Book Review

Bernard Duterme et al. Zapatisme: la rébellion qui dure. Alternatives du Sud. Paris: Centre Tricontinental and Éditions Syllepse, 2014. Chronology. Notes. Index. 205pp.

Tova Beck-Friedman. “Red Father” A 55-minute documentary film. DVD’s can be purchased at: http://tbfstudio.com/red_father.html

Book Review

Göran Therborn. The Killing Fields of Inequality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013. Hardback: $40.00 Paperback: $19.95 Kindle: $9.99

We don’t think of philanthropists as ragged: louche, maybe even a tad shabby, as with
trust-fund hipsters or Palo Alto billionaires, but never ragged. In writing his early-twentieth-century British classic, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell (the pen name of Robert Noonan) wanted to drive home his point. The biggest benefactors of the rich are workers. His is a portrait of hard-pressed working people and their counterintuitive respect and political and economic support for their rulers.

Like many of my generation, I was active in the left. From the mid to late 1960s to the late 1970s, I was affiliated with Trotskyist organizations. We considered ourselves revolutionaries and foresaw the day when the working class would rise up against capitalist oppression, overthrow the government, and establish a proletarian dictatorship. There was no doubt in our minds that this could not be accomplished without violence. When the revolutionary situation was ripe, we would need weapons.

Angela Walker, an independent socialist, is running for the office of Sheriff in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this coming November. Her campaign is part of a small trend of independent labor, Green Party, and socialist campaigns around the country that are discussed in a survey article by Dan La Botz in the forthcoming Summer issue of New Politics. Here La Botz interviews Walker to learn why she is running and what she hopes to accomplish.

Guest blog: This week I have a commentary by a reader. Doug Mann provides background about the issue of tenure for teachers in Minneapolis. His analysis, identifying how the Right has pushed this issue and why systemic racism has to be named in defending teachers’ rights to due process, applies in most respects to other urban school districts.  Doug is the Green Party candidate for Minneapolis School Board, citywide, and an education activist.

For the last two years, Dan La Botz has provided an annual roundup of social struggles in the US.

Tenure and teacher unions suffered a defeat this week when a California court ruled in the Vergara case that the state's law giving teachers tenure violated California's constitution.  I've blogged about why the claims in Vergara were manufactured to pit students against teachers.

Review of: Bryan D. Palmer. Revolutionary Teamsters: The Minneapolis Truckers’ Strike of 1934. Historical Materialism Book Series. Chicago: Haymarket, 2013. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. Photos. 308 pp.

The European Parliamentary Election of last May 25 was marked by a strong push from the Europhobic and racist right, which was  rife with currents of the extreme right. Its best showings were achieved by the United Kingdom Independence Party -UKIP (which received 27.5% of the British vote), by the Party of the People of Denmark (26.7%), by the National Front of France (24.9%), and by the Freedom Party of Austria (19.7), and one shouldn’t forget the recent advances of the Swedish Democrats (9.7%) and of Alternative for Germany (7%).

“Disaster,” “an earthquake,” “electroshock,” “a historic shock,” “a thunderclap,” “a stroke”: the results of the most recent European elections have caused a veritable media storm throughout Europe, beginning with France where the historic victory of the National Front of Marine Le Pen has left commentators with a real hangover.