‘The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes’. The fundamental structure of the state machinery is arranged to perpetuate answering to authority.

Communism’s main argument is the following: that economic production and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising there from constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch. Since dissolution of communal land ownership, all history is the history of class struggle, between the exploited and the exploiters. Only a total emancipation of the whole of society from exploitation can work. The aim is to ‘proclaim the inevitable impending downfall of present day bourgeois property’. It is not socialism.

Socialism is a maintaining of capitalism with a friendly face by eliminating social abuses. Communism is a total reconstruction of society, not just political revolutions. In 1847, socialism was a middle class movement and communism a working class movement, as such, Marx warns ‘a spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism’. In 1847, Marx’s epoch, he saw the bourgeoisie as having simplified class antagonisms: there is now only the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie has a hegemonic hold on values, and as Marx states, ‘the bourgeoisie has resolved personal worth into exchange value’, freedom now is equal to free trade. The bourgeoisie will revolutionize the instruments of production and therefore the relations of production and the whole relations of society. The aim, for the epoch of the bourgeoisie is the constant revolution in production methods, the uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting certainty and agitation. ‘All fixed, frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new formed areas become antiquated before they can ossify… all that is solid melts into air… all that is holy is profane’. The market must nestle everywhere, establish connections everywhere’. Where all enter a domain of cosmopolitan consumption, the normalization of the use of capital and its paradigms of desire. The interdependence of nations perpetuates capital and the nation itself, where the ‘cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery’ which has now, at the end of history, smashed every last wall of resistance when and where ever it was seen. The bourgeoisie force the world to conform to its model and creates a world after its own image, as the world of the neoliberal springs from the Washington consensus, and engulfs mostly without resistance all that it touches. When there is a crisis of over-production, society falls apart, unless new markets are created and old markets are re-exploited.

The main aim of the bourgeoisie is to commodity the proletariat, to lose their charm and character, which are in tern redefined as expressible as commodities (what does this hat say about me? which colour ipod represents me the best?). The proletariat becomes an ‘appendage of the machine’, where labourers are arranged like soldiers, in rank, authority and worth. Differences in age and sex are neutralized by capitalism, all the instruments of labour of the consumer of commodities, more or less expensive to use according to their age and sex. Although child labour in developed society is behind us, child labour is still exploited by capitalists all over the world. Children in developed countries are accomplices to this as they are born as consumers and trained to consume wit the same hear no evil, speak now evil, see no evil attitude as the bourgeois society around them.

In bourgeois society the past dominates the present, in communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society, capital has freedom, people don’t. Communism is against freedom as promoted by the bourgeoisie, as individuality and free-trade. ‘Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that is done is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others as a means of such appropriation’, we should enjoy our arts and leisure only when it has been produced in conditions not equatable to exploitation, I,e, outside a system of wage labour and the squeezing of profit from it. The recent phenomenon of ‘fair-trade’ is not enough. Those that work, get as little as possible to perpetuate the necessity of their labour, those who acquire do not work.

Communism aims to abolish the family as we know it. The family of the bourgeoisie, the wife in an instrumental part of production (and adultery is the private prostitution within alienated bourgeois society). Communism aims to abolish all countries and nationalities, as Marx writes ‘working men have no country’. The abolition of property is not a communist aim: it is the abolition of private bourgeois property. ‘Abolition of private property’ is communism. This should happen when the proletariat is raised to the ruling class, to achieve what is known as the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, means to abolish private property, a progressive/banded income tax, to abolish inheritance, confiscation of property from rebels and emigrants, centralize credit by setting up a state banking monopoly, to centralize transport, communications and factories, to all have the equal obligation to work, to bring agriculture and manufacturing together by merging town and city via the equal distribution of the population, to have free education, to abolish child labour. In sum, ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’. It could be said, that people of no class have no reality and exits in the realm of philosophical phantasy. To think one can philosophize, as classless thing, is to flee from the relations of the world you are thrown, by inauthentically ignoring ones historicity: all history is the history of class struggle. ‘All history is nothing but the continuous transformation of human nature: philosophy can be replaced by economic-historical science of society’, and accordingly, Marx questions Hegel, as ‘it is not the consciousness of men that determined their being but on the contrary their social being that determines their consciousness’.

We are in the age of the petite-bourgeoisie, where unions have numbers but have proven time and again to be in the pockets of politicians. The unions are a reaction to the fluctuating wages of the workers. Fluctuating wages causes anxiety: alienation is the existential state of the poor: the proletariat. The proletariat, the dangerous class, the social scum, is waged labour, capital needs labour and the bourgeoisie need capital. Liberal tools such as the minimum wage set the standards for bare existence. To the petite-bourgeoisie, all should become bourgeoisie! To eradicate social inequalities and let everyone enjoy the luxuries and products of their labour. Even those of the minimum wage can get credit cards to buy now pay later for that Playstation 3, car or fashionable haircut. The petite-bourgeoisie acts for the protection of the working class with these tools: the police, prisons and free-trade. The police reinforce, protect and perpetuate the capitalist state machinery, demonize enemies through media discourses and use prisons as the quantitative pecuniary measure of punishment, the ‘horror’ of being forced out of free society. Free society, free trade, free to consume as much as you like, hang the costs, borrow, pay later, you’re free.

Today marks the 94th anniversary of labor hero Joe Hill’s death by firing squad. (Photo: david_axe / flickr)

www.truthout.org

Thursday 19 November 2009

by: Dick Meister, t r u t h o u t | Report
It’s November 19, 1915, in a courtyard of the Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City. Five riflemen take careful aim at a condemned organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Joe Hill, who stands before them straight and stiff and proud.

“Fire!” he shouts defiantly.

The firing squad didn’t miss. But Joe Hill, as the folk ballad says, “ain’t never died.” On this 94th anniversary, he lives on as one of the most enduring and influential of American symbols.

Joe Hill’s story is that of a labor martyr framed for murder by viciously anti-labor employer and government forces, a man who never faltered in fighting for the rights of the oppressed, who never faltered in his attempts to bring them together for the collective action essential if they were to overcome their wealthy and powerful oppressors.

His is the story of a man and an organization destroyed by government opposition, yet immensely successful. As historian Joyce Kornbluh noted, the IWW made “an indelible mark on the American labor movement and American society,” laying the groundwork for mass unionization, inspiring the formation of groups to protect the civil liberties of dissidents, prompting prison and farm labor reforms, and leaving behind “a genuine heritage … industrial democracy.”

