Class Struggle

Bailout Of Silicon Valley And Banks Is $300 Billion Gift To Rich Oligarchs

March 20, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Banking Crisis, Capitalism, Class Struggle, Silicon Valley Bank

The US government printed $300 billion in a week to save collapsing banks and bail out Silicon Valley oligarchs and venture capital firms, paying them all of their uninsured deposits. Meanwhile, some of the very same Silicon Valley tycoons who benefited from this bailout have tried to cynically rebrand themselves as subversive populists, claiming they are fighting against the big Wall Street banks with which they have closely collaborated. Three banks collapsed in the United States in the span of one week in March 2023: Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank.

The United States Is Literally Sucking The Blood Of The Poor

March 19, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Capitalism, Class Struggle, Human Rights, Poverty

You already know things are not good for a lot of people in the United States. As of two months ago, 64% of the country said they’re living paycheck to paycheck. Even if we exclude the million or so homeless across the U.S., recent data shows that approximately 5.3 million households are behind on their home mortgage payments. Another report from 2018 showed that around 130 million people in the U.S. admitted an inability to pay for basic needs like food, health care, housing, or utilities. And those numbers are before the pandemic began, which is like saying it felt hot in here before a fire burned down the building.

What Will It Take To End The Billionaire Bailout Society?

March 18, 2023 Les Leopold, Common Dreams. Educate! Banking Crisis, Capitalism, Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy

In case we need any more proof, the bailout of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is yet another overt sign that we are operating within a new version of capitalism. The wealthiest among us have little fear of losing money from their most important financial investments. They know they will be bailed out, and the rest of us will pick up the tab. The crisis at SVB has made a mockery of bank deposit insurance and private banking. In the US, bank deposits are insured up to $250,000. If the bank fails, those with accounts below that amount are fully protected. But deposits over that amount are not. The reason is straightforward.

French Socialists On The Potential And Strategy Of Working-Class Struggle

March 14, 2023 Révolution Permanente, Left Voice. Strategize! Class Struggle, France, Macron, Socialism

Romaric Godin is a journalist in the economics department of Mediapart (an independent French investigative newspaper) and author of La Guerre sociale en France — or The Social War in France — an analysis of the developments of French neoliberalism after the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017. Juan Chingo other is an editorialist and board member at Révolution Permanente, as well as the author of Gilets jaunes, le soulèvement — or Yellow Vests, The Uprising — an examination of the Yellow Vests movement and the contradictions of Macron’s reactionary presidency.Romaric Godin is a journalist in the economics department of Mediapart (an independent French investigative newspaper) and author of La Guerre sociale en France — or The Social War in France — an analysis of the developments of French neoliberalism after the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017. Juan Chingo other is an editorialist and board member at Révolution Permanente, as well as the author of Gilets jaunes, le soulèvement — or Yellow Vests, The Uprising — an examination of the Yellow Vests movement and the contradictions of Macron’s reactionary presidency.

Empty Tables

March 13, 2023 Beverly Gologorsky, Tom Dispatch. Educate! Class Struggle, Food and Agriculture, Food Insecurity, health, SNAP Program

My long-dead father used to say, “Every human being deserves to taste a piece of cake.” Though at the time his words meant little to me, as I grew older I realized both what they meant, symbolically speaking, and the grim reality they disguised so charmingly. That saying of his arose from a basic reality of our lives then — the eternal scarcity of food in our household, just as in so many other homes in New York City’s South Bronx where I grew up. This was during the 1940s and 1950s, but hunger still haunts millions of American households more than three-quarters of a century later.

Five Principles For Making State And Local Reparations Plans Reparative

February 20, 2023 Kyle K. Moore, Economic Policy Institute. Create! Black America, Class Struggle, Reparations, Systemic Racism

We are still living in the aftermath of 2020’s overlapping crises of racial injustice, our nation’s polycrisis. Between the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ensuing economic recession, and the public police murder of George Floyd, we saw a harsh truth about the structure of American political economy: White supremacy has shaped our institutions such that their outcome is consistent Black precarity and premature death. This confluence of tragedies brought awareness of the Black American condition to a new generation. It also reinvigorated interest among academics and policymakers to finally do something about the problem of racial disparities (though activists and community organizers largely never lost interest in this).

