee you that we are not going to cut a nickel in Social Security; in fact we’re going to improve the Social Security program,’ what do you think that would do? If you had a president who said, `Global warming is the great planetary crisis of our time, I’m going to create millions of jobs as we transform our energy system. I know the oil companies don’t like it. I know the coal companies don’t like it. But that is what this planet needs: we’re going to lead the world in that direction. We’re going to transform the energy system across this planet-and create millions of jobs while we do that.’ If you had a President say that, what kind of excitement would you generate from young people all over this world?”
-Bernie Sanders, from the November, 2013 issue of The Progressive
Bernie Sanders's Presidential Bid Represents a Long Tradition of American Socialism
by Peter Dreier May 8, 2015 |
This article is republished here with the permission of the author, Peter Dreier, and of American Prospect.
Now that Bernie Sanders has entered the contest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Americans are going to hear a lot about socialism, because the 73-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont describes himself as a “democratic socialist.”
Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016
by Bruce A. Dixon May 18, 2015 |
“The sheepdog is a card the Democratic Party plays every presidential primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for re-election.”
Spoiler alert: we have seen the Bernie Sanders show before, and we know exactly how it ends. Bernie has zero likelihood of winning the Democratic nomination for president over Hillary Clinton. Bernie will lose, Hillary will win. When Bernie folds his tent in the summer of 2016, the money, the hopes and prayers, the year of activist zeal that folks put behind Bernie Sanders' either vanishes into thin air, or directly benefits the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Bernie for President
by Bhaskar Sunkara May 7, 2015 |
We should welcome Bernie Sanders' run, while being aware of its limits.
"I am not a capitalist soldier. I am a proletarian revolutionist. . . . I am opposed to every war but one.” So said Senator Bernie Sanders in 1979, reciting a speech from five-time Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs for a Folkways Records collection.
The Problem with Bernie Sanders
by Ashley Smith May 6, 2015 |
The upcoming presidential contest was shaping up to be one of the most underwhelming in electoral history. An heir to the Bush dynasty, real estate magnate Jeb, looked like the safest bet to become the Republican presidential nominee, and challenge the anointed frontrunner from the Democrats' leading dynasty, corporate drone Hilary Clinton.
Bernie Sanders’s Presidential candidacy— an auspicious development for the left
by George Fish May 6, 2015 |
It’s all over the news, mainstream and left/alternative alike, as well as social media, and is certainly one of the most important items of political news of recent vintage: after much consideration and testing of the political waters, Bernie Sanders (whom only the staid New York Times refers to as “Bernard”!), Independent Senator from Vermont and self-proclaimed “democratic socialist,” is running for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
The Elections in Chicago – A View From Chuy’s Base Area
by Bill Drew May 5, 2015 |
This is the fifth in a series of articles about the Chicago mayor and council elections. Scroll down to find others. - Eds.
Chicago hasn’t seen such electoral contention since the days of Dick and Jane – and Harold. Even in defeat, the Jesús “Chuy” Garcia challenge brought a familiar spirit back to the city by the lake. No one expected the immigrant from Durango to challenge the abrasive Rahm in a run off. Nor could we have have predicted the surprising synergy that would result from over a dozen insurgent ward campaigns and Chuy’s crusade. In the 12th ward on the Southwest side, we learned that politics is local.
Why Marx Matters
by Andrew Raposa April 26, 2015 |
It is extraordinary how relevant Marxist thought is becoming at a time of lingering financial crisis in the US and abroad. The financial debacle of 2008, and its continuous scourge, has at least meant that the words socialism and Marx are no longer distained but fashionable. In fact, the conventional capitalist analysis of Marxism that sees it as nothing but totally irrelevant and not applicable to a modern free and liberal social order is now in question.
After Single Payer Setback: Union Members Face Multiple Threats in Vermont
by Steve Early April 24, 2015 |
Liz Nikazmerad is a rarity in American labor: a local union president under the age of 30, displaying both youth and militancy. For the last two year years, she has led the 180-member Local 203 of the United Electrical Workers (UE), while working in the produce department of City Market in Burlington, Vermont. Thanks to their contract bargaining, full-time and part-time employees of this bustling community-owned food cooperative currently enjoy good medical benefits.
Court-Sanctioned Corruption and Plutocracy in America
by Michael Hirsch April 23, 2015 |
Review of: Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United, by Zephyr Teachout. Harvard University Press, 2014
Something's Happening in Latin America - A Review Essay
by Kim Scipes April 21, 2015 |
Steve Ellner, editor. Latin America’s Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century. Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. Notes. Index. Paper: $29.95.
George Ciccariello-Maher, We Created Chavez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution. Duke University Press, 2013. 352 pages. Notes. 17 photos and 1 map. Index.
“There’s somethin’ happenin’ here, What it is ain’t exactly clear” - Stephen Stills
With the Middle East in flames, NATO trying to start World War III in Ukraine while the European Union’s economy stagnates, Africa torn by low-level wars, and China re-entering the world stage in an assertive manner, there’s one region of the world that is relatively quiet: South America. (Oops—Obama just blew that by declaring Venezuela a “national security threat” to the US. But, never mind.) Yet some of the most interesting and far-reaching changes in the world are taking place in this region. And these two books are excellent entries into understanding current developments in the region.
Mujica and the Chicago Socialist Campaign: A Small Battle in a Larger War
by Bob Roman April 21, 2015 |
The usual practice for lefties defeated in electoral politics is to claim victory, victory in the sense of having spread the word, victory in the sense of building an organization, victory in the sense of whatever plausible argument comes to hand. In the case of Jorge Mujica's campaign for 25th Ward Alderman, we can safely assert it was a successful proof of concept: The "socialist" label, in some neighborhoods, is not a handicap even if it is not an asset. Begging your pardon but I've been saying as much for years. Through our participation, Chicago DSA did earn a reputation as an organization that delivers on its commitments. But the campaign intended to establish a socialist presence in Chicago government and that requires victory.
Liam O’Flaherty: Leader of a Four Day Revolt
by Lily Murphy |
Liam O’Flaherty is regarded as one of Ireland’s finest writers of the twentieth century, but before he rose to literary prominence, O’Flaherty led a little known and short lived occupation of the Rotunda Concert Hall in Dublin city just days after the formation of the Irish Free state in 1922.
Born off the coast of Galway on the Aran Island of Inis Mor in 1896, O’Flaherty served with the Irish Guards during World War I. After experiencing severe shellshock in Flanders he was discharged with a disability pension and led a somewhat nomadic life for the next few years.
Should Chicago Unions Have Backed a Socialist Instead of Chuy García?
by James Cunningham April 15, 2015 |
The “See, we told you so!” reaction by socialists to Rahm Emmanuel's victory over Jesús "Chuy" García in the recent mayoral runoff was as predictable as it was hypocritical. Scott Jay's article in New Politics is but one example of this kind of reaction which combines self-vindication and bravado with an utter lack of awareness of Chicago's political terrain. This know-it-all know-nothingism becomes painfully obvious when Jay writes:
Blame the Black Political Class For Re-Electing Obama's Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago
by Bruce A. Dixon April 12, 2015 |
NOTE: The original version of this article quoted a claim that no voter registration drive was conducted. Since we did not take the time to fact-check this claim before publication, the article has been altered to omit the claim. - Bruce A. Dixon
The results are in, and the truth hurts. Rahm Emanuel will sit in the mayor's office on the fifth floor of Chicago's City Hall four more years. Despite fudging police stats to make murders disappear, despite stonewalling on police torture and atrocities, despite deliberately shortening red light camera intervals to raise revenue for his buddies, despite closing and privatizing more than 50 public schools, almost exclusively in black and brown neighborhoods, than anywhere in the country, and despite his facing a solid progressive Democrat challenger, Rahm Emanuel carried every single ward in black Chicago, not by big margins, but by enough.
Small Victory for Independent Politics in Chicago, as Rahm Prevails
by Samantha Winslow April 11, 2015 |
Chicago teachers now have one of their own on the city council. Susan Sadlowski Garza, school counselor and Chicago Teachers Union executive board member, declared victory this week over incumbent John Pope. Absentee ballots are still being counted, but signs indicate she will squeeze past by less than 100 votes.
The Failures of Lesser-Evilism in Chicago
by Scott Jay |
Once again, a major election in the US has brought out the specter of lesser-evilism--the call to vote for the least bad option--and once again this strategy has been a complete failure, regardless of which candidate actually wins. Usually it is a Republican against a Democrat, although in Chicago in 2015 it was a neoliberal Democrat, Rahm Emanuel, against a slightly less neoliberal Democrat, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.
Death by Cop March - Los Angeles
by Mimi Soltysik April 10, 2015 |
The protestors marched through the streets of Los Angeles on April 7 carrying 617 coffins representing the death of 617 individuals killed by Los Angeles law enforcement since 2000. Participants convened on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors from the north, south, east, and west, staging die-ins at strategic locations along the way. Family members of those murdered along with individuals who have suffered at the hands of the LAPD delivered powerful messages of anger, hope, and sadness, urging the need for continued and escalated community response to LAPD oppression and brutality.
What’s Next for Greece? Debating Syriza’s Options
A reading list on the future of austerity in Greece, Europe and beyond
Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison April 3, 2015 |
In the weeks following its historic victory in the Greek elections on January 25, 2015, Syriza has been engaged in a bitter struggle.
My Deeply-Held Religious Convictions
by George Fish April 2, 2015 |
Dedicated to Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act
First We Take Manhattan…
Global Cities and Diasporic Networks in the aftermath of Syriza’s Victory
by Despina Lalaki March 24, 2015 |
Since the pressures of international financial capital and its subservient political elites will continue with the same if not greater intensity, it is also certain that a new cycle of social mobilization in Greece and the rest of Europe will begin again.
Zen and the Art of Social Movement Maintenance
by James K. Rowe March 24, 2015 |
[This article was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.]
Angela Davis, revolutionary activist and philosopher, is a committed yogi. She began practicing in prison when a doctor working with the Black Panther Party passed along a book on yoga to help her deal with chronic headaches.
Texts and Updates from Greece Panel Discussion Available
Campaign for Peace & Democracy's Feb. 6 NYC Forum
by Stephen R. Shalom March 7, 2015 |
New Politics has previously posted a video version of a Feb. 6 New York City panel discussion sponsored by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) entitled “After the Greek Elections: The Future of Austerity in Greece, Europe and Beyond.”
CPD has now posted text versions of the talks, along with separate updates by each of the speakers.
Model or Sui Generis? Comrade Kshama Sawant is Likely Both
by Michael Hirsch March 6, 2015 |
I’m still frozen in the moment. Has it really been 15 months since revolutionary socialist Kshama Sawant brought her unique brand of municipal socialism back to a major American city after winning an at-large seat in Seattle’s nonpartisan City Council race?
Electoral Action Conference: Building Alternatives to the Two-Party System
by Robert Caldwell March 4, 2015 |
Activists and candidates from around the country will come together on May 2-3 in Chicago to share their experiences and to launch a network for future cooperation at the Future of Left/Independent Electoral Action Conference.
The past few years have seen a significant uptick in independent political initiatives on the left, from election campaigns to new local electoral and social movement formations, to referenda campaigns.
Can Greece defy the Troika?
by Barry Finger March 3, 2015 |
The agreement signed between Greece and the EU after three weeks of negotiations is widely lamented on the left as a setback, if not a defeat, for Syriza. The two sides emerged from the agreement, if that is an accurate description, with different interpretations of the memorandum, signifying perhaps that no real deal was made after all. Greece obtained brief reprieve. Its banks will remain liquid for the next few months. The next phase will not be about what can be extracted from the troika, as much as what Greece can do despite and in defiance of the troika. That is what will be discussed here.
Debt Forgiveness: Who Owes Whom for What?
by Nancy Holmstrom February 26, 2015 |
The lion’s share of indebtedness in this world is invalid and immoral. Forgiveness is not what is called for; it’s liberation.
Talk of a “debt jubilee” leaves open whether the debts are valid or not, but talking about debt forgiveness raises the question of whether a debt is valid from a moral point of view.
On Cafes
by Amin Mansouri February 25, 2015 |
Cafes bring memories of the unpleasantly bleak days of my undergraduate studies in which I sought my peace of mind in the rough and stormy sea of Jean-Paul Sartre’s world, his philosophy and his novels shining light on the notion of loneliness for me. And I lived inside his books and through the characters he created. However, the more I grew critical, the stranger I found Sartre’s intellectual legacy.
#Flood11 Collective Statement
February 25, 2015 |
[Eds.: On Monday, March 2, 2015, in New York City a trial begins for eleven activists who are refusing to plead guilty to disorderly conduct and pay fines for taking part in a climate sit-in in Manhattan's Financial District last September. The Flood Wall Street Eleven plan instead to use their trial to illustrate that the bankers who finance climate change are the real harbingers of disorder. Below is a collective statement from the group. You can sign a petition in their support here.]
In order to solve a problem, you must first identify its’ source. . .
Le Guin Blasts Corporate Publishers
Speech in Acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
by Ursula K. Le Guin February 21, 2015 |
To the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks, from the heart. My family, my agents, my editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as my own, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine.
Newark students seize Cami Anderson’s office
by Bob Braun February 19, 2015 |
A small group of Newark high school students Tuesday night seized the office of state-appointed superintendent Cami Anderson in a protest timed to coincide with her imminent re-appointment to another year, her fifth, as head of the state’s largest school district. The action, which is continuing through the night, stands in stark contrast to the failure of Anderson’s older–and, theoretically, more powerful–critics to do anything to dislodge her from her post.
Men Explain Things to Me…and I Hardly Care - a review
by Amber A'Lee Frost February 16, 2015 |
Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me. Chicago: Haymarket Press, 2014. 130pp.
The word “mansplaining” refers to the condescending tendency of men to lecture women, despite the man’s lack of knowledge—or even despite the woman’s own expertise—on the subject at hand. It entered into the popular feminist lexicon sometime around 2009, and although Rebecca Solnit didn’t coin it, her essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” is largely cited as the inspiration.
2015: A Time for Outrage?
by Lily Murphy February 13, 2015 |
Two years have passed since one of the great political and social thinkers of our time departed this world.
On 26 February 2013 Stephane Hessel died at the age of 95. Hessel enjoyed a long life, from his birth in Berlin to his final breath in Paris, where one of his last works Indignez-Vous! (Time For Outrage) was published.
Syriza: “A grain of sand in the machinery”
by Eric Toussaint February 13, 2015 |
Eric Toussaint, analyses Syriza’s first days at the head of the Greek government for Le Courrier. He was interviewed by Benito Pérez (of the daily Le Courrier, Geneva. 1]
Eric Toussaint is visibly exhausted at the end of a difficult week. But his mind is clear and his enthusiasm is intact: Syriza’s victory in the Greek legislative election has opened one of those parentheses within which History accelerates and is written as we watch. A political scientist who is experienced in economic matters, founder and spokesman of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), Toussaint is a key observer of the battle now going on between Greece and its creditors—mainly the governments of Northern Europe. That is evident from the interest that was shown in his presentations Saturday, in Geneva, during a day of discussions on the economy organized by Le Courrier. A former adviser to the government of Ecuador and the president of Paraguay (Fernando Lugo), the Belgian native has also been approached by Syriza. Pending his possible involvement, Eric Toussaint is speaking out freely and observing the Greek experiment with a benevolent but critical eye.
SYRIZA, Socialists and the Struggles Ahead: A Roundtable
by Antonis Davanellos and Sotiris Martalis February 12, 2015 |
Greece's left-wing government is on a collision course with the rulers of Europe over the commitment of the Coalition of the Radical Left, or SYRIZA, to reverse drastic austerity measures imposed under the Memorandums negotiated with the European Union (EU).
SYRIZA won a tremendous victory in the January 25 elections because it promised an alternative to the catastrophic economic and social crisis that Greece has endured for more than five years. But with the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras only two weeks old, the political and financial elite of Europe, from Germany's Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble to Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank (ECB), have rejected all proposals to negotiate Greece's huge foreign debt or relax the austerity conditions imposed as a condition for the bailout of the country's economic system. With a showdown approaching, all eyes are on the struggle in Greece and the hope it hold for the future.
After the Fall: An Autopsy of the Midterms
by Michael Hirsch February 10, 2015 |
Surveying the wreckage of his party’s 2014 election campaign, Howard Dean, on the November 9th Meet the Press, was candid, with such sound bytes as, ““Where the hell is the Democratic party …You got to stand for something if you want to win.” The Republicans’ message was, “We’re not Obama.” What was the Democrats’ message? “Oh well, we really aren’t either.”
Translation: “Get my message; we need a message.”
Revolution Defended in Rojava--For Now
by Alexander Kolokotronis February 8, 2015 |
After approximately four and a half months of fighting, Kurdish forces have successfully pushed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as ISIS or ISIL) out of Kobanî. The coalition of ground forces most notably included the People’s Defense Units (YPG) , Women’s Defense Units (YPJ) , and the Peshmerga from the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).At the same time, through the air, a U.S. led-coalition made 700 airstrikes against ISIS. On February 6 it was reported “fourteen more villages and some strategically important points have been liberated.” In an October 2014 article for Naked Capitalism Claude Salhani noted the strategic importance of the region. Salhani stated “victory for” ISIS in the region “would give the group prestige among the dozens of groups lined up in the fight against Syrian President Bashar Assad. It would also secure the terror organization’s flow of oil to a lucrative market.”
