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	<title>World Socialist Party (US) &#187; Elections</title>
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	<copyright>Copyright &#xA9; World Socialist Party (US) 2010 </copyright>
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		<title>World Socialist Party (US) &#187; Elections</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org</link>
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	<itunes:author>World Socialist Party (US)</itunes:author>
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		<title>On the UK election debates</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/04/on-the-uk-election-debates/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/04/on-the-uk-election-debates/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 03:36:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1515</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And so Brown , Cameron and Clegg engage in the first of their series of televised debates , all the other minor political parties , of course , excluded in this demonstration of media impartiality and fairness . These three political party leaders claim to be working for the betterment of society. Each of them have their own idea on how to run capitalism, often stealing the ideas of their supposed political opposites and rivals . The reforms that they plan to implement must reflect economic reality. If they do not, they will not get re-elected &#8211; until the next party fails to reflect that reality. There is no way that capitalism can meet the needs of the majority, but all of the party leaders pretend it can if only they find the right plan. None of them have any really new ideas, only regurgitated reforms that have failed in the past. Voting for these parties is voting for capitalism, forever. History shows us that no matter what these political leaders say, when elected they administer capitalism in the only way it can be administered &#8211; in the interests of the capitalist class. The amount of work involved in administering [...]


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		<item>
		<title>Why didn’t anyone wake me up while the revolution was going on? (Why we are not Leftists)</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2009/02/why-didn%e2%80%99t-anyone-wake-me-up-while-the-revolution-was-going-on/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2009/02/why-didn%e2%80%99t-anyone-wake-me-up-while-the-revolution-was-going-on/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:09:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>ROEL</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anti-capitalist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[common ownership]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[communism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=930</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[  It is not uncommon to hear leftists talk knowingly of “ongoing struggles” when they project the day after tomorrow of an anti-capitalist revolution, as if it weren’t really over yet with the expropriation of the capitalist class. The working class must evidently “smash” the capitalist state and set up a “proletarian” régime holding down the entire capitalist class, if we are to take our cue from Lenin (The State and Revolution). The truth, however, is at once simpler and more complex: an anti-capitalist revolution cannot stop with promising capitalism’s eventual replacement worldwide but must make immediate global common ownership and democratic control of wealth production its exclusive goal — or it will remain just another heavenly milkshake. The distinction is not esoteric. It makes all the difference.  Common ownership (communism/socialism) — the system that replaces capitalism — is totally unlike public ownership or state capitalism. It means direct community ownership and control based on universal free access and moneyless production. Banks are a conceptual possibility in a state-owned public industry. They are not in a communist society. Suffice it to say that more or less radicalized versions of the status quo will not do the trick. Those who posit [...]


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		<title>Obama wins</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/11/obama-wins/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/11/obama-wins/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:55:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>ALB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=758</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So the next President of the USA will be Barack Obama. Of course as socialists we know that he is a capitalist politician, the representative of a capitalist party, who will form a capitalist administration to govern the most powerful capitalist country in the world. And that, as a left-of-centre politician getting support with hints of redistributing wealth to the poorer sections of society, he is going to fail, for the simple reason that capitalism simply cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority of the members of society. It is a profit-making system that can only work as such, in the interest of the tiny minority who own and control the means of production and live off the profits produced by the unpaid labour of the majority. This said, there are two points that can be made. First, the rapidity with which ideas can change. A few decades ago it was unthinkable that a man regarded as &#8220;black&#8221; could be elected President of the USA by an a predominantly &#8220;white&#8221; electorate. It is only about fifty years since most &#8220;blacks&#8221; in the South were allowed to vote and that segregation was ended. In some States the [...]


