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Judge of Character
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 […]
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Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part Three
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 […]
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On Freakonomics, Roe v. Wade, and John Roberts, Jr.
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 […]
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In the Reactionary Era of “No Alternative”
For years, U.S. political and economic leaders saw themselves in mortal combat with communist nations for the allegiance of peoples at home and abroad. The pressure of being in competition with an alternative economic system set limits on how thoroughly Western leaders dared to mistreat their own working populations. Indeed, during the Cold War, pains […]
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Politics and the Playing Field: An interview with Dave Zirin
It’s fashionable on the Left to look down one’s nose at the world of sports. To do so, according to Dave Zirin, would be to miss a chance at both inspiration and solidarity. Zirin’s new book, What’s My Name, Fool! Sports and Resistance in the United States creates a much-needed bridge between the political and […]
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“The Question of Working-Class Power”: Bill Fletcher, Jr. Speaks to the Canadian Auto Workers Conference, Toronto, Canada, 13 July 2005
Good morning. President Hargrove, leaders, and members of the Canadian Auto Workers, I wish to thank you very much for inviting me to speak with you today. This is a great honor and I have been looking forward to this opportunity. If all goes according to some plans, by the end of July, the […]
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Against Deferred Gratification
Every now and then I see a slogan that’s credited to Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream: “If it’s not fun, why do it?” It seems like the worst part of the sixties in seven words — the mindless hedonism and self-involvement that made the counter-culture such fertile terrain for commodification. We serious […]
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Fugitive Offers Reward for Rumsfeld’s Capture
Speaking from Cuba, where she was granted asylum after escaping from a US prison in 1979, Assata Shakur, the alleged “Bandit Queen” of the now defunct Black Liberation Army, announced today that she would hand over one million “HANDS OFF ASSATA” t-shirts to the person or persons who successfully apprehend US Secretary of Defense Donald […]
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U.S. Labor in Crisis: The Current Internal Debate and the Role of Democracy in Its Revitalization
[The following is a speech delivered by Jerry Tucker on March 12, 2005 at the conference on “Work and Social Movements in the United States” at University of Paris – Sorbonne (March 10-12, 2005). Tucker will report daily on the AFL-CIO 2005 convention in Chicago on July 25-28. — Ed.] There is today a rare […]
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Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part Two
In Part One, I argued that capitalism produces very few jobs that utilize fully our human capacities to conceptualize and perform work. Instead, most jobs are degraded and demand little of us. I noted that of the ten jobs projected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to show the greatest job growth between […]
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Village of Euclid v. Amber Realty (1926)
Village of Euclid v. Amber Realty (1926). Case decided: November 22, 1926 by the United States Supreme Court 6-3 in favor of the palintiff The desire to cryogenically keep the community as it is at a point in time The popular panacea for preceived problems: Pass a law And so communities across the […]
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A Campaign to End AIDS Once and for All
Thursday May 5, 2005 — AIDS activists from around the country arrived in Washington to place 8,500 pairs of shoes before the White House. The shoes were meant to symbolize the 8,500 who die daily of AIDS worldwide. “We want the president to look out the window and see his inaction,” explained ACT UP veteran […]
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Free Labor from the Empire: Breaking the NED-Solidarity Center Connection
In the increasing “heat” of labor reform issues — which is not always the same as “light” — it has been discouraging to see how little attention has been paid to labor’s foreign policy issues. This is, in my opinion, the 500-pound gorilla that no one wants to touch. Yet, I argue it is absolutely […]
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“Pas de vacances pour les bourgeois!”
“Pas de vacances pour les bourgeois!” (no vacation for the bourgeois) was a favorite slogan at the Sorbonne during the May 1968 nationwide revolt in France. Not supported by any established political parties (including the CPF), the movement which originally started among students who took over the universities came to include workers who occupied factories […]
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“Unity within Our Movement Has Never Been More Important”: Statement by AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff at the Illinois State AFL-CIO Central Labor Council Conference in Findlay, Ill. June 14, 2005
[Michael D. Yates’ Note: As readers of the June issue of Monthly Review magazine know, a fierce battle is raging inside organized labor in the United States. Several unions within the AFL-CIO (the national federation of unions) are threatening to secede from the Federation, their leaders arguing that Federation leaders and many member unions are […]
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On the Uses of State Terrorism
State terrorism is the use of state violence against innocent civilians to create fear in pursuit of a political objective — an ugly side of imperialism. There are two varieties of state terrorism: overt and covert. The most obvious examples of overt state terrorism are the 1937 bombing of Guernica and the 1945 atomic […]
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The Experience of China
[“The Experience of China” is an excerpt from “Approaching Socialism,” published in the July-August issue of Monthly Review in print. The full text of the article will be soon avaialbe at . — Ed.] When the Red Army, led by the Chinese Communist Party, entered Beijing in 1949, the work needed to create a road […]
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An Interview with Samir Amin
MRZINE: In your essay in the November 2004 Monthly Review entitled, “U.S. Imperialism Europe and the Middle East,” you conclude that, “Europe will be of left, the term ‘left’ being taken seriously, or will not be at all.” As opposed to the views of almost all U.S. and U.K. commentators, are not then the “non” […]
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“Can We Do Anything besides Watch?” Some Ideas for Addressing Labor’s Crisis
Most labor activists with whom I have spoken have had a similar reaction. Whether one supports positions taken by the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, et al.; whether one supports the positions advanced by the John Sweeney leadership of the AFL-CIO; or whether one falls into the ‘none of the above’ category, there is […]
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Social Medicine 101
Bastille Day 2005 inaugurates the new Monthly Review Webzine. Paris is also an excellent place to begin a series on social medicine. For it was in Paris, in 1830, that one of the seminal papers in social medicine appeared. While the Parisian workers overthrew Charles X, the last of the Bourbons, a French physician, Louis Rene Villerme published a paper examining mortality patterns in different Parisian arrondissements (districts).