Panel Discussion on Syriza Victory
by Thomas Harrison February 9, 2015 |
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy sponsored a panel discussion Friday evening on "After the Greek Elections: The Future of Austerity in Greece, Europe, and Beyond." A standing-room-only audience heard speakers address the success of the Syriza coalition party in the recent Greek elections and how it is dealing with the austerity crisis.
Rasmea Odeh Action Alert
by Rasmea Defense Committee February 5, 2015 |
[Ed. note: Readers of David Finkel's November article on "The Trials of Rasmea Odeh" will be interested in this alert from the Rasmea Defense Committee.]
Solidarity with Syriza: What Can the Left Demand?
by Barry Finger February 4, 2015 |
For Syriza to triumph, it is not enough for it to play tough with the European Union. not enough to bypass the structure of the European Central Bank to find individual national allies, not enough to refuse to cooperate with capitalist auditors. Greece has already lost 30% of its GDP since the peak before the crisis, with unemployment standing at 25%, a decline only comparable to that seen in the US during the Great Depression.
Greece after the election -- not a threat but an opportunity for Europe
February 4, 2015 |
[Ed. note: The list of signatories to this declaration includes seven out of nine German trade union presidents, all members of the executive boards of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and IG Metall, plus some (primarily social-democratic) politicians at the Bundestag and European Parliament levels, including the vice-chairman of the SPD, as well as numerous academics.]
The political landslide in Greece is an opportunity, not only for that crisis-ridden country but also for a fundamental reassessment and revision of EU economic and social policy.
What Caused the Killings?
by Gilbert Achcar February 2, 2015 |
Gilbert Achcar is a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and the author of many books, including Clash of Barbarisms: September 11 and the Making of the New World Disorder, more
The Challenge of Podemos
by Manel Barriere and Andy Durgan and Sam Robson February 2, 2015 |
The emergence of so-called populist parties as a response to increasingly discredited political elites is a European-wide phenomenon. In most cases these parties have emerged on the right, if not the far-right. Not so in the Spanish state where Podemos, after barely ten months in existence, appears to be undermining the whole political set up in place since the end of the Franco dictatorship in the late 1970s.
New York Times perpetuates myth Israel was ‘fighting for its very survival’ during 1967 war
by Stephen R. Shalom January 30, 2015 |
On January 25, the New York Times posted an article by their Israel correspondent, Jodi Rudoren, about a new Israeli film, “Censored Voices,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this pas
The Real Threat in Europe
by Walden Bello January 30, 2015 |
The real threat is the repression of migrant communities by national security states with the backing of a significant segment of the majority population mobilized by right wing forces.
The Left and the Election of Syriza
by David McNally January 30, 2015 |
It was always going to be messy and it has gotten so remarkably quickly. The decision by the Syriza leadership to form a coalition government with the anti-immigrant Independent Greeks (ANEL) party has rightly shaken progressives who hoped that the Greek elections would rapidly transform politics to the left. Instead, we have been harshly reminded that the logic of electoral politics can be dangerously compromising for the left.
An Antarsya Activist Talks to New Politics about the Syriza Government in Greece
by Iannis Delatolas January 29, 2015 |
New Politics interviewed Iannis Delatolas, an art photographer, a founding member of the Greek Solidarity Movement (AKNY), and a supporter of Antarsya and of the International Socialist Tendency. He has been involved in the antifascist solidarity movement with Greece and in struggles for LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, in anti-war activities, and in other social justice causes.
Some thoughts on the deal between Syriza and the Independent Greeks
by Kevin Ovendon January 29, 2015 |
Here are some immediate thoughts. They include how we on the international and internationalist Left might respond. As well as what in my opinion we should say:
After Syriza's Victory
by Stathis Kouvelakis January 26, 2015 |
Syriza’s electoral triumph has brought hope to the European radical Left and workers’ movement, offering it an immense opportunity. We can also put that the other way around – to fail this test could have incalculable consequences.
A few quick remarks on the first difficulties and problems we face:
Context versus Value
by Manash Bhattacharjee January 26, 2015 |
There have been mostly two kinds of responses to the Charlie Hebdo killings. On one side are those who have simply seen it as a satire versus intolerance issue, with a subtext: Satire being seen as a western/universal (artistic) value and intolerance being a fundamental aspect of religion (more specifically: Political Islam).
"We're Facing an Important Crossroad"
Lebanese author Gilbert Achcar says the third revolutionary phase must be free of religious radicalism.
Dina Kabil interviews Gilbert Achcar January 26, 2015 |
Lebanese Marxist intellectual Gilbert Achcar, author of The People Want (2013), Eastern Cauldron (2004) and The Clash of Barbarisms (2002/2006), says Egypt is at an historical and highly important crossroads in the development of the long-term revolutionary process— stressing the urgency in building leadership and formulating strategies appropriate for change.
Infamy
by Michael Löwy January 21, 2015 |
INFAMY. That is the only word that can sum up how we feel about the the murder of our buddies at Charlie Hebdo. A crime made even more hateful because these comrade artists were people on the left, anti-racists, anti-fascists, anti-colonialists, sympathizers with communism and anarchism. It was only recently that they participated in an homage to the memory of a group of Algerians assassinated by the French police in Paris on October 17, 1961.
Sanders for President?
by Michael Hirsch January 21, 2015 |
[This article is a reply to David Goodner's "Why Bernie Sanders Needs to Run for President—As an Independent."]
Dear David,
You want the excellent Bernie Sanders to run as an independent in the 2016 presidential. So do I!
Why Bernie Sanders Needs to Run for President—As an Independent
by David Goodner January 20, 2015 |
[This article originally appeared in In These Times. See the reply by Michael Hirsch.]
Frank Fried, 1927-2015, Presente!
January 16, 2015 |
Franklin Fried, who devoted more than 70 years to supporting and fighting for freedom, justice, equality, and liberation for working and oppressed people in the U.S. and around the world, died Tuesday, Jan. 13, at his home in Alameda, California. He was 87.
The Coming Reckoning in Turkey
by Daniel Johnson January 16, 2015 |
On December 24 a sixteen-year-old student named Mehmet Emin Altunses was arrested in the Turkish city of Konya. His crime? Apparently the youth insulted President Tayyip Recep Erdoğan, saying in a speech that the new president (who served two terms as prime minister between 2003 and 2014) was “the leader of corruption, bribery and theft,” as well as the owner of an “illegal palace.”
Is Solidarity without Identity Possible? - On the Charlie Hebdo Attack
by Cinzia Arruzza January 11, 2015 |
The time I saw Charb in Paris was January 24, 2010, the day of the crowded commemoration of the French philosopher and activist Daniel Bensaïd at La Mutualité. During the speeches, Charb kept drawing and projecting vignettes about his comrade Daniel, whose book, Marx: Mode d’Emploi, he had illustrated a year earlier.
Public Employees in New York
by Michael Hirsch January 10, 2015 |
Review of: Richard Steier, Enough Blame to Go Around: The Labor Pains of New York City’s Public Employees. Albany, New York: Excelsior Editions/State University of New York Press, 2014. 304 pp. US$24.95 (paperback).
Two things I know to be true about Richard Steier. He is the best full-time reporter on the New York City labor beat. He is also the only full-time reporter on the New York City labor beat.
The Massacre at Charlie Hebdo
by David Finkel January 9, 2015 |
The mass murder at Charlie Hebdo in Paris is the leading news story in the world, and is universally condemned – rightfully so. In the left’s condemnation of this brutal massacre of journalists and cartoonists for expressing opinions in satirical form, we need to express our dissent from some of what’s being preached under the foggy cover of “je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie).
NPA Statements on Charlie Hebdo Killings
January 9, 2015 |
Following are the two statements issued by the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) of France after the January 7 killing of Charlie Hebdo joournalists in Paris. - Dan La Botz, Co-Editor
A Barbarous and Reactionary Act
An Early Activist Critiques Stalin’s 1934 Antihomosexual Law
Kurt Hiller, translated and with an introduction by David Thorstad January 8, 2015 |
[This article, titled “A Chapter of Russian Reaction,” translated into English here for the first time, was written in German by longtime homosexual activist Kurt Hiller (1885–1972) from London and published in the Swiss gay journal Der Kreis in 1946. Hiller had been active in Germany’s first homosexual-rights organization, the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee (Scientific Humanitarian Committee), headed by Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935). Founded in 1897, the committee was Germany’s most prominent gay group.
The U.S. and Mexico: Hand-in-Hand in Human Rights Violations
by Kent Paterson December 28, 2014 |
Though little-noticed by the U.S. media, events north of the border bore striking similarities to developments in Mexico in 2014. Like in the mass protests that arose south of the Rio Bravo and then rapidly extended worldwide over the police killings and forced disappearances of the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college students in Guerrero, Mexico, the catalyzing issue in El Norte was police violence.
The Alternative in Cuba
by Samuel Farber December 28, 2014 |
On December 17, 2014, Washington and Havana agreed to a path-breaking change in a relationship that, for more than fifty years, was characterized by the United States’ efforts to overthrow the Cuban government, including the sponsorship of invasions, naval blockades, economic sabotage, assassination attempts, and terrorist attacks.
‘Anyone but Bibi’ Strengthens the Israeli Right Wing
by Da'am Workers Party December 27, 2014 |
[Editors’ note: The Da’am Workers Party is an Israeli revolutionary socialist organization formed by Palestinian and Jewish activists in 1995. The party initiated the formation of the WAC-MANN trade union movement that aims to organize sectors and populations traditionally neglected by Israel’s mainstream union federation, the Histadrut, and does so based on an explicitly anti-corporate, anti-austerity platform. It opposed the Oslo accords, but supports a two state solution based on the 1967 borders and the dismantling of all settlements. In the last Knesset election, Da’am ran with a Palestinian feminist, Asma Aghbaria-Zahalka, at the head of its list. This article was published on the Da’am website on Dec. 20, 2014.]
Solidarity with Black Lives Matter Movement
by Vermont Workers Center December 27, 2014 |
As human rights organizations, representing struggles ranging from disability rights to labor rights to criminal justice reform, from migrant justice to climate justice, we recognize the struggle for black liberation as central to securing all of our human rights in a country founded upon systemic racism.
The Politics of Dead Cops and the Coming Repression
by Mike King December 25, 2014 |
There’s blood on many hands tonight. Those that incited violence on this street under the guise of protest, that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did everyday. We tried to warn it must not go on, it cannot be tolerated. That blood on the hands starts on the steps of city hall in the office of the mayor.
Activists Blast NYPD Attempts To Silence Movement For Change
by Ferguson Action December 24, 2014 |
New York, NY — Activists issued a scathing statement this afternoon in response to recent attempts by the NYPD to silence the efforts of citizens seeking justice for victims of police violence.
Dreamed a Dream by the Old Canal…….
by Lily Murphy December 23, 2014 |
This year marks 100 years since the birth of Ewan MacColl. Born James Henry Miller in Salford on January 25,1915, he adapted the stage name of Ewan MacColl to acknowledge his strong Scottish heritage.
Post-racialism and the New Civil Rights Movement
Fran Shor December 22, 2014 |
As the shouts of “Black Lives Matter” reverberate from the streets of Ferguson, Missouri to the bridges of New York City, mass protest is once again raising the issue of the persistence of racism, both institutional and individual. Young people, especially from within the black community, have assumed leadership by mo
Catholicism: The New Communism?
by Richard Greeman December 21, 2014 |
Last week, as yet another mega-typhoon laid waste to the Philippines, the leaders of 183 capitalist governments met in Lima, Peru to face the imminent threat of climate catastrophe at a U.N. Climate Conference called COP20. (Yawn.) In case you missed the headlines (they were small), the world leaders agreed to nothing.[1]
DSA on Normalizing Relations with Cuba
December 21, 2014 |
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) celebrates the Obama administration’s move toward the normalization of diplomatic relationships between the United States and Cuba. This change in U.S. foreign policy will help bridge the divide between U.S. and Cuban residents.
Lost to Idealism: The British Left Choose Rhetoric over Reality
by Anonymous December 19, 2014 |
In the United Kingdom, we are accustomed to progressives conducting their arguments in confident terms of complete inevitability. Progress is a one way street, and we are marching ceaselessly along it towards the end of history, almost without trying.
Shummy’s Surrender: Democratic Governor of VT Goes South On Single Payer
by Steve Early December 19, 2014 |
“Vermont…is the only state with universal single-payer health coverage for its residents.”
--James Fallows in The Atlantic, April, 2014
Exposing the FBI
by Lawrence S. Wittner December 16, 2014 |
Review of The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, by Betty Medsger (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. 596 pages. Notes, Index. Hardcover $29.95; paperback $16.95).
A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
by Alicia Garza December 15, 2014 |
I created #BlackLivesMatter with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, two of my sisters, as a call to action for Black people after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed. It was a response to the anti-Black racism that permeates our society and also, unfortunately, our movements.
"Class, Race, Gender and U.S. Policing"
by Michelle Renee Matisons December 15, 2014 |
The white supremacist policing practices behind the murder-by-cop epidemic is really a capitalist, white supremacist, heteropatriarchal policing system that must be analyzed and fought as such.”
The Faults of American Criminal Justice Run Deeper than Race
by Nathan J. Robinson December 15, 2014 |
For those continually exasperated by the spate of white denials of racism in the face of blatantly racist police murders, the #CrimingWhileWhite stories on Twitter were a gratifying rebuttal.
Hong Kong, Ferguson and New York City! Solidarity Statement with Black Communities in Ferguson, Missouri and NYC
December 11, 2014 |
The following statement from Left 21 in Hong Kong was written in early December as the pro-democracy activists there were being driven from the streets. - Dan La Botz, Co-Editor
From Hong Kong to Ferguson and NYC, we send you our warmest solidarity!
Police Violence is Not Inevitable
by Steve Early December 3, 2014 |
In the wake of a Missouri grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9, it can be difficult to imagine a city in the United States where a police department and a largely black and Latino population work together productively.
But it’s happening in Richmond, California, a gritty town in the San Francisco Bay Area best known for its massive Chevron refinery and, in past years, for its high crime rate.
OUTRAGE, PROTEST, AND REBELLION OVER REFUSAL TO INDICT MICHAEL BROWN’S KILLER
by Saulo Colón and Dan La Botz November 25, 2014 |
Pain and anger at the police killing of Michael Brown became transformed into protests that swept across America just before Thanksgiving. Thousands of people in the town of Ferguson, Missouri, and tens of thousands in cities throughout the country reacted with indignation, anger and in Ferguson with violent protests after the grand jury failed to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Sign-on Statement: End the Killing of Students Now: Peace, Justice, and Democracy for Mexico
by Campaign for Peace and Democracy November 20, 2014 |
Dear Friend of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy,
The Trials of Rasmea Odeh
by David Finkel November 20, 2014 |
Rasmea Odeh, a 67-year-old Palestinian-American, associate director of the Arab American Action Network and organizer of the acclaimed Arab Women’s Committee in Chicago, was convicted in Detroit on November 10 of “unlawful procurement of naturalization” at the time she became a U.S. citizen in 2004.
Her imprisonment immediately afterward has been the most shocking part of the case, as explained below.
How Labor Can Save Itself
by Michael Hirsch November 19, 2014 |
Review of The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement,
By Stanley Aronowitz, Verso, 2014.
Kobanê, Turkey, and the Syrian Struggle
Joseph Daher interviewed by Riad Azar November 18, 2014 |
An extended interview with Joseph Daher, a member of the Revolutionary Left Current in Syria, living in Switzerland, will be published in the forthcoming Winter 2015 issue of New Politics. Here we just post the questions dealing with Kobanê and Turkey.
Midterm Elections, Direct Democracy, and Legitimacy
by JP Miller November 17, 2014 |
If any group of United States citizens can claim a mandate in the midterm elections than it must be the millions of eligible voters who abstained from voting. It is a common excuse when discussing U.S. midterm elections to argue that voters do not participate in the numbers that accompany elections in a presidential election year. However, blaming the low 2014 election turn-out on a historical trend is incomplete and deceptive.
Global Capitalism and Pathogenic Environments: Is palm oil monoculture responsible for the ongoing Ebola outbreak?
by Jean Batou November 13, 2014 |
The Ebola pandemic, which has already caused the death of more than 5000 people in West Africa, could kill more than 90,000 people, just in the Liberian county of Montserrado, between now and 15 December, if measures taken in the affected regions are not massively increased over the next few days.[i]
The No State Solution: Institutionalizing Libertarian Socialism in Kurdistan
by Alexander Kolokotronis November 2, 2014 |
In what many outside of the territory are referring to as the Rojava Revolution, a major shift in political philosophy and political programmatics has taken place in Kurdistan. Yet, this shift is not limited to the region of Rojava, or what many call Syrian or Western Kurdistan – a region where the Democratic Union Party (PYD) has taken an active part in this change. In “Turkish,” or rather Northern Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been the foremost leader.
Brazilian 2014 Elections: Plus ça change...
by Charmain Levy October 28, 2014 |
Once again the Workers’ Party (PT) found itself in the difficult position of having to defend its government’s sorry record on issues such as the economy, corruption and energy policies, all while fending off right-wing opposition candidates. Fortunately for the PT and its incumbent president and presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff, their adversaries at the national level never managed to assemble a political program that differentiated itself from the PT’s.
Critique of Piketty on Capital and Inequality
by Charles Post October 27, 2014 |
THE ISSUE OF growing inequalities of income and wealth in the advanced capitalist world over the past four decades has been the subject of both social scientific research and political struggle. On the one hand, there is an extensive literature that amply documents the growth of inequality globally since the mid-1970s.
