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3/28/2023 LA Schools’ Lowest-Paid Workers Walk Out, With Teachers by Their Side By: Sonali KolhatkarRead NowA massive three-day strike by school support staff and teachers recently shut down Los Angeles schools. They stand together to demand better wages and benefits for the school district’s most vulnerable workers.  Tens of thousands of Los Angeles teachers went on strike March 21-23, 2023, for the first time in four years, shutting down the nation’s second-largest school district for three rain-soaked days. But this time the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) did not walk out in order to demand better working conditions for educators. Rather, they were engaging in a remarkable act of solidarity with their lesser-paid colleagues—the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)’s support staff of about 30,000 people who are in their own union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99. It was the first time that the two unions—the largest two in Los Angeles—went on strike together. SEIU Local 99’s demands for the district to offer a 30 percent pay raise and health benefits may sound ambitious. But that’s only because the district’s campus aides, teaching assistants, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, gardeners, and other support staff make an average of only $25,000 a year with no benefits. In Southern California, where everything from housing costs, to health care, to groceries are far higher than the national average, this is an untenable wage. Although LAUSD is offering the workers a 23 percent salary raise along with a 3 percent bonus, the double-digit bump is not nearly enough to make ends meet relative to the appallingly low wages they currently earn. On March 23, 2023, the third and final day of the three-day action, thousands of workers gathered in Los Angeles State Historic Park for a final joint rally. Among them was Maria, a campus aide at Eagle Rock High School, who spoke with me and preferred not to use her last name. She tells me, “we live paycheck to paycheck, and we have to work some days unpaid on top of it all.” Suraya Duran, a community parent representative at Eagle Rock High School and member of SEIU Local 99, was also at the rally. She says, “These essential employees worked through the pandemic with no raise, no benefits, and the uncertainty of stable hours.” In contrast, Duran points out, “it’s egregious to hear that the [school] superintendent makes more than the president of the United States.” She’s referring to LAUSD’s latest head, Alberto Carvalho, who makes $440,000 annually, the most that’s ever been paid to a district superintendent in LA. It’s not as if the district can’t afford to pay its lowest-paid workers a living wage. It currently has at its disposal a $4.9 billion reserve fund, of which about $2.3 billion has not been spoken for. The unions argue that this money can and should be used to meet worker demands for higher wages. “There is money. It’s whether they choose to invest in these workers. That’s the bottom line,” says Duran. Superintendent Carvalho spun the strike to suggest the workers were letting down low-income students of color by walking out for three days. He released a statement on Twitter the day before the strike began, saying that the COVID-19 pandemic was particularly difficult for “kids who are English language learners, students in poverty and students with disabilities,” who “cannot afford to be out of school.” But Duran, whose job involves liaising between a school and parents, points out that many of the support staff’s own children attend schools in LAUSD. She says that it is common for workers to juggle multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. “They come to the school during the day, and then they’re going to a graveyard shift.” She adds, “They deserve to have a wage that is comparable to today’s standards.” Maria says, “I feel that we are underpaid, and we feel unappreciated by the district. We are the ones that get paid less, but we are the ones that make sure the campus is safe, and, most important, that the kids are safe.” The public generally considers educators as the only school workers worthy of compensation. The strike served to uplift the voices of support workers like Maria who often remain invisible, but whose jobs are essential to the functioning of schools. UTLA secretary Arlene Inouye pointed out in an op-ed that “24 percent of SEIU 99 members report that they don’t have enough to eat. One in three report that they have been homeless or at high risk of becoming homeless while working for LAUSD.” This underscores the injustice of a district sitting on more than $2 billion while relying on severely underpaid workers to continue operations. If Carvalho is so concerned about children living in poverty, he could directly address some of that by meeting the wage demands of their parents who work in the district. Instead, he ridiculed the unions in a now-deleted Tweet that SEIU Local 99 captured in a screen grab. “1,2,3…Circus = a predictable performance with a known outcome, desiring of nothing more than an applause, a coin, and a promise of a next show,” wrote Carvalho in February 2023 after the strike was announced. He added, “Let’s do right, for once, without circus, for kids, for community, for decency.” But strikes serve the explicit purpose of moving the ramifications of closed-door negotiations out into the open for all to see. Perhaps it is the visibility of LAUSD’s refusal to meet the wage demands of its lowest-paid workers that Carvalho most objected to when he referred to the strike as a “circus.” The UTLA-SEIU joint strike served a powerful narrative purpose: to highlight the appalling working conditions of tens of thousands of workers in LA public schools and to warn the district that workers have each other’s backs. Although SEIU