The Dawn Of Austerity

February 19, 2023 Nick Serpe, Dissent Magazine. Educate! Austerity, Capitalism, Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Worker Rights and Jobs

In The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism, Clara E. Mattei brings us back to the dawn of modern austerity politics, just after the First World War. In both liberal Great Britain and fascist Italy, she argues, austerity imposed steep costs in the short term but in the long term proved beneficial to capital. By forcing the working class to rely on the private labor market for survival, austerity ensured the survival of the wage relationship at a moment of anti-capitalist upheaval. In our current moment, as policymakers are once again entertaining monetary tightening as a means to impose necessary hardship and discipline on working people, The Capital Order is a potent reminder of the cruel rationality of austerity: maintaining stable class relations is worth the price of the economic pain austerity causes.

Formerly Incarcerated People Seek ‘Protected Class’ Status

February 18, 2023 Ella Fassler, Truthout. Create! Class Struggle, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Formerly Incarcerated, Georgia

Atlanta, Georgia - Bridgette Simpson said she was a bright-eyed and bushy tailed 23-year-old college graduate when she suddenly found herself living a nightmare. A judge had just ruled on her traffic ticket in New Jersey, when she was suddenly surrounded by a sea of cops. Her ex-fiancé had used her car for robberies in Georgia, and she was being arrested and extradited for accessory to armed robbery. “I thought my life was going to be one way and it did not turn out that way,” Simpson told Truthout. “My district attorney, Paul Howard, knew I didn’t commit the crimes. He didn’t care. They were very adamant about getting me locked up.”

Employers Steal Up To $50 Billion From Workers Every Year

February 15, 2023 Mindy Isser, In These Times. Resist! Class Struggle, Immigration, Wage Theft, Worker Rights and Jobs

In recent years, mainstream media has been dominated by stories of increased crime, but rarely do outlets cover one of the most common and insidious offenses in our society: wage theft. Employers steal billions of dollars from workers every year by paying less than minimum wage, making employees work off the clock, not paying earned overtime, misclassifying workers as independent contractors and more.

Biden’s Populist Speech Can’t Cover Up Capitalist Crisis

February 9, 2023 Tatiana Cozzarelli and Madeleine Freeman, Left Voice. Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Joe Biden, State Of The Union

President Biden gave his second State of the Union address on Tuesday, marking the halfway point of his first presidential term. The speech was characterized by enthusiasm for the economy, populist rhetoric, and bipartisanship. But Biden’s sunny characterization of his administration’s achievements and plans painted a picture of the United States that doesn’t reflect the reality of hundreds of millions of working and poor people. It didn’t reflect the deep structural crisis his administration is trying desperately to stabilize — a crisis whose symptoms include a shaky economy, increased geopolitical tensions, and a radical Far Right that is throwing its weight around in a polarized country where many feel increasingly unrepresented. Biden tried to paint a picture of a United States that has come back stronger after the pandemic, but despite his populist rhetoric and laundry list of policies, none of these measures can address the real needs of the vast majority of the working class and poor who have been exploited and oppressed for much longer than the last two years.

Woke Imperialism

February 6, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Black America, Class Struggle, Imperialism, Liberal class, Media

The brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by five Black Memphis police officers should be enough to implode the fantasy that identity politics and diversity will solve the social, economic and political decay that besets the United States. Not only are the former officers Black, but the city’s police department is headed by Cerelyn Davis**,** a Black woman. None of this helped Nichols, another victim of a modern-day police lynching. The militarists, corporatists, oligarchs, politicians, academics and media conglomerates champion identity politics and diversity because it does nothing to address the systemic injustices or the scourge of permanent war that plague the U.S. It is an advertising gimmick, a brand, used to mask mounting social inequality and imperial folly. It busies liberals and the educated with a boutique activism, which is not only ineffectual but exacerbates the divide between the privileged and a working class in deep economic distress.