Rosa Luxemburg for Today
by Nicole Shippen October 27, 2014 |
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY:
Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Legacy
Edited by Jason Schulman
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 214 pp.
The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg:
Volume I: Economic Writings 1
Edited by Peter Hudis
Verso, 2013, 596 pp.
The Scottish Independence Referendum: A Socialist Perspective
by Eric Chester October 26, 2014 |
On September 18, 2014, the Scottish people had the opportunity to withdraw from the United Kingdom and become an independent country. The unity of Scotland and England has existed since 1707, so the vote could have broken with three hundred years of history. After a long and bitter campaign, the proposal to leave the UK was defeated by a margin of 55% to 45%.
Protests Sweep Mexico over Police Attack on Students
by Frontera NorteSur |
[October 24, 2014] Public outrage over the police murders of six people and forced disappearances of 43 students from the Atoytzinapa rural teachers’ college in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero continued to snowball this week.
Response to Jay and Sustar & Bean
by Adolph Reed |
The following article by Adolph Reed, Jr. responds to an article that appeared on the New Politics website a week ago. Sadly, since then we have learned that Karen Lewis has been afflicted with brain cancer. We offer our sympathy to her, her family, and her friends and wish for her rapid and full recovery.
Behind the Kobane Tragedy: The Kurdish Political Movement and Turkey
by Özlem İlyas Tolunay October 14, 2014 |
The whole world is just watching the forthcoming massacre in Kobane. US-led air strikes seem to be made only for show. When ISIS approached the oil-rich Erbil, the Kurdish Regional Government’s capital, the U.S.-led coalition forces immediately took action against ISIS. However they didn’t do the same for Kobane.
Indiana Moral Mondays
by George Fish October 12, 2014 |
Moral Mondays has been established in Indiana. At a founding meeting in Indianapolis in mid-September, the organization adopted a “five-point agenda” similar to those of Moral Mondays movements in other states:
Ebola: Who are the Architects of Death and How Can We Combat Them?
by Jean Batou October 11, 2014 |
According to the latest predictions of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), if the Ebola pandemic continues to progress at the current rhythm, it could affect 1.4 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone between now and January 2015, leading to the deaths of 700,000 in a year, and thus making Ebola the third leading cause of death from infectious diseases in Africa, after AIDS and respiratory diseases.
What They's Talking about on the Streets in Hong Kong
by Ruixue Bai October 9, 2014 |
After Sunday night, when many people feared that there might be a crackdown on the protests after following several pleas for protesters to leave the sites and the government’s warning that civil servants must be able to return to work the next day, this week the protests have nevertheless continued.
Karen Lewis and the Long Arm of Lesser Evilism
by Scott Jay October 8, 2014 |
The article by Scott Jay that follows was published on our website several days before the public learned that Karen Lewis was suffering from brain cancer. We are sorry to hear of her illness and offer our sympathy to her and to her family and friends. We leave the article on our website as a matter of public record and because the political issues that it raises remain important, even though she has now decided not to run for mayor. We wish Ms.Lewis a rapid and full recovery. – Editors
A Challenge to Occupiers and Unionists
by Sean Crawford |
Where have all the occupiers gone? We have scattered, enmeshed in an economic system we loathe, faced with the dismal realities of the prolonged "Great Recession" and a jobless recovery that only benefits the ruling class. With our future prospects bleak and our hopes for creating a more just economy diffused, we are left with only our collective will, experience, and values.
A Sleeping Giant Stirs: Mexico's October Risings
by Frontera NorteSur October 5, 2014 |
Largely downplayed in the U.S. media, ground-shaking events are rattling Mexico. On one key front, Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong announced October 3 the Pena Nieto administration’s acceptance of many of the demands issued by striking students of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN). IPN Director Yoloxichitl Bustamante, whose ouster had been demanded by the students, handed in her resignation.
Betty Reid Mandell, at 89; longtime advocate for the poor
by Bryan Marquard October 3, 2014 |
Long after retiring as a professor of social work at Bridgewater State, Betty Reid Mandell kept putting her teachings into practice in her 80s by lending assistance to the homeless who were seeking help from the state Department of Transitional Assistance.
When she stopped by to volunteer, she recalled in an essay, the homeless section of Boston’s welfare offices reminded her of the front line in an endless conflict.
Hong Kong - Statement from Four Organizations Calling for a Tactical Retreat and a Report
October 4, 2014 |
Today [October 3] Hong Kong’s rule of law and basic human rights were totally violated. In Mong Kok, Causeway Bay and Tsim Tsa Tsui fascist thugs and gangs to different extents attacked the peaceful occupiers, resulting in hundreds of injuries. We condemn this most severely. A variety of circumstantial evidence points to the conclusion that Beijing is the biggest suspect behind these thugs and gangs.
Hong-Kong - Chinese Government Sends in its Mafia
October 3, 2014 |
The following is a report from an on-the-ground source in Hong Kong. - Editors
The government is mobilizing its mafia extensively. Since noon, the government has started mobilizing gangsters to provoke the public. It is hard to imagine that the government is lining up with the mafia but it now happens during the CY Leung’s administration. This is something expected and no need to be shocked about it.
Looking at the current situation, the government hopes to shift Occupy Central with Love and Peace into a massive riot and make the Hong Kong public angry with the protesters.
Occupy Central--What’s Next for the Hong-Kong Democracy Movement? A Brief Observation on the Current Movement
by Au Loong Yu October 1, 2014 |
(An earlier version was translated by Bai Ruixue, but since then the Chinese version had been revised and partially translated by the author.)
Monday 29th September 2014/Occupy Central Day 3 - Occupy central continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
Ukraine: Resisting nationalist polarization and Russian invasion
Building a Democratic Left Party; A leftist feminist point of view
Nina Potarskaya interviewed by Jean Batou September 29, 2014 |
Nina Potarskaya is one of the leading Ukrainian leftist feminists, founder of the feminist squadron at Maidan, and member of the Left Opposition, which helped organize three successive conferences of left forces in Kiev, in November 2013, March 2014, and September 2014. The most recent conference decided to build a new democratic Left party, which is the first electoral effort of its kind in Ukraine. She was interviewed in Geneva by Jean Batou, with the help of Kirill Buketov, for solidaritéS.
The Tragedy of Being Michael Brown
Did Brown have to be a college-bound angel to have his death matter?
by Mina Khanlarzadeh September 18, 2014 |
Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, was shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9.
Defying Apocalypse
by Brian Tokar September 18, 2014 |
Greening the Union Label
Zero Carbon Future Could Be a Jobs Bonanza
by Steven Wishnia September 18, 2014 |
From teachers to transit workers, civil servants to electricians, the People’s Climate March will have more organized-labor participation than any environmentalist effort in U.S. history.
Naomi Klein Breaks a Taboo
by John Tarleton September 16, 2014 |
The fact that global warming is man-made and poses a grave threat to our future is widely accepted by progressives. Yet, the most commonly proposed solutions emphasize either personal responsibility for a global emergency (buy energy-efficient light bulbs, purchase a Prius), or rely on market-based schemes like cap-and-trade. These responses are not only inadequate, says best-selling author Naomi Klein, but represent a lost opportunity to confront climate change’s root cause: capitalism.
Reply to Bennett Muraskin on Gaza Protest Blog
by Stephen R. Shalom September 7, 2014 |
Bennett Muraskin complains that a blog post of mine -- a report on a demonstration in Newark protesting the blank check given by NJ senators Menendez and Booker for Israel's crimes -- is missing "full recognition of Hamas' war crimes and vile ideology."
Response to Stephen Shalom’s Blog on Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza
by Bennett Muraskin September 7, 2014 |
There is something missing from Stephen Shalom’s blog post on Israelis crimes in the recent Gaza conflict and it is full recognition of Hamas’ war crimes and vile ideology.
Ebola : A Virus in the Heart of Darkness
by Jean Batou September 6, 2014 |
Filoviridae Ebola is a virus made up of ten proteins that was first identified in 1976 in Zaire, today the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). While today five types of the virus are recognized, they are all believed to be mutations of the first known strain, which one finds today in western Africa. (Gire et al., Science, August 28, 2014).
Interview with Sam Gindin on 'The Making of Global Capitalism'
by Lois Weiner August 31, 2014 |
Sam Gindin, former Research Director of the Canadian Auto Workers union and co-author with Leo Panitch of “The making of global capitalism” graciously agreed to answer questions from NP board members about his book when he and I participated in a conference at the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Thirteen arrested as protesters tell Senators Menendez and Booker: ‘No more blank check for Israel’s crimes,’
by Stephen R. Shalom August 31, 2014 |
Outside the Gateway Center, where Menendez and Booker have offices. (Photo by Tom Bias.)
[This article was first published on Mondoweiss.]
Michael Brown and Ferguson—Stop the Killing of Black Men
by Dan La Botz August 22, 2014 |
Another young black man has been shot and killed by the police in an American city. Michael Brown’s killing forms part of a national pattern that is a horror for the African American community, an outrage against humanity, and a disgrace to our country.
Ferguson, Militarization, Federal Jurisdiction in Police Brutality
Hawkins Calls for Federal Jurisdiction in Police Brutality Cases; Statement on Ferguson, Garner, Syracuse, Militarization of Police
Howie Hawkins August 22, 2014 |
[We re-post here a statement by Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for Governor of New York.—eds.]
Staten Island, Syracuse, Ohio, and Ferguson. Garner, Grant, Crawford, and Brown. Add these locations and names to the long list of young black unarmed men (and women) who are racially profiled and injured or killed at the hands of Police Departments around the country. From every corner of the US there are daily reports of police brutality and misbehavior.
A Comment on the East Bay Mayoral Campaigns
by Scott Jay August 18, 2014 |
In the past few weeks, New Politics has published two valuable commentaries on the role of socialists and the Left in local electoral campaigns, first a broad overview by Dan La Botz and then a response by David Judd specifically on Dan Siegel’s campaign for Mayor of Oakland.
Is It Time To Be Outlaws Again?
by Mel Packer August 17, 2014 |
Only large-scale civil disobedience will make our leaders address economic injustice.
In 1989, Bob Dylan recorded a song titled “Everything Is Broken”. That song seemed to go largely ignored, perhaps because it seemed to be only a pessimistic lament that offered no suggestions for how to go about fixing the “everything”.
But as with many of his songs, it was prophetic. Lately, many Americans are experiencing the feeling that everything is broken, but people in many other countries have had this feeling for a long time.
Israel and Imperialism
A Response to Bennett Muraskin
by Barry Finger August 9, 2014 |
I would like to thank Bennett for his kind and appreciative comments on my artcile and use the opportunity presented by his letter to answer some essential points of contention.
Coal Miners Are Mad…and Scared. And They Have a Right to Be
by Mel Packer August 8, 2014 |
In 1968, the Mannington Mine in Farmington WV owned by Consol Coal, caught fire, blew up, and 78 miners were buried, many likely alive.
In 1972, a Consol mine in Blacksville, WV, caught fire and 9 miners were buried (again, likely alive) when Consol sealed the mine off to stop the fire and save the coal.
Kshama Sawant on Gaza Solidarity: End the Brutal Violence and Killings
by Kshama Sawant August 7, 2014 |
[Because Kshama Sawant is at the moment the leading elected socialist official in the United States her opinions carry a weight far more important than those of many other socialist groups and activists. We print below Sawant's recent statement on Israel's attacks on Gaza made in the Seattle City Council and reprinted on the Socialist Alternative website. - Eds]
Bacevich on the Betrayal of U.S. Soldiers
by Jack Stuart August 6, 2014 |
Review of Andrew J. Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country. New York, Metropolitan Books, 2013. 238 pages. Endnotes. Hardcover $26. Paperback $16. Kindle $11.04
Response to Barry Finger on Israel-Palestine
by Bennett Muraskin August 6, 2014 |
I wish to commend Barry Finger for his analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict dating back to the establishment of 1947 UN Partition Plan. (Finger makes a minor error in calling it the “1948 partition.”)
Michael Walzer's Defense of Israel's Crimes
by Stephen R. Shalom August 4, 2014 |
There is so much wrong with Michael Walzer’s brief essay on the New Republic website, supporting Israel in its latest onslaught, while criticizing “a little uneasily” some of the excessive civilian deaths, that it is hard to know where to begin.
Supporting the Struggle Against Apartheid Then and Now
by Barry Finger July 29, 2014 |
The discussion of a socialist strategy towards Palestine never recedes from global pertinence and urgency. The basic terms of the Palestinian tragedy established in 1948 remain a festering wound—unaddressed, malignant and oozing in blood and rot. With it the Israeli garrison state continues to descend, and rightfully so, into isolation and disrepute in the court of civilized opinion.
Obama Foreign Policy – A Brief Postscript
by David Finkel July 26, 2014 |
JULY 21, 2014 -- Since the writing of my effort to analyze the Obama foreign policy (“Droning On, Fracking the Planet,” New Politics Summer 2014), a confluence of events – in various ways, all blowback from ravages of U.S policies past and present – combined to transform much of world politics in nasty and dangerous directions, with huge tolls in destruction and human misery. To review very briefly:
La Botz Got the Siegel Campaign All Wrong
by David Judd July 24, 2014 |
Dan La Botz' article on the return of Left to electoral politics is generally insightful, and its survey of campaigns around the U.S. is a valuable contribution. However, the article's analysis of the Dan Siegel campaign for mayor of Oakland is off.
New Politics Summer 2014 is Now Available
by Editors July 20, 2014 |
Dear New Politics Subscribers and Friends,
The exciting new issue of New Politics is now available in print and online! This issue focuses on the American Scene as well as offering articles on the Ukraine and other international topics and theoretical discussions. Click any of the links below to access the online essays and book reviews.
Troublesome Words
by Kristian Williams July 17, 2014 |
Words have histories, and history affects meaning. And since the history of the English language is very much bound up with the history of the English Empire, many ordinary words have histories that are subtly, or even covertly, racist, imperialist, or otherwise troublesome. I recently received a letter from a colleague, taking me to task for using the word tribalism in an article. He wrote:
An Open Letter to Israeli Academics
July 14, 2014 |
These are desperately bad times. The government of Israel, having provoked the firing of rockets by its rampage through the West Bank, is now using that response as the pretext for an aerial assault on Gaza which has already cost scores of lives. An atmosphere of hysteria is being deliberately provoked in Israel, and whole communities are being subject to collective punishment, a war crime. People are dying, and for what? To prevent a unity government of Fatah and Hamas?
Social Inequalities, the World Cup, and Some Simple Solutions
by Maynor G. González July 11, 2014 |
The World Cup is the most widely viewed sporting event around the world. Millions of viewers will tune in Sunday to watch the broadcast of the upcoming final match and cheer on their favorite teams as they battle for the golden trophy. In the United States, the event has become a much anticipated and celebrated source of entertainment – an opportunity for people to show support for their country and an excuse to grab a drink and watch the game with friends at a local bar.
Monsters and a Critique of Everyday Neoliberalism:
An Interview with David McNally
Andrew Sernatinger and Tessa Echeverria July 4, 2014 |
[This is part two of an interview with scholar-activist David McNally on the current economic crisis. The first part focused on the crisis itself, its causes, the way in which working life has been reorganized, the perspective of ruling elites in managing the crisis and pursuing austerity policies, and how this should help inform our stance as movement activists.
Global Slump & the New Normal
An Interview with David McNally
Andrew Sernatinger and Tessa Echeverria June 29, 2014 |
[It’s been nearly seven years since the onset of the global economic crisis that began in 2007. In order to get an understanding of the crisis—of its origins, depth, and trajectory, we spoke with David McNally, activist, political economist, and author of Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (2010) and more recently Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism (2012). For readability’s sake, we have broken this interview into two parts. This first part focuses on the crisis itself, its causes, the way in which working life has been reorganized, the perspective of ruling elites in managing the crisis and pursuing austerity policies, and how this should help inform our stance as movement activists.
No Iraq War Replay!
June 29, 2014 |
Adopted by U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) Steering Committee, June 25, 2014
A majority of working people opposed the Iraq War and participated in the eight year struggle to end it. We felt great relief when the last troops departed Iraq in 2011.
Inequality Kills
by Bob Turansky June 23, 2014 |
Book Review
Göran Therborn. The Killing Fields of Inequality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013. Hardback: $40.00 Paperback: $19.95 Kindle: $9.99
When I Was Against Gun Control...And Why I Changed My Mind
by Bennett Muraskin June 22, 2014 |
Like many of my generation, I was active in the left. From the mid to late 1960s to the late 1970s, I was affiliated with Trotskyist organizations. We considered ourselves revolutionaries and foresaw the day when the working class would rise up against capitalist oppression, overthrow the government, and establish a proletarian dictatorship. There was no doubt in our minds that this could not be accomplished without violence. When the revolutionary situation was ripe, we would need weapons.
Angela Walker, “Free Range Socialist,” Runs for Sheriff in Milwaukee
June 18, 2014 |
Angela Walker, an independent socialist, is running for the office of Sheriff in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this coming November. Her campaign is part of a small trend of independent labor, Green Party, and socialist campaigns around the country that are discussed in a survey article by Dan La Botz in the forthcoming Summer issue of New Politics. Here La Botz interviews Walker to learn why she is running and what she hopes to accomplish.
Betrayals in Social Movements
by Scott Jay June 16, 2014 |
For the last two years, Dan La Botz has provided an annual roundup of social struggles in the US.
