Communism

Mapping American Social Movements Through 20th Century

May 9, 2016 James Gregory, www.fdepts.washington.edu Educate! Communism, History, Social Movements, Socialism, United States

By James Gregory forUniversity of Washington - This collaborative project features maps and other visualizations showing the chronological geography of dozens of social movements that have influenced American life and politics during the 20th century, including radical movements, labor movements, women's movements, many different civil rights movements, environmentalist movements, and more. Until now historians and social scientists have mostly studied social movements in isolation and often with little attention to geography.

Roots And Contours Of Worker Rebellion In A Changing China

April 9, 2016 Herman Rosenfeld, www.socialistproject.ca Resist! China, Communism, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Herman Rosenfeld for The Socialist Project - It is impossible to ignore the large and growing wave of worker strikes and protests now rocking China. Just last year there were over 2700 actions, double the numbers of 2014 and more than 500 during this past January alone. They are in response to the Chinese government's restructuring program of wage cuts, worker layoffs, and workplace closures during an economic slowdown and plans to move away from the export-oriented strategy followed in this stage of the reform period.

Former Czech Dissident: Freer Under Communism Than Capitalism

October 26, 2014 Andre Vltchek, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Capitalism, Communism, Czechoslovakia, Freedom

Before the so-called ‘Velvet Revolution’, people complained about not having access to certain types of information, or certain cultural products, including certain films. They were not allowed to travel abroad, whenever they wanted, etcetera. But they didn’t realize that their dignity of life was much, much better then, than it is nowadays. They didn’t realize that when capitalism enters, they would start to feel anxieties, very deep existential anxieties… They would start being terrified that they would lose jobs. They are now forced to trade their human dignity for keeping their jobs. Now they have to kiss the backsides of their bosses much more than they would have had to, under Communism. It is all very interesting, as people used to have certain advantages, which were of course created, built and established by socialist movements throughout history. And they sort of forgot, having those values and advantages, that…They did take things for granted. They did not even realize that they had some great things, that they had great lives. Suddenly, when they began losing them, they realized that something was going terribly wrong. Some people are now very disappointed. It is very interesting: this shift from a socialist system to a capitalist one. Under socialism, Czechoslovakia produced everything, literally from needles to locomotives. Now everything has changed! All the national industries have gone. Sold or stolen by those…

The Economic Choice Beyond Capitalism And Communism

September 3, 2014 Grassroots Economic Organizing, www.geo.coop Create! Capitalism, Communism, Finance and the Economy

Below is an interview with Robin Hahnel about the Participatory Economics movement or "Parecon." Parecon is a theoretical economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for the allocation goods, services, resources and the guidance of production. In this interview, author and political economist Hahnel talks about his book Of the People, By the People: The Case for a Participatory Economy and describes the Parecon vision of an alternative economic system that avoids the excesses and failures of both capitalism and communism. While Parecon remains more a theoretical proposition than an actual practice, it provides one more vision, one more possible response, to those who claim that "there is no alternative" to our present ways of organizing ourselves and our economy. The interview was conducted by David Delk of the Alliance for Democracy.

How Do We Get Past Capitalism?

February 6, 2014 Robert Jensen, www.resilience.org Educate! Capitalism, Communism, Finance and Economy, Socialism

The main argument of the book is that capitalism is constituted by a varied of different practices, and so challenging capitalism needs to be about a variety of struggles. I draw on the important work of J.K. Gibson-Graham, who argues that we should model anti-capitalist struggle on feminist struggles. Second-wave feminists didn’t look for an overthrow of patriarchy. Instead, they analyzed what they were up against and fought it in all of its varied manifestations. One of the problems with traditional anti-capitalist thought is that it defines capitalism as a totality, which encourages us to imagine another totality, socialism, which we can try to replace it with. This totalizing perspective has colonized the imagination of anti-capitalism and left us waiting for a revolution we can never have. In the book I argue that we see ourselves as inhabiting a complex social world that has some capitalist things going on in it as well as some socialist ones, some communist ones, and many where economics are not separated out of the broader fabric of life (such as sharing and gift giving, and mutual support). The way we get past capitalism is by building on the healthy non-capitalist aspects of our world while we also do pitched battle with the capitalist ones that we have a fair chance of winning against. In that way we build a better world and shrink the destructive capitalist practices that are part of the social fabric.

This Communist Utopia Successfully Eliminated Capitalism

December 21, 2013 Dan Hancox, www.versobooks.com Educate! Communism, Finance and the Economy

The first part of Marinaleda’s miracle is that when their struggle to create utopia began, in the late 1970s, it was from a position of abject poverty. The village was suffering over 60 percent unemployment; it was a farming community with no land, its people frequently forced to go without food for days at a time, in a period of Spanish history mired in uncertainty after the death of the fascist dictator General Franco. The second part of Marinaleda’s miracle is that over three extraordinary decades, they won. Some distance along that remarkable journey of struggle and sacrifice, in 1985, Sánchez Gordillo told the newspaper El País: "We have learned that it is not enough to define utopia, nor is it enough to fight against the reactionary forces. One must build it here and now, brick by brick, patiently but steadily, until we can make the old dreams a reality: that there will be bread for all, freedom among citizens, and culture; and to be able to read with respect the word ‘peace’. We sincerely believe that there is no future that is not built in the present." It may be a household name in Spain today, but it was not until the late twentieth century that Marinaleda gained any notoriety. The village ’s first victories came during a different systemic crisis, one which exists in the living memory of many: the aftermath of a fascist dictatorship.

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