Subjects Archives: Class

If you reject from the outset the idea of uniting a majority based on shared economic interests, then pretty much all you’ve got left is the “thoughtful and humane co-optation” of racism and xenophobia.

In the U.S., where wealth is most highly concentrated, almost a quarter of income goes to the rich. So it should come as no surprise that a big chunk of the world’s richest call America home. Two out of five millionaires and billionaires live there, and their ranks are growing fast.

Unions provide workers with voice and the means to use their collective strength to gain job security and say over key aspects of their conditions of employment, including scheduling and safety. These gains are significant in our “employment at will” economy.

When it came to the general election in Britain, everything was settled in advance. The Conservative Party led by Theresa May was supposed to prevail. The Labour Party, victim of its own confusion, its refusal to support the will of millions of members and voters who wanted to put an end to the straitjacket of the European Union, was supposed to be trounced.

It must be part of a bold and insurgent campaign based on resistance to racism, austerity and war that focusses on mass rallies and mobilisations. Giving in to the right can only make it weaker.

When first encountering the “Impeach Bush” movement in 2007 I responded, almost flippantly, “why not impeach the system that gave us Bush?” Otherwise, I said, “we risk having someone in the White House who’ll make us long for Bush.” If prescient, my response was admittedly formulaic and evidentially deficient.

Read Michael D Yates’s informative interview with labor journalist Steve Early and Mike Parker, leader of the Richmond Progressive Alliance. The conversation focuses on both the benefits and limitations of engaging in radical politics at the local level.

The first thing to understand about colleges and universities is that they are workplaces. And like all workplaces in capitalist societies, they are organized as hierarchies, with power radiating downward.… Those at the top have as their central objective control over the enterprise, so that their power can be maintained, that revenues from tuition, grants, money from various levels of government, and the like keep flowing in, that the prestige of the college or university grows. And, of great importance, that those below them do not and cannot make trouble by challenging their authority.

Christian Appy.  American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity.  New York: Viking, 2015. Christian Appy is the author of two splendid previous books about the Vietnam War: Working-Class War and Patriots.  Patriots was extraordinary in that it offered oral histories by soldiers on both sides of the conflict. The main argument of Appy’s […]

Throughout the previous period, PAME, the class-conscious movement, was at the forefront of the struggle against capital’s attack on labor and popular rights.  We will continue in the same direction, because the problems and factors that led the vast majority of the people to poverty, misery, and the loss of rights and conquests are still […]

Support Our Comrades Saïd Bouamama and Saïdou (Z.E.P.)! by Young Communists, Lille Section On 20 January 2015, our comrades Saïdou, of the band Z.E.P. (Zone d’Expression Populaire), and Saïd Bouamama, a sociologist and militant communist based in Lille, are summoned to appear before the Court of First Instance of Paris, charged with “public insult” and […]

Prisoners in Colombia have recently gained new visibility.  Prisoner protest actions are one factor.  Another is discussion at the Havana peace talks of prisoners as victims of armed conflict.  November 2014 marks the two-year anniversary of talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government. Beginning on October 20, hunger strikes […]

  Numsa General Secretary’s Presentation to the Cape Town Press Club, February 11, 2014 I speak to you today with a powerful and united mandate from 341,150 metalworkers. They made their views extremely clear in our workers’ parliament in December last year — the parliament we called the Numsa Special National Congress.  In that parliament […]

  The news that Detroit has declared bankruptcy, the largest North American city to do so thus far, foreshadows an extension of the social crisis currently afflicting the centers of capitalism.  As some observers have noted, Detroit is just the tip of the iceberg in what is sure to be a procession of indebted municipalities […]

  When Wisconsin state workers were courageously occupying the state capitol to protest Governor Scott Walker’s attack on their unions’ right to bargain, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka trumpeted a call for solidarity actions throughout the labor movement on April 4, 2011, the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, killed during the Memphis sanitation […]

  1. For days now Turkey has been witnessing a genuine popular movement.  The actions and protests, which have started in Istanbul and spread all over Turkey, have a massive, legitimate, and historic character.  The most important of all is the striking change in the mood of people.  The fear and apathy has been overcome […]

In a recent PBS interview with Bill Moyers, journalist Chris Hedges discussed protest for social change.  “Revolt,” he said, apropos of salvaging a collapsing world, “is all we have.  It is our only hope.” I agree.  So would my friend Tito Gerassi, who believed all his life in revolution.  And, since rising unemployment is part […]

Whereas once the primitive was our savage other, today the native is the bearer of an alternative future.  In the late 1980s the Kayapo Chief Raoni, with his spectacular feathered headdress, accompanied the pop star Sting on concert tours to enlighten western audiences of the ecological disaster in the Amazon that came hand-in-hand with human […]

A young veteran was just arrested for murdering homeless people in Los Angeles.  Regardless whether he is actually guilty, a large number of terrible acts have been committed by returning veterans traumatized from the war.  None of the studies of which I’m aware accounts for such costs (including the cost of imprisoning them) in the […]

  “Real Class Warfare: The Great 1934 Longshore Strike in Portland” Presentation by Michael Munk Tuesday, October 11 7:30 pm Rialto Poolroom and Bar 529 SW 4th Ave, Portland Free and open to the public Must be 21 or over. On May 9, 1934, thousands of longshoremen along the West Coast walked off the job, […]