Archive | Commentary

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

Hey, lady. You got a problem with my hat? I mean, look. I was just walking down Fort Washington Avenue, minding my own business on my way to the A Train, and you — an ordinary, middle-aged white lady in a blue plaid housedress — stop to glare at my hat. How friendly is that? […]

[The following is the concluding section of Michael A. Lebowitz’s talk “Socialism Doesn’t Drop from the Sky,” presented to the National Conference of Revolutionary Students for the Construction of Socialism of the XXI Century in Merida, Venezuela on 24 July 2005. — Ed.] In the same way that Marx was prepared to change his own […]

  In Part Two, we examined the rapidly changing nature of post-secondary teaching, one of the two reasonably skilled  jobs among the top ten jobs estimated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to show the highest job growth between 2002 and 2012. The other job is nursing. Job experts claim that there is a […]

“Hip capital” . . . “Rebel consumers” . . . “Conquest of cool” . . . “Bobos [bourgeois bohemians] in paradise!” Such are the terms used by social critics to ironically sum up the marketing of the counter-culture, a phenomenon that is commonly exemplified by the reduction of one-time “anti-establishment” anthems to a seemingly endless […]

In my lifetime, young people have changed the world. From Little Rock to Greensboro, from Selma to Soweto, in Tien an Mien and Seattle and Nepal, it was the young who dared to act in the face of the overwhelming certainty that nothing could be done. It was their direct action that educated, opened doors […]

Controversy sells. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, a collaboration between economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Sthephen J. Dubner, is a good example of this maxim. Levitt and Dubner tackle controversial subjects in an unconventional fashion, and now their book is a New York Times Bestseller. Although I do not […]

With god on our side we don’t need a conscience. The others are ripe for burning and burn them we will, the smoke of their flesh rising to heaven, an acceptable sacrifice. With god on our side there is no grey, no shading only glaring gorgeous white blinding with purity: beyond just blackness that could […]