workers and their UTLA colleagues returned to school campuses after their three-day walkout, the district has, as of this writing, remained firm on its lowball offer. However, the strike did prompt LA’s newly elected mayor Karen Bass, who initially remained on the sidelines, to get involved. Bass is now actively mediating between the district and unions. Alejandra Sanchez, a special education assistant at Eagle Rock High School, has a message for the superintendent: “Mr. Carvahlo, we are not ‘clowning around’ as you implied [in your tweet]; we are here today as one, UTLA and SEIU, fighting together for a better future, for respect, better wages, and stable hours. Our work is not a joke.” Highlighting the solidarity between teachers and support staff and their refusal to stay silent, one teacher at Sanchez’s school wore a rain poncho while picketing that sported the words, “Hey Carvalho, in our ‘circus,’ you’re the saddest clown.” AuthorSonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Archives March 2023
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3/28/2023 How the Cuban Government and Its People Collaborated on the Family Code By: Natalia MarquesRead NowRevolutionary Havana youth describe the process of building legislation in dialogue with the people.  On September 25, 2022, Cuba passed one of the world’s most progressive codes on families. All in one go, the small island nation legalized same-sex marriage, defined and upheld the rights of children, the disabled, caregivers, and the elderly, and redefined “family” along ties of affinity rather than blood. This opens the concept of “family” to include nontraditional forms of familial relations, which exist outside the model of the heterosexual nuclear family. Hailed as “revolutionary” by many in Cuba, the code will help provide protections to people who would have otherwise faced discrimination in society while ensuring that Cubans in same-sex relationships who wish to marry now have the legal right to do so. According to young Cubans and social movement leaders, whom I spoke to about the Family Code while attending a conference titled “Building Our Future” in Havana in November 2022, the code is a reflection of a dialogue between the Cuban people and their government. In the time since the code was passed, the Cuban government remains in dialogue with the people. The Ministry of Justice is still holding seminars in provinces throughout Cuba for people seeking answers to questions that have come up during the implementation process. The Family Code has been influencing everything from sports to property relations. Notably, in just the first two months of the law being passed, 112 same-sex marriages were registered. A Revolutionary Code “It’s a revolutionary code that will change the thinking and the vision that Cubans have regarding… discriminations that can happen in society,” said Jose Luiz, a third-year international relations student at the Higher Institute of International Relations Raul Roa García. The Family Code legalizes and broadens the definition of a “family” far beyond the traditional definition. The code “will bring new protections to people who have, in one way or another, been discriminated against,” Luiz told me. Cuba ratified a new constitution in 2019. The constitution was written through “popular consultations” with the Cuban people. Through this process, Cubans participated in community discussions with government officials to both discuss and amend the constitution. Article 68, which called for defining marriage as a union between two people, thus legalizing same-sex marriage, was mentioned in 66 percent of popular consultation meetings. A majority of the Cuban people involved in these processes supported maintaining the definition of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman. This is partly due to historic prejudices against LGBTQ+ people that are prevalent across the Americas, and partly due to Cuba’s growing conservative evangelical movement, which opposes progressive social reforms such as same-sex marriage. After intense debate regarding Article 68 among the Cuban people, the constitutional commission decided not to include the proposed language in favor of same-sex marriage and instead pushed the decision of addressing the matter through a future “family code” legislation. This legislation became the 2022 Family Code. ‘Popular Consultation’: A Government in Dialogue With Its People In order to overcome social conservatism to pass one of the most progressive Family Codes in the world, Cuba underwent a meticulous process of popular consultation, from February 1, 2022, to April 30, 2022. The National Assembly of People’s Power stressed the importance of Cubans familiarizing themselves with the code, in order to prevent feelings of uncertainty. Through this process, the Cuban people made more than 400,000 proposals, many of which were included in the finalized code. Minister of Justice Oscar Manuel Silvera Martínez said that the 25th version of the code, presented to and approved by the National Assembly, “was more solid because it was imbued with the wisdom of the people.” Young people played a central role in the process leading up to the approval of the Family Code. “The Cuban youth… are involved in all tasks that are deployed by the Cuban revolution,” said Luiz. “We also participated in our referendum for our constitution in 2019. We were in popular committees, discussing the constitution and we contributed to that.” In 2019, Cuba held a referendum on a new constitution. The referendum passed with a majority vote of 86.85 percent, which is about 73.3 percent of the total electorate. The referendum was preceded by a popular consultation process, in which a draft constitution was discussed in 133,000 public meetings nationwide, where the people of Cuba submitted 783,000 proposals for changes. Cuban officials stated that almost 60 percent