For Republican politicians and the corporate media, the U.S. midterm election results are supposedly evidence of “a massive conservative trend sweeping the nation.”1 Proclaiming the victory of his party on election night, top House Republican John Boehner declared that “the American people have sent President Barack Obama a message through the ballot box to change course” – and he was not calling on Obama to steer further to the left. There has clearly been a significant decline in public support for Obama. However, there is no massive conservative trend in national opinion. The real picture is more uncertain and...
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Many “anti-capitalist” personalities urge people to support one of the two main capitalist parties, the Democrats, on the grounds that they are a “lesser evil” compared with the Republicans. One example is film maker Michael Moore (see March issue, p. 10). Another is Paul Street, who has written two useful exposés of Obama – Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (2009) and The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (2010) (both from Paradigm Publishers). Although Street calls himself a libertarian socialist, he campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. What they say...
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In a Russian-language document now circulating on the internet, Yevgeny Volobuyev, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) in St. Petersburg, “sounds the tocsin to warn of the danger of the CPRF finally turning into a fascist party”. Volobuyev explains that Russian fascists have been arguing for a long time on their websites about “what to do with the CPRF”. Some said that they should just put communists “up against the wall”, but others argued that they should first join the CPRF and take over its structures. In recent years, with openly fascist organizations like...
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In his famous novel The Grapes of Wrath (Chapter 25), John Steinbeck described how food was destroyed during the Great Depression: Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people come for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges… A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships… Dump potatoes in the...
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We socialists like to refer to wage labour as “wage slavery” and call workers “wage-slaves”. Non-socialists may assume that we use these expressions as figures of speech, for rhetorical effect. No, we use them literally. They reflect our view of capitalist society. Socialists use the word “slavery” in a broad sense, to encompass both chattel slavery and wage slavery as alternative ways of exploiting labour. We are aware of the differences between them, but we also want to draw attention to their common purpose. Capitalist language conceals this common purpose by equating chattel slavery with slavery as such and...
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“CARE: Dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor.” So reads a wall poster at the Haiti offices of the “humanitarian” agency CARE International. The offices are housed in a mansion in a wealthy district up in the hills above Port-au-Prince, at a hygienic distance from the poor people they are “dedicated to serve”. Well, you can’t expect the respectable ladies and gentlemen who administer aid to live and work down in the filth and stench of the shantytowns. Of course, you can’t blame the poor for the lack of sewers, but still… The aid administrators realise that they...
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In April 2009, interviewers working for the Rasmussen agency asked 1,000 people: ‘Which is a better system – capitalism or socialism?’ 53 percent said capitalism, 20 percent socialism, and 27 percent were not sure. Although ‘capitalism’ came out the clear winner, commentators were shocked that almost half the respondents failed to give the ‘correct’ response on a matter so crucial to the dominant ideology. ‘Capitalism’, ‘socialism’ and ‘the free market’ The interviewers did not define ‘capitalism’ or ‘socialism’, so we are left to guess what respondents understood by these words. No doubt most of those who answered ‘socialism’ did...
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Unemployment – Is it really the problem? Is unemployment really the problem? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to play down the misery of the millions who have lost their jobs – or the millions more who are going to lose their jobs – as the world slides deeper into the next Great Depression. I know very well what losing your job so often means. Losing your home (well, you thought it was yours!). Losing medical coverage (if you had it). Even losing your family. But think. If not being employed was really the problem, wouldn’t you expect...
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1. We are fighting in Afghanistan because we are loyal Americans. We have unquestioning trust in the wisdom of our leaders. 2. We are fighting in Afghanistan because we are devoted to the principles of free trade and free enterprise. That is why we want to protect the heroin export business of President Karzai’s brother and other Afghan warlords against interference and unfair competition by the Taliban. 3. We are fighting in Afghanistan because we want to secure the route for a pipeline to pump vast quantities of natural gas from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and...
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Although the peace accord of 2003 ended five years of war in other parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fighting has continued intermittently in the eastern Kivu region. The latest bout began on October 25, when the rebel forces of Laurent Nkunda resumed their offensive, accompanied by the usual atrocities against civilians, burning villages, and floods of starving refugees. What is this war about? Spillover from Rwanda? At first sight, it looks like spillover from the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in neighbouring Rwanda. General Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi and Christian fundamentalist, says he is protecting his people from the...
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