The Dan La Botz Socialist for Senate Campaign in Ohio in 2010 was one of the most successful socialist electoral campaigns in more than 60 years. The 25,000 votes cast for La Botz compare favorably with earlier Socialist Party candidacies in Ohio, with other socialist parties, and with reformist parties to the left of the Democrats. The La Botz campaign, in fact, compares favorably with all Socialist, Communist and Socialist Workers Party and other leftist party campaigns since the heyday of socialism. Only Eugene V.
review
If the purpose of a memoir is to tell the story of a life or the evolution of an individual’s thinking, this one by Christopher Hitchens, the jowly, balding erstwhile enfant terrible doesn’t ring true. There’s no metamorphosis in thinking here — it’s more a whipsawing of opinion if not a trading up. And despite a heavy lathering of opinions, there’s precious little of his adult life as lived.
review
Loïc Wacquant has expanded the theory of the neoliberal state beyond the usual economic definition. He has linked the criminal justice system with the welfare system as two parts of the same policy of enforcing conformity to an unstable job market of temporary, part-time, low-paid, and flexible employment. Other criminal justice scholars and welfare scholars have analyzed these as separate spheres. While they have seen both as repressive, they have not seen them as interconnected.
The United States has an ongoing jobs crisis that has been crippling our people and our economy for nearly two years. In September 2010, 14.8 million people were officially unemployed, 15.7 million were either forced to work part-time or were jobless and no longer looking for work and another 16.3 million were the working poor. Thus, almost 47 million people were afflicted by unemployment or underemployment (see table 1). Moreover, the numbers multiply when the families of the unemployed are included.
Workers are in no way responsible for the economic crisis of capitalism. This would be or at least should seem to be obvious to socialists. Noncontroversial as it may now be, this has not always been the case. There have been socialists — quite outspoken in their time — who had attributed past turndowns to a profit-squeeze triggered by cumulative decades of militant wage demands.
By: Steve ShalomJanuary 14, 2011
The New York Times ran a truly despicable story on its front page today. The article, by Scott Shane, argues that Pfc. Bradley Manning is not being treated so badly. But what moves this piece from the category of apologetics to contemptible is its opening paragraphs that try to contrast the plush circumstances of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with the grim conditions under which Manning is being held:
By: adminJanuary 14, 2011
Stephen Steinberg’s Boston Review article “Poor Reason: Culture still doesn’t explain poverty“ is a breath of fresh air, reminding us that the path toward ending poverty is creating decent jobs for everyone.
New York City plans to have even more inaccessible taxis
By: newpoliticsNovember 14, 2010
The critique of “Waiting for Superman,” available mostly in the blogosphere, indicates that a backlash against the neoliberal project in education is developing. No doubt you’ve seen the barrage of propaganda for this ersatz documentary, which touts charter schools as the solution to poverty and inequality and teachers unions as the enemy. But if you haven’t read the critiques by teachers and advocacy groups, be sure to look at the Rethinking Schools webpage that refutes the film’s premises and conclusions.
Note: This article begins a series by Richard Greeman. Longtime socialist and international activist Richard Greeman is best know for his studies and translations of Victor Serge, the Franco-Russian novelist and revolutionary.
By: Barry FingerOctober 24, 2010
Christina Romer, the former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, argues in today’s (October 24) New York Times that “Now Isn’t the Time to Cut the Deficit.” Her argument, which is unexceptional among liberal economists, is simply that “tax cuts and spending increases stimulate demand and raise output and employment; tax increases and spending cuts have the opposite effect.” This, she reassures her readership, is a “basic message of macroeconomics.”
By: adminOctober 1, 2010
Tomorrow, Oct. 2, I will be marching in the Socialist Contingent at the big march in Washington, DC.
We will gather at 10am at 12th and Constitution and march with the Peace Table. Join us if you can!
I read with keen interest 2 recent articles on the New Politics website: “Card Check: Labor’s Charlie Brown Moment?” by Robert Fitch, and “Does ‘Union Democracy’ Undermine ‘Solidarity?” by Herman Benson.
A note on "Mean Bastards": This short piece, posted after the death of George Steinbrenner, has received a kind of confirmation in Ellen DeGeneres walking out on her five year contract worth tens of millions with "American Idol." I had criticized Simon Cowell (a former AI judge) along with Steinbrenner, Trump, etc.
By: newpoliticsAugust 1, 2010
President Obama’s speech to the Urban League about education July 29 didn’t cover any new ground, but there were some shifts worth noting. He tweaked his administration’s rhetorical stance towards teachers and teacher unions, adopting a less combative stance than his and Arne Duncan’s support for firing teachers in a “failing” Rhode Island school.
I admire Claudia Dreifus’s interviews with scientists in the New York Times Tuesday Science section, and particularly her attention to women in science, and I know of her honorable history in the left and feminism. So I befriended her on Facebook. There she publicized her book, with Andrew Hacker, Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting Our Money and Failing our Kids – and What we Can Do About It, to be published by Times Books/Henry Holt on August 3.
All day long, and on into a second day, here in New York, the media have been full of George Steinbrenner. He’s always been a Mean Bastard — even in the Seinfeld version — and that’s how he is memorialized: a Mean Bastard and a Winner. Sometimes he’s represented as a Mean-Bastard-with-a Heart-of-Gold-who-Gave-Money-to-Good-Causes. It would seem paradoxical to be deep in grief over a man universally acknowledged to be a Mean Bastard.
Unions Representing Workers in Canada, Mexico qnd U.S. Explore Merger:
Would Create International Union of One Million Metal Workers and Miners
The United Steelworkers (USW), which represents 850,000 workers in Canada, the Caribbean and the United States, and the National Union of Miners and Metal Workers (SNTMMRM), known as the Mineros, which represents 180,000 workers in Mexico, have announced plans to explore uniting into one international union. The agreement to begin exploration of a merger was signed on June 21.
It has been more than a year since Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African- American president of the United States. Despite the obvious historic significance of his election, Obama’s actions to date make it very doubtful that his presidency will alleviate the persisting conditions of racism, discrimination, and general inequality that continue to shape the experience of most African-Americans in the United States.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood famously described the border between our country and the United States as the world’s longest “one-way mirror.”
