Archive | August, 2005

The Bush government, itself a coalition of the willing, cobbles together four different streams of conservatives. Like all coalitions, it is vulnerable to events. Patrick Buchanan, the journal National Interest, and the think tank Cato Institute, are conservatives against Bush’s Iraq policy. Similarly, the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation criticize Bush’s fiscal […]

For students of the U.S. labor movement, searching the 1970s for meaningful working class victories can prove to be a tedious and frustrating task.  During the tumultuous 1960s, U.S. labor, at best, offered benign neglect to the potentially transformational struggles of that era — Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War resistance, women’s rights, environmental, and other pivotal […]

Most progressive-minded hip hop fans and culturally-inclined activists have not heard of Baltimore rapper Son of Nun yet. After listening to the Son’s first album, Blood and Fire, I can only say this: they will. Despite this being his first album, Nun — a high school teacher, activist, and organizer from Baltimore — is clearly […]

This idea cannot withstand a nanosecond of thought. The idea that a fixed quantity of work exists, to be parcelled out among workers, is the so-called lump-of-labour fallacy. It is depressing that supposedly responsible governments continue to pretend to be unaware of the old ‘lump of labour’ fallacy: the illusion that the output of an […]

The prevailing spin on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rise to Iran’s presidency wrongly suggests that a win for his rivals could have ushered a dawn of enlightenment. The mainstream press has largely described Iran’s competing factions as little more than vote-rigging theocrats arrayed against tolerant modernizers. In particular, strong support for Ahmadinejad among the Basij militia and […]

When arguments turn to economics, most of us (a) flee, (b) fall asleep, or (c) give up and figure it’s just too hard to understand. But you can stand your ground, even if you have never taken an economics course. What it takes is being curious and willing to ask questions and challenge claims. It […]

General Electric (GE) commercials have always aimed to present a calm, peaceful world that (they imply) the company’s technological ingenuity helps make possible. After all, they “bring good things to life.” As environmental degradation continues to expand in tandem with global capitalism, environmental consciousness becomes a new marketing strategy. GE’s newest invention is to present […]

2005 will mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Industrial Workers World, the I.W.W., popularly known as the “Wobblies.” The most radical, mass-based labor organization to emerge within U.S. history, they embodied the slogan “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All,” as they organized unskilled as well as skilled workers, immigrants […]

Anyone interested in politics should at least occasionally read what Right-Wing Think Tanks (RWTTs) are proposing, for what they advocate shows up as Administration policies. Reading the RWTTs enables us to identify and respond to the same ideas that eventually trickle out of the mouths of Administration spokespeople. Right-Wing Think Tanks want to eliminate the […]

The Industrial Workers of the World, celebrating their centenary this year (see Paul Buhle, “The Legacy of the IWW,” Monthly Review, June 2005), could not play a major role in labor or the Left after the middle 1920s,  but their influence continued (and continues) to be felt in many curious ways. To take an often […]