If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. The

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Capitalist Property ~~Paul Lafargue

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1903/06/caproperty.htm

Individual property can only exist in a primitive stage of human life, because of its two attributes, it is the product of the owner's labour, and it is used by him.

These two qualities, regarded is indispensable to and inseparable from individual property, have left so strong an impression upon the human mind that the defenders of capitalism idiotically state that property is the reward of toil. Nevertheless, capitalist production can only exist when individual property is stripped of the two attributes which alone justify it.

Personal wealth is still, indeed, the result of labour, but it no longer belongs to the workers who produce it; the means of production (land, machinery, mines, &c.) are not owned by the wage-workers who use them, but by the capitalist who has not made them, and who does not work them. Capitalist property does not, consequently, possess the two attributes of individual property.

Why Anarchism is Dangerous. ~~ Dana Ward and Paul Messersmith-Glavin

https://www.anarchistagency.com/commentary/why-anarchism-is-dangerous/

Anarchists frighten privileged elites and their authoritarian followers not simply because the primary goals of the movement have been to abolish the sources of elite power – the state, patriarchy, and capitalism – but because anarchism offers a viable alternative form of social and political organization grounded in workplace collectives, neighborhood assemblies, bottom-up federations, child-centered free schools, and a variety of cultural organizations operating on the basis of cooperation, solidarity, mutual aid, and direct, participatory democracy. Opposed to all forms of hierarchy, domination, and exploitation, anarchists work to create a culture grounded in equal access to resources making the genuine exercise of freedom possible. Over the past century and a half, and particularly in the last two decades, the self-managing principles of anarchism have proliferated around the world and have also become part of the standard operating procedures of protest. Since elites would be rendered redundant in an anarchist egalitarian society, no wonder rulers tremble at the thought of anarchist jurisdictions.

“Harm Reduction Voting” vs. Independent Working-Class Politics ~~ George Martin Fell Brown

https://www.socialistalternative.org/2020/08/27/harm-reduction-voting-vs-independent-working-class-politics/

~~posted for Collectivist

Millions have spent the past four years horrified by the experience of the increasingly authoritarian Trump administration, that deliberately stokes racist division. But many are nonetheless disappointed that his main opponent, Joe Biden, is  a corporate tool who was an architect of mass incarceration and whose campaign message boils down to “I’m not Trump.”

Environment: The foundations of revolutionary eco-socialism ~~Daniel Turano

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article4013

~~ posted for Collectivist

The concept of eco-socialism is based on a double paradoxical note: the solution to the “ecological crisis” due to the capitalist mode of production necessitates a response of a socialist type, whilst the environmental balance sheet of “actually existing socialism” is catastrophic. I will briefly develop these two elements and then present some foundations of an eco-socialist aggiornamento as it is conceived inside the “International Eco-socialist Network”. I hope to bring forward evidence that eco-socialism is something more than a new label on an old bottle: a necessary alternative adapted to the challenges of our times. [1]

Friday, October 2, 2020

How Trump Is Privatizing the U.S. Immigration System. ~~ MAURIZIO GUERRERO

The administration is allowing industries to directly control guest worker programs.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/trump-visa-h2-immigration-system-privatization-labor-workers



Using the pan­dem­ic as an excuse, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has all but can­celed immi­gra­tion to the Unit­ed States. But while the pres­i­dent cracked down on fam­i­lies seek­ing asy­lum from life-threat­en­ing con­di­tions, he’s still allowed big indus­tries to hire low-wage labor­ers from oth­er coun­tries. Under the H2 visa pro­gram, record num­bers are enter­ing the coun­try, recruit­ed direct­ly by indus­tries such as meat-pro­cess­ing and agri­cul­ture, which deter­mine who gets into the coun­try and for how long.

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Presidential Debate #1: The Squabbles of Capital ~~ Ezra Brain

 

https://www.leftvoice.org/presidential-debate-1-the-squabbles-of-capital

The first presidential debate, for all its drama and chaos, showed that there are actually very few political differences between the two candidates. While it is certainly alarming to watch Donald Trump continue his increasingly overt overtures to the far right, we must understand that it is the working class, not Joe Biden, that has the power to fight back against the far-right.

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

COVID-19, Economic Depression, and the Black Lives Matter Protests ~~ Michael D. Yates

Will the Triple Crisis Bring a Working-Class Revolt in the United States?

https://monthlyreview.org/2020/09/01/covid-19-economic-depression-and-the-black-lives-matter-protests/

~~ Posted for Collectivist

Upsurge?

In 2018 and 2019, leftist writers, organizers, and pundits were exclaiming that U.S. workers were on the move, striking even in the “red” states that had voted for Donald Trump. Claims were made that the presidential campaigns for Bernie Sanders and the rapid growth of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) were largely responsible for this rise in militancy by long-suffering laborers, who had seen their economic circumstances deteriorate for decades. Left-wing journalists interviewed striking teachers and automobile workers, reporting on a new mood of combativeness. After years of slumber, perhaps the working class was awakening.1

​​​​​​​Make Corporate Landlords Pay the Bills During the Pandemic ~~ Sofia Lopez and Sara Myklebust


​​https://blackagendareport.com/make-corporate-landlords-pay-bills-during-pandemic

~~ Posted for Collectivist

​​​​​​​Make Corporate Landlords Pay the Bills During the Pandemic
​​​​​​​Make Corporate Landlords Pay the Bills During the Pandemic

Elected officials and corporate landlords haven’t taken any meaningful action to prevent the crisis from hitting poor people of color hardest.

Monday, September 28, 2020

Long-Term Global Trends Affecting the U.S.

