Working Class

General Strike Campaign Growing In The United States; Begins On May Day

April 20, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast COVID-19, General Strike, Recession, Working Class

Over the last two years, there have been record numbers of worker strikes in the United States not seen since the depression. Since the recession and COVID-19 pandemic started this winter, there have been many wildcat strikes in response to workers having their pay cut and being required to work in hazardous conditions even though they are deemed essential. Now, as the government demonstrates its unwillingness to provide basic protection for the population even as it injects billions of dollars to big industries and banks, support for a general strike is here. We speak with Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson about the plans being made for the first general strike on May Day, what that will look like and how the campaign will be sustained over time.

Coronavirus And The Crisis This Time

April 20, 2020 Sam Gindin, The Bullet. Strategize! COVID-19, Recession, Socialism, Working Class

Crises – not regular downturns but major crises – are characterized by the uncertainty they bring. They interrupt the normal and require yet-to-be discovered abnormal responses in order for us to move on. In the midst of these periodic calamities, we don’t know how or even whether we will stumble out of them nor what to expect if they do end. Crises are, consequently, moments of turmoil with openings for new political developments, good and bad. Because each such crisis modifies the trajectory of history, the subsequent crisis occurs in a changed context and so has its own distinct features. The crisis of the 70s, for example, involved a militant working class, a challenge to the American dollar, and a qualitative acceleration in the role of finance and of globalization.

Essential Workers Of The World Unite!

April 19, 2020 By Santiago Leyva del Río and Kaveri Medappa, ROAR Magazine. Organize! Essential worker, International Solidarity, Strike, Working Class

Ironically, the global pandemic which threatens our lives has put a spotlight on the infrastructures that sustain them. The workers who have always been saving lives, caring for the ill, cleaning and sorting waste, producing goods and providing services essential for the uninterrupted running of lives have been made “heroes.” The same capitalist actors who considered these workers easily replaceable and often dismissed their work as “unskilled” are now cynically hailing them as “warriors.” The classification of certain workers as “essential” has created conditions, which allow for disparate groups of workers to think about themselves as part of a collective. The nature of this crisis has made the infrastructural labor that sustains everyday life evident. On the one hand, this conjuncture has revealed, and will exacerbate the shared vulnerabilities of “essential workers.”

Pandemic, The Left And Workers’ Power

April 18, 2020 Juan Cruz Ferre, Left Voice. Strategize! COVID-19, Electoral Politics, Socialism, Working Class

There are over 140,000 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., but the actual number of infected individuals is probably already in the millions. We don’t know the real incidence of infections because the Trump administration has intentionally restricted the availability of tests in order to keep numbers artificially low. For this reason, we missed a golden opportunity to detect cases early, trace their contacts and isolate before there was community circulation of the virus. Now it’s too late. ICUs are overflowing in New York City, and we can expect similar situations in other cities as they reach their peak of infected individuals. We are on track to finding ourselves in a scenario like the one in Italy or in Spain, but with a population that’s five times larger and without universal health care. In New York State alone, there were 279 deaths in the 24 hours of Monday, March 30.

Bailout The Pension System

April 14, 2020 Ed Ott, Portside. Organize! Congress, Pensions, Working Class

It is not a secret that the United States has an inadequate and underfunded pension retirement system. Its about to get much worse! The private and public sectors’ pension plans are suffering terrible losses as a result of layoffs and investment losses. We are weeks away from a new assault on what’s left of millions of pensions across the country. There are two kinds of pension plans: (1) a defined benefit plan is when workers retire and get a set amount of money each month (such as 80 percent of their highest wage). This was the gold standard many unions won for their members in the post-WWII years. It required employers to set aside enough money to ensure workers would have adequate income when they retired. (2) Starting in the 1980s employers began to reject defined benefit plans as too expensive and moved to defined contribution plans – so-called “modern pensions.”

Class Struggle Is Global

April 6, 2020 Harry Targ, Heartland Radical. Educate! Global Finance, US Imperialism, Venezuela, Working Class

Today, the United States is seeking to crush the Venezuelan experiment and to destroy all vestiges of the Bolivarian Revolution in the Hemisphere. The project includes securing complete control of Venezuela’s oil resources. But, in addition, the United States is committed to turning back history; decades of resistance from the Global South. Following the inspiration of the Cuban Revolution, the Bolivarian Revolution has constituted the most sustained threat to US global hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, and hence the international system. History has shown that John Bolton’s “troika of tyranny” is just the latest conceptualization coming from the Global North; a conceptualization that Professor Huntington warned of in 1976, as the “crisis of democracy;” that is, there was too much of it.

We Won’t Pay For This Crisis: An Emergency Program To Protect Working People

March 19, 2020 Staff, Leftvoice.org Create! Coronavirus COVID-19, Crisis, Epidemic, Working Class

The spread of the COVID-19 virus has caused not only a world health crisis, but may also cause a deep economic depression. The fabric of society is becoming strained to the breaking point, and social, economic, and political catastrophes are already erupting in a variety of forms. We live in a society in which our very existence is constantly dominated and constrained by the dual imperatives of profit and competition.