of the draft constitution was modified based on the proposals submitted by the public during the popular consultation process. “I remember at my college, we had meetings to explain the [Family Code], and for us as students to give our perspective of the code and propose something for the code,” Neisser Liban Calderón García, also a Cuban international relations student, told me. “But after we did that at college, we had the same thing in our community, with a different perspective because at college we are with our friends, with [other] students; but in the community, we are with people from all ages and from different families.” García, who has a boyfriend, told me that he is glad that he will now have the opportunity to marry in the future. The results of this popular process speak for themselves: With 74.01 percent of eligible voters participating, the Family Code passed in a landslide victory with 66.87 percent of votes in favor. “The day that… [the Cuban people] voted for the Family Code in the popular referendum, I also participated directly in the polling station,” said Luiz. “I could see the high participation of the people in the process, and the high acceptance and eagerness for the approval of the code.” As Luiz mentioned, some young people had the opportunity to participate in an even more direct way. “Through the University Student Federation [FEU], we have meetings with the leadership of the country. For example, my institute had a meeting with the president. And in that meeting, we described the vision we have as revolutionary and communist youths, the vision we have of the change that needs to happen regarding the base and the leaders of the country,” Luiz said. “We have a voice [as youth] in every space that we have, including the president of FEU [who at the time was law student Karla Santana]. She is part of the National Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba. And she shares her perspective with the Cuban government regarding the thinking of the youth and its tradition in the Cuban revolution.” Gretel Marante Roset, international relations officer for the Federation of Cuban Women, told me that the women of Cuba played a special role in the process of creating the Family Code. “Our commander in chief [Fidel Castro] said that the Federation of Cuban Women is a revolution within another revolution. Women in Cuba are beneficiaries and protagonists of our own development.” Women hold half of all national parliamentary seats in Cuba. “The Federation of Cuban Women was part of the commission writing the draft of the Family Code to propose the text and interpretation of gender equality,” Marante Roset told me. “About the Family Code, I think that the document is for the future. It is based on love… recognizing other types of families, joint human rights… I think that this is the future for Cuba,” Marante Roset said. AuthorNatalia Marques is a writer at Peoples Dispatch, an organizer, and a graphic designer based in New York City. This article was produced in partnership by Peoples Dispatch and Globetrotter. Archives March 2023 3/28/2023 France: Over 1 Million People Participate in Protests Against Pension Reform By: Orinoco TribuneRead Now
Trash cans burning in Paris, France, as protests continue in the country against the government's pension reform. Photo: AP/Jean-Francois Badias.
Over one million people participated in demonstrations against the pension reform bill across France, according to the French Interior Ministry, while unions give the estimate at over three million.
The Interior Ministry said 1.089 million demonstrators took to the streets in France on Thursday, March 23, double the number present at the previous manifestation on March 15; however, it was less than at the demonstrations on January 19, 31 and March 7, the French media reported. Then, the number of protesters reportedly amounted to around 1.2 million. However, France’s largest union, CGT, reported that a record 3.5 million people took part in the protests across the whole country. The Paris demonstrations gathered around 120,000 people, according to the police, while according to the union, 800,000 people participated. Clashes between black bloc radicals and law enforcement officers broke out in the French capital during today’s protests. A Sputnik correspondent reported that the police used tear gas to disperse protesters who managed to reach the Place de la Republique, demanding the area be cleared through loudspeakers. A water cannon was also seen at the scene. As of Thursday evening, 80 people were detained across France, and some 120 police officers were injured, French Interior Ministry said.
Moreover, during a demonstration in the city of Rouen, a 40-year-old woman had her thumb blown off by a grenade, local media reported. Her injuries were seen to by medical workers. The report said the injured woman was a college teacher and had two children.
In the southwestern city of Bordeux protests and clashes saw fire engulf the front door of the city’s town hall building. Although it remained unclear who exactly ignited the flames, the blaze was later extinguished by officials.
France’s leading unions announced that the 10th nationwide protest against the pension reform would take place on March 28, according to local TV.
Later in the day, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne commented on clashes between the demonstrators and police. “The violence and damage we saw today are unacceptable. I am grateful to the police and emergency services that were mobilized,” Borne said on Twitter.
On March 16, Borne announced that the government had adopted a law on raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030 by invoking Article 49.3 of the constitution, which allowed the bill to get passed without parliamentary approval. The decision sparked a strong backlash, prompting people to take to the streets across the country.