Is 21st Century Fascism Advancing Undercover?
by Jean Batou |
The European Parliamentary Election of last May 25 was marked by a strong push from the Europhobic and racist right, which was rife with currents of the extreme right. Its best showings were achieved by the United Kingdom Independence Party -UKIP (which received 27.5% of the British vote), by the Party of the People of Denmark (26.7%), by the National Front of France (24.9%), and by the Freedom Party of Austria (19.7), and one shouldn’t forget the recent advances of the Swedish Democrats (9.7%) and of Alternative for Germany (7%).
The European Elections: Despite the Crisis, the Neoliberals Save the Day
by Stefanie Prezioso June 7, 2014 |
“Disaster,” “an earthquake,” “electroshock,” “a historic shock,” “a thunderclap,” “a stroke”: the results of the most recent European elections have caused a veritable media storm throughout Europe, beginning with France where the historic victory of the National Front of Marine Le Pen has left commentators with a real hangover.
What Is the “Middle Class”? Who Are the 99%?
by Martin Oppenheimer May 30, 2014 |
What is the “Middle Class”?
Steve Kindred (1944-2013) and University of Chicago Students for a Democratic Society
A distinctive strain within the New Left, both passionate and reasoned
by Jesse Lemisch May 17, 2014 |
Steve Kindred, my friend, brilliant Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) leader, organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union, activist in the struggle to keep the Stella d’Oro plant in the Bronx open, campaigner against a lockout of workers by Sotheby’s auction house—all this, and a thousand other causes. Steve is, for lack of a better word, “gone,” in a New York hospital, suffering from abdominal cancer, which has spread. Having been close to Steve and having admired and loved him now for 50 years, I am very sad.
Ghana's Invisible Working Class
by Brian Denepitiya |
Ghana, known for its stability and economic prosperity in the last 50 years, is praised as a model African state. Despite their rise to a middle income country, Ghana is struggling to deal with the rise of Kayayo’s, a destitute working class who go unacknowledged by policy makers. This is the story of an American living in a Kayayo town.
Arundhati’s Demands
by Daniel Larkins |
Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Haymarket, April 2014, $15 paperback.
When you think of ghost stories, you may recall Henry James, Hamlet, or Banquo. Maybe you smell a camp fire, the story going around, the threat of the flame as you extend your arm and that impaled marshmallow over the heat. Or maybe you sense those dying embers, the cool of night taking its grip.
Spring Mix
by Eric Schuster |
The salad days. Too cold or hot or wet for much of anything this time of year, and rereading E. P.
Rosa Luxemburg—a revolutionary for our time, or a liberal?
by Ingo Schmidt April 29, 2014 |
Review of Jason Schulman (ed.), Rosa Luxemburg — Her Life and Legacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 214 pp.
Beyond the ER
Eminent doctor takes a small and belated peek at how his own privilege saved his life as a patient at Mass General
by Jesse Lemisch April 19, 2014 |
The February 6 issue of The New York Review of Books carried Dr. Arnold Relman’s account of his own hospitalization at Massachusetts General Hospital (and elsewhere) under the title “On Breaking One’s Neck.” In a subsequent article, I said that the appearance of Dr. Arnold Relman as a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital, accompanied by his wife, Dr.
It's Earth Day. Thanks, Toyota!
by Hadas Thier |
Save the earth by buying a Prius? That seems to be the takeaway message from this year’s Earth Day New York taking place on April 22. Earth Day events in the city will be sponsored by – Who would have guessed? – Toyota.
A Rejoinder to Greco on Chomsky
by Stephen R. Shalom April 13, 2014 |
Anthony Greco, in his book Chomsky’s Challenge to American Power, charged Noam Chomsky with too often failing to meet “minimal standards of intellectual honesty” (p. 229). To prove his point he provided instances of things Chomsky wrote over the course of some fifty years that were inaccurate.
Noam Chomsky on American Power: A Reply to Shalom
by Anthony Greco April 13, 2014 |
I conclude my book, Chomsky’s Challenge to American Power (Vanderbilt University Press, 2014), by describing Noam Chomsky as a contradictory figure.
Militant Minorities and Union Unity
by Kurt Stand April 12, 2014 |
Steve Early. Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement In Distress. Monthly Review Press, November 2013. 304 pages. Notes. Index.
More on Marot's "October Revolution"
by Bob Turansky |
This is in response to an earlier comment on Dan La Botz’s review of Jean Marot’s The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect. I agree that the review is excellent, though I’d say in response to Gasper that the book is more than merely “interesting”.
The Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band 1970-1973
A Slapstick Demolition of Male Supremacy
by Naomi Weisstein April 8, 2014 |
[Introduction by Naomi Weisstein: My paper, “The Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band 1970-1973: A Slapstick Demolition of Male Supremacy” was presented at the end of March at the Boston University Conference “A Revolutionary Moment: Women’s Liberation in the Late 1960s and early 1970s.” This landmark conference drew a multiplicity of papers, rigorously retrieving a suppressed history, and countering such contemporary notions as that “leaning in” is what the radical women’s liber
The Debate Today is How to Stop The Violent Offensive of the Neoliberal Right-Wing
by Franck Gaudichaud and Valeria Ianni |
Venezuela is torn between the destabilising attempts of the right-wing, the limits of the Bolivarian process and the possibility the working class and the popular movements will advance the [revolutionary] project, [but] not without tensions and contradictions.
Reply to Davenport on Climate Change
by Robin Hahnel March 29, 2014 |
In a posting on March 4, 2014 Nicholas Davenport criticizes me for “a misunderstanding of activists’ arguments against carbon trading and, more fundamentally, a lack of attention to the dynamic of reform and revolution.”
Adolph Reed's premature burial of the U.S. Left
by Michael Hirsch March 27, 2014 |
Back in the day, (a cliché, I know) Adolph Reed wrote a waspish piece in the Village Voice, “Liberals, I Do Despise,” which made something of a splash and was hard to refute — this when the Voice was widely read, not a freebie and well-worth paying for — as he attacked a coterie of Clintonistas for “a politics motivated by the desire for proximity to the ruling class and a belief in the basic legitimacy of its power and prerogative.” He called it “a politics which,
Lemisch's On Active Service Now Available Online
Online Free Availability of Lemisch's, On Active Service In War and Peace: Politics and Ideology in the American Historical Profession (1969, 1975)
by Jesse Lemisch March 26, 2014 |
Starring: Samuel Eliot Morison, Oscar Handlin, Richard Hofstadter, McGeorge Bundy, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr, Daniel Boorstin (including HUAC testimony), Allen Nevins, William Hardy McNeill, Eric Hoffer, John Blum, Stanley Elkins, and others. With 305 fact-filled footnotes!
Looking Back at the Labor Party: An Interview with Mark Dudzic
Derek Seidman March 24, 2014 |
In the 1990s, hundreds of U.S. labor activists came together to form the Labor Party. The initiative was the brainchild of Tony Mazzocchi, the passionate leader of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union (which, after two mergers, is today part of the United Steelworkers). Mazzocchi held true to the dream of an independent political party rooted in the labor movement over which working people would have ownership. He was fond of pointing out: “The bosses have two parties. We need one of our own.”
Greco on Chomsky
by Stephen R. Shalom March 20, 2014 |
Anthony F. Greco. Chomsky’s Challenge to American Power. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013. Hardcover $69.95, paper $29.95, e-book $14.99.
Ali Mustafa
by Jared Anderson March 14, 2014 |
I will never forget when I first met Ali Mustafa. It was September 2012, during my first year at York and just before I joined Students Against Israeli Apartheid (Ali was a former member), where he did a talk on his visit to Egypt. After he was done, he asked the audience for comments. Seeing no takers, I chimed in. Not knowing who I was, he was very impressed with my comments, and that was the beginning of our friendship.
Address on unfolding situation in Ukraine, 10 March 2014
March 4, 2014 |
The author's view of the strength of the right is not universally shared among UK progressives. - DL
I am Zakhar Popovych a member of the Left Opposition initiative, and I have been on the Maidan under my red flag from the very first day of its emergence. I don’t sleep there in tents but I have been visiting the square virtually every day during these months.
Euro-Maidan is mass popular and grassroots movement, not a manufactured one
Ukraine: Was What Happened a Revolution? If so, then…
by I. O. Kuzyk March 11, 2014 |
I view the recent events in the Ukraine rather simply – everything hangs on the answer to a central question: Were the events in Ukraine a revolution? If one agrees, as I do, that the overthrow of Yanukovych was the product of a genuine, popular uprising against a corrupt and thuggish regime, then progressive people of all stripes should be supportive of the events in Ukraine - even with reservations.
A Tale of Resistance: Conversation with a Woman Striker
by Nevin Kaplan March 8, 2014 |
The workers of Punto Leather Factory, located at Kazliceşme in the district of Zeytinburnu in Istanbul, have been organized in their union, Deriteks, for a decent livelihood and decent working conditions. They stand against harsh working conditions, health and safety problems, denial of their constitutional right to unionize, disadvantageous health insurance plans, prohibitions against using their annual leave entitlements; in summary they stand against working in conditions of slavery.
Left Opposition Statement: Ukraine will be saved from intervention by solidarity
March 8, 2014 |
The following article is reprinted from LeftEast.
The socialist union “Left Opposition” offers its assessment of the Russian aggression in Crimea and the destructive role of Ukrainian nationalists. The intervention of Russian armies was made possible as a result of a split in Ukrainian society. Its unity is impossible with the oligarchs and chauvinists in power. Only solidarity will save Ukraine.
A Response to Robin Hahnel's Open Letter to the Movement
by Nicholas Davenport March 4, 2014 |
The question of what demands ecosocialists should put forward in response to the climate crisis is a pressing one. Robin Hahnel, in “An Open Letter to the Climate Justice Movement”, argues that the climate justice movement should demand a cap-and-trade policy, abandoning its traditional stance against carbon trading. To Hahnel, carbon trading is the most realistic way for society to make carbon emissions cuts in the necessary time frame, and, contrary to the arguments of activists, it ca
Sanitation Workers: You Gotta Love Them
by Michael Hirsch February 26, 2014 |
Review of Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City By Robin Nagle (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013).
Rationally, we know garbage isn’t picked up by the faeries, but to much of the public, it might as well be. We “take out” the garbage, but who removes it?
Ukraine, Coup or Revolution?
by Richard Greeman February 25, 2014 |
The Ukraine is no longer ‘in flames.’ With the hurried flight of the detested Yanukovich, peace and order have descended on Kiev (except for some fistfights in the Parliament!) There is no looting. Self-organized popular militias protect the luxurious Presidential Palace (privatized by Yanukovich) as crowds of citizen file through to gape at his collections of antique and modern automobiles.
February Traumas: The Third Insurrectionary Moment of the Venezuelan Right
by Jeffrey R. Webber and Susan Spronk February 25, 2014 |
“Today the counter-revolutionary Right is reactivating itself,” according to long-time Venezuelan revolutionary Roland Denis, “taking advantage of the profound deterioration that this slow revolutionary process is suffering.
A political earthquake strikes Ukraine
by Alan Maass and Sean Larson February 24, 2014 |
UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT Viktor Yanukovich appears to have been driven from power after the mass protest movement that has occupied Kiev’s Maidan (Independence Square) since November survived a deadly crackdown last week. In a matter of days, the country’s corrupt and autocratic regime was overwhelmed.
People Took to the Streets to Defend Their Rights and Freedoms
February 23, 2014 |
A Reply to Julia's Letter on Ukraine
by E. Haberkern |
My problem with Julia's analysis is that it repeats the standard line that is being repeated throughout the press regardless of political point of view. I think there are two main problems with this party line.
Manifesto: 10 Тheses of the Leftist Opposition in Ukraine
February 21, 2014 |
While we recognize that the following statement represents the point of view of a small minority both within the Ukrainian rebellion and in Ukraine at large, we reprint it here nonetheless, thinking that it is an important statement of the left. - Editors.
Euromaidan and a Program for the Left
Euromaidan’s popularity has nothing to do with Ukrainians finding the question of free trade with the European Union so significant that it emboldened them to survive sleepless nights on the square. The country’s socioeconomic problems, which are much more acute than those of its neighbors to the East and West, gave the protest its meaning.
A Letter from Ukraine
by Richard Greeman February 19, 2014 |
Dear Friends,
As the uprising in Ukraine seems to be coming to a crisis after weeks of mass demonstrations and occupations, I would like to translate for you the following letter received last week from Julia Gusseva, the Russian translator of Victor Serge and co-organizer of the International Conference of Independent Labor Unions in Kiev last November. Julia, an activist since the ‘80s, is one of the founders of the Praxis Center in Moscow, and writes from an anarcho-syndicalist viewpoint.
A Letter from Ukraine
by Richard Greeman February 19, 2014 |
Dear Friends,
As the uprising in Ukraine seems to be coming to a crisis after weeks of mass demonstrations and occupations, I would like to translate for you the following letter received last week from Julia Gusseva, the Russian translator of Victor Serge and co-organizer of the International Conference of Independent Labor Unions in Kiev last November. Julia, an activist since the ‘80s, is one of the founders of the Praxis Center in Moscow, and writes from an anarcho-syndicalist viewpoint.
How A Famous 90-Year-Old Doctor Survived Hospitalization, But You Probably Won’t
by Jesse Lemisch January 22, 2014 |
Enclosed in and insulated by their own structures of thought, many doctors are quite blind to the role of privilege, including their own, in getting or not getting medical care and in determining the quality of that care. If they acknowledge some flaw (or even ignorance or barbarity) in individual health care, they see it as non-systemic, simply a matter of a bad apple in an otherwise benign barrel. They may maintain this obtuseness even when they themselves become patients.
Twenty Years Since the Chiapas Rebellion: The Zapatistas, Their Politics, and Their Impact
by Dan La Botz January 13, 2014 |
The Chiapas Rebellion led by the Zapatistas took place twenty years ago this month. What was the importance of the rebellion and of the Zapatistas? What was the impact at the time? And what has been its political legacy? What is the role of the Zapatistas in Mexico today?
Closing Bridges While Building Bipartisan Bridges for Corporate-Backed 'Reform'
by Stephen R. Shalom January 10, 2014 |
It remains to be seen whether NJ Governor Chris Christie will be able to avoid having his political career crash and burn.
'Operation Enduring America'
The U.S. in Central Asia After Afghanistan
Alan Ruff December 31, 2013 |
"As we reassure our partners that our relationships and engagement in Afghanistan will continue after the military transition in 2014, we should underscore that we have long-term strategic interests in the broader region... As the United States enters a new phase of engagement in Afghanistan, we must lay the foundation for a long-term strategy that sustains our security gains and protects U.S. interests..." —US Senator John Kerry, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, December, 2011.
Marta Russell, 61, Writer about Disability Issues
December 25, 2013 |
Chicago's Boss against the 99%
by Michael Hirsch December 23, 2013 |
Kari Lyderson, Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago’s 99%, Haymarket Books, 2013
New Yorkers rejoicing in Michael Bloomberg’s departure from office can be grateful for another small favor: they don’t live in Chicago, where residents are stuck for at least two more years with an austerity-mad, street-brawling mayor who wields near absolute power over a City Council far more supine than the one we have here.
Maybe We All Need Something More Than a Wife
by Dianne Feeley December 15, 2013 |
During the early days of second-wave feminism, I remember reading Judy Brady’s essay “I Want a Wife” about how everyone needed “a wife,” that is someone to take care of the tasks of everyday life, as women were raised to do.
Lovely Bones: Reflections on the Legacy of Nelson Mandela
by Kate Doyle Griffiths-Dingani December 9, 2013 |
The question of where Mandela would be laid to rest was finally resolved in June, months before he passed away on December 5, 2013.
Ohioans Elect Two Dozen City Councilors on Independent Labor Ticket
by Bruce Bostick |
Union-dense Lorain County, Ohio, is now home to an independent labor slate of two dozen newly elected city councilors—recruited and run by the central labor council there. All labor’s candidates had strong showings last month, and all but two were elected.
“This was a step we took reluctantly,” said Lorain County AFL-CIO President Harry Williamson. “When the leaders of the [Democratic] Party just took us for granted and tried to roll over the rights of working people here, we had to stand up.”
HOW CAN LABOR SUPPORT A POLITICAL PARTY WHOSE LEADERS VOTE TO CUT FOOD STAMPS?
December 6, 2013 |
On June 10, 2013 the U.S. Senate, with its Democratic majority, approved a farm bill that included a $4.1 billion cut in food stamp funding over a 10-year period. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), under this proposal 500,000 households would lose $90 in food stamp benefits each month. Despite that, the Senate passed the measure by a 66-27 margin, making clear that it had bipartisan support.
Only one Senate Democrat voted against the farm bill.
On Electoral Reforms, Sewer Socialism, and Concern-Trolling Technocrats
by John Halle December 5, 2013 |
One of the many great things about having a card-carrying socialist elected to a major municipal office [in Seattle] is that we can start to have good arguments. Peter Lavenia started one with me a couple of weeks ago and I’m going to argue back.
Opening the left door wide
by Warren Davis November 27, 2013 |
This essay is inspired by the recent article by Denis Godard titled: “The NPA in crisis: We have to explain because we have to start again.” His article is a review of the strategic orientation of the historically Trotskyist-origined tendencies that prioritize building independent class formations and which see electoral vehicles as expressions of anti-capitalist cum revolutionary socialist movements “from below” (that is, based in and directly responsive to grassroots and rank-and-file formations).