Joe Hill’s story is the story of, perhaps, the greatest of all folk poets, whose simple, satirical rhymes set to simple, familiar melodies did so much to focus working people on the common body of ideals needed to forge them into a collective force.

Remember? “You will eat, bye and bye/In that glorious land above the sky/Work and Pray, live on hay/You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”

Ralph Chaplain, the IWW bard who wrote “Solidarity Forever,” found Hill’s songs “as coarse as homespun and as fine as silk; full of laughter and keen-edged satire; full of fine rage and finer tenderness; songs of and for the worker, written in the only language he can understand.”

Joe Hill’s story is the story of a man who saw with unusual clarity the unjust effects of the political, social and economic system on working people and whose own widely publicized trial and execution alerted people worldwide to the injustices and spurred them into corrective action.

It’s the story of a man who told his IWW comrades, just before stepping in front of the firing squad: “Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize!”

Hill’s comrades aimed at nothing less than organizing all workers into One Big Union regardless of their race, nationality, craft or work skills, calling a general strike and wresting control of the economy from its capitalist masters. The revolutionary message was presented in the simple language of the workplace, in the songs of Hill, Chaplain, and others, in the street corner oratory and in a tremendous outpouring of publications, including a dozen foreign-language newspapers, which were distributed among the many unskilled immigrants from European nations where unions had similar goals.

Workers were told again and again that they all had the same problems, the same needs and faced the same enemy. It was they who did the work, while others got the profit; they were members, all of them, of the working class. To aspire to middle-class status, as the established labor movement advocated, would mean competing against their fellow workers and chaining themselves to a system that enslaved them.

Organized religion also was a tool of enslavement, to keep the worker’s eye on that “pie in the sky” while he was being exploited in this world. Patriotism was a ruse to set the workers of one nation against those of another for the profit of capitalist manipulators.

IWW organizers carried the message to factories, mines, mills and lumber camps throughout the country, and to farms in the Midwest and California.

The cause of radical unionism to which Joe Hill devoted his life was lost a long time ago. The call to revolution is scarcely heard in today’s clamorously capitalist society. Labor organizations seek not to seize control of the means of production, but rather to share in the fruits of an economic system controlled by others. Yet, Joe Hill’s fiery words and fiery deeds, his courage and his sacrifices continue to inspire political, labor, civil rights and civil liberties activists.

They still sing his songs, striking workers, dissident students, and others, on picket lines, in demonstrations, at rallies, on the streets and in auditoriums. They echo his spirit of protest and militancy, his demand for true equality, share his fervent belief in solidarity, even use tactics first employed by Hill and his comrades.

Hill emigrated to the United States from his native Sweden in 1902, changing his name from Joel Haaglund, working as a seaman and as an itinerant wheat harvester, pipe layer, copper miner, and at other jobs as he made his way across the country to San Diego, translating into compelling lyrics the hopes and desires, the frustrations and discontents of his fellow workers.

In San Diego, Hill joined in one of the first of the many “free speech fights” waged by the Industrial Workers of the World against attempts by municipal authorities around the country to silence the street corner oratory that was a key part of the IWW’s organizing strategy.

Not long afterward, Hill hopped a freight for Salt Lake City where he helped lead a successful construction workers’ strike and began helping organize another free speech fight. But within a month, he was arrested on charges of shooting to death a grocer and his son and was immediately branded guilty by the local newspapers and authorities alike. Ultimately, Hill was convicted on only the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence.

Hill had staggered into a doctor’s office within an hour after the shootings, bleeding from a chest wound that he said had stemmed from a quarrel over a woman. The prosecutor argued that the wound was inflicted by the grocer in response to an attack by Hill, although he did not introduce into evidence either the grocer’s gun or the bullet that allegedly was fired from it. He did not introduce the gun that Hill allegedly used and did not call a single witness who could positively identify Hill as the killer. But he easily convinced the jury that the murders were an example of IWW terrorism and that since Hill was an IWW leader and had been arrested and charged with the crime, he was guilty.

As Hill’s futile appeals made their way through the courts, Gov. William Spry of Utah was swamped with thousands of petitions and letters from all over the world asking for a pardon or commutation. But he would not even be swayed by the pleas for mercy from the Swedish ambassador. Not even by the pleas of US President Woodrow Wilson.

The governor paid much greater attention to the views of Utah’s powerful Mormon Church leaders and powerful employer interests, particularly those who controlled the state’s dominant copper mining industry. They insisted that the man they considered one of the most dangerous radicals in the country be put to death.

Joe Hill’s body was shipped to Chicago, where it was cremated after a hero’s funeral, the ashes divided up and sent to IWW locals for scattering on the winds in every state except Utah. Hill, with typical grim humor, had declared, “I don’t want to be caught dead in Utah.”

Even in death, Hill was not safe from the government. One packet of his ashes, sent belatedly to an IWW organizer in 1917 for scattering in Chicago, was seized by postal inspectors. They acted under the Espionage Act, passed after the United States entered World War I that year, which made it illegal to mail any material that advocated “treason, insurrection. or forcible resistance to any law of the United States.”

The envelope, containing about a tablespoon of Hill’s ashes, was sent to the National Archives in Washington, DC. It remained hidden there until 1988, when it was discovered and turned over in Chicago to the men who presided over what little remained of the Industrial Workers of the World, shrunken to only a few hundred members.

The post office apparently had objected to the caption beneath a photo of Hill on the front of the envelope. “Joe Hill,” it said – “murdered by the capitalist class, November 19, 1915.”

… or how about a house which can boast it comes with:

the added benefit of a Netloft?

Being urban, Malcolm instantly thought metaphorically, and in terms of Mbps. Particularly so, in the light of his continuing grief with VirginMedia.

It took several measures of time to link the location (Newlyn, Cornwall) with the concrete article.

And to recognise that modern monofilament doesn’t need a loft any more.

by matttbastard

(Image: Tacoma Urbanist, Flickr)

Sarah Palin is back — and, seemingly, everywhere, as she launches a book tour (and, perhaps, a run at the White House in 2012).

Max Blumenthal:

In a Republican Party hoping to rebound in 2010 on the strength of a newly energized and ideologically aroused conservative grassroots, Palin’s influence is now unparalleled. Through her Facebook page, she was the one who pushed the rumor of “death panels” into the national healthcare debate, prompting the White House to issue a series of defensive responses. Unfazed by its absurdity, she repeated the charge in her recent speech in Wisconsin. In a special congressional election in New York’s 23rd congressional district, Palin’s endorsement of Doug Hoffman, an unknown far-right third-party candidate, helped force a popular moderate Republican politician, Dede Scozzafava, from the race. In the end, Palin’s ideological purge in upstate New York led to an improbable Democratic victory, the first in that GOP-heavy district in more than 100 years.