The opposition tried to prevent the adoption of the law on Monday through a vote of no confidence in the French government, but failed to secure an absolute majority in the parliament twice. There have been several nationwide strikes and hundreds of demonstrations in France within the last two months, with over 1 million people taking part in most of them. During the protests, clashes often broke out between the police and the protesters. Author
this article was republished from Orinoco Tribune.
ArchivesMarch 2023  It is said that even “a broken clock is right twice a day,” meaning that even a buffoon or a criminal (e.g. somebody like former US President Trump, who is both in equal measure) is capable of a correct opinion or cogent utterance. This has never been truer than with a recent foreign policy speech Trump gave wherein he spoke with refreshing clarity about the real threat to the American people, arguing that it comes not from abroad but from within. “The greatest threat to Western civilization today is not Russia, it’s probably more than anything else ourselves,” he declared, specifically condemning the “horrible, USA-hating people that represent us.” “These globalists want to squander all of America’s strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they’re creating here at home,” Trump said. He slammed the “entire globalist neocon establishment,” “defense bureaucracy” and NATO, as it is currently organized and funded – viz. the tools of the US empire. He pointed to a “sick and corrupt establishment” in need of eviction, asserting that “these forces are doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed.” He argued that “the abolition of our national borders,” a rising crime rate, and “the collapsing of the nuclear family and fertility rates” threatened the country more than any foreign power. He also alluded to the gutting of America’s manufacturing base, condemning “the globalist class that has made us totally dependent on China and other foreign countries that basically hate us.’ Not Up to the Task In a time of rampant warmongering from Democrats and Republicans alike, Trump’s speech came as a breath of fresh air. But he still gets it wrong most of the time, and no one should suppose that a second stint in the White House would be any less disastrous than his first. Recall that as much as Trump may have wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq, the same neocon establishment he rails against now prevented his doing so. It’s also impossible to overlook his role in the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Suliamani, his deployment of the MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) in Afghanistan, and his continuing coziness with the Israel Lobby, at the expense of the Palestinians and American security. So Trump was, and would again become, either a liar and hypocrite, or too weak as president to effectively take on the despised deep state. However, it’s just as undeniable that his calling out US aggression presents an opportunity for leftists to recruit from the Trump fandom, finding common ground in opposition to the empire. Who are you calling ‘Marxist?’ Alongside crime and fertility rates, the “globalist class,” and the rest of Trump’s litany of internal threats to the US, we find his assertion that “the Marxists” are also part of the problem, who he says “would have us become a godless nation, worshiping at the altar of race and gender and environment.” On the one hand, this is a kind of political hangover on his part; an instance of embarrassing Boomer paranoia. But more significantly, it’s also an indictment of the synthetic left of the present generation; of professed “Marxists” who care more about feminism, gender ideology or racial grievance than they do about the liberation of working people, all of whom (regardless of color or gender) deserve to partake in the country’s prosperity and a voice in its destiny; this means, at minimum, a living wage, guaranteed education, housing and healthcare, ample free time and family leave. One look at the way that social justice issues of equity and inclusion are co-opted time after time by the corporate elite and billionaire class should tell anyone how much real “Marxism” can be found in them. And it is not “the Marxists” who would transform the US into a godless nation: The capitalists have already accomplished this. Neither are Marxists to blame for the “collapse of the nuclear family and fertility rates,” when the fault is rather with the capitalist elite, to whom you and I appear more like livestock than like fellow human beings, worthy of happy families and dignified, prosperous lives. There is so much to applaud in Trump’s anti-imperialist message, and while we may dare hope to overthrow the entrenched US establishment and its endless global entanglements, it does not follow that he is the one for the job. Our task is to take what’s correct and valuable in that message and to transplant it; to see it take root in the anti-capitalism that American workers so desperately need. The sooner, the better! AuthorPaul Shepard This article was republished from The Revolution Report. Archives March 2023 As we demand an end to the U.S. war machine, peace and an end to imperialism everywhere, we have to take the time to talk about the current political situation in Haiti. It has been reported that in coordination with Washington, Canada has begun a “significant military deployment