Anaylisis of Historical Global Developments and their Relevance to the

Internal Situation of the United States


Written by dmorista

In this article I will endeavor to try to look at the current world situation, and particularly that of the U.S, in socioeconomic, political, and military terms, in a historical perspective. I will use some of the theoretical systems developed on the left, to analyze the Capitalist world milieu and the nations and socioeconomic systems that compose it. First a discussion of some of the basic concepts and theoretical constucts I will use to couch my arguments.  Those who are familiar with World-Systems Theory mignt want to go to the end of main body of the  article and read the concluding section: Application of World Systems Theory to the Current Situation.

Introduction:

There can be no doubt, as we look at the great sweep of human history, that great civilizations and empires; are “born”; they “rise”; they pass through a period of “greatness”, during which their power, institutions, and culture reach a peak; and eventually they “decay and fall”. There has been a lot of theoretical work on these issues, especially for the particular case of Empires that rise to the level of being the Global Hegemon; a position that the U.S. has occupied for around a century, but would seem to be sliding out of at this time. The time period during which the U.S., to one degree or another, occupied that position stretches from around 1908 to the present day. The dynamics of the situation, how it affected the U.S. internally, and who the other major powers, rivals, and allies that were involved has changed over time.

The examination of Capitalism, Global Hegemony, and the dynamics of the various Global Hegemons has been taken up by many scholars. Among the most prominent are Immanuel Wallerstein, George Modelski, and Giovanni Arrighi. Wallerstein, whose analysis proposed that there is a World System of capitalism, engendered a school of thought called World-Systems Theory. Wallerstein propounded and expanded upon these ideas in a 4 volume work in which he proposed that Holland was the first Global Hegemonic Power, then the British Empire, and finally the United States; and he analyzed the operations of capitalism during these respective Hegemonic Epochs in great detail (Wallerstein, 1974, 1980, 1989, 2011). Wallerstein proposed relatively short periods of what he termed “Uncontested Hegemony” exercised by each of those three societies, (See Table 1). He examined developments outside of those restricted time periods in great detail, but did not propose a formalized framework for a recurring cycle of developments, inside and outside of the respective Hegemonic Powers, that explained these events. George Modelski described 5 global hegemonies each about one century in length, and proposed a set of cyclical events that helped explain the recurring phenomenon of Hegemonic Rise, Ascendancy, and eventual Decline (Modelski, 1987). {See Table 2A in the Appendix for Modelski's proposal and Table 2 in the text for my modification of it}. Giovanni Arrighi outlined the occurrence of 4 global hegemonies, each with increasing power and control over the global economic system, but ironically of declining temporal length (Arrighi, 1988). {See Table 3A in the Appendix for Modelski's proposal and Table 3 in the text for my very slight modification of it}. Joshua Goldstein writing about Long Economic Cycles and political power among the major powers, proposed his own explanation of the evolution of Great Power Global Hegemony (Goldstein, 1988). All the major variants of theories proposing a World Capitalist System and a succession of hegemonic powers agree on two things: that in the last few decades of its power, the ruling class of the declining hegemon shifts over from actual productive capitalism to financial capitalism; and that “Hegemonic Wars”, of particularly horrific intensity and length, mark the transition from one hegemony to the next.

Some theorists have proposed that the first hegemon was Portugal, and they advance involved arguments as to why Portugal was hegemonic (the Portugese Empire did have more extensive holdings in Asia and Africa than the Spanish Empire did) rather than Spain. The Spanish Empire, however, was actually larger and it produced far more of the gold and silver; that played a pivotal role in the economic developments of the 15th - 17th centuries. I prefer to just call the first Hegemonic Epoch that of “Iberia” for the reason that it involves the two empires; that were the first and the second empires to control areas in both the “Old World” (Eurasia and Africa) and also in the “New World” (the Americas), i.e. the first truly global empires. I also think that France was the third Global Hegemon, or a very close miss, that had its period of hegemony, or near hegemony, after that of Holland and before that of the British Empire. There is plenty of evidence to support either the postion that France was a hegemonic power, and perhaps more that affirms that it was not, it is beyond the scope of this essay to address it at any length.1 All historians are in agreement that, neither Spain nor Portugal, had the sophisticated financial institutions needed to process the wealth that flowed into those countries; and that therefore their banking was handled by financial institutions in the Italian city states, most notably Genoa and Venice. Giovanni Arrighi argues that Genoa was actually the first Global Hegemonic power and that both Portugal, and Spain, depended on the Genoese Bankers; and in turn were manipulated by them to utilize their geographic, military, and political power, largely in the service of Genoa's ruling class' agenda; he discussed this at length in his seminal book on the subject (Arrighi, 1988)


The Left - Leveraging the Capitalist Crisis in the Ruling Class

https://www.workers.org/2020/09/51532/

The writer is First Secretary of Workers World Party. 

The head of the U.S. Postal Service is sabotaging delivery of ballots through the mail. Trump is acting like he won’t step down even if he’s defeated in the elections. And it appears that right-wing and neo-fascist forces, who have guns, are getting ready to go into the streets after the elections to support an attempted coup. Every group and activist ready to fight fascism in the streets should be making preparations right now to intervene in the event of any fascist developments in November.

The political crisis in the ruling class that is playing itself out in the presidential election is not really about Trump, any more than it’s about saving democracy, decency and all the other stuff that Democratic Party leaders are shouting about.

This crisis is about the capitalist system starting to break down and fall apart, and what must be done to rescue capitalism and U.S. imperialism from demise.

This crisis has been building for a long time.  The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the course of the crisis; it’s like pouring gasoline on a burning police station.

Sunday, September 27, 2020

Prison Slavery in the United States - 13th Amendment to the Constitution

Two pieces on prison slavery in Amerika: a link to an IWW organization of prison workers, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committed, that is fighting to end prison slavery; and then an article on the origins of prison slavery in Amerika