Though the ideological purge may have backfired, Palin’s participation in it magnified her influence in the party. In a telling sign of this, Congressman Mark Kirk, a pro-choice Republican from the posh suburban North Shore of Chicago, running for the Senate in Illinois, issued an anxious call for Palin’s support while she campaigned for Hoffman. According to a Kirk campaign memo, the candidate was terrified that Palin would be asked about his candidacy during her scheduled appearance on the Chicago-based Oprah Winfrey Show later this month — the kick-off for her book tour — and would not react enthusiastically. With $2.3 million in campaign cash and no viable primary challengers, Kirk was still desperate to avoid Palin-backed attacks from his right flank, however hypothetical they might be.

“She’s gangbusters!” a leading conservative radio host exclaimed to me. “There is nobody in the Republican Party who can raise money like her or top her name recognition.”

In contemporary politics, money + brand recognition = power –period. For a Republican party scrambling to maintain its ever-shrinking base, that makes Sarah Palin its most influential personality. And with the Democratic Party and the White House being seen, rightly or wrongly, as the party of Goldman Sachs, an avowed fauxpulist like Palin (she’s ‘one of us!’) driving the tone and tenor of conservative politics in an age of economic instability is not something to airily discount.

Tim Egan:

Right now, a time when only 20 percent of Americans call themselves Republicans and Democrats are shrinking as well, the independents are disgusted with both parties. In large part, it’s because neither one seems to be on their side.

The early warning shots came on Nov. 3, against an ineffective former Wall Street executive, ousted New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, and the billionaire mayor who barely bought himself a third term, Michael Bloomberg of New York. Both felt the back hand of an electorate that feels as if the system is rigged against them.

A year ago, most people were open-minded about the ground-shaking changes that came with the economic collapse. Polls found a slim majority in favor of Wall street bailouts to save the economy. They would listen, watch, wait.

By this fall, the majority were not only against the bailouts, but in favor of curbing pay on Wall Street, and tightening government regulation of same.

The continuous drip of perceived unfairness continues. One day it’s news that Goldman Sachs seems to have stepped ahead of the line of those waiting to receive H1N1 vaccines, prompting questions about why investment bankers were getting doses rather than children or pregnant women. This week, Gallup found one in five parents saying they were unable to get swine flu vaccine for their children.

Another day brings a report that the top banks are raising credit card interest rates – some as high as 29 percent, which would shame a Mob extortionist — even against people who have always paid on time. This is the thanks we get?

If Congress steers through the Great Recession without responding to the thousand points of pain among average Americans, people will see them for what they are in bottom-line terms: an insulated club. Proof, just recently, came from a Center for Responsive Politics report that 237 members of Congress — 44 percent — are millionaires, compared to just 1 percent for the country as whole.

It’s difficult to take the clumsy rhetorical and symbolic excesses of the so-called Tea Party protest movement seriously. The ham-fisted polyester populism employed by some of the more exuberant adherants seems designed to drive a stake through the barely-beating heart of parody. But the (partly manufactured) rage that is driving teabaggers to target moderate Republicans like Dede Scozzafava or burn Speaker Pelosi in effigy isn’t simply fodder for mockery by progressive bloggers and #p2 snarkmeisters; it’s a bellwhether for a burgeoning class divide that threatens to leave the Congressional millionaire elite behind — and give a boost to any political movement that figures out how to tap that rage, regardless of where that movement lies on the ideological spectrum.

The fall of social democracy in Europe may provide clues as to how this could play out if progressives fail to heed the mood of the electorate. In a piece for Red Pepper published in June of 2008, Magnus Marsdal tried to explain how and why the populist right has been ascendant in Europe over the past decade, using the Norwegian Freedom Party (FrP) as an example:

Talking to people who voted for the Norwegian populist right offers useful insights for anyone trying to fight radical right-wing populism elsewhere in Europe, particularly when it comes to what I call ‘identity politics’.

How does the FrP make the worker-voter identify with a party that is positioned so far to the right? Hostility towards foreigners and mobilisation of ‘white’ or ‘Norwegian’ identity plays a big part. So does the male- orientated FrP’s anti- feminism, which mobilises identity among male voters.

The right-wing populists also play with a particular type of consumer identity that sets the population as consumer individuals against the state, the tax system and the elite. These are the obvious side of the FrP’s identity politics.

There are two other elements that are less apparent but even more important to consider, both in Norway and in other countries where right-wing populism is on the rise.

Worker identity
First, the FrP’s rhetoric offers its own worker-identity. This is not the worker as opposed to bosses and owners. It is the worker contrasted to the lazy and dole abusers ‘below’ and ‘posh’, cultured people ‘above’.

It is quite normal for people to imagine society as if it were split into three different sections, with themselves in the middle. Moral values determine who is worthy, and who is unworthy, both ‘up there’, ‘down below’ and among ‘proper working people’. The unworthy ‘up there’ include all those who represent the state, the Labour Party, the government and everybody else who ‘lies and steals money from common workers’, as Hans Erling Willersrud, the car worker who is the main character in The FrP Code, puts it.

Among people ‘down there’, the worthy are those who, through no fault of their own, have become ill, disabled or been made redundant. Everyone else is unworthy, including those who don’t do their jobs properly. For many workers worthiness equals skills – you are worth something because you have skills and you do something. This way of measuring worth and dignity is an alternative to measuring by income or education. On this essentially moral scale, the ‘honest worker’ comes out on the same level as, or above, the rich person or the leading politician.

The unworthy also include the dishonest: those who turn with the wind, pay lip service to all, who are not ‘solid wood’, as Norwegians say. The worst are probably those who suck up to ‘posh’ people and intellectuals one moment, only to denounce them among workers the next. Not being perceived as ‘solid wood’ has created quite a few problems for politicians, especially for the Labour Party, which needs to present itself favourably to different groups at the same time.

From my interviews with working-class FrP voters, I made a simple model to show how those ‘up there’ and ‘down there’ stand in relation to the ‘proper working people’. The elite ‘up there’ are divided into three different types:

• the ‘know-it-alls’ linked to the education system and the state;
• the greedy, found at the top of the economy; and
• the politically powerful (often connected to the ‘know-it- alls’ and the greedy).