in Haiti,” as admitted by the Canadian Ambassador to Haiti, Sébastien Carrière. Carrière continued by saying, “We took over … We delivered armor. There have been two deliveries since October. There would be a third delivery in the next few days, and another one later in February. There is this CP-140 surveillance operation, intelligence sharing, there are ships arriving. Listen, it’s still military deployment in a significant way.” Devastating weapons, mass surveillance technology and Canadian soldiers have been on the ground in Haiti for weeks to further repress the nation. But this isn’t new for the first free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti has been under attack by imperialists since its revolution in 1804. The U.S. slave-owning class, threatened by Haiti’s successful revolution, chose to isolate Haiti economically and politically, refusing to accept a free Black-led republic. While France agreed to recognize Haitian independence in 1825, they did so in exchange for the large sum of 150 million franc for the loss of “property” — the formerly-enslaved Black people of Haiti. Faced with isolation, Haiti felt obligated to pay this debt of $21 billion over 122 years — paying France until 1893, and then the United States until 1947 — keeping Haiti in a constant state of debt. Imperialist forces of France, United States and Germany interfered with Haitian affairs leading to desabilization in the country, the assassination of Haiti’s president in 1915, and the U.S. military invasion and occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1947. As detailed in Eugene Puryear’s analysis, “Haiti: between a rock and a revolution,” foreign military interventions and occupations have been “efforts to destroy the popular revolution spirit of the Haitian people who have faced 2 coups, 3 dictators, 2 foreign military occupations, multiple death squads, 4 straight dodgy elections since 2006, 1 presidential assassination,” and a range of exploitative trade deals.  A U.S. Marine and a UN soldier in Haiti during a 2010 deployment. Public domain. Now-exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide attempted to recover the billions stolen by France in 2003, and was removed from office through a coup d’état. In fact, it was a U.S. Navy SEAL team that removed Aristide from his home in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre on Feb. 29, 2004. Immediately thereafter, the United States, Canada and France landed troops in Haiti, militarily occupying the country for the following three months. These same occupying countries met with the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank to have them pledge monetary “aid” to help strengthen Haiti’s police state to maintain peace and stability, and to respond effectively to civil unrest while “respecting human civil rights,” which resulted in a loan of $410 million to the financially victimized nation. This same predatory approach to aid was applied towards Haiti after the 2010 earthquake when $13 billion in funds raised for Haiti never made it to the Haitian people. Meanwhile, Haiti has over an 80% unemployment rate, while 60% of the population lives on less than $2 per day, with a minimum wage of $7.50 per day. Is the struggle in Haiti really about gangs? Peaceful worker protests in Haiti are often met with violence. Through varying decrees made by the Moïse regime, all protests have been characterized as “terrorism” and incentive structures for police officers have been created to increase their violence against civil society. And now the already violent national police have even more violent, racist support with this new intervention. Moïse was unable to control the protests and so dissolved the parliament, the judiciary and ruled by decree in dictatorial fashion until he was assassinated in 2021. But where do these so-called gangs come from? The rise of “gang violence” has followed the rise of the mass popular movement in Haiti. Haitian elites have deployed paramilitary forces to try to “repress and intimidate” this huge popular movement against poverty wages in order to protect their private property. This has continued with state repression and paramilitary forces. Anyone is seen as a gang member when it comes to putting profit over people. After Aristide’s removal in 2004, in June of that year, the United States handed the occupation of Haiti to the low-paid, multinational army called the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti or MINUSTAH. Since the early 2000s, “MINUSTAH is how the U.S. has outsourced its control of Haiti,” author and activist Bill Quigley explained. MINUSTAH has helped to fortify the U.S./UN presence in Haiti. In 2010, Nepalese UN soldiers introduced cholera into the country. In her article, “Call for UN to help Haitians affected by cholera,” Victoria Klassen states: “The peacekeeping mission inadvertently introduced cholera into Haiti’s most extensive water source in October 2010, after sewage leaked from a UN camp housing cholera-infected peacekeepers. Since 2010, confirmed cholera infections have claimed around 10,000 lives and infected over 820,000 people in the country leading to over 10,000 deaths.” In “The UN let off peacekeepers involved in a Haitian boy’s rape” journalist Amy Bracken reported, “But it’s here, in early 2012, that local youths reported seeing UN police in a vehicle sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy who is mentally disabled.” As the title states, no UN “peacekeepers” ever faced accountability. And that is just one reported case of the violence that these invasions and occupations have caused the Haitian people. Destabilizing what was once the colonial gem of the French empire is a critical strategy in all of this. Various UN occupations have literally uprooted Haitian elected democracy and led to installments of puppet regimes, while state institutions were dissolved at a whim, as we see in the case of Haiti’s current Prime Minister Ariel Henry. And the Haitian people don’t want any UN intervention at all — no matter what is “reported.” Since October of last year, hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been taking to the streets across the country demanding the resignation of the U.S.