Class Struggle

It’s Time To Challenge The Corporate University

May 12, 2022 Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt and Bertin M. Louis Jr., Truthout. Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Corporatism, Higher Education

Bill Readings, a late Université de Montréal professor noted the move towards corporatization of universities in his 1997 study, The University in Ruins. While the 1990s were certainly not the golden age of higher education, there were aspects of them that were palatable compared to the current moment. At that time, tuition was lower and more affordable. Technological incorporation in teaching and internet accessibility had just begun. Google and Wikipedia were nonexistent, and living accommodations for students on college and university campuses were modest. Universities relied on shared governance (faculty participation in the governance of an institution) for decision-making.

High-Deductible Health Plans Make Income Inequality Worse

May 9, 2022 Mark Kreidler, Capital and Main. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Health Insurance

Anyone holding a high-deductible health plan understands the dynamic: When it costs more for people to access health care, they’re going to think twice before using it. It’s a system designed to hold down costs by discouraging service. But there’s something even more insidious about such plans. For lower income California families already living paycheck to paycheck, a single medical need can sink them deeper into financial peril. This type of health care keeps poor people poor. That is precisely what worries Malissa Sanchez, whose employer in Los Angeles essentially forced a high deductible health plan (HDHP) on her in April when it eliminated a direct-payment system that previously allowed her to buy her own coverage. “The new plan just isn’t as good,” said Sanchez, 30.

‘Crush Inflation’?: Workers, Living Standards, And The Politics Of Inflation

March 27, 2022 Sam Gindin And John Clarke, Socialist Project. Resistance Report Capitalism, Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Inflation

Politicians, the media, central bankers and the average worker have all been talking up the recent acceleration in the cost of living. Just a short time ago price rises of just 2% might have been considered ‘inflationary’. In the current phase of the Covid pandemic, inflation in core capitalist states, including Canada, is now running at the 5-7%, far ahead of wage settlements and bumps in income supports for welfare. Inflation always carries important consequences for workers living standards, collective bargaining and meeting basic needs for the poor. Inflation always generates class conflict, most directly and immediately over distribution but indirectly eventually over questions of power over capital and the state.

Why There’s More Labor Media Coverage

March 25, 2022 Lane Windham, Working-Class Perspectives. Educate! Class Struggle, Labor Movement, Media, Worker Rights and Jobs

It seems like workers and their unions are in the news more than ever lately. Starbucks baristas, Amazon warehouse workers, John Deere strikers, and even New York Times tech workers, who just unionized, have all starred in the recent swell of labor coverage. The pandemic launched essential workers out of the media’s shadows, making this largely Black, brown, and female workforce much harder for reporters to ignore. Yet the shift in the media’s coverage of labor has been a dozen years in the making. It started before the pandemic and even predates the current upsurge in union organizing. Why are we seeing this increase in working-class and labor reporting? And how does it connect with larger shifts in how Americans view class itself?

Imperialism And The Weaponization Of Empathy

March 24, 2022 Onyesonwu Chatoyer, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! Class Struggle, Immigrants, Imperialism, Joe Biden

Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of other beings, is present in some form in most living things on Earth. Scientists theorize that empathy developed as an evolutionary strategy to build stronger bonds among animals that depend on cooperation for survival. In one particular kind of animal, humans, empathy is clear evidence that the claim spread by the ruling class, that each of us is fundamentally cruel, self-interested, and greedy is nothing more than an attempt to naturalize the individualism and antisocial behavior that best serves their exploitative interests. In its purest form empathy is a net positive for us on a planet where for the last several hundred years the genocidal system of capitalism-imperialism has normalized massive daily violence happening against a backdrop of apathy and ignorance.

‘Reckoning’ With The Economic Marginalization Of Native Americans

March 11, 2022 Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Counter Punch. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Indigenous Peoples, wealth inequality

Over the last two years, there has been much discussion of a national “reckoning” on race. There can be no complete reckoning without strong analysis and substantive action to address the economic marginalization of Native Americans in 21st century America. Through years of intentional governmental policies that took away their lands and resources, American Indians have been separated from the wealth and assets that were rightfully theirs. Today, we see a consistent lack of information on Native Americans and their socioeconomic issues.

US Sanctions: An Act Of War Against Workers

March 10, 2022 G. Dunkel, Workers World. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Russia, Sanctions, Ukraine, US Imperialism, Worker Rights and Jobs

Mass media in the United States and throughout the countries of Western Europe are exhaustively and intensely depicting the suffering of the Ukrainian people as Ukraine confronts the Russian army. It is the U.S. and its NATO proxy who have now broadened the war being fought in Ukraine. What the media is not covering is the impact of this war on the working and poor people inside Russia. In an alliance with the most economically powerful capitalist governments and their central banks, the U.S. has managed to cut the Russian economy off from many of the world’s financial arteries. According to the conservative weekly The Economist, “No major economy in the modern world has ever been hit so hard by such weapons.”