Left Third Parties in 2013: The Wave Begins?
by John Halle November 7, 2013 |
The 2013 municipal election contained mixed results for left third party advocates.
Queering Socialism: An Interview with Alan Sears
Andrew Sernatinger & Tessa Echeverria November 6, 2013 |
We’re at an interesting (and terrible) moment where we’re witnessing attacks on most every gain working people have made for at least the last half century. The curious exception to that has been the advance of marriage and civil rights for gay and lesbian couples in many U.S. states and core imperialist countries.
Doug Ireland, 1946-2013
by Thomas Harrison November 4, 2013 |
Doug Ireland, radical journalist, blogger, passionate human rights and queer[1] activist, and relentless scourge of the LGBT establishment, died in his East Village home on Oct. 26. Doug had lived with chronic pain for many years, suffering from diabetes, kidney disease, sciatica and the debilitating effects of childhood polio. In recent years he was so ill that he was virtually confined to his apartment. Towards the end, even writing, his calling, had become extremely difficult.
An Open Letter to the Climate Justice Movement
by Robin Hahnel November 4, 2013 |
[The following open letter to more than 60 environmental justice organizations is a revised version of a talk given at a conference on "The Political Economy of the Environment" held in Brooklyn, New York, on October 5, 2013, co-sponsored by the Union of Radical Political Economy and New Politics. It will appear in the Winter 2014 issue of New Politics as part of a special section on the environment, featuring articles from several different points of view.
Socialism and Sports
Lee Levin October 25, 2013 |
The two great loves of my father’s life were the Green Bay Packers and golf. Every fall Sunday we worshipped at the altar of the Green and Gold. My brother and I learned, at an early age, that we could only talk during commercials and half time. Our Sunday routines created my love of armchair sports. Today, in addition to following pro football, I watch college basketball and football, pro basketball, baseball and tennis. Too often feminists and leftists dismiss the importance of sports in society and only focus on the machismo culture encouraged by profe
Another International Labour Movement is Necessary
by Dan Gallin October 9, 2013 |
[New Politics readers will be interested in the following article by Dan Gallin, who advocates social justice unionism, international solidarity and the need for workers' movements that actually move.
German Lessons
by Bhaskar Sunkara October 6, 2013 |
Passionately watching last week’s election returns* at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung’s office in New York, without ever having been to Germany or learned more than a half-dozen German words, was an unusual experience. It was easy enough to orient my sympathies — as an American socialist they stood with the Left Party.
Jobs vs. the Environment
by Brian King October 3, 2013 |
Is there a fundamental conflict between a healthy environment and a healthy economy?
COIN of the Realm: Sprawling Police State Brings the Wars Home
by Michael Hirsch October 3, 2013 |
Review of Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, ed. by Kristian Williams, William Munger and Lara Messersmith-Glavin (AK Press, 2013); and Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and Bin Laden’s Final Plot Against America, by Matt Apuzzo & Adam Goldman (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2013).
You Want MORE?
by Greg King October 2, 2013 |
Fewer than two weeks before the US House of Representatives brought on the government shutdown, it voted (9/19/13) by a slim margin to cut $40 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, over the next 10 years. Now, $4 billion a year may not seem like much, given the enormous figures our "leaders" play with, but it will mean that a great many families as well as individuals will not have enough to eat.
AFL-CIO Charts a New Course
by Michael Hirsch October 1, 2013 |
[Originally posted on the Indypendent, Sept. 27, 2013]
Response to Review of Wild Socialism
by Martin Comack September 12, 2013 |
I would like to comment on the Leninist critique of my book Wild Socialism: Workers Councils in Revolutionary Berlin, 1918-21 by Dan La Botz on your website. His review contains several errors and misinterpretations.
The Brazilian Spring: Still Under Construction
by Rodrigo Santaella September 10, 2013 |
Brazil went to the streets in June this year with crowds never before seen in the history of the country. There were young workers and students who were demonstrating for the first time, but also sectors of the middle class and union members as well as social movement and left party activists who protested about a wide diversity of issues.
We Oppose Both a U.S.-led Attack on Syria and the Brutal Regime of Bashar al–Assad
We Support a Democratic Syrian Revolution!
Statement of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy September 7, 2013 |
Pressured by the British Parliament's historic rejection of military action against Syria and by the great opposition of most of the American people to getting involved in yet another bloody war in the Middle East, President Obama has been forced to take his plan to attack Syria to Congress. At the moment, Congress appears to be sharply divided over whether or not to support the President, with many still undecided, and it is therefore imperative to take advantage of widespread antiwar opinion to make the case now against U.S. military intervention in Syria.
Roundtable on the Syrian Crisis
by Stephen R. Shalom August 31, 2013 |
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy has posted an interesting symposium on Syria. It was mostly written before the August 21 chemical weapons attack and the resulting war threat from Washington. None of the symposium participants favors U.S. military action, but the symposium provides useful background on the Syrian uprising that helps us make sense of the current situation.
A Comintern International Agent: The Talented and Reviled Pepper
by Dan La Botz August 29, 2013 |
Review: Thomas Sakmyster. A Communist Odyssey: The Life of József Pogány / John Pepper. Budapest-New York: Central European University Press. 2012. Photos. Bibliography. Index. 249 pp.
A Black, Working Class March on Washington: But We're Still Waiting for the Beginning of a New Movement
by Dan La Botz August 26, 2013 |
The Fiftieth Anniversary March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 24 was a mostly African American working class event of tens of thousands. They came to celebrate the struggles and victories of a half century ago and to put on the agenda for today the issues of racial profiling and stand-your-ground laws, the country’s unemployment rate and growing economic inequality, and new restrictions on voting rights.
Egypt: The Revolution at the Crossroads
by Thomas Harrison August 22, 2013 |
As I write, a horrible tragedy is unfolding in Egypt. The old order has reasserted itself with a vengeance. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that Egypt will ever again be what it was before 2011.
Letter to Supporters
August 15, 2013
by Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists |
The following statement from the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists makes a powerful case for socialism from below in the context of the Egyptian coup, the massacres carried out by the military and their horrific impact on the nation's democratic upsurge. Like others, the Revolutionary Socialists is evolving its point of view, challenged as it is with understanding first the election of a repressive right-wing Muslim government on the heels of a healthy mass movement, and then the shocks from a bloody military coup. We think it important to share their statement on the situation and, along with the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and others, we are republishing it as a contribution to the general discussion.
Dream Sequences: Marching on Washington, Fifty Years On
by Christopher Phelps August 22, 2013 |
It is the age of Barack, the age of Trayvon; a time for imagining post-racial transcendence, a time for recognizing obdurate injustice. As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington this month, as new generations surround the reflecting pool, we will ask whether we yet judge each other by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin.
Giroux on the War on the Young
by Dick Dunbar August 22, 2013 |
Review of Henry A. Giroux, America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth, Monthly Review Press, 2013.
Fighting the Landlords from Stuy-Town to Detroit
by Michael Hirsch August 18, 2013 |
Books reviewed:
Charles V. Bagli, Other People’s Money: Inside the Housing Crisis and the Demise of the Greatest Real Estate Deal Ever Made (Dutton, 2013).
Laura Gottesdiener, A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home (Zuccotti Park Press, 2013).
Yes, We Can
Response to “Creating a Transcontinental North American Working Class Movement” by Dan La Botz
by Edur Velasco Arregui and Richard Roman August 16, 2013 |
We hoped that our book, Continental Crucible, would open up a discussion of the future of the North American Left and labor movement, a discussion that is urgent in the face of the relentless capitalist offensive of the last forty years.
Wild Socialism
by Dan La Botz August 8, 2013 |
Book Review of Martin Comack. Wild Socialism: Workers Councils in Revolutionary Berlin, 1918-1921. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. Chronology. Bibliography. Index. 97pp. Paperback or e-book: $24.99
White Racial Delusion
50 Years After the March on Washington
by Paul Street August 3, 2013 |
“There is not a Black America and a White America….there’s a United States of America.” So proclaimed Barack Obama, to wild applause, at the launching of his national and global celebrity in his instantly lauded 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address.
As the 1 Percent Leaves the 99 Percent in the Dust, Bush’s Chief Economist is Smiling
by Gregory N. Heires August 1, 2013 |
Perhaps you shouldn’t be surprised that the chief economist during George W. Bush’s presidency seems happy that economic inequality in our country is at its most extreme since the Great Depression.
After all, the Bush administration delivered huge tax breaks to the wealthy, the very people described by the former president as his political base.
The Double Standard in Europe's Austerity Discourse
by Ben Luongo July 25, 2013 |
The International Monetary Fund acknowledged making an egregious error in its evaluation of the Greek bailout it helped create after its ambitious push for harsh austerity last month. Their failed analysis highlights the dangers of austerity measures imposed on Greek citizens. According to the IMF report:
Class Struggle from the Couch
by Jon Hochschartner July 16, 2013 |
On Sept. 17, Grand Theft Auto V, the latest installment in the wildly popular video game franchise, will be released for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, perhaps as one of the final major games for the current console generation.
Real Unions and Unreal Unions
A reply to Dan La Botz
by Herman Benson July 11, 2013 |
This discussion has shifted ground. It started with what I proposed, but now we're discussing Dan La Botz's views on the AFL-CIO. I wrote about the need to democratize unions. Dan wants to turn existing unions into "real unions."
Egypt: Not the next stage of the revolution
Continued economic decline sealed the fate of the Muslim Brotherhood, writes Yassamine Mather. But martial law also represents a defeat for the working class and democracy
by Yassamine Mather July 10, 2013 |
[from Weekly Worker 969, July 4 2013]
Rejoinder to Bratsis
by Costas Panayotakis July 10, 2013 |
In his review of Remaking Scarcity Peter Bratsis raises a number of important issues regarding the relationship between scarcity and economic democracy but does not always offer an accurate account of how the book specifies that relationship.
Political Economy of the Environment
Call for Workshop Presentations
July 7, 2013 |
A Conference of the Union for Radical Political Economics
Co-sponsored by New Politics
St.
Men Without a Country: Snowden and Trotsky
by Dan La Botz July 4, 2013 |
I have been following the story of Edward J. Snowden, so far the most famous man of the twenty-first century without a country, who at the moment bides his time in an international way station in Moscow waiting for some country to offer him a visa and asylum. A whistle blower who revealed that the U.S.
Let’s Accept an Invitation from the Trumka of 1970—to Revolt
Dan La Botz July 2, 2013 |
When Herman Benson writes about the labor movement, I read with interest what he has to say, knowing that his last 50 years as head of the Association for Union Democracy (AUD) represent only the most recent part of an even longer career in the labor movement that began when he was a machinist in the auto industry and a member of the United Auto Workers after World War II.
The Killing of Clément Méric
Elizabeth Koechlin July 2, 2013 |
The killing of Clément Méric, an 18-year-old anti-fascist activist and member of a student union, by a young fascist skinhead in Paris on May 6th has shocked French public opinion.
Getting ready for the future
Replying to an invitation from Rich Trumka
Herman Benson July 1, 2013 |
If you're a friend of labor, liberal or radical, Rich Trumka's invitation applies to you. He's asking for your thoughts on how the AFL-CIO can get ready for the future. (As you know, unions have not been doing so well these days, and maybe someone can come up with some good ideas.) Toward that end, he posted questions on the internet submitted by seven presumed notables, including former labor secretary Robert Reich and In These Times labor editor David Moberg. Within a few electronic moments, over a thousand comments poured in.
Brazilian Spring: a general panorama and some perspectives
Rodrigo Santaella June 26, 2013 |
[Mass protests have been taking place in all the major cities of Brazil for the past week, beginning with a demand to reduce bus fares and expanding into a mass movement that demands improvements in all public services, health, education, and working peoples’ rights.
On Syria
A Personal Statement by CPD Co-Directors
Thomas Harrison and Joanne Landy June 26, 2013 |
During the past two years, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy has released official statements in broad support of the Syrian revolution: CPD Salutes Syria’s Courageous Democratic Movement and Message of Condolence and Solidarity from U.S. Peace Activists to the Syrian People. What follows, however, is not an official position but rather a personal statement by CPD’s co-directors about the current situation.
Reaffirming the Chartists’ Revolutionary Moment
Dan La Botz June 26, 2013 |
Book Review: David Black and Chris Ford. 1839: The Chartist Insurrection. Foreword by John McDonnell, M.P. London: Unkant Publishers, 2011. 233 pages. Chronology. Illustrations. Appendices. Index. £10.99.
The End of Lethargy in Brazil
Richard Antunes June 22, 2013 |
Our country was at the forefront of social and political struggles in the 1980s, and succeeded in preventing the introduction of neoliberalism in Brazil, so that Latin America’s “lost decade” was, for social movements and popular politicians in our country, exactly the opposite.
Turkey: A De Facto End to the Hegemony of the Coup of September 12, 1980
Özlem İlyas Tolunay June 20, 2013 |
Maybe we are not organized, but we are neither apolitical nor without ideology. We were only afraid, because we are the daughters and sons of a generation, killed and tortured to death just before and after the military coup of September 12, 1980 in Turkey. But, we have now learned that cowards die many times before their deaths. We went beyond the fear threshold and achieved the collective confidence that one smells in the air.
Are Conservative Evangelicals Hampering Anti-Trafficking Efforts?
Sean McElwee June 19, 2013 |
Human trafficking is an issue so entirely abhorrent, it seems that it would be impossible to inappropriately address it. And yet a forthcoming paper (to be published in by Dr. Hebah Farrag, Richard Flory and Brie Loskota) argues that often religious organizations fail to get the job done right.
Creating a Transcontinental North American Working Class Movement
Book Review
Dan La Botz June 15, 2013 |
Richard Roman and Edur Velasco Arregui. Continental Crucible: Big Business, Workers and Unions in the Transformation of North America. Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2013. 148 pages. References. Index. Paperback. Price: $19.95 CAN.
The Persecution of the Mexican Miners
Book Review
Dan La Botz June 13, 2013 |
Napoleon Gómez. The Collapse of Dignity: The Story of a Mining Tragedy and the Fight Against Greed and Corruption in Mexico. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, Inc., 2013. 344 pages. Photos. Index. $26.95 U.S. / $36.00 CAN / Kindle $11.99.
Occupy Taksim Gezi Park
Özlem İlyas Tolunay June 1, 2013 |
The on-going resistance to the remodeling of Taksim Square in Central Istanbul, Turkey took on a new more militant form on Monday evening when bulldozers arrived at the park and began demolishing some parts of the Gezi Park's wall and removed nearby trees. Taksim Solidarity, the resistance movement whose members were at a regular meeting at the park during the demolition, succeeded in stopping the demolition when they moved into the area where the bulldozers were removing the trees. A group of 20 to 30 people stayed on guard duty throughout the night.
Taksim Solidarity press release, June 5, 2013
Taksim Resistance June 5, 2013 |
To the Government of the Republic of Turkey and the Public
Citizens have been expressing their democratic outrage in Taksim Istanbul and all around the country against the insensitivity of the government for the public concern about the de-facto destruction of the Taksim Gezi Park that took place around 10 PM on May 27th.
We share the pain of Abdullah Comert’s and Mehmet Ayvalitas’s families and wish to extend our get-well wishes to thousands of wounded citizens.
Getting There
An interview with Michael Albert, one of the authors of "Occupy Strategy"
Stephen R. Shalom May 25, 2013 |
Michael Albert, Jessica Azulay, and David Marty Mexican Teachers Rebel Against Government's Educational Reform
Mexican teachers, particularly in the south of the country, have joined a regional rebellion of rank-and-file teachers that erupted in violence in late April. In the state of Guerrero the offices of all three major political parties were vandalized and set afire to protest their support for the educational reform passed by congress and the states over the last five months. At the same time there have been marches and demonstrations in several other states, and there are plans afoot to strike indefinitely beginning on May 1. Human Rights and the POSCO Struggle
One of the most inspiring examples of people fighting back against the predations of international capital is taking place in the Jagatsinghpur district of the Indian state of Orissa (also spelled Odisha). The Indiana University Student Strike
The Indiana University (IU) student strike of April 11-12, 2013, was an important milestone in new student activism. Nicaragua Notes: The Watchmen, the Hunters and Gatherers, the Street Vendors
The Watchmen In Managua one finds uniformed guards in front of the banks, in the shopping malls like Metro Centro, in the grocery stores, and anywhere else there is likely to be substantial amounts of money. These men have the status bestowed by a uniform and the authority commanded by carrying a pistol. One could say that they are the elite of their profession, but they are far outnumbered by the lumpenguardia found on every middle class street of the capital city. South Africa--The Marikana Massacre and the New Wave of Workers’ StruggleAn Interview with Mazibuko Jara of the South African Democratic Left Front
[This article will be appearing in the summer 2013 issue of New Politics.] Rebutting David Greenberg's Hit Job on Howard Zinn
The March 25 issue of The New Republic offers a lengthy piece by Rutgers professor David Greenberg, “Agit-Prof: Howard Zinn’s Influential Mutilations of American History.” The essay presented as a review of Martin Duberman’s Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left (2012) [read the review by Ron Briley, the book editor of History News Network (HNN), heremore Whatever happened to welfare?
