Socialism

Why Are There Suddenly Millions Of Socialists In America?

March 4, 2016 Harold Meyerson, www.theguardian.com Educate! 2016 Elections, Bernie Sanders, Socialism, United States

By Harold Meyerson for The Guardian - In 1906 German sociologist Werner Sombart wrote an essay entitled Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? that sought to explain why the US, alone among industrialized democracies, had not developed a major socialist movement. Today, however, we need to pose a different question: why are there socialists in the United States? In this nation that has long been resistant to socialism’s call, who are all these people who now suddenly deem themselves socialists? Where did they come from? What do they mean by socialism?

The No State Solution In Kurdistan: Libertarian Socialism Institutionalized

March 2, 2016 Alexander Kolokotronis, www.newpol.org Create! Kurdistan, Revolution, Rojava, Socialism

By Alexander Kolokotronis for New Politics - In what many outside of the territory are referring to as the Rojava Revolution, a major shift in political philosophy and political programmatics has taken place in Kurdistan. Yet, this shift is not limited to the region of Rojava, or what many call Syrian or Western Kurdistan – a region where the Democratic Union Party (PYD) has taken an active part in this change. In “Turkish,” or rather Northern Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been the foremost leader. In Eastern Kurdistan (lying within Iranian borders) the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) has taken to the change in ideological orientation as well.

Venezuela Agricultural Communes Oppose Privatization Of Lands

February 9, 2016 Lucas Koerner, www.venezuelanalysis.com Resist! Communes, Food and Agriculture, Land Rights, Privatization, Socialism, Venezuela

By Lucas Koerner for Venezuela Analysis – After passing a motion by majority vote on Tuesday, Venezuela’s National Assembly will launch an inquiry into the expropriations of privately owned land and enterprises spearheaded by the socialist government in past years. The country’s newly elected parliament, dominated by the right-wing opposition, has vowed to reverse the socialist government’s social and economic policies, which included the breakup of large private firms and landholdings deemed unproductive and their transfer to state, worker, or communal control.

The Case For Radical Modernity

February 5, 2016 Jeremy Gilbert, www.redpepper.org.uk Strategize! Left, Socialism, Technology

By Jeremy Gilbert for Red Pepper - If we look back at points in history where the left has achieved real political success, we can see that socialists have always had to identify the problems that capitalism is creating at any given moment, and respond to them by using new technologies, new forms of government and new types of self-organisation in order to achieve their objectives. The period of the socialist left’s greatest success – the mid-20th century – was also when it most wholeheartedly embraced what were then the cutting-edge sciences of manufacturing, communication and management.

Cuba Impression

January 5, 2016 Gene Bruskin, www.stansburyforum.com Educate! Cuba, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Poverty, Socialism, Torture

By Gene Bruskin for Stansbury Forum - As I prepared for my recent November trip to Cuba I thought back to my many memories of my first visit in the spring of 1970. Having left teaching in the South Bronx, discouraged and risking the draft deferment NYC teaching ironically provided, I decided, with my wife at the time, to go on to Cuba on the Second Venceremos Brigade. The Brigade was a left initiative to help break the US imposed blockade on Cuba and 800 of us went from across the country to cut cane with the Cubans and help them succeed in their production goal in the Year of the Ten Million tons.

‘Socialist Imperative’: ‘Must-Read For Revolutionaries’

October 18, 2015 Doug Enaa Greene, www.links.org.au Educate! Capitalism, Socialism

By Doug Enaa Greene for Links - Those who open Michael Lebowitz's new book, The Socialist Imperative, will find something far different and refreshing than the old apologetic Soviet manuals on the smooth workings of a planned economy. What they will discover is a collection of writings inspired by Lebowitz's lifetime of activism and profound solidarity with the oppressed and exploited under capitalism and his revolutionary vision of how to build a socialist alternative. The purpose of Michael Lebowitz's book is explained by his title choice -- The Socialist Imperative. As Lebowitz argues, the pressing need to eliminate capitalism and replace it with a “society of associated free producers oriented to the full development of human potential” (p. 8) is not new, but is needed because of capital's drive to expand without limit threatens the destruction of the natural world. This means that the need to act is immediate. Certainly with the crushing crisis of capitalism and ecological disaster in the not too distant future, the time is coming when to act may be too late.

What It Means To Be A Socialist

September 23, 2015 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Revolution, Socialism

By Chris Hedges in Truth Dig - We live in a revolutionary moment. The disastrous economic and political experiment that attempted to organize human behavior around the dictates of the global marketplace has failed. The promised prosperity that was to have raised the living standards of workers through trickle-down economics has been exposed as a lie. A tiny global oligarchy has amassed obscene wealth, while the engine of unfettered corporate capitalism plunders resources, exploits cheap, unorganized labor and creates pliable, corrupt governments that abandon the common good to serve corporate profit. The relentless drive by the fossil fuel industry for profits is destroying the ecosystem, threatening the viability of the human species. And no mechanisms to institute genuine reform or halt the corporate assault are left within the structures of power, which have surrendered to corporate control. The citizen has become irrelevant. He or she can participate in heavily choreographed elections, but the demands of corporations and banks are paramount.

Political Earthquake Shakes UK: Corbyn Wins Labour Leader

September 13, 2015 Rob Sewell, www.marxist.com Create! Democracy, Great Britain, Jeremy Corbyn, Socialism, United Kingdom (UK)

By Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal Britain for Defending Marxism - This astonishing victory of Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party represents a political earthquake of monumental proportions. It has turned the political map of Britain upside down. Hundreds of thousands of workers and youth, desperate for change, are celebrating this victory all over the country. Michael Meacher has correctly described the Corbyn campaign as “the biggest non-revolutionary upturning of the social order.” Corbyn, the left wing candidate, represents the anti-Establishment majority. This massive Corbyn victory means the party clearly rejects the right wing agenda. People want a fundamental change in society.