[...]

A second element to the FrP’s identity politics is that of aggrieved identity. ‘I’m just an ordinary worker, I have no fucking say,’ says Hans Erling Willersrud. He knows what it means to be at the boss’s beck and call and he’s had enough of the condescending attitude of Labour politicians who ‘can’t be bothered to listen to what [he’s] got to say’.He had some contact with the social security office when he was sick, and ‘has had it up to here with the system’. ‘They wouldn’t even believe he was in pain,’ says his mother Eli.

Hans Erling thinks politicians and bureaucrats are driving his country into the ground. He believes the social democratic elite has arranged things so the rich, the shrewd and the sleazy can take advantage of the system at the expense of the common man. He’s at the bottom of the pile at work. He’s at the bottom of the pile at the dole office. He’s at the bottom of the pile in the trade union (as an FrP voter) and in politics in general. He sees himself as a ‘political underdog’.

This doesn’t mean he is weak. On the contrary: being an underdog is not about lacking personal strengths, but finding that they don’t count for anything. More powerful people, regardless of their competence, are lording it over theunderdog, without recognising his skills or paying attention to what he actually knows, thinks or wants. It’s humiliating. He feels aggrieved.

And how does a political party like the FrP exploit the popular mood? It uses political language and images to touch a nerve with people who feel ignored, trampled on and overruled.

Carl Hagen’s most important ploy is to place himself in the role of the underdog. When he rages against the other parties wanting to keep a strong FrP out of government, he says, ‘Our voters will not be treated as second-rate.’ This simple sentence is perfect for connecting with people who on a daily basis, whether at work, at school or in the media, feel that they are treated like second-class citizens. Widening the focus, Hagen implies that what ordinary workers are in the workplace, the FrP is in the party political system. The voters can identify only too readily with what he is saying.

At the same time, Hagen – in the role of the affronted man who refuses to back down – offers the promise of vindication. For more than 30 years he has paid for the conceited sins of others, he tells them. But he turns the other cheek. Unlike the powerful and the arrogant, he is not driven by haughtiness or personal ambition. He is only fighting for what’s fair.

This underdog pose is brilliant because it can be applied to so many different voter groups. Above/below is a relationship that most people can recognise. Because he understands the underdog mentality, Hagen can connect with social-democratic workers as readily as with Christian fundamentalists who feel that their Christian cultural heritage is under threat.

Other subjects that mobilise the affronted population’s sense of themselves as the underdog include the FrP’s attacks on ‘politicians and bureaucrats’, its protest against schemes such as ‘the new opera being paid for by taxpayers’ and accusations that overpaid journalists are ‘persecuting the FrP’.

So where does Sarah Palin and her overwhelming ubiquity fit in all this? Like Barack Obama in 2008, Palin could prove to be a blank canvas on which citizens could project their desires en masse. Only instead of hope and change driving a national popular movement, hate and fear would be the engine of political change in 2012.

Of course, recent polls make the likelihood of a Palin run for the Presidency seem dim for the moment, as Joan Walsh notes.

But that doesn’t mean progressives should exhale:

The main reason not to fear a President Palin can be seen in recent polling among independents and moderates. In a the most current ABC News/Washington Post poll, Greg Sargent drilled down to find that: only 37 percent of independents and 30 percent of self-described moderates think she’s qualified for the presidency, and 58 percent of moderates view her unfavorably. Even more intriguing (but not surprising): Palin’s approval rating with men is higher than with women, 48 percent to 39 percent, and just a third of women believe she’d be qualified to be our first female president. (So much for Palin’s appeal to Hillary Clinton fans!)

So I think the Sarah Palin rehab tour is more about Sarah Palin Inc. than Sarah Palin 2012. She’ll rack up the speaking fees, raise some money for red-state, red-meat Republicans, further polarize the party and live the high life she thinks she deserves. Still, even as I dismiss Palin as a serious GOP threat, increasingly I believe that the faux-populism of the right is something to worry about. It may be fun to mock Sarah Palin, but Democrats shouldn’t laugh at many of the people who admire her – who see a folksy, new kind of self-made mom trying to fight the bad old Eastern elites.

Digby nails it:

I’m not saying that we should panic. These people are politically weak in their own right. But when I see the liberal gasbags on TV blithely dismissing this as if it’’s impossible that Americans could ever fall for such lunacy, I feel a little frisson of alarm. I’ve read too many accounts of people who, 80 or so years ago, complacently made the same assumption. And the whole world found out that under the right circumstances even the most civilized nations can throw in with the crazies.

Bottom line: If the ugly momentum of right-wing identity politics carries into 2012, we could see the nastiest, most polarizing Presidential campaign since 1972, regardless of who gets the GOP nomination.

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

Zeinab is a short gap-toothed woman that, were she English and dressed in scarlet, might remind me in other contexts of the Wyf of Bath. Together with her sister (and cousin, with really bad flats) they clean the sha5as of Teba Street with a proficiency that can only be described as fluent. I open the door to the flat and in comes a personified rush of Alpheneus and Peneus to clean the sometimes Augean quarters. She is cheerful and well-humored, I’ve never failed to feel guilty at her arrival; it usually results in my blushingly trying to patch up the most embarrassing aspects of my bachelorhood (leaving the toilet up, a sink full of dishes), and apologizing profusely. One by one, she touts the carpets out to our enormous balcony (this tiny woman) and beats the crap out of them with an alacrity that, if ever employed by the police, might be the physical undoing of a number of criminals.

I’ve always overpaid her. Maybe because I’ve never grown up with “help” around the house, but no matter what, I always seem to be awkward about service industries. I slip people tips that are too much, I’m a little too polite. Somewhere along the lines, I know that this is their job, but nevertheless, I can’t help but feel a little guilty, even really guilty, at having a maid. Is it an Americanism? What would happen if we had a butler? It seems like Americans in general seem to be fascinated by the idea of having servants — note all the movies and series that have butlers in them (Bruce Wayne, for example) — but I think I’d get so wrapped up in my guilt that I’d be pretty bad at it. Even now, as Zeinab huffs her way from each room with these giant carpets, I feel the instinct to help her. She won’t let me. She just stands there with the carpet on the floor, irritated that I’m interrupting her job.

Is that the natural order of things? It’s existed for thousands of years, a class of people serving another class. They get what they want, we get what we want. Even sea anemones and clownfish have a kind of hierarchy, a symbiotic relationship. No one begrudges the clownfish for being able to travel.

