Battle for Social Democracy and Unfettered Capitalism (tags)
Two opposing schools of thought face each other at the sickbed: neoliberalism and social democracy. Didn't the death-bells of neoliberals ring in the course of the financial market crisis? Were not neoliberals unmasked who first caused the whole mess with their deregulation?
The American century was yesterday (tags)
"The people can always be made, with or without the right to vote,to follow the orders of the leaders. It is very simple. One need nothing to do but to tell the people that they are being attacked, and to reproach the pacifists of their lack of patriotism and putting the country in danger. This method works in every country." (Hermann Goering,1946)
The long struggle for a post-capitalist society (tags)
The (Corona) crisis has relentlessly exposed the inability of neoliberal capitalism and its political personnel to meet the elementary needs of the people. Even if it is not felt to the same extent in Germany due to the depressing political conditions: the neoliberal offensive is in a deep existential crisis.
Make Social Democracy Great Again (tags)
Erik Olin Wright spoke of smashing, taming, escaping and eroding capitalism as alternatives of the transformational left. We must resist the "selective perception" of the elite that ignores market distortions, market failures, state failures, and the attack on the poor, seniors and students
Utopia, Technology and Struggle. Ways out of the Crisis of Social Democracy (tags)
The big question is still open. Must an emancipatory project aim at a changed distribution of incomes or is hedging capitalism through regulation and redistribution enough? In other words, is shifting to an eco-Keynesian path sufficient to create equal life chances?
Get The Internationalist No. 50! (tags)
Special expanded Winter 2017 edition: 80 pages of revolutionary Marxist propaganda. Send US$2 to Mundial Publications, Box 3321 Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008 USA. Subscriptions $10.
What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy? (tags)
Tony Judt and William Beveridge were great progressives and crusaders for the social state. In the US, the middle class benefited enormously in the postwar years from subsidized housing and subsidized education. We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present.
Progress Means Reduced Working Hours (tags)
Shorter hours can lead to economic growth, higher productivity, greater output, more time sovereignty and better long-term health of workers. Closing one's eyes to these arguments and only thinking of short-term profit is hostile to the future and not only hostile to the economy.
Fascism's Ugly Face in Ukraine (tags)
Ukraine
Free Internet Book: "Social Democracy After the Cold War" (tags)
As a result of the efforts of the “progressive modernizers,” for whom modernization “has too often meant deregulation and privatization,” social democracy is no longer what it used to be, argues Robert Taylor (2008).
The Left, Labor and Occupy (tags)
Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist "demands" on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel "black bloc" anarchists. Reformist social democrats rail against "ultraleftists" in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers' struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle.
New issue of The Internationalist is out! (tags)
Special for May Day 2012.
CAPITALIST CATASTROPHE AND PROLETARIAN STRUGGLES (tags)
Hi fellows, here is the very first draft translation in English of the first pages of our last review in French "Communisme" N°60. Sorry for the language but improvements will come later. Meanwhile, have a good reading and we are waiting for your comments and critics...
Noam Chomsky and Marxism (tags)
Noam Chomsky and Marxism
Zionism as Jewish National Socialism (tags)
There is a law in Israel, passed in 1985, which forbids political parties to openly oppose the principle of a Jewish state. Neither are they allowed to work for a change of this principle through democratic means. A party so doing will be banned from elections to the Knesset. Democracy is thus denied to those citizens - even Jews - who wish to work within the parliamentary system towards replacing the Jewish state with a secular state which represents all its citizens' equal rights regardless of religion or ethnic origin.
The Los Angeles Supermarket Strike of 2003-2004 (tags)
Media coverage was eclipsed by Hollywood’s Academy Awards, but on Sunday, Feb. 29, Southern California supermarket workers voted 86% to end their five-month old strike, accepting a contract that amounts to a serious, if not total, victory for a determined employer offensive with national implications.Thus one of the most important strikes in the U.S. in years has ended in defeat.
A century of What to do? of Lenin: A critical defense at the light of the Argentinazo (tags)
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Speech By Swedish Prime Minister at Memorial for Foriegn Minister Anna Lindh (tags)
With her burning international involvement since her teens, with Olof Palme as her model. . .Anna Lindh did not just speak for Sweden in the world. She also spoke for the world in Sweden.
Breaking Free of the Protest Mentality (tags)
Protestors are in the classic role of "protestors", people with no real power over their lives so they must demand it from the ruling class. Demonstrations also point to a lack of creativity; the only thing we can come up with is playing the song and dance of our rulers. How much longer will these protests go on for? If we could only get a few more tens of thousands to protest, will we be successful in overthrowing capitalism, the state and wage-slavery? Why do the state, capitalism and wage-slavery exist, why do the governments of the U.S. and Israel do what they do, and what are we actually going to do about it?