A Labor Movement To Challenge The Billionaires

March 2, 2022 Jonathan Kissam, UE Union. Strategize! Class Struggle, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Veteran union negotiator and labor lawyer Joe Burns has issued a bracing challenge to the U.S. labor movement in his new book, Class Struggle Unionism, one that should be read by everyone in the labor movement, and everyone who is concerned about the power that the billionaire class exercises over our society. In less than 200 pages, and in clear, accessible language, Burns lays out a strong case that the reason the labor movement in the U.S. has been on the defensive for the past half-century is its abandonment of the type of unionism practiced by UE — what Burns calls “class struggle unionism” and what UE, in our 2020 pamphlet, refers to as “Them and Us unionism.”

The American Political Process Is Disconnected From Economic Reality

February 25, 2022 Richard D. Wolff, Counter Punch. Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, COVID-19, Finance and the Economy

The growing disconnect between the capitalist system and the economic realities plaguing the United States is now nearing completion. On the ground, the accumulated problems of U.S. capitalism undermine its empire and challenge its very future. Meanwhile, the ever-deepening inequalities of wealth and income conjure up images of ancient Egypt’s pharaohs. Three economic crashes opening the new century (2000, 2008, and 2020) have shaken the system; so have the two wars America lost against very poor countries in the Middle East: Afghanistan and Iraq. The worst public health crisis in a century during the COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed how unprepared U.S. capitalism was and is, thereby imposing massive new human and financial costs lasting into the future.

New Data Shows US Government Has Been Bought For $14 Billion

February 21, 2022 Lee Camp, Scheer Post. Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Corporatism, Party Politics

There are a lot of reasons so many people hate the two corporate parties, but one of the biggest ones might be just how thoroughly they are bought off by the “One Percent.” (And no, I don’t mean the percentage of people who like Trident’s new Indian Curry Explosion™ chewing gum.) I’m referring to the One Percent who are disgustingly wealthy — people who own ponies for their children to play with and children for their ponies to play with. Those individuals essentially own all our politicians. (Also for their children to play with. … Which explains why Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand were forced to dress up like Snorks for an entire month. Or maybe they just needed the snorkels to be able to breathe while under an avalanche of bullshit?) But yes, our politicians are more bought-off than ever before.

The Capitalist Imperative Driving Cruel And Bipartisan US Migration Policies

February 18, 2022 Daniel Melo, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Bipartisan, Capitalism, Class Struggle, Immigration

President Biden recently reached an agreement with Mexico to reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a program instituted by the Trump administration. It requires tens of thousands of migrants to pursue their requests for asylum outside of the US, living in horrifying conditions on the Mexican side of the border until it is their turn to attend a hearing. While Biden initially moved to end the program, a Texas judge ordered the administration to continue MPP until it went through the proper administrative process to end it. The administration, having received the appropriate legal coverage, not only reimplemented the program with minimal changes (to the horror of not just advocates but even asylum officers at the border), but broadened its scale--any migrant from a Western Hemisphere nation can be sent back under the program.

Class Struggle And Freedom Beyond Colonial Borders

February 13, 2022 Charisse Burden Stelly, Hood Communist. Organize! Africa, Class Struggle, Colonialism, Human Rights

The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief how truly interconnected our world is, how superficial colonial borders are, and thus how the struggle for freedom must link localized organizing to broader global insurgencies. Of course, this is not new. Though our epoch offers unique challenges, problems, and articulations of the dialectic between repression and resistance, history doesn’t repeat itself—but it rhymes. In a world structured by racial capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism, Blackness has often been the antithesis of freedom. After legal emancipation from racial slavery, freedom for Black folks has generally meant freedom to die and suffer—or simply “slavery by another name.”

CEO-Worker Pay Resource Guide

February 13, 2022 Inequality.org. Organize! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality, Worker Rights and Jobs

Since 2018, U.S. publicly held corporations have had to annually report the ratio between their CEO and median worker compensation. Corporate lobby groups and allied Republicans fought hard to repeal, delay, or water down this disclosure mandate, a measure initially enacted as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. But institutional investors weighed in heavily to defend pay ratio disclosure, as did hundreds of thousands of individuals outraged about the extreme pay gaps at the vast majority of large U.S. corporations. The CEO-worker pay ratios the new disclosures have begun revealing are boosting momentum behind efforts to use tax, contracting, and subsidy policy to narrow our compensation divides.

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