Online Features

On Capitalism, Authoritarianism and What Is New about Trumpism

[PDF][Print]Below is a revised version of a presentation given to a panel on “Mass Incarceration and the Global Rise of Authoritarian Capitalism” at the Los Angeles Peace Center on September 23, 2017.
In this paper, I would . . .

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Venezuela: The Hour of the Lackeys

[PDF][Print]The tremendous economic, political and moral crisis that Venezuela is going through has not only sunk millions of people’s living and working conditions, but also the political programs that appear confronted to the death in a . . .

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Inequality and the Ecological Transition

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Last month Branko Milanovic published a blog post about the Yellow Vest movement against the fuel tax in France.  He was worried – like many analysts – that the uprising proves it will be virtually impossible to roll . . .

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Why no socialism in Sweden?

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The Wage-Earner Funds in Sweden is one of the few serious attempts in an advanced capitalist society to socialize the means of production. Developed by Rudolf Meidner and Anna Hedborg, two economists at the powerful social-democratic . . .

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The People No Longer Want Maduro–and No One Chose Guaidó

[PDF][Print]The following statement was issued by Marea Socialista, a Venezuelan organization.
Only the sovereign mobilized people can decide its destiny, in a referendum and general elections
The Venezuelan people, mobilized along all social sectors and taking to the . . .

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Who Shut Down the Shutdown?

[PDF][Print]Who ended the shutdown? The Democrats? Nancy Pelosi? Mitch McConnell? None of the above.
The shutdown got shut down when workers took Laguardia Airport off-line on Friday, January 25. A rolling disaster of massive commercial disruption was . . .

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The Venezuelan People Must Decide, Not Trump

[PDF][Print]Right-wing opposition leader Juan Guaidó has declared himself interim president of Venezuela against sitting President Nicolás Maduro, and he was immediately recognized by the U.S. government and a range of authoritarian leaders in Latin America. Here, . . .

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A Labor Movement 2020 Election Strategy

[PDF][Print]Organized labor has an opportunity to play an important role in the upcoming selection of a presidential candidate in the Democratic Party’s primaries and the eventual November 3, 2020 U.S. presidential election. The stakes couldn’t be . . .

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Forgotten voices in Venezuela crisis

[PDF][Print]Things are approaching a crisis point in the long battle of wills between Venezuela and the White House. Juan Guaidó, president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, swore himself in as the country’s “interim president” before a . . .

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Against the coup intervention in Venezuela!

[PDF][Print]This statement was issued by the PRT, Mexican section of the Fourth International, on 23 January 2019.

The Workers’ Revolutionary Party (PRT) stands emphatically against the new attempted coup d’état and imperialist intervention against Venezuela. In an . . .

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What do Trump’s ‘withdrawal’ from Syria and the Gulf’s rapprochement with Assad have in common?

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In the days since Donald Trump’s announcement that the US was to rapidly withdraw its 2,000 troops from Syria, an enormous amount of speculation about what this means has taken place. In my initial piece, I expressed a number of views that are not widely shared.

New York Progressives Must Demand More

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I campaigned for governor with the slogan of “Demand More!” because Gov. Cuomo has governed as a social liberal but as an economic conservative. Although he touts the agenda he outlined in his January 15 State of the State and Budget presentation as “progressive,” New York progressives should not be satisfied. It is still a conservative economic program. Progressives must demand more.

100 years after the death of Rosa Luxemburg

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The deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht have haunted the imagination of the left for a century. Joe Sabatini reviews a recent publication exposing the events of their deaths, Klaus Gietinger’s The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg, as well as providing an introduction to some of the literary works inspired by the events of 15 January 1919.

What LA Teachers Have Already Won

ImageThe United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), the city’s teachers union, has now reentered negotiations with a school board chastened by a strike that has shown the movement’s political power in massive demonstrations with community members and parents.

Money-Launderer-in-Chief Trump, the capitalist media and socialism: A time-line

ImageHere is a timeline of how the mainstream U.S. capitalist media has covered the issue of Trump’s financial ties with the Russian mafia capitalist class. This timeline is significant, because it provides a clue to the thinking of the mainstream of the U.S. capitalist class as well as how that thinking is now changing.

On Revolution and Internationalism: Socialist Strategy Today

With the revival of the socialist movement in the U.S., and the phrase “political revolution” having briefly entered the political mainstream as a result of Bernie Sanders’ Presidential campaign, it’s a good idea for contemporary socialists to look back upon the political strategies of our predecessors to examine what they thought “revolution” signified, and to draw appropriate conclusions.

Why the LA Teachers Strike Matters

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The January 14 strike date announced by the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) has heightened tensions in an already contentious dispute with Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner, who represents the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in negotiations. However, far more is at stake in Los Angeles and for the rest of us than a traditional contract struggle.

The Housing Affordability Crisis and What Millennials Can do About It

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Randy Shaw, Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. University of California Press, 2018. 304 pp.

When millennials head home for the holidays this month, many who are city dwellers will be hosted by parents or grand-parents whose housing is far more spacious and financially secure than their own. Even guests with well-paid jobs in relatively stable rental markets will cast an envious eye at the benefits of baby boomer house buying decades ago.

Green, Union Jobs: Organizing at Buffalo’s Tesla Factory

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Rob Walsh, originally from a small town just outside Utica, is a material handler at the Tesla plant just south of Buffalo, New York’s downtown—dubbed Gigafactory 2—and part of the joint United Steelworkers/International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers organizing committee. One of plant’s earliest hires, he works 12-hour shifts three to four days a week, making $16.50 an hour. He is one of roughly 400 employees that work around the clock at the plant producing Tesla’s solar roof tiles. During those shifts, Walsh delivers production from the warehouse to the floor and then takes the finished product out to be shipped.

Solidarity with the Popular Uprising in Sudan

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We, the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists, support the ongoing uprising which erupted across Sudan starting December 19th, 2018. The protests were set off by the lifting of subsidies on bread, wheat, and electricity as well as spiking inflation. The United Nations Development Program has estimated that nearly half of the population, i.e. 20 million, live below the poverty line. However, their demands go much deeper and call for the downfall of the regime of Omar al-Bashir because of its decades of economic, political, and social repression. The dictator al-Bashir was also on the verge of obtaining constitutional amendments allowing him to run in the presidential election in 2020.

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