The turn to less: Corona and the consumption dilemma (tags)
The Corona crisis could be the beginning of a better normality. Corona could make a turning point in history. The global North has benefited from unequal trade relations. Global employment has lost its role as the center of life. We must get out of the old path dependencies.
The Second Honduran Coup Came Today Because the First One Failed (tags)
"A significant portion of the Honduran population has gone underground overnight. Tipped off that last night their homes would be raided and they would be hauled off to the soccer stadium in Tegucigalpa where the regime already holds at least 75 citizens incommunicado – reports of the use of torture are all the more credible because the regime won’t allow any attorney, doctor or human rights observer inside the stadium to inspect – other rank-and-file Hondurans opened their homes to resistance organizers throughout the country. They are hiding from the regime, but they are in constant contact with each other, and with our reporters. Another part of last night’s wave of state terror came in the form of this provocation: Key human rights leaders and attorneys were notified anonymously of an alleged roundup of dissidents at a particular police station in the capital. They rushed down to look for the detainees, only to be greeted by the very nervous and heavily armed station police who had, simultaneously, received an anonymous phone call telling them that a mob was on its way there to burn down the station. Fortunately, cooler minds prevailed and once the human rights attorneys explained to the police the message they had received, both sides figured out it was an attempt to trick them into a violent confrontation.
Leftist Union Leaders Assassinated in Venezuela (tags)
On November 27, three leftist union leaders in the Venezuelan state of Aragua – Richard Gallardo, Luis Hernández and Carlos Requena – were gunned down by an assassin. The murder came hours after the unionists had led a workers occupation of a Colombian-owned milk plant which had been brutally broken up by state police. All three were leaders of the UNT (National Workers Union) and of the USI (Socialist Left Unity), a party which has opposed attempts by the government of Hugo Chávez to impose state control of labor, and has fought the rightist opposition backed by imperialism. They may have been murdered by assassins hired by the Colombian company, by elements connected to the police of outgoing state governor, a former Chávez ally, or by supporters of a current official of the governing United Socialist Party. In any case, despite Chávez’ socialist rhetoric, the reality of the bourgeois Bolivarian “revolution” in Venezuela today is that leftist unionists are murdered while the forces of capitalist state repression back up the bosses. While many leftists have called on the Chávez government to investigate, Trotskyists call for organizing workers defense guards and imposing workers control of production. Venezuela today is stuck at a crossroads. Building a Bolshevik-type workers party based on Trotsky’s program of permanent revolution is key.
“Green” capitalism: German Greens adopt new economic programme (tags)
Germany’s Green Party recently agreed to a new economic programme, published under the title “The Green free-market economy.” The programme paper was developed by prominent party figures under the auspices of the party’s parliamentary faction leader Fritz Kuhn, heralding the free market as the guardian angel of the environment—and their own wallets. Every line of this document reflects the class outlook of the upper middle class—those owning medium-sized businesses and the better-off self-employed—by glorifying the market and private property, while simultaneously expressing the authors’ fear of mounting social inequalities. The entire document is characterised by a continuous “on the one hand...and on the other hand” type of argument.
The International Socialist Organization and the 2006 election (tags)
The International Socialist Organization is holding a conference this weekend in New York City under the slogan “Socialism 2006—Build the Left, Fight the Right.” An examination of the perspective upon which this gathering has been organized, however, makes clear that it is aimed at promoting a “left” variety of bourgeois politics, in the form of the Green Party, which can serve only to divert a mass movement that arises against the right-wing policies of the two major parties and lead it into a political dead end.
Europe’s ‘Green’ militarists (tags)
The days when the German Green Party opposed international military operations by Germany’s armed forces, or at least criticized them, have long since passed. After seven years in government, the party has returned to the opposition benches, but it has by no means returned to its former pacifist positions. The Greens are among the most avid proponents of a German military mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one that could easily become the most extensive and dangerous foreign operation conducted by German soldiers since World War II.
A socialist strategy for workers’ power: the only answer to France’s “First Job Contract” (tags)
The month-long struggle against the Gaullist government’s “First Job Contract” has brought to the fore the fundamental class and political issues facing workers and young people not only in France, but across Europe and internationally. The needs of youth and workers—decent-paying and secure jobs, education, health care, a future without war or repression—are in irreconcilable conflict with the interests of a financial elite who represent a failed political and economic system. This oligarchy of wealth and power is determined to make the working class pay for the crisis of the capitalist system.
Chavez in Madrid-The working class must be the vanguard of the revolution (tags)
Bolivarian Revolution
GOP Alliance may Split over Stem-Cells (tags)
For most of the 20th Century, leading conservatives and libertarians united against atheist-collectivists. To this day, a WWII-era alliance between US capitalists and moralists continues long after the defeat of the "Reds." And then came stem-cell research...