The State Murder Of Tortuguita And Tyre Nichols Are Inextricably Linked

February 6, 2023 Black Alliance for Peace. Educate! Atlanta, Capitalism, Class Struggle, Fascism, Georgia, Memphis, Police, police brutality, Tennessee, Tortuguita, Tyre Nichols

The cold-blooded assassination of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, also known as Tortuguita, Spanish for “Little Turtle,” is a reminder that fascism in the United States cannot be reduced to the political intentions of avowed white nationalists. African/Black and Indigenous people residing in the settler-colonial project known as the United States continue to be subjected to a cycle of state-sanctioned violence and political repression with bipartisan consensus. People of the global majority and their allies must not allow these latest episodes of injustice to go unanswered. The Atlanta City-Wide Alliance of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP-Atlanta) has been working with a coalition of Indigenous people, African/Black people, other people of color, and Euro-Americans to prevent the construction of “Cop City,” as BAP-Atlanta expressed in a recent statement. The statement highlighted the obvious nexus between the proposed $90 million police-training facility site, where Tortuguita was killed on January 18, and the white supremacy-fueled genocide, militarism, and oppression the U.S. empire exercises both outside and within.

Santiago Declaration Envisions End Of Neoliberalism Death Spiral

February 1, 2023 Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams. Create! Class Struggle, Global Economy, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

An international coalition made up of more than 200 trade unions and progressive advocacy groups on Thursday published the Santiago Declaration, a manifesto for "a complete overhaul of our global economic system." The undeniably anti-neoliberal document proclaiming that "our future is public" is the product of a meeting held in Chile—the "laboratory of neoliberalism" where Milton Friedman and his University of Chicago acolytes' upwardly redistributive economic model was first imposed at gunpoint by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military junta. From November 29 to December 2, more than 1,000 organizers from over 100 countries gathered in Santiago and virtually to germinate a left-wing movement against "the dominant paradigm of growth, privatization, and commodification." "We are at a critical juncture," the manifesto begins.

When The People Have Nothing More To Eat, They Will Eat The Rich

January 20, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Billionaires, Brazil, Class Struggle, Fascists

On 8 January, large crowds of people dressed in colours of the Brazilian flag descended on the country’s capital, Brasília. They invaded federal buildings, including the Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, and vandalised public property. The attack, carried out by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, came as no surprise, since the rioters had been planning ‘weekend demonstrations’ on social media for days. When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) was formally sworn in as Brazil’s new president one week prior, on 1 January, there was no such melee; it appears that the vandals were waiting until the city was quiet and Lula was out of town. For all its bluster, the attack was an act of extreme cowardice. Meanwhile, the defeated Bolsonaro was nowhere near Brasília. He fled Brazil prior to the inauguration – presumably to escape prosecution – and sought haven in Orlando, Florida (in the United States).

The Forgotten Socialist History Of Martin Luther King Jr.

January 16, 2023 Matthew Miles Goodrich, In These Times. Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Martin Luther King Jr, Socialism

In 1952 a 23-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a love letter to Coretta Scott. Along with coos of affection and apologies for his hasty handwriting, he described his feelings not just toward his future wife, but also toward America’s economic system. “I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic,” he admitted to his then-girlfriend, concluding that “capitalism has outlived its usefulness.” King composed these words as a grad student on the tail end of his first year at the Boston University School of Theology. And far from representing just the utopianism of youth, the views expressed in the letter would go on to inform King’s economic vision throughout his life. As Americans honor King on his birthday, it is important to remember that the civil rights icon was also a democratic socialist, committed to building a broad movement to overcome the failings of capitalism and achieve both racial and economic equality for all people.

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