The ghost of Reagan's welfare queen still hovers over conservatives. She is black. She is a large part of Mitt Romney's 47 percent of moochers, and the "takers" that conservatives talk so much about. Most people don't talk about welfare or know much about it, but conservatives, who also don't know much about it, use it as a threat when they seek reelection or talk about policy. Republicans, and some Democrats, declare that welfare reform was a success because it brought the rolls down and put "free loaders" back to work. The Last American IdealistLAPD killer Dorner's insane rampage was fired by a naïve faith in the country's political myth
Christopher Dorner's brutal killings of multiple people vaguely associated with the Los Angeles police have caused debates over both the department's deployment of manhunt drones and the disastrous trigger-happiness that had them showering bullets on any hapless civilian with the misfortune to d Nicaragua: Hunger, Malnutrition, and the Fight to End Them
School began this week for children all over Nicaragua, but even before children entered the classroom the Nicaraguan government had begun supplying its School Feeding Program as the Ministry of Education transferred food from warehouses to 10,000 schools in 153 municipalities. For many Nicaraguan children, the School Feeding Program is essential to preventing hunger and malnutrition. Nicaragua: Contentious Debate Over Social Security Reform
Nicaragua is in the midst of a contentious debate that could become a serious social struggle over the reform of the nation’s Social Security system. President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government has proposed to increase the retirement age, the number of years one has to work, and the number of required contributions. What Happened to the Nicaraguan Revolution?: A View from the Rank and File
When the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) led the Nicaraguan people to victory over the dictatorship of Anastasio Samoza in 1979, Wilmer (not his real name) was only 14 years old. Having come from a family of modest means, he identified with the revolution that ended the long repressive rule of the Samoza family that with U.S. backing had for 43 years run, ransacked and ultimately ruined Nicaragua. HP and the Occupation
In December 2009, the Israeli Knesset passed a law allowing for the creation of a biometric database of the inhabitants of Israel. As of January 2013, the program is in its initial testing stage. The Sandinista Government has Failed the Women of Nicaragua: Solis
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government have failed the country's women. That was the message delivered by Azahalea Solís, an attorney and a member of Nicaragua's Autonomous Women's Movement, speaking at the Ben Lindner Center in Managua on January 17 to an audience of Nicaraguans and American students from various universities. Free Russian Political Prisoners!
We the undersigned call for the liberation of the Russian political prisoners, both those already condemned, and sent to the new Gulag, like the two feminist activists of the Pussy Riot group, and those in jail awaiting trial – some 20 activists, socialists and anti-fascists, in connection with the demonstrations against Putin on May 6th. Aaron Swartz: What We Know So Far, What We Need to Know
The reaction to Aaron Swartz's suicide has quickly reached a level of intensity which may have surprised those who will eventually need to respond to it. Of the People, By the People
Robin Hahnel's Of the People, By the People: The case for a participatory economy (Soapbox Press, 2012, distributed by AK press, www.akpress.org) is the latest and most accessible presentation of his argument that a new economy—based on equality, participation, solidarity, and self-management—is both desirable and possible. Originally formulated by Hahnel and Michael Albert more than two decades ago, the model has been continually refined and improved, addressing problems raised by critics. An Ascending Trajectory?: Ten of the Most Important Social Conflicts in the United States in 2012
[This article was written for a foreign audience, so I have spelled out some things that might otherwise be taken for granted when writing for an American reading public.] Scrooge Accepts Nobel Peace Prize
Brussels, Chrismas Eve, 2012. (From our Special Correspondent). Reactions were sharply divided here in Euroland to Stockholm's award of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union (EU) in recognition of its efforts to promote the moral values of fiscal discipline and responsibility through the Euro. Building a Better World
Forty-three years ago, I belonged to The Hawaii Resistance. It was an anti-draft group, believing in non-violent revolution. Then I saw a whole row of benches slammed into the ribcage of one of my friends, with whom I was blocking the path for the 29th Brigade of the Hawaii National Guard to get on the airplane for Vietnam. I was horrified to see that happen, to hear him cry out in pain. I got to thinking, suppose hundreds of thousands of us sat down on Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street, attempting to bring an end to "business as usual"? Who Carries the Brief for Black America?An Open Letter to African American Thinkers and Leaders
As an African American currently residing in one of the poorest counties in South Carolina, I have become increasingly troubled by the absence of our voice in an increasing number of conversations involving public policies which directly impact the health and future development of African American political, social and economic interests. Mexican Congress Approves Education "Reform"
The Mexican Congress has in near record time approved a new law on education called for by the new president Enrique Peña Nieto intended to reassert government control over the country's education system, break the power of the Mexican Teachers Union bureaucracy, and improve the quality of education. At the heart of the new law is a regular teacher evaluation with increased emphasis on merit. Istanbul Mayor Bans Freedom and Solidarity Party Campaign
While in Istanbul last week I participated in a march and demonstration by the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP) on Dec. 9 to launch a campaign to link grassroots community organizations to a broader program for social and political change in Turkey. The march of hundreds of ODP members of all ages, some of them families with children, was a peaceful event though the chants were militant. "Let us live like human beings. Take the government's hands off the people," was one. And periodically the marchers shouted, "Revolt!" Toward a Positive Socialist/Left Electoral Movement and Program
We on the socialist left really do need to build a broad-as-possible socialist/left/progressive electoral movement. I know this will be anathema to many of the self-styled "revolutionary left," or, if advanced and advocated, only paid lip service. It is, however, the only way to establish a positive socialist and honestly progressive political presence in the United States today. Mexico's Opposition Parties Sign "Pact for Mexico," Left in Disarray, Radical Youth in Violent Rebellion
Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico's new president who took office on December 1, carried out a shrewd political maneuver the very next day, convincing the opposition parties to join him in signing a "Pact for Mexico," calling for the completion of the neoliberal transformation begun in the 1980s. Joining Forces to be Stronger
When, shortly after the occupation of Zuccotti Park (Sep. 17, 2011), I started organizing disabled people to join in the new Occupy Wall Street movement, which seemed to be growing at the speed of light, I was criticized by leaders in the disability rights movement, including my good friend Bob Kafka, a national leader of ADAPT. Theories of Disablement
In the United States and in other OECD countries, the majority of disabled people live in poverty. The Unpaid Labor of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities in Institutional and Community-based Disability Services
Drawing on the work of scholars, advocates, and historians, I wrote this article (based on my October 4 talk at the disability rights forum) to examine the unpaid labor of persons with intellectual disabilities in institutional and community settings. In general, my PhD research, and this piece, are aimed at contributing to the literature that examine intellectual disability and work. Gaza Quiz
An uneasy cease-fire has been declared ending Israel's attack on Gaza, Operation Pillar of Defense. Take this quiz to see how much you know about the situation. China: From Bureaucratic Communism to Bureaucratic Capitalism
The election last week of Xi Jinping to the chairmanship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), together with six others who with Xi constitute the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the party, represents entrenchment of what the Chinese Marxist intellectual Au Loong Yu has called “bureaucratic capitalism.”[1] The bureaucratic capitalists, many of them princelings, that is, sons of the founders of China’s Communist government, have through their control of the state and crony state-corporation relationships come to dominate the heart A Call to Join in the International Days of Solidarity Against Political Repression in Russia
An appeal from the Russian leftists to their comrades in the struggle: Michael Lebowitz Tries to Tackle "Real Socialism"—And Misses
Michael A. Lebowitz. The Contradictions of "Real Socialism": The Conductor and the Conducted. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012. 222 pp., $15.95 Interview with Socialist Alternative Candidate Kshama Sawant
Andrew Sernatinger: I’m speaking today with Kshama Sawant, a socialist running for a seat in the Washington State House of Representatives against Democrat Frank Chopp, presently the House Speaker. Kshama is a lecturer in economics at Seattle University and Seattle Central Community College, and is a member of Socialist Alternative. Kshama, thanks for speaking with me today. Kshama Sawant: Thank you for having me. Self Immolation and The Left: The Greens Do It Again!
Even in the age of extreme reality television, nationally broadcasted suicides remain a blessedly rare occurrence. And so the suicide which occurred during a Huffington Post sponsored debate on third party voting probably should have received more attention that it did. Lessons of the American Revolutionary Left of the 1970s
Book review of: Michael Staudenmaier. Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969-1986. Oakland: AK Press, 2012. Bibliography, index. 387 pages. Paperback, $19.95. Film Review: “The Master”
Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film “The Master,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Laura Dern, might alternatively have been titled “Masters and Followers,” for the movie is as much about his followers as it is about the character of the master, Lancaster Dodd (played by Hoffman). Movie Review: “Death by China,” a film by Peter Navarro
To call this feature-length film xenophobic, fear-mongering and hysterical almost understates the case. The whole thing is so over-the-top that, like a bad horror movie where you can see the strings moving the monster, it leaves us numbed and bored or perhaps laughing. Yet it’s not funny. Mexico: The PRI is Back, the Left In Disarray
The PRI is back—and the left is in disarray. Occupy Nigeria: ‘When the Cup is Full’
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." - Abraham Lincoln Beyond November: Thoughts on politics, social movements, and the 2012 elections
[This article first appeared in the September issue of Jacobin.] The Neoliberal Assault on Disability Rights
A Public Forum The Neoliberal Assault on Disability Rights Thursday, October 4, 2012 7:00pm sponsored by New Politics, Radical Film and Lecture Series(RFLS), The Greek Grassroots Challenge to the Politics of Austerity
Harrison and Landy recently returned from a trip to Greece, where they met with activists and others to gain a better understanding of the popular upsurge against the Greek government’s austerity program. Reply to Balderston: Longview Contract Was Not a Victory
[Reply to Bill Balderston's article, "Occupy Oakland and the Labor Movement."] I am going to focus my remarks on section 2 of Bill Balderston's article, which he subtitled "The Battle of Longview". Bill and I have very different views of the outcome of this battle, and what that outcome is likely to mean. Statement on Mexican Election from Group in Veracruz
[Introduction by Dan La Botz: As tens of thousands throughout the country protest the results of Mexico’s presidential elections, a group in the State of Veracruz has issued a statement calling upon Mexicans to both refuse to recognize the results of the election and to engage in a campaign of civil disobedience to make it impossible for the new government to rule. "Right-to-Work," Organized Labor, and "The Proletariat as a Whole"
On January 31, 2012, the Republican majorities in both the Indiana Senate and House passed "right-to-work" legislation, riding roughshod over both the Democratic minority and tens of thousands mobilized workers and their allies. Indiana thus became the first new "right-to-work" state since Oklahoma, which became one in 2002—and a possible harbinger of more defeats for organized labor to come. The People Rule
What is democracy? Well, as most of us know, it comes from the Greek demos kratos—the people rule. But what form has that rule taken? Well, in the days of the ancient Athenians, free Greek men used to gather in the agora—the marketplace, to debate public policy and vote on it. Fast forward to the Magna Carta signed by King John of England at Runnymede, and it meant limiting the power the king had over his nobles. The serfs and townspeople were left out of the mix. Cuba, Socialism and Democracy
In January 2011, members of the Participatory and Democratic Socialism Movement proposed that the Cuban Communist Party adopt its "Proposals for the Advance of Socialism in Cuba." ("Socialism and the 'Citizens' Demand for Another Cuba," Pedro Campos, Havana Times, June 24, 2012)* These socialist critics of the Cuban regime offered a program of radical democratic proposals including full freedom of speech and press, freedom of association (including partie Some Lessons of 1989's East European Revolutions: Reflections of a U.S. Peace Activist
[This article will appear in the forthcoming summer 2012 print issue of New Politics.] Every Day Is Memorial Day
(Written the Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend 2011,when I was my usual long-term unemployed due to only temporary service work available at that time.—GF, May 18, 2012) Occupy AmericaOccupy America: A Call for ArticlesOccupy Wall Street and its hundreds of offshoots in cities and towns across the country is the most exciting and important development on the American left in years. The occupiers accuse Wall Street and the government and political parties of abusing and neglecting the American people and call for a more democratic and just society. The Left and the U.S. Elections: A New Politics Symposium
It is half a year from the national elections in the United States. The campaigns are well under way, and the debate on the left as to how to relate to the elections is under way as well. New Politics has invited leftists with a range of different views to comment on what position they think the left ought to take. Running for President Against the System
To run or not to run? This is a question that every left-wing organization faces every four years. We in the Socialist Party USA spend a good chunk of our National Conventions debating this very question. Yet, for us and for others in the Socialist movement, it is the capitalist system itself that has made running for President on a Socialist line a necessity. Occupy Election Season!
As spring comes to life and the Occupy movement stirs from hibernation, it finds the American electoral machine in full swing for the 2012 race. National elections are anathema to many on the radical left, but to most Americans they represent the only avenue of participation in the political process. That voting via the Electoral College for one of two pre-selected politicians every four years is the extent of citizens' interaction with our democracy is reason enough to scoff at it intellectually, but its material importance can't be overlooked. Progressive Election Strategy and the Norman Solomon Campaign
We can’t devise a successful electoral strategy for “The Left”—meaning the forces of peace, social/economic justice and sustainability—unless we face a simple fact: We’re getting our asses kicked. The Left Should Declare Its Independence from the Democrats
Obama's 2008 promise of "change" has been so outrageously contradicted by three and a half years in office that it almost looks like deceit. The domination of financial elites is now more absolute than ever. Diverting the Spectacle: Radical Students and the Election Season
Another election season dawns, and yet again students like myself are urged to "make our voices heard" by selecting our preferred candidate. Many of us will undoubtedly be caught up in the fervor of rhetoric and promises, some perhaps even believing that this time things will be different. As a radical student activist it's often difficult to view this bi-yearly charade as anything other than a perverse blend of distraction and manipulation. Independent Politics for a Green New Deal
It is time for the Left to be realistic about how it is going to build the power we need to make the changes we want. Strategic Reflections on the Quadrennial Extravaganza
The quadrennial presidential election extravaganza is here and along with it comes the quadrennial intra-U.S. leftist bloodletting on the unpleasant question of how to best respond to the narrow "choices" handed down by the nation's corporate-managed one-and-a-half party system. Workers and Leaders
I have considered myself a Marxist for forty years, yet my main concern for quite a lot of that time is that working people have more control over their own lives. That's not necessarily going to be the case if a communist party comes to power. Then political cadres transform themselves into bureaucrats and "lord it over" working people. We can see that in China, Vietnam and Cuba. The Alfred Marshall the Left Doesn't Know
Most leftists know economist Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), if they know him at all, only through the superficial account of him given in Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers,[1] as only a fusty Victorian preoccupied with abstract mathematical models of economic equilibrium. The “Jobs For All” Issue: It’s Still the Economy and Unemployment Front and Center, Not the Occupy Movement
Noted socialist writer Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” That doesn’t just apply to the business and managerial classes alone—I submit, it can also apply to those who are economically comfortable either as workers or as retirees—and thus have no inkling of what it’s like to be one of the working poor, what it’s like to be chronically unemployed and “living” on a mere $600/month in unemployment compensation, to live Russia, The Return of the Revolution: An Appeal
“Yesterday (Feb. 4, 2012) more than 100 000 people marched on the streets in the centre of Moscow despite severe cold (-20C) demanding free and fair elections and the end of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian rule. Following on the mass demonstrations of December 10th and 24th in Moscow, in which tens of thousands of people took part, this shows clearly that the period of social passivity in Russia is over; the Putin era is nearing its end. “A Dangerous Method”: Freud, Jung, and Spielrein
David Cronenberg’s new film “A Dangerous Method” begins in the opening years of the twentieth century with the delivery to the Burghölzli Clinic of the Zurich Hospital of a young woman named Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly) who, suffering from hysteria, becomes one of the early patients to undergo psychoanalysis. Spielrein, a wealthy, well-educated, and lovely young Russian Jewish woman—whose hysterical outbreaks express themselves in fits, tortuous postures, tormented speech, and bizarre behavior—comes under the care of Dr. Piety, Money, and Catholicism
Review of Jason Berry, Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church, New York: Crown Publishers, 2011 The Movement for Justice and Equality in Mauritania
New Politics interviews an MJEM activist in the United States A WPA for History: Occupy the American Historical Association
[Partly in response to my calls to the American Historical Association to deal with the jobs crisis in the field, AHA President Tony Grafton organized on short notice a special session at the 126th Annual Meeting of the organization in Chicago on January 6, 2012. The session, entitled "Jobs for Historians: Approaching the Crisis from the Demand Side," was well-attended, with about 250 people in the Sheraton Chicago’s Ballroom VI. Grafton chaired, and I was one of four speakers. Carl Davidson, Bill Ayers, and Zig Ziglar Moments
Adapted from an article originally published in the May 2011 Indianapolis Peace & Justice Journal—GF Add another Frustration to Being Unemployed: A Case in Point from Indiana’s WorkOne State Employment Agency
(I’m sure unemployed workers outside of Indiana have encountered very similar problems, and can relate well to this particular situation; just one more frustration added to the already-present myriad frustrations of being unemployed and not able to find a job. Originally published in the July 2011 Movement, monthly newspaper of the Indianapolis Peace & Justice Center—GF) A Taxonomy of Capitalist Sharks
Trying to reform Capitalism is a futile as preaching Vegetarianism to a Shark. And nearly as dangerous. Stay away from those gaping greedy Jaws if you don’t want to get eaten alive—the sorry Fate of many idealistic Liberals and Social Democrats! (See fig. 1) Euthanasia for the Rentier
The immediate European economic crisis demonstrates, if there were any lingering doubts, that the architecture of the European Monetary Union is incompatible with countercyclical intervention. It was designed solely to contain inflation at 2%. There is no central fiscal authority and no mandate to either maintain acceptable levels of employment or to sustain working class living standards against the ravages of the business cycle. Occupy the American Historical Association: Demand a WPA Federal Writers' Project
As part of his program to deal with America's economic catastrophe, economist Robert Reich has proposed a revival of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. Andalusian Uprising: The Empire that Unites the Arab Spring and European Anti-Austerity Protesters
In the seventh century, Musa bin Nusair, born in Syria, traveled and fought his way through the Middle East and across North Africa, expanding the Muslim empire headquartered in Damascus, Syria. With his general Tariq bin Ziyad in the lead, he crossed the Mediterranean from Morocco with an army of several thousand, taking control of most of Spain. From 711 until 1031, the Umayyad Empire stretched from Córdoba to Damascus. Sharing the Torch: Youth of the 60s Meet With the Youth of OWS
The evolving Occupy Wall Street movement continues to confound and surprise even its ardent supporters. Two days after Mayor Bloomberg’s brutal nighttime eviction of sleeping Occupiers from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, a massive candlelight march in support of Occupy Wall St. wound its way from Foley Square (opposite the federal courthouse), around City Hall and across the Brooklyn Bridge (police estimated 32,500 participants). Occupy the Democratic Party? No Way!