-backed de-facto president Ariel Henry and his administration — and NO UN solution in Haiti, NO MINUSTAH. The Haitian people are demanding concrete responses to their needs. They are demanding resolution to the nation’s food insecurity, rampant inflation and severe fuel shortages. Haitians demand that the de-facto government withdraw. “… July 2021, a few days after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse a gallon (3.78 liters) of unleaded 95 has increased in price by 128%, from 250 to 570 gourdes (2.11 to 4.83 euros), while the price of diesel and kerosene is now nearly 670 gourdes, representing a 90% surge,” as reported by Jean-Michel Hauteville of Le Monde. This is a surge that is choking Haitians at the request of the International Monetary Fund. But most importantly, the Haitian people demand that we — workers, anti-imperialists and radicals of the world — unite with Haiti, uplift its self-determination and say ‘NO’ to any UN intervention in Haiti, wherever we are and in all our work. Haiti hasn’t been silent and for Haiti’s sake, neither can we. AuthorKerbie Joseph this article was republished by Liberation News. Archives March 2023 3/26/2023 Starbucks workers take nationwide coffee break and walk off the job. By: Mark Gruenberg, John Bachtell, Roberta Wood & Scott MarshallRead Now Striking Starbucks workers took the lovable skeleton mascot out of the closet where their bosses had confined it, saying the skeleton was treated as badly as the workers. | Roberta Wood/PW CHICAGO — How did Marvin, a lovable skeleton, become the mascot of striking Starbucks workers in this city’s historic Greektown neighborhood? This location is blocks north of the giant University of Illinois campus. It is one of more than a hundred stores in the country where the workers filed for union representation and voted to join today’s strike, even before the NLRB had a chance to schedule their union recognition vote. According to the baristas here, management’s treatment of Marvin corresponds to their treatment of the workers and their community. Marvin “came to life” one year during the Halloween season when workers hung Marvin in the window, and he became a neighborhood fixture, decked out to celebrate whatever holiday was going on, bringing smiles to the faces of both staff and community. “But then Starbucks District Manager Lesley Davis said we couldn’t have him,” explained Chris Allen, 22, a shift supervisor. Davis banished the beloved Marvin to the back of the house, out of sight. “It sucks having someone else make all the decisions when you’re doing all the work daily,” Lily Haneghan, 23, told People’s World. Haneghan admitted when co-workers first discussed forming a union, she was scared. “I had no idea what a union was, and then my boss said, ‘If you unionize, you will get fired.’” That was a big threat to someone who had invested the last five years of her young life working for the company. But then she reflected, “They think of us as coffee robots. There’s no concern for our physical and emotional well-being.” Haneghan and Allen were co-strike captains.
The national Starbucks strike on March 22, at more than 115 stores from Anchorage and Arkansas to Seattle and Phoenix, preceded the showdown at the firm’s annual meeting over whether its union-busting is hurting the so-called progressive coffee chain’s brand. The baristas and their allies walked out to protest the firm’s rampant labor law-breaking, orchestrated and directed by longtime CEO Howard Schultz. The labor law-breaking prompted union pension funds and pro-stockholder investors to demand an independent audit of the impact of the law-breaking, which also defies the firm’s proclaimed standards. The proposal came up at its Zoomed annual meeting on March 23. “The faux progressivism of Starbucks is being exposed for what it is: A marketing ploy,” said Starbucks Workers United (SWU), the union-sponsored group aiding the grass-roots organizing drive nationally. The National Labor Relations Board filed federal charges against Schultz personally and over 500 charges it levied against the company. The number of complaints from exploited Starbucks workers to the NLRB is 1,200 and counting. “The One Day Longer national unfair labor practices (ULP) strike demanded Starbucks fully staff all stores, give partners a real seat at the table, not an empty chair, and negotiate a contract in good faith,” SWU said. That’s exactly what Schultz, his union-buster lawyers, and his managers haven’t done. The only two bargaining sessions the two sides ever had—after pressure on Schultz—lasted five minutes each, with the bosses, led by the union buster, walking out.