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		<title>The Revolutionary Vote</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/11/the-revolutionary-vote/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/11/the-revolutionary-vote/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:06:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/socialism/the-revolutionary-vote/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The vote is a gain, a potential class weapon, a potential &#8220;instrument of emancipation&#8221; as Marx put it. Despite Lenin&#8217;s distortions , Marx and Engels always held that the bourgeois democratic republic was the best political framework for the development and triumph of the socialist movement. This is another pre-1914 socialist position we see no reason to abandon. Certainly, political democracy under capitalism is not all that it is purported to be by many supporters of the system and it is severely limited, from the point of view of democratic theory, by the very nature of capitalism as an unequal, class-divided society. Certainly, &#8220;democracy&#8221; has become an ideology used to give capitalist rule a spurious legitimacy . But it is still sufficient to allow the working class to organise politically and economically without too much state interference and also, we would argue, to allow a future socialist majority to gain control of political power. In a vote between lesser of two evils , &#8221; Vote Cholera or Vote for Typhoid&#8221; , ( btw , someone once said &#8220;Those who choose the lesser of two evils soon forget that what they chose is an evil&#8221; ) Not voting at all is [...]


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		<title>Obama, the Rev. Wright and hesitation</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/05/why-obama-may-have-hesitated-to-distance-himself-from-wright/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/05/why-obama-may-have-hesitated-to-distance-himself-from-wright/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 03 May 2008 14:29:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dr. Who</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[USA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=437</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The latest scandal that surrounds Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama’s previous involvement with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and that highlights his difﬁculty fully disowning this association with the politically radical pastor until a statement unequivocally doing so publicly on April 29th is angrily upsetting his fans and supporters who fear that the time it has taken him to do this may seriously undermine his popularity among Democrats, and so impair his bid for president. The mainstream press has not been able to provide any explanation for this hesitancy to detach himself from Rev. Wright either. It is certainly a major concern as Obama attempts to win the Democratic primary in Indiana on Tuesday, May 6th. But a little bit of logic and materialist understanding may be able to come to our aid in explicating this curious phenomenon. How would a young Chicago community organizer with strong ambitions to become a politician actually make his way into the political arena? His choice of church would have to be made carefully. There are hundreds of churches in Chicago, indeed more per capita than in any city in the United States. Young Obama could easily have joined any one of them if [...]


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		<item>
		<title>What&#8217;s the Matter with Pennsylvania?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/04/whats-the-matter-with-pennsylvania/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/04/whats-the-matter-with-pennsylvania/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:35:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Friend of WSP</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=401</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From our friend at Marx and Coca Cola Recently at a campaign event Barack Obama made the following comment about the dying Rust Belt towns in Pennsylvania: You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing&#8217;s replaced them&#8230;And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it&#8217;s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren&#8217;t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. I couldn&#8217;t agree more (except for the gun part. People like guns, because like cigarettes, they&#8217;re cool). The goal of this blog is to channel working class bitterness away from religion and xenophobia into actual constructive action (I admit it&#8217;s a long term project). According to a McCain spokesman that makes me a latte-drinking, New York Times reading, Volvo drinking liberal freak show: &#8220;It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking,&#8221; [Steve] Schmidt [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Selecting a US President: the invisible primaries</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/04/selecting-a-us-president-the-invisible-primaries/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/04/selecting-a-us-president-the-invisible-primaries/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:25:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=387</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The expression &#8220;invisible primary&#8221; comes from Arthur T. Hadley, The Invisible Primary (Prentice-Hall, 1976). A more recent study refers to the &#8220;money primary&#8221; (Michael J. Goff, The Money Primary, Rowman &#38; Littlefield, 2004). The two terms refer to the same process: the efforts of would-be candidates to gather support, raise funds and cultivate the media in the year before a presidential election, before the &#8220;visible&#8221; primaries begin. Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, defines the phenomenon as &#8220;a private referendum in which the wealthiest Americans substantially preselect and predetermine who our next president will be&#8230; The hottest candidate in the check-writing sweepstakes is deemed &#8216;worthy&#8217; by the major media via hundreds of news stories&#8230; All others are dubbed losers before the first [public] votes are cast.&#8221; This slightly overstates the case. The number of candidates deemed worthy may, as this time round, be two or three. But the great majority of would-be candidates are indeed thrown out. Money and media coverage So to get through the invisible primary you need two things: money and media coverage (lots of both). Let&#8217;s look at this a bit more closely. Money and media coverage are closely connected &#8211; partly because [...]