At a moment when Occupy faces severe police repression and cold weather, and as we are both extending our movement to the streets and rethinking our future, various pressures are beginning to build with the objective of taking our movement into the Democratic Party. The Camel and the Needle's Eye
Gertrude Ezorsky: From Left Democratic Socialist to Left Democratic Socialist
(A presentation at a conference at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on November 18, 2011, held in honor of Gertrude Ezorsky and sponsored by the New York Society For Women in Philosophy)
There is a famous quip by Georges Clemenceau: "Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head." Behind the Euro Crisis: Germany Gambles on the Old Dream of European Hegemony
German industrial and financial power is the key to understanding the complex and often confusing international maneuvers around the Crisis of the Euro. Germany is Europe’s industrial powerhouse, the only country that has survived the Great Recession with a healthy economy, low unemployment, rising GDP, social stability and a favorable balance of trade. Yet, only within the solid framework of a strong European Union can Germany, Europe’s principal creditor nation, ever hope to collect on her Southern European loans and investments. From Occupy Wall Street, to Occupy America, to Occupy the World
The emergence of a mass movement, the beginning of a new radicalization Occupy Wall Street: The Making of a New World
To the superficial eye Liberty Park (Zucotti Park) in lower Manhattan is a circus—a mass of people all packed together in one rather small city square, towered over by the gleaming multistory offices of the 1%, ringed by metal police barricades and overseen by a tall police tower at one end and a solid row of police vans along one side. Boxes, plastic bins and tarps covering all manner of equipment surround the perimeters, tents sprout like mushrooms down the middle. The park is a cacophony of sound. Reviving Progressive Activism: How a Human Rights Movement Won the Country’s First Universal Health Care Law
I. IntroductionOn May 26, 2011, Vermont became the first U.S. state to enact a law for a universal, publicly financed health care system. As Governor Shumlin signed Act 48,[1] he set Vermont on course toward implementing a single payer system by 2017. The Stones Cry Out: The Power of the Occupation in the City Square
Eagleton on Marx
Review of Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton New-York Historical Society Sinks to a New Low with a Black-Tie Gala for Henry Kissinger
[Reprinted from the History News Network.] Occupy Wall Street in Context: Systemic Crisis and Rebellion
The main flaw of the Occupy Wall Street movement, according to the establishment media, has been that the protesters themselves have only been able to articulate a "vague" sense of grievance. This, it is argued, is evidenced in the protesters' disorganized and rather scattered complaints. What is it, the media bemoans, that all those demonstrators occupying city parks across the nation in an apparent protest of everything from the death penalty to corporate greed really want? On the Occupy Wall Street Action Plan
A statement, called an Action Plan by one of the people circulating it, seems to have emerged from the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York, or from a working group set up by the people there. It's impossible to know how many people in and around OWS would agree with the thrust of this plan, but the two main points—if adopted and carried out—are extremely important. Even to get these points widely discussed would be a huge step forward. The details are less important than the main ideas. A ‘Palestinian Spring’? Not Yet.
[This is a revised version of a talk given at a conference sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine held at Columbia University, October 14-16, 2011.] Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Your City. Occupy Your Campus.
#OccupyWallStreet has caused quite the media frenzy during the past three weeks. The protestors (this author included) who have been camping out in Liberty Plaza, formerly Zuccotti Park, are dedicated to staying and demonstrating for economic and social justice. The mainstream media and many liberal commentators such as Nicholas Kristof have criticized #OccupyWallStreet for its lack of structure and demands. “What exactly are they protesting?” they ask coyly, “I just don’t get it.” Carl Oglesby: New Left Intellectual
Carl Oglesby, the eloquent, bespectacled former president of the original Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) of the 1960s, died Tuesday, September 13, 2011, at his home in New Jersey. He was 76, and had been suffering from lung cancer. Oglesby was one of the New Left’s most articulate spokespersons, a fierce, scholarly critic of the Vietnam War and an insightful student of how the U.S. ruling class functioned. From #SidiBouzid to #OccupyWallStreet
On December 17th, 2010 Tunisian street vendor Mohammad Bouazizi lit himself on fire. Mohammad Bouazizi was twenty-six years old. He held a university degree, but was unable to find work for himself besides selling fruits and vegetables on the streets of Sidi Bouzid. On Wednesday, December 17th, the Tunisian police confiscated his merchandise and threatened to put him in jail for selling without a license—instead of pleading for his goods and livelihood as he had in the past, Mohammad Bouazizi doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire. The End of Welfare As We Knew It
[In the current budget debates, it is taken for granted that the welfare program for families has been a failure and its end has been a blessing. To remind people what the actual record has been, I offer here the section on welfare from a book that I co-wrote. I have added up-dated information.] Insurance: A Legalized Racket
"HEALTH INSURERS PUSH PREMIUMS Sharply Higher" headlines today's NY Times, with double-digit increases of up to 80 percent at a time when premiums are averaging over $15,000 a year (up 9 percent from the previous year!) The Occupy Wall Street March
The following is a report from the Occupy Wall Street protest march from which I am now on the train returning home. The Greek and the European Crisis in Context
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM, Greece, a weak, peripheral nation in the European economy, was still licking its wounds from the greatest politico-financial scandal in its post-war history -- the collapse of the Athens stock exchange. The wild stock market speculation had been fueled by often-repeated statements from various government officials (with Finance Minister Yiannos Papantoniou leading the chorus) that the upward trend was an accurate reflection of the robust state of the real economy. Is Something Wrong With Single Payer?
With all the advocacy efforts expended over the last 20 years, it might be reasonable to expect some results by now for the Single Payer (SP) movement. Of course, SP would be a great way to provide health insurance in America. Instead of thousands of private insurance companies (payers for health care services) competing with each other to see who can fool the most people, there would be one source of payment, the federal government, for doctors, clinics and hospitals. Slandering Nonviolence
[Originally published as an Op-Ed, Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, October 2008. Updated, corrected and partially rewritten, January, May and September 2011. ] Cincinnati: First Outsider, First African American Police Chief
A Victory After Decades of Struggle for Racial Justice
Cincinnati's recent selection of someone who is not white and is not from the West Side of Cincinnati as the city's new police chief is a victory for justice and civil rights, and a vindication of the efforts of those activists who for decades have struggled against the racism, violence and abuse that have characterized the Cincinnati Police Department. Obama in Hyde Park: “Black and White Together, Against the Lower Classes”
“Black and white together, against the lower classes”—Nichols and May routine about Hyde Park (Chicago), late 1950s
Hannah Arendt Against the Facts
Blues on the Border: Legendary Rock Guitarist Javier Batiz Plays and Sings for 'My Beloved and Beautiful Tijuana'
Javier Batiz, the great Mexican rock-and-roll guitarist, played and sang last week in a concert that embodied and gave voice to everything that is most wonderful about Tijuana and the U.S.-Mexico border region. Alas, we who wished to lay the foundations of kindness . . .
…Alas, we But you, when at last it comes to pass -- Bertolt Brecht, “To Posterity” Sense and Nonsense in the Balanced Budget Debate: A Socialist Response
The Republicans have successfully changed the economic debate from jobs to deficit control. Why the urgency? After all, this anemic “recovery” has been marked above all by the lack of job growth. Growth needs to considerable exceed 3% per annum if the private sector is to make any significant headway in reducing unemployment. Instead growth is actually trending downward from its post Great Recession peak. The intractability of long term unemployment now exceeds the duration experienced in the 1930s. A Thousand Platitudes: Liberal Hysteria and the Tea Party
[Comments by Marvin and Betty Mandell and others are posted below the article.] Lessons from Industrial Disaster in an Unpredictable Age
As the Gulf oil spill of April 2010 came and went -- public outcry now quieted and offshore drilling now resumed -- so too seems the case with the nuclear fallout of Japan. Currently, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are determining the future of more than a dozen aging nuclear reactors in the United States, some of which are of the same design as the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that exploded and melted down last month. The bureaucrats at NRC however, have never denied a nuclear plant application for renewal. How the Islamic "virus" broke out of the imperialist laboratory
[Editor's note: This article continues Richard Greeman's series about Islamism.] Over the years, the British-backed Moslem Brotherhood’s activities spread far beyond Egypt. Not by coincidence did the first Arabic translation of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” still in circulation today, appear in Egypt the 1920"s. This anti-Semitic forgery was created by the Imperial Russian secret services around 1905 in order to designate a scapegoat and divert the growing Russian revolutionary movement into reactionary channels (pogroms, Black Hundreds). Rising Above the Herd: Keith Preston's Authoritarian Anti-Statism
-- Keith Preston, "The Thoughts That Guide Me: A Personal Reflection" (2005)[1]
Jobs for All
Recently, George Fish had a piece on the New Politics website entitled Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis. I urge New Politics readers to read and consider Fish's proposal. Inventing Islam
In what concrete ways can it be said that the West “invents” what it calls Islamism ? Contemporary imperialism inadvertently spreads Islamic militantism by stirring up the ME/A hornets’ nest through torture-camps and attacks on civilians. But Western agents have long supported Islamic movements in the region as a way to divert nationalism and democracy. Historically, the British Intelligence Service nurtured the Islamicist movement at its very origin. Solidarity With Zimbabwean Political Prisoners
[The following appeal has been endorsed by New Politics as well as The Nation, The Progressive, and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, among others.] Six people in Zimbabwe are now imprisoned on charges of treason for organizing a meeting to discuss the mass movements in Tunisia and Egypt. For this “crime” they face a possible death sentence. They have been tortured and are now in solitary confinement. The New American Workers Movement at the Crossroads
The new American workers movement, which has developed so rapidly in the last couple of months in the struggle against rightwing legislative proposals to abolish public employee unions, suddenly finds itself at a crossroads. Madison, Wisconsin, where rank-and-file workers, community members, and social movement activists converged to create the new movement, remains the center of the struggle. In Ohio, which faces similar legislation, unions have also gone into motion, while working people around the country have been drawn into the fight. Welfare in France: A Review
The Bureaucrat and the Poor: Encounters in French Welfare Offices American workers fight back
[This is a modified version of an article first posted on the Workers' Liberty website.] The Great Recession and its aftermath have generated a wholesale and unprecedented assault on the living conditions and future prospects for the American working class. This is the backdrop for the dramatic conflict now unfolding in Wisconsin. Madison, Wisconsin: State Violence Threatened—and Rebutted
A small and curious bulletin begins this note from the front lines: as of several hours ago, the head of the Wisconsin professional police association announced that its members would not eject demonstrators from the Capitol building, and suggested some would be spending the night with the demonstrators in order to protect them. The New American Workers Movement and the Confrontation to Come
The new American workers movement—born in the last few weeks in the giant protests in Wisconsin and Ohio—faces a fateful confrontation this coming week. In Madison and Columbus, Republican legislators are pushing to abolish public employee labor unions and tens of thousands of workers are protesting and resisting. We have seen nothing like this face off between workers and bosses in the United States since the labor upheaval of the early 1970s, though the issues in the balance are more like those of the 1930s. A Period of Revolutionary Fervour
(Editor's note: Ali Kadri, presently a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE), has written this letter, received by a member of the New Politics Editorial Board.) A New American Workers Movement Has Begun
Thousands of workers demonstrated at the state capital in Madison, Wisconsin on Feb. 15 and 16 to protest plans by that state’s Republican Governor Scott Walker to take away the state workers’ union rights. Walker, cleverly attempted to divide the public workers by excluding police and firefighters from his anti-union law, and the media have worked to divide public employees against private sector workers. Moslem Disunity
For a movement to be a serious threat to the imperialist West, it must be coherent and united, which is simply not the case of what is termed "Radical Islam." A united, militant Islamic world would indeed be a serious threat to the West, but nothing like that is in the offing, with the result that “Political Islam,” divided, remains weak and ineffectual. So much for the Clash of Civilizations theories, based on ideology rather than concrete history. Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis
Carl Davidson, organizer for CCDS [Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism] and one of its four National Co-chairs, recently e-mailed me on what it was doing in terms of addressing the unemployment crisis in the U.S. today, that direct and nasty continuing fallout from the still-current recession. He wrote: Climate wars
The international climate change summit in Cancún in December 2010 produced an agreement that host president Felipe Calderon of Mexico declared a “success for humanity and reason”. All the major economies pledged to reduce carbon emissions and agreed to establish a ‘Green fund’ to financially help developing countries adapt to climate change. One country however, remained deeply critical of the document and refused to ratify the agreement. Cockroft’s "Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now"
James D. Cockroft’s "Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now," written for the centennial of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, is a radical scholar’s guide to radical Mexico and well worth the read. Both a scholar and a political activist, Cockcroft writes as a partisan of oppressed and exploited and an opponent of capitalism. Actually-existing Islamic movements and states
Editor's note: This is the seventh article in a series by Richard Greeman about Islamism. U.S. imperialism, deluded by its own ideology, has joined the March of Folly in Afghanistan/West Pakistan -- following in the illustrious footsteps of other would-be conquerors including the Persian Emperor Darius I, Alexander the Great, the British Empire under Queen Victoria and Brezhnev's Soviet Russian empire. All these great powers lost whole armies in the region before being driven out by the fiercely independent natives, as we have seen in previous articles. The U.S. “Take a Hike, Gimpy”
New York City plans to have even more inaccessible taxis The U.S. March of Folly in the Middle-East
Does desperation alone account for reckless escalation of U.S. military aggression in the Middle East for which the “threat” of an aggressive Islamism provides the rationalization? To be sure, the worsening world economic crisis directly conditions the international context, aggravating U.S. capital’s frantic rush to control the world’s remaining oil reserves. America's willingness to use excessive force and to go it alone also serves to intimidate would-be imperialist rivals like China, Russia and France, so as to retain its lion’s share. Obama's Dangerous Escalations
Obama’s decision to radically escalate the wars he was ostensibly elected to terminate is a measure of U.S. imperialism's desperation. It’s not just that our erstwhile peace candidate and future Nobel peace laureate is withdrawing exhausted U.S. troops from the frying pan of Iraq only to transfer them into the fire of Afghanistan, although that itself was an act of desperation. Many of these “volunteer” soldiers and reservists, shattered after several devastating tours of duty in Iraq, are being forced to remain in the service years beyond their contracts. A Clash of Fundamentalisms
In our previous articles, we emphasized the ideological nature of today’s problematic Islamic “threat.” Historically this “threat” fits into an established tradition of hysterical propaganda campaigns – whether against “Indians,” “Negroes” or “Reds” -- which distort and exaggerate real and potential challenges to U.S. capitalism /imperialism so as to justify violence, state terror and wars of plunder. If the truth is “the first casualty” in war, then democracy is the second. Although framed by the U.S. Contextualizing the Threat of Radical Islam: “Urgent Threats” of Yesteryear
[Editor’s note: This is the second in a series by Richard Greeman.] To understand the lunacy of the problematic Islamic “threat” currently being hyped in mainstream U.S. political discourse, we need to place the concept in the historical context of Western, particularly U.S. imperialism’s collective self-image. White American identity has from the beginning defined itself in opposition a dangerous, threatening, darker “other” who had to be conquered, subdued, and/or exterminated : in the first instance the “savages” native to the Americas. Contextualizing the Threat of Radical Islam
Note: This article begins a series by Richard Greeman. Longtime socialist and international activist Richard Greeman is best know for his studies and translations of Victor Serge, the Franco-Russian novelist and revolutionary. Fitch, Benson, and Early
I read with keen interest 2 recent articles on the New Politics website: “Card Check: Labor’s Charlie Brown Moment?” by Robert Fitch, and “Does ‘Union Democracy’ Undermine ‘Solidarity?” by Herman Benson. Update to "Mean Bastards as Culture Heroes"
A note on "Mean Bastards": This short piece, posted after the death of George Steinbrenner, has received a kind of confirmation in Ellen DeGeneres walking out on her five year contract worth tens of millions with "American Idol." I had criticized Simon Cowell (a former AI judge) along with Steinbrenner, Trump, etc. Hacker and Dreifus’s Higher Education? A Neocon Screed
I admire Claudia Dreifus’s interviews with scientists in the New York Times Tuesday Science section, and particularly her attention to women in science, and I know of her honorable history in the left and feminism. So I befriended her on Facebook. There she publicized her book, with Andrew Hacker, Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting Our Money and Failing our Kids – and What we Can Do About It, to be published by Times Books/Henry Holt on August 3. Mean Bastards as Culture Heroes
All day long, and on into a second day, here in New York, the media have been full of George Steinbrenner. He’s always been a Mean Bastard -- even in the Seinfeld version -- and that’s how he is memorialized: a Mean Bastard and a Winner. Sometimes he’s represented as a Mean-Bastard-with-a Heart-of-Gold-who-Gave-Money-to-Good-Causes. It would seem paradoxical to be deep in grief over a man universally acknowledged to be a Mean Bastard. The Decommissioners - Update
The trial of the Decommissioners lasted three weeks, in which time the jury heard not only from the Decommissioners but also detailed evidence of war crimes committed in Palestine and testimony from EDO managing director Paul Hills, who faced questions about his company’s dealings with Israel. All the defendants were acquitted by unanimous jury decisions. One of the defendants, Chris Osmond, said: "It was the right verdict. Our action was because nobody else was willing to take action. Teachers in Oaxaca: A Review
Diana Denham and the C.A.S.A. Collective, Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca (Oakland: PM Press, 2008) and Peter Kuper, A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Oaxaca (Oakland: PM Press, 2009). The Israeli Military and the "Decommissioners"
On the 17th of January 2009, Israeli warplanes pounded the terrified inhabitants of the densely populated Gaza strip in over 50 air-strikes. It was the 22nd day of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military assault on Gaza that left an estimated 1400 dead, including over 300 children. Metal Workers & Miners Unions Consider Merger
Unions Representing Workers in Canada, Mexico qnd U.S. Explore Merger: The United Steelworkers (USW), which represents 850,000 workers in Canada, the Caribbean and the United States, and the National Union of Miners and Metal Workers (SNTMMRM), known as the Mineros, which represents 180,000 workers in Mexico, have announced plans to explore uniting into one international union. The agreement to begin exploration of a merger was signed on June 21. Max Lane on Indonesia: A review
Max Lane. Unfinished Revolution: Indonesia Before and After Suharto. New York: Verso, 2008. 312 pages. Notes, index. $29.95 The Need to Say NO
[This review appeared in New Politics, vol. I, no. 4, summer 1962 (old series).] As a novelist, a middle class man of the mid-century, a Jew and a socialist, Harvey Swados is that wonderful rarity in the United States today, a committed human being. His recently published collection of essays written over the last ten years, A Radical’s America,* reveals his deep sense of disturbance about the quality of contemporary American life, its cant and corruption. Does "union democracy" undermine "solidarity?"