Who’s At Fault For Cuba’s Economic Problems?

February 14, 2020 Reese Erlich, Progressive.org Educate! Harm, Havana, U.S. Embargo, Working Class

HAVANA—Chef Alexis Alvarez was in panic mode. He was preparing a gourmet meal for visitors from the United States when the electricity went out. He mostly cooks with natural gas and charcoal, but those won’t power his blender full of organic kale.

Black Alliance For Peace Stands In Revolutionary Solidarity With The People Of Bolivia

November 13, 2019 the Black Alliance for Peace. Educate! Bolivia, Capitalism, US Imperialism, Working Class

The Black Alliance for Peace condemns the U.S. sponsored counter-revolutionary coup in Bolivia. The right-wing ruling elite of Bolivia with the full support of the bipartisan right-wing U.S. government is attempting to reimpose the anti-people authoritarianism that was the norm throughout “our Americas” during the period of unchecked U.S. hegemony. The people of Bolivia entered a new historical era when the largely indigenous Movement for Socialism (MAS) with Evo Morales in the leadership disrupted this history of unchallenged U.S. hegemony. However, with the forced resignation of Morales and the physical assaults against leaders of the MAS, the progress made by indigenous and working-class people of Bolivia is under serious assault.

War And Militarism Are Class Issues

September 13, 2019 Ajamu Baraka. Educate! Neoliberalism, Syria, Wars and Militarism, Working Class

As a Black working-class oriented alliance residing in the center of empire and committed to peace and abolishing war, repression and imperialism, we are quite clear about how we see the world and our responsibilities. We say that there can be no working-class justice, no working-class rights in a world where powerful elite social forces are prepared and are using extreme violence in the form of political and economic destabilization and war. We are clear that war is a class issue. That it is always the rural and urban working classes that are required to fight the wars against other working classes and oppressed peoples and nations. That is why we in BAP say clearly and without equivocation “Not one drop of blood from the poor and working-class to defend the capitalist dictatorship in the U.S. and oppressor classes and peoples’ world-wide.”

The Iranian Working Class: History And Tasks Today

May 25, 2019 Staff, Socialistproject.ca Educate! Class Struggle, History, Iran, Working Class

The Iranian workers’ movement dates back 120 years. One of the earliest strikes involving eleven thousand oil industry workers took place sometime between 1923 and 1930. This strike was organized by the first Communist Party of Iran. Reza Shah, the father of the late Mohammad Reza Shah, even with his relatively strong army, could not suppress the strike. He had to ask for the help of the English Royal Navy to do so. The workers’ movement had also raised the cry for the nationalization of the oil industry before it was nationalized by the Mohammad Mosaddegh and his National Front organization.

10 Reasons The Gilets Jaunes Are The Real Deal

February 12, 2019 David Studdert, Off-guardian.org Resist! Class Struggle, France, Protests, Working Class, Yellow Vest

We live in a world where democracy is a threat and freedom is a punishment, where you can’t tell a turd from a diamond, where 5G is trumpeted even as it threatens to kill us, where the prevailing ethos is buyer-beware and where anyone against warmongering and eternal war is smeared and painted as a monster. Who do you believe? All the things you felt certain about Democracy, liberty, the right to free speech, television news, all these things are not only being undermined, in reality, they are being thrown in your face.

Renewing Working-Class Internationalism

February 6, 2019 Aziz Rana, Newlaborforum.cuny.edu Strategize! Class Struggle, Internationalism, Working Class

Trump’s 2016 victory has generated a growing internal debate within left-leaning circles about the future direction of the Democratic Party. To date, this debate has overwhelmingly focused on domestic questions of the economy, with the Sanders wing transforming policies such as “Medicare for All” into a basic litmus test for party politicians with national ambitions. But it has not left foreign policy totally unscathed. For a significant and vocal base of party activists, the Bush and Obama years speak to a general and systematic failure of the mainstream national security establishment.

The Cost of Employer Insurance Is A Growing Burden For Middle-Income Families

December 8, 2018 Sara R. Collins and David C. Radley, Commonwealthfund.org Educate! Insurance, Working Class

Recent national surveys show health care costs are a top concern in U.S. households.1 While the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces receive a lot of media and political attention, the truth is that far more Americans get their coverage through employers. In 2017, more than half (56%) of people under age 65 — about 152 million people — had insurance through an employer, either their own or a family member’s.2 In contrast, only 9 percent had a plan purchased on the individual market, including the marketplaces.

The Working Class Strikes Back

August 30, 2018 Chris Wright, Counterpunch.org Resist! Class Struggle, Working Class

Reading the daily headlines, it’s easy to forget that the corollary of a civilization in precipitous decline is a world of creative ferment, a new world struggling to be born. If you could have a God’s-eye view of all the creative resistance rending the fabric of political oppression from the U.S. to Indonesia to Colombia, you would surely be persuaded that all hope is not lost. This conclusion is borne out in detail by a book published earlier this year, The Class Strikes Back: Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Dario Azzellini and Michael G. Kraft. The chapters, each dedicated to a different case-study, survey inspiring democratic activism in thirteen countries across five continents.

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