More than six years with Starbucks Sean Plotts has worked six and a half years for Starbucks, including two and a half years as a shift manager at the Lincoln Village location in Chicago. A recent graduate, he holds an associate in arts degree from McHenry County College. “They were once cutting edge in the fast food industry, but other companies have caught up. They are brutally cracking down on stores going union,” said Plotts. Less than 300 stores are unionized out of 28,000, and 900 unfair labor practices are already filed with NLRB. “All we’re asking,” Plotts said, “is to be treated fairly, paid well for our services, and given the resources to serve the public. We love this job, but it’s stressful when they’re cutting hours and cutting floor coverage to save a couple of extra bucks at the end of the day.” Plotts described this as a “union-busting” tactic, adding, “They want to flush out many tired employees. We’re all tired. People shouldn’t have to work as long as they do for little pay just so the stores can get a couple hundred more dollars at the end of the day.” So far, Starbucks refuses to recognize the union at the Lincoln Village location. “We’ve had one bargaining session which lasted eight minutes, including introductions,” said Plotts, who expressed gratitude for public support for the strikers. Shot the hours back Another Lincoln Village worker, Autumn Graham, who sports shoulder-length hair, has been with Starbucks for five years. He started in St. Louis and moved to Chicago because of a toxic work environment at the store there. “I worked at a store on Bryn Mawr Avenue (in Chicago),” he said. “We unionized in May, and they shut us down in October. We and the Clark and Ridge store were the first to organize in Chicago. They just stonewalled us. Cutting our work without telling us anything and then shutting it down and assigning us to other stores. Graham depends on Starbucks’ health benefits, as meager as they are, and needs to work full-time to pay his bills. The company has slashed his hours, making life difficult. “If you work 20 hours, you get benefits. Many workers struggle to get to 20, only get 17, and are denied benefits. When we unionized, they cut our hours from 20-25 to 15 hours and denied us benefits,” he said. “Recently, they shot the hours back up because we’ve lost a lot of staff. They say business is slow, but I know from the receipts that we’re as busy as before. They ask us to do more with fewer people,” said Graham. “If you’re a Starbucks customer, just fill out the review on your receipt and write ‘support the union, come to the negotiating table,'” he said. “They need to quit making excuses.” Across the country, workers in 24 stores in California—including two in Sacramento and one each in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—joined them. Back East, so did workers in Boston, six stores in metro D.C., three in the Baltimore area, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Flint, Mich., Buffalo, St. Louis, and St. Paul, Minn., among others. “As Starbucks celebrates their provenance and record profits this week, my partners have to deal with the reality that we are being nickeled and dimed to extract as much labor as cheaply as possible,” said Maria Flores of Queens, N.Y. “Our shift supervisors, who make maybe $4 more an hour than baristas, are being met with resistance when picking up barista shifts or working with other shift supervisors, and they’re struggling. Where is the disconnect? “I’m striking because the power of workers can save the world. Our union is small but now unstoppable, and we’re ready to start making moves. The walls are closing in on Starbucks and when we negotiate I think the flood gates might open!” “Workers unite!” her Queens colleague James Carr predicted. “I’m excited to get out onto the streets with the people, enjoy the weather, and withhold my labor from Starbucks.” “I’m excited to join the national effort in striking! It’s so reassuring and reaffirming to be a part of something that’s bigger than just Long Island. I hope Starbucks corporate starts accepting and joining us in solidarity,” said Lynbrook, L.I., worker Liv Ryan. The workers and SWU have won union recognition elections at 294 Starbucks stores and file daily for votes at more stores. The latest unionized stores are in Oak Park, Ill., at Lake St. and Euclid, plus Pleasanton and Sunnyvale, Calif., Ashland and Portland, Ore.—at Portland State University, and Cameron, N.C. Its latest wins were in Portland, at the Pioneer Courthouse, at 10th and Market Streets in downtown Philadelphia, at Litchfield Park, Ariz., and in Hillsboro, Ore.