That was a random comparison.

Maybe it’s the democrat (read: believer in democracy), maybe it’s the crypto-communist in me (works unite!), maybe it’s growing up in a working-class household. I still can’t get quite used to the idea of being the Western effendi or educated ustaaz here; back home I’m a kid with a teaching job hoping to go to a Ph. D program — if anything, that lowers peoples’ opinions of me. Here, you’re educated. You’re in a foreign country. You’re worldly and a gentleman, even. You speak Arabic? Really? Wow; that’s amazing. There’s a lot of clout that you can throw around for just being here and being a decent human being. If you tip well, you’re generous. You’re rich. A lot of that gets wasted on the expats that drink their expatty frustrations away at the Portuguese Club, who have lived here for seven years and still haven’t learned a lick of Arabic to save a piaster — or their lives, for that matter.

And so, when you find someone sympathetic to your culture enough to learn the language, I think you give them a little too much credit, a little too much clout. My students are always asking (forget it: Ahmed and Marwa are always asking), “Why did you come to Egypt? It’s awful here!” And I always ask them back, “Why not?” We take it for granted that many people want to change nationalities. Not many people elsewhere understand the idea of going someplace else and absorbing the culture elsewhere, making a place for yourself outside of what would be called your “natural” home. “I like it here,” I usually say. “The people are much nicer. And I like the food.” Most people are baffled at this response. It’s okay though; most people, I think, are baffled by me in the US sometimes.

But then we have Zeinab. One reason that I will never Egyptianize is largely due to the treatment of service staff: Zeinab has sort of accepted that her lot in life is cleaning flats. And that’s fine, I suppose, if it really makes her happy. Faten says she makes a pretty piaster doing it — especially for foreigners. But for my father (and for me), washing windows and cleaning cars were ways of getting somewhere else, of doing something else. If we washed enough windows, we might get a new car, we might be able to afford a truck — and with a truck we might start landscaping. And with enough landscaping, we might be able to afford something else, do something else entirely.

And I know I’m assuming. People do it all the time. Maybe Zeinab’s happier cleaning flats. Maybe she enjoys it, even. Maybe there was a lifetime lifetimes ago that she did something worse, and this thing is that much better. But I remember that sometimes (especially over the summer, newly graduated from college and I was cutting yards again) I just wanted to drop the fact that I had a BA and knew a language our clients in West Palm Beach would never in their lifetime learn. I got big plans, Ma, if only they knew. But when it all boils down to it, nobody really cares about the lawn guy.

Everybody’s got different dreams, I suppose; everybody’s got different things they want to scream at their employer — secret lives of Walter Mitty that will remain undiscovered to us. I don’t think I’ll ever know Zeinab’s; I just hope that somehow, one day (or now!) she’s happy. Because I really am grateful for all the things she does.

Another book review so soon on this blog? Well, yes. This book from Shire Publications, Victorian and Edwardian Horse Cabs by Trevor May, is short, just 32 pages long, but it  is filled with many facts and rare images of interest to lovers of history. In Jane Austen’s day most people walked to work, town, church, and market square, or to their neighbors. Six miles was not considered an undue distance to travel by foot one way. The gentry were another breed. They either owned their own carriages or hired a public horse cab. These equipages were available as early as the 1620’s.

Hackneys, or public carriages for hire made their first significant appearance in the early 17th century. By 1694, these vehicles had increased to such a number that a body of Hackney Coach Commissioners was established in London. The commissioners dealt out licences, which was a bit of a joke, for a mere four inspectors were responsible for over 1,000 vehicles.

Hackney Coach 1680

Most of these licensed hackney coaches were purchased second hand. All that an enterprising person needed to establish his own hackney coach business was enough money for a used carriage and three horses, two that worked in rotation, and one that could be used as a replacement in case of injury or illness. The death of a horse could lead to a cab owner’s financial ruin. Another important ingredient was housing for the horses.

Hackney Coach 1800

By, 1823, the lighter horse cabs began to replace cumbersome hackney coaches in great quantity, and by the mid 1830’s, the hansom cab set the new standard for modern horse cabs. Aloysius Hansom, an architect, designed the first carriage. When Hansom went bankrupt through poor investments, John Chapman took over, designing an even lighter, more efficient cab, one whose framework did not strike the horses on their backs or sides whenever a carriage ran over an obstacle in the road.

Hansom Cab

Commercial cab firms tended to be small, even as late as 1892. Only one or two proprietors provided a large number or variety of equipages, like Afred Pargetter, whose concern advertised removal carriages, cabs, and funeral coaches for hire. While cabs were licensed, their drivers were not and the road could present a dangerous obstacle course. The video clip below shows how adroitly horses and carriages managed to avoid each other with seemingly few rules (mostly towards the end of the clip). Notice how some lucky individual horses pulled relatively light loads compared to other horses forced to pull heavy carts.

These two video clips, one from 1903 and the other from 1896 (unbelievable!) show the end of an era, for by 1914, motorized vehicles were rapidly replacing the horse-drawn cart.

I recommend this book to anyone with an insatiable appetite for a pictorial history on a particular topic. Trevor May is an expert on the Victorian era, and he has managed to squeeze more information about horse-drawn cabs in this short book (more a thick pamphlet) than I have read before. The images are simply splendid.

• Order the book at this link
• Omnibuses and Cabs, their origin and history, H.C. Moore
  Cabriolet: Probert Encyclopedia

Retail Worker’s Lament        by Patrick Ryanball

(after Elliott Kahlil Wilson’s Wedding Vows)  Note: These are not the intended line breaks

I like being stepped on.  I have no need for personal space.   Feel free to reach across me without saying a word.  I want that.  Assume I will move for you like a weather vane moves for the wind.  That your time is more valuable than mine.  Assume I’m uneducated.  That I have nothing better to give to the world but my cracked and soiled hands.  All my time.   Emptied for you to fill.

Please call me a strange name even though I wear a name tag like a clear day wears sunlight and the night pins on the moon.   And go ahead, ask me where the bananas are, I will tell you with some joy born out of pithy revenge that they are the bright yellow things right in front of you, and the both of us will laugh.

I have nothing better to do right now than to serve you.  I’m always ready to go the extra mile.  I’ll do it with a smile slapped across my face.  I’m as flexible as taffy.  Stretch me as far as I can go.  I am not yet broken.   And pay no mind to the mess you’re making.  Once you walk away, it vanishes you know.