[We have asked labor activists to respond to "Card Check: Labor's Charlie Brown Moment?" by Robert Fitch, to encourage discussion on the important issues raised in the article. What follows is the response of Herman Benson.] Los Suns
It's not unprecedented for athletes here to object to racist policies, military invasions, and various other crimes and stupidities. The raised, gloved fists of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the podium at the 1968 Olympics provide the most dramatic and public example of athletes taking a public stand against oppression. For their courage, Smith and Carlos were demonized and hustled out of town by the U.S. Olympic Committee, though today they are celebrated, at least in some circles. Phyllis Jacobson, 1922-2010
The editorial board of New Politics is very sad to report the death of Phyllis Jacobson, co-founder and long-time co-editor of the journal. Phyllis died on March 2, 2010, after suffering a devastating stroke close to ten years ago. We are deeply indebted to Phyllis and her late husband Julie for tirelessly holding high the banner of radical, democratic socialism and independent politics. In Tribute to Phyllis Jacobson
Julie and Phyllis Jacobson launched New Politics in the early 1960s, when they saw the absence of a voice for authentic left-socialist thought following the demise of the Independent Socialist current of the previous period. Ironically, although it was a time of reborn activism for civil rights, peace and what we now call “global justice,” the movement for a socialist politics fiercely independent of Washington, Moscow and Beijing had not organizationally survived to see it. Phyllis Jacobson: An Appreciation
Phyllis Jacobson, who died after a protracted illness on March 2 -- just shy of her 88th birthday -- was the dynamic force behind a remarkable political and intellectual partnership of shared passion that left an indelible imprint on three generations of twentieth century American radicalism. For Phyllis Jacobson, A Comrade
Those of us who knew Phyllis Jacobson and her husband Julie will realize that her death brings to a close a long and rich chapter in the history of the revolutionary and democratic socialist left in the US. She was the last of a small but heroic generation. Starting with the YPSL Fourth International, the youth section of the Socialist Party that split under Trotskyist leadership to set up the Socialist Workers Party in 1938 she and Julie ended up in the Workers Party (later the Independent Socialist League) when it was formed in 1940. Condolence Statement
We would like to send our condolences to the family, friends and comrades of Phyllis Jacobson. As a founding editor of New Politics, Phyllis played a crucial role in advocating the core principles of "socialism from below," including opposition to Stalinism and support for independent working-class political action. Her commitment to internationalism and solidarity was genuine and heartfelt. Without any hesitation, she opened the pages of New Politics to us when we organized campaigns to defend socialists in Greece and South Korea who faced government persecution. Good Bye, Phyllis
I met Phyllis and Julie in September of 1961. I had just graduated from the University of Chicago where I had joined the YPSL, and was passing through New York on my way to London. I met them at Julie’s machine shop in Great Jones Street in the East Village and they took me out for lunch at the corner diner on Lafayette and Great Jones. There they told me that the first issue of New Politics had just come out, and as the good and experienced organizers they were, they immediately enrolled me as their London distributor. A Robust Voice for Such a Diminutive Person
The image of Phyllis that remains most salient, and the one I most miss, would begin with a phone call. I would answer with a lugubrious “hello.” And from the other end, I would hear a buoyant “HIYA, STEVE, this is PHYLLIS.” A robust voice for such a diminutive person. And a twang that seemed more Texan than Bronx. A Personal and Political Tribute to Phyllis
IT’S A STAPLE of American comedians to make fun of in-laws in general and mothers-in-law in particular. But, in my case and with no offense to Michael, I could have married my husband simply for his parents. The New Corporatism in American Politics and the Grassroots
From the Tea Party to the Coffee Party, How Political Parties Grow the Grass and Mow the Lawn "Drunk, crazy, and manipulated by their betters" - Sailors and Democracy
Kate Millett and Her Critics
[This article appeared in the old series of New Politics, Fall 1970.]
Sexual Politics by Kate Millet Kate Millet's Sexual Politics has elicited awe, praise and sober criticism, but proof of its effectiveness is the appearance of a variety of articles and reviews marked by utterly unselfconscious vulgarity, philistinism and venomous hostility. Why Should the Left Trust the Government?
In 1960, as a graduate student in history, I decided to pick up some work as a census-taker on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. At the training session (at the Henry George School), the instructor said, "you're paid by the head, and [smirk], nobody's going to make any trouble if you find a couple of two-headed people." (At that time I was still a Good Boy, and didn't find any such.) Invoking "sedition" against Teabaggers: short-sighted, ahistorical, and suicidal
The Nation joins a great tradition (Alien and Sedition Acts, Palmer Raids, Smith Act) by invoking "sedition" against Teabaggers. Black Outrage in Los Angeles
[This article appeared in New Politics no. 13, Summer 1992.] The fire burning in South-Central Los Angeles illuminated the rage, anguish and despair of African-Americans consigned to bleak lives of poverty and hopelessness by the most "advanced" country in the world. But as history attests, once the rage subsides, the images, which should be unforgettable, are all too soon forgotten. The ghetto and those trapped inside it are once more invisible. The Right's Conspiracy Theory Attack on Frances Fox Piven
If you believe Glenn Beck, the Tea Party lunatics, Rush Limbaugh, and their ilk, Frances Fox Piven is the Marxist Machiavelli whose 1966 article in The Nation (written with Richard Cloward) still serves as the blueprint for a radical takeover of American society, including Barack Obama's "socialist" administration. Two Invented Lives
[This article was published in New Politics No. 23, Summer 1997] Review of HELLMAN AND HAMMETT, by Joan Mellen (HarperCollins, New York, 1996. 572pp. $30.00 HB, $13.00 PB) Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
[Editors' note: Howard Zinn, among his multitude of other contributions to the left, was a long-time sponsor of New Politics. We express our deepest sympathies to his family and post here an article by NP board member Steve Shalom that will be appearing in the spring issue of Democratic Left.]
'Bows of pseudo-profundity' and 'moral certitude': Alan Johnson and Democratiya
The merger of the online journal Democratiya, with Dissent, provides an obvious point to begin assessing the role of Alan Johnson's creation. The following is not intended as the last word on this subject, but as a contribution to a process of analysis. The approach here will be to focus on the argumentation used in Democratiya, specifically in the one article written for the journal by Johnson. The Politics of George Clooney’s Help for Haiti Telethon
I totally agree with Jesse Lemisch's astute comments about George Clooney's extravaganza and its conspicuous avoidance of anything that might be construed as "political." Of course, in the midst of a colossal disaster, this feel-good spectacle of entertainment icons is inherently political, rife with intended and unintended consequences. First of all, it is hard to separate celebrity magnanimity from self-promotion. George Clooney's Haiti -- and Beyond
George Clooney (currently in "Up in the Air") organized on short notice a technically and musically fine two hour fund-raising telethon, "Hope for Haiti," which was broadcast on January 22 on most networks, many cable channels, on the Web, and both in and beyond the US. Here are two samplers of the music: one and two. A Hostile Biography of Leon Trotsky
Robert Service. Trotsky: A Biography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. 600 pages, including end notes, bibliography, index. $35.00. Robert Service’s study is quite readable. The prose is clear, and the story interesting. It follows the basic outline sketched by Trotsky himself in his literary masterpiece My Life, supplemented by Isaac Deutscher’s brilliant trilogy – The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast. Dennis Brutus
Dennis Brutus – celebrated poet, anti-apartheid fighter and lifelong socialist – died last week. As a student activist at the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-2000s, I was privileged to know Dennis in the short time before he departed for the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he spent his last years. Throughout the world and for a long time to come, Dennis’ outstanding contributions to peace and justice struggles will be recounted. Worth reading: “The Old Man” by Christopher Hitchens
If you missed “The Old Man,” Christopher Hitchens’ review of Verso’s reissue of Isaac Deutscher’s trilogy about Leon Trotsky, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200407/hitchens do read it. The review describes Trotsky's accomplishments not generally known, for example, his activities as a brilliant war correspondent in the Balkans. But most important of all is the discussion of Trotsky’s polemics against the communist policy in pre-Hitler Germany. Trotsky warned that in communist policy the real enemy was not the Nazis but social democracy. News update: Mexican government to meet with electrical workers, mediators
The Mexican Secretary of the Interior will meet with the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) and a group of mediators tonight (December 16) some months since President Felipe Calderón liquidated the state-owned Light and Power Company, seized the facilities, and fired of the 44,000 workers. The union, which has sought in the courts the return of all workers to their jobs, has more modest goals for these negotiations, according to general secretary Martín Esparza. Middle East: Faint Glimmer of Hope
There’s a glimmer – a very faint glimmer – of hope arising from recent developments in Palestine. I’m referring to the statement by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) that he will not seek re-election as “president” of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in essence a statement of resignation. If Abu Mazen stands by his resignation, it will deliver a much-needed kick in the teeth to the Obama administration. Putting race on a bronze pedestal
Planning a Columbus Day radio broadcast this year with Native American friends from across the hemisphere brought back a childhood memory. We were talking about that unfortunate human capacity to regard groups of strangers as "others," as qualitatively different, strange, threatening and of lesser worth, and about the town that succeeded in getting rid of its “illegal aliens” only to discover that its workforce, consumers and everything that sustained its economy had been eliminated. Mexican Electrical Workers Union Fights For Its Life
The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), made up of approximately 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers in Mexico City and surrounding states, is fighting for its life. The union's struggle has rallied allies in the labor movement and on the left in Mexico and solidarity from throughout the country and around the world, but, if it is to survive, the union and its supporters have to take stronger actions than they have so far, and time is not on their side. Nobel Ironies – The “Not George Bush” Prize
It seems doubly ironic that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has given its 2009 award to Barack Obama -- just a few months after Arizona State University declined to award him the customary, symbolic honorary degree as its commencement speaker. The ASU decision, on the grounds that president Obama “had not yet accomplished enough,” was fully understandable in view of the reputation which that esteemed University is committed to uphold. You don’t command a degree from ASU on academic credentials alone, or just from a decade of teaching at elite law schools. Nobel Ironies – The “Not George Bush” Prize
It seems doubly ironic that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has given its 2009 award to Barack Obama -- just a few months after Arizona State University declined to award him the customary, symbolic honorary degree as its commencement speaker. The ASU decision, on the grounds that president Obama “had not yet accomplished enough,” was fully understandable in view of the reputation which that esteemed University is committed to uphold. You don’t command a degree from ASU on academic credentials alone, or just from a decade of teaching at elite law schools. Mexican Government Seizes Power Plants, Liquidates Company, Fires Workers, Union in Jeopardy
October 11, 2009 -- Mexican Federal Police last night and early this morning seized the plants of the Central Light and Power Company of Mexico (LyF) which provides electricity to Mexico City and several states in central Mexico. The government of President Felipe Calderón also announced the liquidation of the company, the termination of the workers, and thereby the elimination of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) which has opposed the government's policies. War in Afghanistan and Pakistan: A critical moment to voice your opposition
The President and Congress are reviewing U.S. policy on the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is a critical moment. This may be a turning point for the expanding U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a time when speaking out clearly and unambiguously against war can make a crucial difference. We urge you to sign the Campaign for Peace and Democracy emergency statement calling for an end to military intervention in both countries. The statement declares us firmly against military escalation in the region and for the withdrawal of all U.S. Mexican Government Prepares to Seize Mexico City Power Plants to Break Power of Electrical Workers Union
The Mexican Preventive Police (PFP) are preparing to occupy the facilities of the Central Light and Power Company in Mexico City in an attempt to break the militant Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), according to a union press release. The union warns that the quasi-military occupation of the plants could come within a week. The PFP have been used in the last three years to attempt to break strikes of miners and steelworkers as well as to try to crush popular social movements. Lowering the age of consent: Sexual rights are human rights
Law professor John Spencer, of Cambridge University, has created a huge controversy in the UK by suggesting a reduction in the current age of sexual consent of 16. His proposals, broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Iconoclasts programme, with my support as a co-advocate, have been savaged by The Sun and the Daily Mail. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mrd9g Lowering the age of consent: Sexual rights are human rights
Law professor John Spencer, of Cambridge University, has created a huge controversy in the UK by suggesting a reduction in the current age of sexual consent of 16. His proposals, broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Iconoclasts programme, with my support as a co-advocate, have been savaged by The Sun and the Daily Mail. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mrd9g “The Last Truck”: Politics and Art
The extent to which a film, book, essay, meeting, or web posting will evoke the emotional immediacy of some contemporary disaster or the analysis of why and how it happened is an aesthetic issue and a political one as well. My analysis of the film tilts toward the latter, and not merely a result of my Victorian Marxist inclinations. Just recently, the University of California system has been visited by a round of disastrous cut backs and furloughs. The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
On the evening of September 7 (Labor Day) HBO broadcast "The Last Truck:Closing of a GM Plant [in Ohio]", a documentary by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar. The film interviews workers about their years at the plant, and counts down to the last day and the last truck, I found it powerful, both emotionally and aesthetically. Immediately afterwards. I wrote to H-Labor, the labor historians discussion list: “Shown this evening … on HBO. Let's hope it stays around in one form or another. Powerful, poignant, sad beyond belief, brilliantly done. Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29
Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29 (2008), directed by Kevin Rafferty, a thrilling football movie showing Harvard’s astonishing come-from-behind “victory” – the title is the Harvard Crimson’s -- in the last 42 seconds of the 1968 Yale-Harvard game. Rafferty is a brilliant documentarian, known for his earlier Atomic Café. In some ways, Harvard Beats Yale is continuous with the themes of the earlier film. Harvard’s largely working-class (and mostly anti-Vietnam War) team is up against the aristocracy and arrogance of Yale and its fans.. Multiculturalism vs. human rights?
Multiculturalism vs. human rights? Defending multiculturalism but warning against its excesses Multiculturalism has many positive benefits. It defends the right to the different, which is a very important and precious human right, especially for those people whose difference has historically resulted in social marginalization and exclusion: including women, black, disabled and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Debating Activism
Underneath any specific conclusions we come to on any subject, is a more fundamental framework consisting of our premises. Because premises are usually implicit in contrast to explicit conclusions, and because they often are shared by much of our surrounding culture, we tend to take them for granted. We may argue or discuss some specific government action, for instance, without even being aware that our agreement or disagreement is itself shaped by our underlying sense of human nature or what kind of society is possible or what difference we are able to make in the world. Interested in "bad guys" - but not bad systems
While researching a book on The Great Recession (or whatever we wind up calling this economic downturn) I noticed that I couldn’t find any unemployed bankers who had actually handled the “toxic assets” that supposedly caused the crisis. I started to look for them systematically and eventually discovered that they were still employed. Furthermore, their activity of creating and trading collateralized debt obligations and the SWAPS that insured them was, in fact, booming. Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis
Campaign for Peace and Democracy July 7, 2009 Right after the June 12 elections in Iran, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy issued a statement expressing our strong support for the masses of Iranians protesting electoral fraud and our horror at the ferocious response of the government. STUNNING VICTORY FOR CZECH OPPONENTS OF U.S. RADAR BASE
For immediate release NEW YORK, March 18, 2009 |