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Socialism

The Case For Radical Modernity

February 5, 2016 Jeremy Gilbert, www.redpepper.org.uk , ,
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 , , , , ,
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 ,
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 ,
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 , , , ,
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 ,
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 , ,
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 , , , ,
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 , , , , , , ,
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 , ,
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 , ,
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 , ,
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.

Bernie Sanders Is No Eugene Debs

May 27, 2015 Howie Hawkins, www.socialistworker.org , ,
UNFORTUNATELY, TOO many self-professed socialists in the U.S. have abandoned the socialist principle of independent political action. They argue instead that whether or not to support a Democrat or an independent candidate is a question of tactics, not principle. That was not the case when the United States had a viable Socialist Party. The political independence of the Socialist Party is a major reason why it was viable, why it had power, why it elected many of its candidates, why it was central to the political dialogue of the country. After the demoralizing and self-defeating experience of fusion (cross-endorsing the more progressive Democratic and Republican candidates) that undermined and ultimately destroyed the Greenback Labor and People's Parties of the recently past Populist era, the Socialist Party of America put into its constitution a ban against endorsing the candidates of the capitalist parties.

Venezuela On April 11: 2002 Coup To 2015 Economic War

April 13, 2015 teleSur, www.telesurtv.net , ,
The 2002 coup was symptomatic of the impatience of the opposition to gain power democratically, their calculation that it was highly unlikely that they would be able to win power at the ballot box, as well as a reactionary response to the series of enabling laws which Chavez passed between 1999-2001. This series of laws really rocked the stronghold that the country’s elite had historically exercised over the Venezuelan economy and its political system. The 2001 reform of the Hydrocarbons Law in particular paved the way for the government to retake control over state oil company, PDVSA, which had basically just become a managerial entity tasked with administering contracts to foreign companies. These laws sent a message to opposition forces that the revolution looked set to be more than just a cosmetic overhaul of politics as is, as well as message to international economic organizations such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank that Venezuela intended to follow a sovereign and independent path in terms of its economic system.

The Most Dangerous Woman In America

March 17, 2015 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com , , , ,
Kshama Sawant, the socialist on the City Council, is up for re-election this year. Since joining the council in January of 2014 she has helped push through a gradual raising of the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Seattle. She has expanded funding for social services and blocked, along with housing advocates, an attempt by the Seattle Housing Authority to allow a rent increase of up to 400 percent. She has successfully lobbied for city money to support tent encampments and is fighting for an excise tax on millionaires. And for this she has become the bête noire of the Establishment, especially the Democratic Party. The corporate powers, from Seattle’s mayor to the Chamber of Commerce and the area’s Democratic Party, are determined she be defeated, and these local corporate elites have the national elites behind them.
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