Revisionism

The Public Ownership Solution

December 14, 2018 Thomas M. Hanna, Jacobinmag.com Create! Public ownership, Revisionism

Socialism in the United States is making a comeback. Socialists are winning elections at the local, state, and federal levels; the membership of Democratic Socialists of America stands at a record fifty-five thousand; and polling consistently finds that younger Americans have relatively positive opinions of the concept. While the term “socialism” means different things to different people, for the vast majority in the burgeoning movement it suggests the promise of a very different kind of system — one that is far more equitable, democratic, and ecologically sustainable than both capitalism and past experimentation with its alternatives.

William Blum, Renowned U.S. Foreign Policy Critic, Dead At 85

December 11, 2018 Chris Agee and Louis Wolf, Informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Foreign Policy, Journalism, Revisionism

December 10, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - William Blum died in Virginia on December 9, 2018. He was surrounded by friends and family after falling in his Washington D.C. apartment and sustaining serious wounds 65 days ago. He was 85 years old. Bill was born March 6, 1933 at Beth Moses Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y. and became an American author, historian, and critic of United States foreign policy. He worked in a computer-related position at the United States Department of State in the mid-1960s. Initially an anti-communist with dreams of becoming a foreign service officer, he became disillusioned by the Vietnam War.

The Death Of Small Businesses In Big Cities

November 29, 2018 By Rebecca Jennings, Vox.com Create! Capitalism, Revisionism, Small Business

If you want to understand “retail death” — and I’m using quotes here because the concept of buying and selling things is very much alive — all you have to do is look at one very specific street. In the ’90s, the stretch of Bleecker Street that snakes north through New York City’s Greenwich Village was home to dozens of independently owned bookshops, sex shops, antique stores, and framing galleries. But the death knell rang when the luxury fashion house Marc Jacobs decided to settle there in 2001, the year after the nearby Magnolia Bakery was featured in an episode of Sex and the City. Within the next 10 years, 44 of those original neighborhood businesses would close to make space for the chains and luxury boutiques that followed.

Socialism Beyond Borders

November 27, 2018 By Hilary Wainwright, Redpepper.org.uk Strategize! Border, Revisionism, Socialism

In an age of transnational corporations and global finance-driven speculation, socialist strategy is doomed if it focuses exclusively, or even primarily, on any individual nation state. Yet, at the same time, popular struggles for control over nation states are an essential part of a necessarily international strategy. This is my starting point in responding to Costas Lapavitsas (page 38) and his call for socialism to ‘start at home’. We must learn from the recent successes of cross-border movements and their distinctive capacity to counter the power of the huge corporate lobbies, most recently in the defeat of the TTIP trade deal between the EU and the US.

Seizing The Initiative

November 20, 2018 Lester Spence, Dissentmagazine.org Strategize! Electoral Politics, Revisionism, San Francisco

When we look back at the 2018 midterms, we will likely remember the historic victories of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and many others elected as part of the blue wave that helped retake the House of Representatives. And we should. Their elections signal resistance to Trumpism that we, the left, can build on. But while we can and should focus on who we elect—particularly candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, who were put in office on the backs of mass movements—focusing solely on elected representatives puts far too much responsibility and stakes too much hope on them as individuals. Electing the right people is a start, but it is not enough. We should instead spend far more time on the ballot initiatives. Here’s why.

Lessons On Building Democracy After Nonviolent Revolutions

November 15, 2018 Jonathan Pinckney, Wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! Democracy, Nonviolence, Revisionism

In 2011, Egypt began a political transition following a nonviolent revolution. There was tremendous optimism both from within the country and abroad that the transition was likely to lead to a democratic outcome. In 2014, Burkina Faso also began a political transition after a nonviolent revolution overthrew longtime authoritarian President Blaise Compaoré. While many admired the revolution, its unfavorable conditions — low levels of economic development and a region that was less conducive to democracy — made the prospects for democratic advancement less optimistic. Yet, today, Egypt is once again under autocratic rule, following a 2013 coup by General Abdel-Fatah al-Sissi.

Midterm Takeaway: We Need A Lot More Democracy

November 10, 2018 By Peter Certo, Otherwords.org Strategize! Electoral Politics, Revisionism

I can’t be the only one who spent the night of the midterms tossing and turning. Though I managed to shut off the coverage and try to sleep, spasms of anxiety woke me repeatedly throughout the dreary hours. Ultimately, Republicans picked off several red-state Senate seats while Democrats won back the House and at least seven governorships. A Democratic House will serve as a badly needed check after two years of aggressive Republican monopoly, but I can’t help feeling uneasy. For one thing, I can’t shake the last days of the campaign. For a while, Republicans “merely” lied about their policy agenda. Rather than campaigning on the $2 trillion tax cut for rich people they actually passed, they promised a middle class tax cut they never even had a bill for.