Minimum wage is just fine.  In fact, I wouldn’t accept anything less.  I’m not interested in paying my bills this month.  Let me work for the holy gift of health insurance and fair pay.  I can wait years.   I’m as patient as a fire alarm for it.  I will lose my house for this job.  My dignity.  My free time.  All of my relationships.   I am that committed to this company.

Want to know my retirement plan?  I will work up to the day I die, poor and anonymous.

The British National Party has been getting a lot of attention lately, from politicians, the media, and most importantly from sizeable sections of the working-class who feel that the BNP represent their interests. Housing, work, pay and welfare are all issues which the BNP have supposedly taken up whilst claiming to represent the “British working-class”. The BNP however is stooped in a tradition of fighting against our class, from collaborating with rich business owners to calling for the ending of, and actively working against workers’ struggles, such as strikes. Despite this, the BNP are still attempting to tap into the working class, especially in former pit towns and dilapidated industrial zones as a way to increase their support by blaming the problems which the bosses (represented by the past and current Tory and Labour governments) have created, on asylum seekers, migrant workers, women and LGBT people, in other words, blaming other working class people for problems they have not created and are also suffering from themselves.

Fascism, as a political ideology only came about as a reaction to the growing workers’ movement in Europe in the late 1800s. It was, and still is the ideology of the bosses, who upon seeing a growing working class movement that threatened their own economic and political power sought to find their own ‘extreme’. This extreme saw it’s fulfilment in fascism, an ideology which has traditionally attacked the working class first, whilst blaming the problems of society on ethnic minorities, and other sections of society rather than themselves (the bosses). When Hitler came to power, his first wave of attacks targeted the trade unionists in Germany, as well as the Anarchists and Communists. Unions were banned except for the ‘official’ one and they used the state to crush any attempt by workers to improve their working conditions, pay and their life in general. The BNP is no different, it has its roots in former members of the National Front, a more ‘in your face’ fascist organisation, whilst it also drew members from the former National Socialist Movement (National Socialist being another term for ‘Nazi’) and the Nationalist Party among many others. The Minister of European Parliament (MEP), Andrew Brons had been a former member of the National Socialist Movement and stated his aim to create a pan-Aryan “Universal Nazism”, whilst Nick Griffin himself had been a former member of the National Front and continue to have links with Fascist organisations around Europe and America. Simply because they have changed their attire from boots to suits doesn’t mean they have dropped their former politics, like all politicians, they are also lying.

During the Great Miners’ strike, which was eventually defeated by Thatcher’s government as well as by Scargill’s (the then leader of the National Union of Mineworkers) incompetence, the BNP actively worked against these working class heroes. Not only did the BNP not support the strikes, but they actively called for the miners to return to work and called on the Army to be used to break up pickets. A former BNP parliamentary candidate in Yorkshire and a candidate in Dewsbury in the 1990s, the Dowager Lady Jane Birdwood ran Self-Help, a right wing pressure group dedicated to smashing unions and funded scabs during the strike. She, among many others such as the late John Tyndall who remained in the party up until his death only a few years ago, saw the miners’ strike as a “Communist plot” to destroy Britain and even saw Thatcher as being too weak towards the miners. For anyone who remembers the great battles during the 1984-85 strike would remember how Thatcher ruthlessly persecuted mining communities and trade unionists and brought in London police and the Army to batter the miners into submission, at the Battle of Orgreave, soldiers in police uniforms herded miners into a field before charging at them on horseback, and to the BNP, this was seen as being too soft. Jane Birdwood found support from … guess who … mine owners, who actively worked with her and her pressure group to undermine the strike.

The memory of the Miners’ strike is still burning brightly, to those who fought against pit closures in order to secure a decent life for themselves, their family and friends, the BNP’s attempt to gain their support should be met with a hard fist to the face. Fascists are opposed to unions and working class struggles as they are organised on class lines. We realise that our enemy is the boss class and their politician lackeys, not fellow working class people who happen to have a different skin colour, unlike what Nick Griffin tells us, but then that is no surprise seeing as he is from a rich, traditionally Tory (his father had been a member of the Conservative party and Griffin himself attended Cambridge university at a time when attending Cambridge was more of a privilege than it is now) and middle class family, he can safely say these things whilst sitting in his comfortable farm mansion in Powys.

The BNP is a scab party, we have more in common with other workers with different skin colour than we do with bosses with the same skin colour. Smash the BNP before they can come for our class!

Originally posted on the Anarchist Federation blog

The BNP is always happy to steal a good idea when it sees one. The immensely successful and largely-online Obama election campaign in the US was certainly a good idea and, from the constant stream of online communications (or, in the BNP’s case, cheap and nasty begging letters) to the appearance of the Obama campaign website itself, the BNP has nabbed the lot, not even bothering to alter it much beyond adding a Churchill here and a porky nazi pretending to be a statesman over there.

The Barack Obama campaign site

Not the Barack Obama campaign site

This is the fourth part of an analysis of the swing state Pennsylvania. It focuses on the industrial southwest, a once deep-blue region rapidly trending Republican. Part three can be found here.

Pittsburgh and the Southwest

Pennsylvania’s southwest has much in common with West Virginia and Southeast Ohio, the northern end of Appalachia. Electoral change in the region is best understood by grouping these three areas together as a whole.

Socially conservative (the region is famously supportive of the NRA) but economically liberal, the industrial southwest voters typify white working-class Democrats. These voters can be found in unexpected places: Catholics in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, loggers along the Washington coast, rust-belt workers in Duluth, Minnesota and Buffalo, New York.

It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal that brought the working-class to the Democratic Party; before his time, the party constituted a regional force confined mainly to the South. In Pennsylvania, a Republican stronghold that had voted for President Herbert Hoover, Mr. Roosevelt laid the foundations for a lasting Democratic coalition.

For decades, voters in southwest Pennsylvania constituted this coalition’s foundation. Take, for instance, Democratic nominee Walter Mondale:

In 1984, the industrial southwest, badly hurting from a receding recession, cast a strong ballot for Mr. Mondale. It did so again for Governor Mike Dukakis, and twice for President Bill Clinton.

Ironically, it was during the presidency of Mr. Clinton – a man much liked by Appalachia – that the Democrats became regarded as the party of the coasts and the elite. Ever since his time, Pennsylvania’s industrial southwest has been in a bad way for Democrats.