The System Must Be Overthrown, And That Requires Revolution

August 13, 2015 William T. Hathaway, www.dandelionsalad.wordpress..com Educate! Capitalism, Socialism

By William T. Hathaway in Dandelion Salad - Gaither Stewart is a man of passions. In The Europe Trilogy he shared with us his passion for international espionage and intrigue. In Voices from Pisalocca he shared his passion for village life in his adoptive country, Italy. In The Fifth Sun he shared his passion for Native-American mythology. Now in Recollection of Things Learned he shares his passion for socialism, both the complexity of its theory and the clash of its praxis. In his new book Stewart shows how capitalism inevitably divides humanity through wars, racism, sexism, and class antagonism. He defines the key aspects of socialism and gives us an historical overview of its development, including critiques of the attempts to achieve it.

Why Are 1% Organizing Against Inequality

August 12, 2015 Matthew Pulver, www.salon.com Educate! Classism, Socialism, wealth inequality

By Matthew Pulver in Salon - I’ve written previously about the growing fear among elites that they’ve pushed economic inequality too far. That fear is proliferating, according to a New York Times Op-Ed this weekend by former marketing conglomerate CEO Peter Georgescu. Joined by his friend Ken Langone, founder of Home Depot, Georgescu warns his fellow 1 percenters that “[w]e are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape.” The column raises the specter of “major social unrest” if inequality is not addressed. Georgescu writes: "I’m scared. The billionaire hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones is scared. My friend Ken Langone, a founder of the Home Depot, is scared. So are many other chief executives. Not of Al Qaeda, or the vicious Islamic State or some other evolving radical group from the Middle East, Africa or Asia. We are afraid where income inequality will lead."

How To Win Sanders’ Supporters To Independent Politics

August 9, 2015 Bryan Koulouris, www.socialistalternative.org Strategize! Elections, Electoral Politics, Independence, Money in Politics, Socialism

By Bryan Koulouris in Socialist Alternative. The Bernie Sanders campaign for President is gaining more traction than anybody expected. This reflects the massive, widespread hatred of Wall Street, the frustration at big business domination of the political system and the openness to socialist ideas in US society. Sanders’ rallies have constantly necessitated bigger venues than organizers planned. Thousands are being turned away at the doors from New Hampshire and Iowa to Colorado and Minnesota. Polls show Sanders’ support skyrocketing, putting him within ten percentage points of Hillary Clinton in state after state. Socialist Alternative stands for building a new, mass working people’s party. We disagree with Sanders’s approach of running in the Democratic primary.

Sky High Activism, Wedding Pics, Rainbows & Flags

July 5, 2015 Eleanor Goldfield, www.occupy.com Resistance Report China, Climate Change, LGBTQ, Pope Francis, Racism, Socialism, South Carolina, Sweden

By Eleanor Goldfield for Occupy.com. Congrats to all the couples who can now tie the knot! But now that you’ve ridden the rainbow to marital bliss, allow me to bring you back down to everything else we gotta fix in this country. A Chinese company stunningly and scarily showcases sky-high activism while a Chinese couple offers up some dystopian and creative wedding pic ideas. Bree Newsome shows the South Carolina legislature it’s actually not that hard to take down the Confederate flag. July 4th is this weekend so go enjoy a celebratory march with some rebels. Let’s get serious and blunt about the global corporate takeover. And finally, Naomi Klein and Pope Francis join forces to battle climate change.

Socialists And The U.S. Political System

July 4, 2015 Joseph Schwartz, www.dsausa.org Educate! History, Politics, Socialism

By Joseph Schwartz in Democratic Socialists of America - Yet the barriers to social change posed by our constitutional structure should not overwhelm us with pessimism. The history of the United States is punctuated by radical reform periods: Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the civil rights era. Militant social movements can make major gains when ruling elites prove incapable of solving major social crises. During these periods a moderate reform party temporarily controls all three branches of government, in part because it incorporates into its electoral coalition some of the protesting constituencies and part of their political agenda. Periods of conservative reaction often follow these periods of radical reform, with the left having to play defense.

Socialism Means Abolishing Distinction Of Bosses & Employees

June 30, 2015 Richard D. Wolff, www.truth-out.org Educate! Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, Socialism

By Richard D. Wolff in Truthout - Actual large-scale socialism would thus predominantly entail worker cooperative enterprises such as these. Like the capitalist enterprises that once emerged from European feudalism, these new cooperative enterprises would seek to solve problems such as how to organize their interdependencies with one another and with the public, how to relate to private and public property, and how to manage transitions from smaller- to larger-scale enterprises. Different forms of societal socialisms will emerge: some with markets, private property and large corporations, and others with centralized and/or decentralized planning systems, socialized property, constraints on enterprise size etc. Debates, experiments and choices among them will likely characterize the multiple forms that socialism will take.

Karl Marx Was Right

June 2, 2015 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Capitalism, Marxism, Socialism

By Chris Hedges in Truthdig - Karl Marx exposed the peculiar dynamics of capitalism, or what he called “the bourgeois mode of production.” He foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites, since “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production” and “the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships … the relationships which make one class the ruling one.” He saw that there would come a day when capitalism would exhaust its potential and collapse.

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