Labour Has A Plan

November 9, 2018 Peter Gowan, Jacobinmag.com Strategize! Electoral Politics, Jeremy Corbyn, New Economy, Revisionism

When Mio Tastas Viktorsson and I argued that the Left should revisit the Meidner Plan last year, we could have hardly expected that a strikingly similar policy would be adopted by British shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the Labour Party at this year’s conference. The Inclusive Ownership Funds (IOF) proposal — drawing its name and much of its inspiration from a recent report by researchers Matthew Lawrence, Andrew Pendleton, and Sara Mahmoud of the New Economics Foundation — calls for transferring 10 percent of the equity in all British firms with over 250 employees into worker-owned and -controlled funds over the next ten years. The funds would pay out annual dividends up to £500...

Scum Vs. Scum

November 6, 2018 By Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Corruption, Electoral Politics, Money in Politics, Revisionism

There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political system than the Senate race in New Jersey. Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The senator had flown to the Dominican Republic with Melgen on the physician’s private jet and stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen, including helping some of the Dominican women acquire visas to the United States.

Federal Judge Won’t Block Voter ID Law That Strips Native Americans Of Their Voting Rights

November 3, 2018 Alexandra Jacobo, Nationofchange.org Educate! Courts, Elections, Electoral Politics, Indigenous Peoples, North Dakota, Revisionism, Voting

A federal judge in North Dakota has denied an emergency motion that sought to seek relief for Native Americans against a state voter ID law that will make it so that “hundreds, perhaps thousands of Native Americans” will not be able to vote in next week’s elections. Although U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland expressed that there is a “great cause for concern” in regards to the law, he ruled against the motion because it would cause more confusion and chaos so close to the election. “The federal courts are unanimous in their judgment that it is highly important to preserve the status quo when elections are fast approaching,” Judge Hovland wrote.

The Woman Aiming To Get 50 Million Americans Into The Worker-Owner Economy

November 3, 2018 By Fran Korten, Yesmagazine.org Create! New Economy, Ownership, Revisionism, Small Business, United States

For decades Marjorie Kelly has looked for ways that businesses can better contribute to the good of society. In 1987, after getting a master’s degree in journalism, she founded Business Ethics magazine to showcase socially responsible corporations. But after 20 years as president and publisher, she sold the magazine. She had come to an epiphany: Encouraging individual corporations to behave better was an insufficient route to improving society. Significant change would require a shift in the ownership structure of business. Kelly’s 2012 book, Owning Our Future, lays out ways to expand democratized ownership models, including employee ownership. Research shows that when employees own the company, they make higher wages.

Brazil: The Indispensable Need For Resistance

October 30, 2018 Carlos Aznárez, Resumen-english.org Resist! Brazil, Electoral Politics, Fascism, Revisionism, Right-Wing

The die is cast. There are no longer any polls that can be used to draw un provable results. The truth is that a fascist has come to the presidency of Brazil by a vote of millions. The fact is serious from any point of view, and not only for Brazilians, but this vote will undoubtedly have an unpredictable impact on the rest of the continent and beyond. The Nazi Bolsonaro won by nearly a ten point advantage thanks to many factors that will have to be analyzed starting from this very moment. One of them, the fundamental one, is this insistence from many popular sectors of not taking into account that in the framework of these bourgeois democracies that they are absolutely controlled by the enemies of the peoples.

Election Rigging And The Decline Of American Democracy

October 27, 2018 Dan Sisken, Occupy.com Educate! Democracy, Electoral Politics, Revisionism, Voting

In the mid 1990s, scholars of politics in the Arab world published a book titled “Democracy without Democrats?” It appeared in the midst of a period of liberalization in some Arab countries that included competitive elections for parliaments and a loosening of state control over the media. The premise was that if democratic institutions such as elections, political parties and a partially free press could be established, they might entrench a more open and liberal system of government that could evolve into a more fully democratic regime. Many of the contributors to the volume were skeptical and as matters developed in places like Jordan, Egypt and Algeria, the skeptics were proven right...

Letting The Killer Kill & Sidestepping Native Voter Suppression

October 25, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com Resistance Report Electoral Politics, Indigenous Peoples, Revisionism

The next recession and/or crash is nigh. And one of the architects of the last crash wants you to pencil in 2020. We dive into some new old news on how we got here and what we need to make it through. Next, the trial of the century was supposed to start on Monday October 29th but we love black gold. And finally, Native Activist Allison Renville joins us to talk about the authoritarian move to disenfranchise indigenous voters in North Dakota.

After Rahm’s Destruction, Can Chicago Creative A Cooperative Economy?

October 15, 2018 Matt Stannard, Occupy.com Create! Chicago, Cooperatives, Finance and the Economy, Politics, Revisionism

When Rahm Emanuel announced last month that he would not seek a third term as mayor of Chicago, he broke no hearts among people opposed to neoliberal privatization and the power of finance capital. In Chicago under Emanuel, as the editors of the 2016 anthology Neoliberal Chicago write, “neoliberalism led officials to privatize everything from parking meters to schools, gut regulations and social services, and promote gentrification wherever possible.” To take just one lurid example, Emanuel’s Chicago “privatized janitorial services for our schools,” organizer Amara Enyia told me, only to end up with rodent-infested schools, literally “rats and mice running around in classrooms. Those schools had to be closed and cleaned. This is what happens when you privatize services.”

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