Thus, whilst metropolitan Philadelphia has been moving steadily left, Pittsburgh and the industrial southwest have been marching in the opposite direction.

To get a sense of the movement in this region, compare these two maps:

Modified NYT Image

In less than a generation’s span, one sees Democratic strength in northern Appalachia utterly vanish.

In a state where things have been going badly for Republicans, southwest Pennsylvania provides some consolation. Were it not for the southwest’s rightward trend, Pennsylvania would today be a fairly solid Democratic state.

Nevertheless, if I were to choose between Pittsburgh and the industrial southwest or Philadelphia and the suburban southeast, I would much prefer the latter. While Philadelphia itself is in declining, its metropolitan area as a whole has experienced rapid growth. The southwest’s population, on the other hand, remains basically stagnant, suffering the effects of economic decline.

In absolute terms, moreover, eastern Pennsylvania holds far more votes:

Republicans might take comfort in Allegheny County’s vote reservoir – were it not consistently blue. Indeed, Democratic strength in Pittsburgh ensures that, as a whole, the southwest will still vote Democratic for some time yet. Although – unique to practically every other major city – Republicans have been improving in Pittsburgh, its substantial black population limits their potential.

The puzzling thing, however, is why Appalachian working-class whites are moving so rapidly right. It cannot be simply race: both Vice President Al Gore and Senator John Kerry were white, after all, yet they still did progressively worse. It cannot be simply elitism, either: Governor Mike Dukakis and Governor Adlai Stevenson were intellectual technocrats, yet they won what Mr. Kerry and Mr. Gore could not.

Finally, it is not as if all the white working-class has suddenly turned Republican: voters in Michigan, northeast Ohio, upstate New York, and Silver Bow and Deer Lodge Montana, amongst other regions, still retain the Democratic habit. In Pennsylvania, working-class strongholds such as Scranton and Erie, surrounded by a sea of Republican counties, also continue to vote deep blue. They will be the topics of the next post.

NEW TEXTS ON LOREN GOLDNER’S WEBSITE

http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/

Article on the origins of Turkish communism and of the reactionary
ideology of “anti-imperialism” in the 1917-1925 period (Nov 2009)

“Socialism in One Country” Before Stalin, and the Origins of
Reactionary “Anti-Imperialism”: The Case of Turkey, 1917-1925 (2009)

http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/turkey.html

Ssangyong Motor Strike in South Korea Ends in Defeat and Heavy
Repression (2009)

http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/ssangyong.html

General Perspectives on the Capitalist Development State and Class
Struggle in East Asia (2009)

http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/asiamarx.html

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

There has been a spate of growing murder and violence in certain areas of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal by armed persons acting on behalf of the ‘CPI (Maoist)’.

The vicious violence unleashed by these death squads in various parts of the country must be condemned.

In West Bengal alone these death squads have targetted the CPI(M) and have killed more than 60 members and supporters of the Party in the past few months. Their use of the name of Mao Zedong, a widely respected figure, while carrying out the acts of carnage and killing, is reprehensible.

Such acts can also in no way be justified in the name of a war against the State. While every conscious citizen opposes acts of oppression committed by members of the exploiting classes or individuals in the State apparatus, the self-styled Maoists by their violent acts of vendetta, torture and gruesome killings, are gravely damaging the cause of the popular democratic movement. Indeed, they are in fact working against the interests of the workers and peasants.

In order to isolate the self-styled Maoists politically, it is important that the Indian State do all that is necessary to restore its presence and credibility in tribal areas whose interests it has largely been ignoring.

The Manmohan Singh government should review its neo-liberal policies that have pauperised the tribal people and help the state governments to meet their developmental challenges in these areas. Counter insurgency vigilante groups (such as Salwa Judum) have proved to be counter productive.

Harassment and killing of innocent local people should be avoided while tackling the violence, and those responsible for such acts in the name of fighting the “Maoists” should be punished. A genuine dialogue should be started with those “Maoists” who are ready to give up the path of armed struggle.

Watch this video in which CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat at a public meeting explains how the self-styled Maoists are working against the interests of the workers and peasants.

http://blip.tv/file/2822670

May Day - London

A CENTURY+ OF MAY DAYS: LABOR AND SOCIAL STRUGGLES

A Century+ of May Days: Labor and Social Struggles
International Conference

In Chicago during May Day weekend 2010, there will be a conference to discuss, debate and analyze labor and social struggles, both past and present.

Call for Papers, workshop and panel proposals (by December 15^th).

We hope to cover an array of important historical and political topics. In addition to purely academic pursuits, conference participants will have the opportunity to participate in the May Day rally organized by the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Illinois Labor History Society.  If there is sufficient interest, we will set up a Chicago labor history tour.

Initial list of participants and endorsers: Illinois Labor History Society; James Thindwa, In These Times; Suzie Weissman, Saint Mary’s College of California; Bryan Palmer, Labour/Le Travail (Canada); Ronald van Raak, M.P. (The Netherlands); Kim Bobo, Interfaith Worker Justice; Michael McIntyre, DePaul University; Peter Hudis, Loyola University; Sungur Savran, Author (Turkey); Lea Haro, University of Glasgow (Scotland); George Gonos, SUNY-Potsdam; Janine Hatman, University of Cincinnati; Lauren Langman, Loyola University; Alexander Pantsov, Capital University; Francis King, Secretary–Socialist History Society (London); Mark Lause, University of Cincinnati; Eric A. Schuster, Truman College; Knud Jensen, DPU Aarhus University (Copenhagen); Axel Fair-Schulz, SUNY- Potsdam; JP Page, CGT (France); Dianne Feeley, Against the Current; Kevin Anderson, UC – Santa Barbara; Fritz Weber (Vienna); Jerry Harris, DeVry University; Joe Berry, University of Illinois; Theo Bergmann, (Stuttgart); Dan LaBotz, Author (Cincinnati); Sobhanlal Datta Gupta,. Surendra Nath Banerjee Professor, Calcutta University. (India); Spectre Magazine (Belgium); Steven McGiffen, American Graduate School of International Relations (Paris); Len Kaufmann (Wisconsin); William A. Pelz, Institute of Working Class History (Chicago)

Further details: mayday1890.2010@gmail.com <mailto:mayday1890.2010@gmail.com>  or write: Institute of Working Class History, 2335 W. Altgeld Street Chicago, IL. 60647-2001 U.S.A.A

Web site: http://www.mayday2010.info/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

The “Affordable Health Care for America Act”: some facts and falsehoods about the latest push towards socialized medicine from Freedomain Radio. (18:11):

References: http://www.fdrurl.com/tn60

Stefan Molyneux runs Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web. His books, podcasts, and videos are available free on the web. Mr. Molyneux accepts donations with the utmost gratitude.

