Archive | Commentary

  I can’t help but reflect on what I am leaving behind as I walk down the ramp onto the airplane that will carry me back to the US after nearly a year living in Venezuela. There exists the tendency — perhaps, common among people like me, raised and educated in the best private schools […]

Note: this concluding report on the AFL-CIO Convention and events surrounding it will be offered in two parts.  First, a summary and catch-up on certain events and impressions of the week in Chicago; second, an attempt to sort out and analyze these events, what they represent in a larger context, and what it all could […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  We all remember the TV images of diligent cleanup workers in Alaska wiping the black sludge from the Exxon Valdez off the shores of the Prince William Sound. Who would have guessed that the well-intentioned workers were unknowingly being poisoned by Exxon? Those of us who are acutely aware of monopoly capital’s contradictions might […]

A part of the watershed bears the name of Willoughby Back in the 1830s some folks planned a medical college and approached an out-of-stater with the above name, seeking funds With true nineteenth century hucksterism/whoredom the town founders (flounders?) name their price: give money for the college and we’ll name the town after you What […]

Imports into the U.S. keep rising and the merchandise trade deficit keeps growing. Manufacturing jobs continue to disappear and wages and working conditions continue to worsen.  Increasingly, those who seek to explain these trends point to China.  It is true that China has become an export powerhouse, and the United States its main market.  China […]

1 She calls across the tenement valley to her friends pulling laundry off the cross-cut line A block away, hogs hang from steel question-marks Guts pour from the gashes in their bellies spill over the workers’ shoes fall between the floor slats into Miller’s River She calls Bernadette, Madge, Belinda in the chopped syllables of […]

Although the widely celebrated consumer sovereignty allows people to choose whether to consume Coke or Pepsi, nobody could even dream of suggesting that workers can act as sovereign individuals within their place of employment. Ideologists mouth comforting platitudes that depict people as sovereign individuals in their role as consumers, but obviously ultimate control of the […]

Nothing offend American voters more than the imputation that their vote is ideologically motivated. Anything that smacks of partisanship is rejected out of hand. “I don’t vote for the party,” they’ll insist.  “I vote for the person.” Then why, one wonders, is the American electorate such a lousy judge of character?  Why is inflexibility taken […]

In Europe, the legitimacy of almost all established political parties and governments seems to be suffering from metal fatigue. This malaise is aggravated by their attempts to implement neoliberal economic policies and adapt themselves to US imperialism at the same time. Is the small Scandinavian country of Denmark an exception that proves the rule? The […]

Sometimes, when a comrade intentionally ignores relevant facts in the discussion of an issue, it may indicate that the comrade is enthralled by an unexamined shibboleth. If I remember my Bible, the word shibboleth was used as a kind of military password, because enemy intruders couldn’t pronounce it.  Those who approached Hebrew positions at night […]