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		<item>
		<title>What it is ain’t exactly clear</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/02/what-it-is-ain%e2%80%99t-exactly-clear/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/02/what-it-is-ain%e2%80%99t-exactly-clear/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:36:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>ROEL</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[USA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=352</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If we may go by the trend emerging from the presidential primary results so far, we very likely will see the end of the CheneyBush era next November. Voters both Democratic and Republican have turned out in large, often record-breaking numbers to make preliminary choices from among the presidential candidates who have offered themselves. This is a healthy democratic trend. According to the Pew Research Center, the upsurge in voter interest is sharpest and heaviest on the Democratic side and therefore concerns a much larger constituency than on the Republican side. More interesting, younger Democratic voters “are considerably more likely than their elders to be Hispanic, and slightly more likely to be black, more apt to say they have no religious afﬁliation and more likely to say they are ‘liberal’ in their political orientation.” Not only that, but across the board regardless of race or ethnicity, “Barack Obama won a majority of the 2008 vote among this [younger] age group in every state that has held a primary or caucus thus far with the exception of California, Arkansas, and Massachusetts Obama also had a 54%-43% advantage among the next youngest age group, those ages 30-44.” Does this suggest that the [...]


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		<item>
		<title>The Mass Debaters</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/01/the-mass-debaters/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/01/the-mass-debaters/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2008 04:42:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dr. Who</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=339</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Who has seen whiter, glossier, teeth and lies whiter and glossier still than those bared on television during the recent debates between Democrats and Republicans? The race culminating in the presidential trophy in late 2008 is solidly on, with these wealthy members of the capitalist class vying for leadership of the world’s most prosperous land, brought to them by the generous contributions of our dear readers’ unpaid surplus value. These sellers of capitalist reforms are so impeccably dressed and groomed, so charming and witty, so passionate in their determination to give a structurally exploitative society a new lease on ideological life, that it might well take an Odyssean resistance to temptation on your part to keep from falling for their well-oiled sell, written and rehearsed with a large team of marketing professionals from behind the curtains. Senator Obama, for all his oozing liberal rhetoric and strong likeability factor, while an Illinois Democratic senator has always supported a free market system. Isn’t that the one in which most of us must work so hard to produce free surplus value for our employers that we don’t even have enough free time to ourselves? One of the most popular bills that he signed [...]


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		<title>The Iowa caucuses: Wrong end of the crystal ball?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/01/the-iowa-caucuses-wrong-end-of-the-crystal-ball/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/01/the-iowa-caucuses-wrong-end-of-the-crystal-ball/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:21:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>ROEL</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[USA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=324</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We read in the Boston Globe (Friday, January 4th) that the results of the Iowa caucuses among Democrats and Republicans are important for the unprecedentedly intense grassroots interest they reveal in the upcoming presidential election. But more to the point, to the extent voters in Iowa are still trying to make those two creaky old suits of armor work, they remain profoundly clueless. On the surface, they appear to be lining up once more to perform the symbolic ritual of Throwing the Rascals Out. This time, it is true, the Rascals are a smelly bunch of radical pro-corporates quaintly christened “neoconservatives” &#8211; but who are in fact capitalist revolutionaries in the service of the military-industrial complex, out to stack the transnational energy deck in its favor. They have teamed up with an early protg, Osama bin Laden, to give political insurgency a slick new retro cachet, privatizing terrorism, which before the era of liberation struggles had always been the prerogative of the state. Now the whole corporate sham is tottering at the hustings. The Iowa Democrats who made Barack Obama’s day have never learned that the capitalist system is not designed to deliver the goods to the Little People who [...]


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