RELATED:

• Radical Healthcare Reform: An Anarchist Approach
• ObamaCare: Status Quo on Steroids
• Government Blocks Doctor From Treating Uninsured Patients Cheaply

RADICAL FOOTNOTES

Radical Footnotes: Periodical for the Narrative of Working-Class Publishing 

The new issue of Radical Footnotes No 3 is just off the press. Long overdue thanks to the peccadilloes of the members of the finance community.

This number contains a piece on Chas. H. Kerr and Joseph Ishill.

Carl Slienger (Editor)

Radical Footnotes: is a periodical for the narrative of working class-publishing. ISSN 1757-4803 Published by Carl Slienger, PO Box 4ST, London W1A 4ST. The British subscription rate is £9.00 for four issues. Overseas rates from publisher. Email: radfootnotes@Gmail.com

THE HISTORY of working class publishing is a fascinating and important part of working class history which is reflected in this new specialised periodical. The ability to maintain a publishing programme is a vital necessity for any working class organisation. This has often been carried out in the face of immense difficulties. Bailiffs hammering at the printer’s door are the least of the problems afflicting the left press. Boycotts by advertisers and commercial distributors have been the norm rather than the exception.

Radical Footnotes is the only research and essay publication focused on the study of the forms, methods and praxis in the development of Working-Class publishing and allied industries. It covers all aspects, all periods and all languages of the transmission, dissemination, reception and recovery of the printed word.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Capitalism in Crisis

TOWARDS A MARXIST ANALYSIS OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS

The International Institute for Research and Education: http://www.iire.org

Seminar: Towards A Marxist Analysis of the Global Crisis

On 2-4 October, the IIRE held its first international Economy Seminar on the Global Crisis. Thirty-six participants, economists and non-specialists, from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America attended the three-day event which was open to activists from different tendencies of the radical left.

The objectives of the seminar were to analyse the nature, characteristics and consequences of the current global economic crisis, from perspectives relevant to social activists, and to fortify the global network of Marxist economists. All talks will be available at the IIRE podcast, which we expect to launch with the next newsletter. For now it is possible to download all the talks in one file (original languages, more than 500MB).

Three main questions guided the various sessions of the weekend. First, what is the nature or cause of the crisis? Second, what are the social, economic and political consequences? Finally, what are the links between the current economic crisis and the global ecological and food crises? A solid look at Keynesianism, Ernest Mandel’s contribution on long waves and economic cycles and a (self-) critical take on discourse and propaganda were activities that peppered the debates.

The seminar kicked off with a well-attended public meeting on the crisis with guest speakers Chris Harman of the SWP in Britain and IIRE fellows Michel Husson of the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies and Claudio Katz of the University of Buenos Aires.

François Chesnais (France) opened the seminar itself with an introduction on the role that the so-called financialisation of the economy had in the global crisis. He stated that the crisis cannot be labelled either financial or financialised. Rather, the current crisis has its roots deep in the process of capital accumulation, which, revealing its contradictions, should lead us to look at the dynamics of productivity, the rate of profit and its distribution. The discussion that followed generated a debate between over-accumulation versus under-consumption as explanations for understanding the crisis.

Ozlem Onaran (Turkey), Claudio Katz (Argentina) and Bruno Jetin (France) presented reports on the conditions of the European, Latin American and Asian economies. The debates paved the way for a deeper understanding on how the crisis is perceived and dealt with in the different regions. Participants concluded that an essential characteristic of the crisis is the lack of de-linking tendencies among countries and continents; on the contrary, the efforts to save capitalism have been concerted and almost unanimous.

Michel Husson (France) and Klaus Engert (Germany) analysed the crisis in the framework of the theory of long waves. According to this theory, elaborated by IIRE founder Ernest Mandel, it is possible to use important endogenous factors, i.e. related to the logic of capital and its internal contradictions, to explain the general fall in accumulation that began during the 1970s and has not yet concluded. This discussion left open the possibility of a new ascending wave of economic growth and capitalist accumulation dependent on such exogenous factors as a radical change of the relationship of forces between the classes. One of the conclusions, therefore, was that another wave of attacks on the working class is most likely on its way.

Eric Toussaint (Belgium) emphasised that there is no automatic link between the fact that the crisis is being paid for by workers and the popular masses, and an increase of social struggles. Political, ideological and organisational factors will also play a role in the development of the struggles.

Esther Vivas (Spain) and Daniel Tanuro (Belgium) brought in a fundamental analytical dimension with their introductions: the economic crisis cannot be observed in isolation from the global ecological and food crises. Vivas presented the causes and structure of the food crisis: the current model of agricultural and livestock production is in a large measure responsible for climate change. Tanuro demonstrated how the official, ruling class responses to climate change are insufficient, unreal, irrational and even put us in more danger. He argued that eco-socialists should push for and end to unnecessary production, the retraining of workers in affected sectors and the development of a new agricultural model instigated by radical anti-capitalist measures.

Overall, the analyses revealed that the crisis is systemic, that those who are paying for it are the popular and working classes, and that now, more then ever, it is necessary to build an emancipatory, global anti-capitalist and eco-socialist project.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Well well well, A serious Article from a Comic. Well How about an upset sarcastic article? That sounds better! I would like to start by saying I am discussed at the lack of care for our troops overseas, and now on our own soil! Really, bad enough we have to worry about terrorist and that scum of the earth over there, now to come home and deal with ONE OF OUR OWN? Postal workers, high schools now a US MILITARY BASE! Today i got the news from a dear friend that has been a inspiration in what i do and have done, her brother and cousin are stationed in FT HOOD! I have a roommate that wants to still defend this country thats COURAGE i say! But really I feel the sickness in my stomach that her family feels, I want to spit on the assholes that attempt shit like this. If you are disgruntled at your job FYI take a step the fuck back, rub your ears and say FUCKIN WHOOOOSAAA! You need to know that you fucking up the lives of many families that stretch across nations! I could go on and on….I say this if you hate your job, LEAVE dont come back and Fuck up a possible nation! Take a sewing class, go to a self-help group…FUCK HEAD BUTT A WALL and maybe knock some fucking since into your head before you destroy a nation’s heart and soul!

THAT SHITZ NOT COOL!