Archive for December, 2015
- Working-Class Life: Are Military Bases Havens from Heartless Civilian Work?
- Worker Coops in Brazil: The Good and the Not So Hot
- Workforce Organization vs Neighborhood Assemblies and the Role of the State: David Harvey and Murray Bookchin
- Sham Apology from Japan for Enslaving “Comfort Women”
- State of the World Analysis 2015
- Labor Review for 2015: From the Bottom Up
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Michael Moore Satire on Police Attacks on Blacks
Sometimes humor is a great way to mock the authorities in order to make a point. Humor can also unite people in a common fate as well as mobilize them to further mock the authorities. Michael Moore’s short video is a creative use of street theatre. While we are figuring a way to liquidate police departments, videos like this can help maintain sanity.
Happy Holidays to all!Watch on YouTube
- Parasitic Finance Capitalism: Myths about the Federal Reserve
- China and Russia Dumping IMF
- Analysis of Spanish Elections and Implications for U.S.
- Where Did the Our Walmart Campaign Go Wrong?
- Venezuela Elections from the Bottom Up
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Crowdfunding a Global Solidarity Economy Through T-Shirts and Music!
Here’s a good example of the power of ingenuity which applies crowdsourcing to the solidarity economy through making t-shirts and music. These folks are on the right page at the right time.
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Left Arguments About Whether Pink Tide is Receding in Latin America
This editorial response by the Trotskyists is good in that it points out the dangers of attributing all of Venezuela’s problems to US intervention and the failure of the Maduro government to be proactive. But as the editors themselves say, the problem is a one of leadership. In other words, any leadership other that the Socialist Equity party will not do. More importantly, not a word is mentioned about the community councils and worker cooperatives and what is becoming of them. Here is a typical Leninist dismissal of any worker activity that is not controlled by them.
- Is the Pink Tide in South America Receding?
- World Youth Unemployment Skyrockets: More Capitalist Irrationality
- 40,000 Oil Jobs Lost in Canada: Economic Depression Causes Psychological Depression
- Global Stock Markets Drop Over 300 Points
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IMF Forgives Ukraine Debt to Russia
Should nation-states pay their bank debts to other nation-states? (more…)
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What the French Right’s Electoral Victory Means
This is a good article on the political situation in France (more…)
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Capitalist Irrationality: Oil Company Lays off 85,000 Workers!
Why is this irrational? (more…)
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China’s Shipbuilding Orders Sink 62%
Marxists have made a distinction between the real economy, which produces goods and services, and the fictitious economy in which banks claim profits on stocks and bonds without producing anything. Since China is the workshop of the world in the production of real goods, when China is in trouble the whole world economy is in trouble. This brief article shows a decline in shipbuilding orders.
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Maduro’s loss in Venezuela: Keeping things in perspective
It’s always difficult to interpret the meaning of the loss of a socialist candidate. (more…)
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US Political Campaign in Venezula
The elites within the political economy are not content (more…)
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Mass Terrorism in US: One a Day For 3 years
These are some amazing statistics (more…)
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“The 33” Worker Collective Creativity in the Chilean Mines Movie
Unfortunately many workers believe that without their boss, they would not know how to run things. But time and again, whether in natural disasters or in revolutionary economic situations, workers demonstrate their collective ingenuity and surprise everyone, including themselves.This movie review shows workers at their best as well as capitalists at their worst (which is most of the time).
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Rent Strike by Students in London Wins: All Demands Met
Here’s a good example of how organizing over the long haul can pay off.
Read the details at libcom.org
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911 French Style: The Rulers Who Cried Wolf Once Too Often
Well over 50 years ago the social psychologist Muzafer Sherif did a study that showed the fastest way to unite a group which has group conflict is to provide them with a common enemy that comes from outside the group. The problem is that when there is real group conflict those conflicts don’t disappear. “The war on terror” is an example of the rulers of a capitalist society, in this case France, inventing a boogie man – the terrible Islamic fundamentalists – to suppress its own conflicts within its domestic population. In this case it’s the organized protests at the United Nation’s Climate Conference in Paris in spite of the French ban on demonstrations of any kind.
The efficiency of the term “terror” is that it scares people into thinking in black and white terms, and it discourages its enemies from publicly expressing their domestic opposition to the rulers. But we’re afraid the French people are not as easily tamed in their protest against climate change as the Americans were in their version of 911 as this footage shows.