“Starting in May, Starbucks forced baristas and supervisors at those three Seattle stores to reapply for their existing positions under the premise of organizing the three stores into their own mini-district, where partners would be expected to work shifts at all three locations. “Workers had no chance to say goodbye to coworkers and lost the sense of stability they had been counting on. They were also subjected to multiple meetings where managers illegally solicited grievances and promised improvements to prevent unionizing. “The NLRB has filed a consolidated complaint for these three stores, and included in the remedy is the requirement that the company stop holding these meetings to solicit grievances and to ‘make whole’ the employees who were not rehired, and were functionally pushed out of their own stores.” We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, please support great working-class and pro-people journalism by donating to People’s World. AuthorAward-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but a holy terror when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners. El galardonado periodista Mark Gruenberg es el director de la oficina de People's World en Washington, D.C. También es editor del servicio de noticias sindicales Press Associates Inc. (PAI). This article was republished from Peoples World. Archives March 2023  Workers walked out of the Flint Assembly Plant in the 2019 General Motors strike. In a runoff election, UAW members have elected a full slate of reformers to lead the union into this year's Big 3 auto bargaining and beyond. Photo: Jake May/The Flint Journal via AP. The machine will churn no more. Nearly 80 years of top-down one-party rule in the United Auto Workers are coming to an end. Reformer Shawn Fain is set to be the winner in the runoff for the UAW presidency. As of Thursday night, Fain had a 505-vote edge, 69,386 to 68,881, over incumbent Ray Curry of the Administration Caucus. Curry was appointed by the union’s executive board in 2021. There are around 600 unresolved challenged ballots. (This story will be updated with the final vote tally when we have it.) “By now, the writing is on the wall: change is coming to the UAW,” said Fain. “You, the members, have already made history in this election, and we’re just getting started. It’s a new day in the UAW.” It’s a stunning upset in one of the nation’s most storied unions. Once Fain’s victory is conclusive—after remaining challenged ballots are counted—he will join Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, who ran on the Members United slate and won outright in the first round, and a majority of the International Executive Board, giving reformers control of the direction of the union. The UAW Members United slate won every race it challenged—a clear rebuke to the old guard. “Thousands of UAW members put countless hours into this historic campaign to take back our union,” said Fain. “I thank those members—no matter who they voted for—for taking an active role in our union. “But thousands of members have lost faith, after years of corruption at the top and concessions at the bottom,” he continued. “Our job now is to put the members back in the driver’s seat, regain the trust of the rank and file, and put the companies on notice. We are ending give-back unionism and company control in the UAW.” PHOTO FINISHFain is an electrician from Kokomo, Indiana, and on the staff of the international union. “Shawn Fain ran a campaign on the promise of true reform in the UAW,” said Justin Mayhugh, a General Motors worker at the Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City and a member of Unite All Workers for Democracy, the caucus formed in 2019 to fight for members’ right to vote on top officers. UAWD backed Fain’s UAW Members United slate. “That message has resonated with the members of our union who are ready for change,” Mayhugh said. “He ran a campaign based on the needs of the rank and file, and because of that, he was able to overcome the many entrenched advantages Curry enjoyed during this election process. It’s a truly historic moment for our union.” And not a moment too soon. The Big 3 auto contracts with Ford, GM, and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) expire in six months, and the industry is undergoing major changes with the rise of electric vehicles. The Big 3 now have less than half of the domestic auto market and more than half of all U.S. auto workers are non-union. Agreements with the Canadian union Unifor covering some 20,000 auto workers at the Big 3 also expire in September. “We are putting the Big 3 on notice: they should get ready to negotiate with a UAW where the membership is back in charge of this union,” Fain told Labor Notes in December after the first round of the election, where reformers won five seats outright. LONG TIME COMINGThe last time a reformer had won a seat on the UAW board was in 1986, when Jerry Tucker of the New Directions Movement became a regional director. New Directions coalesced a group of reformers into a rank-and-file resistance movement in the 1980s and early 1990s. And going back even further, the last contested election for the presidency, except for Tucker’s run for president in 1991 and other symbolic runs, was in 1946 between RJ Thomas and Walter Reuther, heading opposing caucuses. Reuther won and purged the Communists from the UAW staff and defeated or co-opted other opponents. He consolidated his power in a 1947 sweep that accomplished what historian Nelson Lichtenstein describes as “nothing less than the elimination of his rivals from all posts in the UAW hierarchy.” “The UAW in the ’40s was known for this intense internal democracy,” said Lichtenstein, author of Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit. “And hopefully, with the victory of Shawn Fain, he’s not going to create a new machine. There are going to be contested elections from now on, and that’s a good, healthy thing. It brings in the rank and file and energizes people.” BUMPS AHEADThe UAW has 400,000 members and a strike fund of a billion dollars. The new leaders campaigned on a militant approach to organizing, internal democracy, and solidarity against tiers, similar to the leadership shakeup in the Teamsters in 2021. The Members United slogan was “No Corruption, No Concessions, No Tiers.” They face steep challenges. The union has seen a membership decline in its core manufacturing sector. The GM division, for example, is today about 11 percent of its 450,000-member heyday in the 1970s. Attempts to organize auto factories in the South have failed, including at a Nissan plant in Mississippi in 2017 and a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee in 2019. Other organizing opportunities are on the horizon. Ford will build four new factories to produce electric vehicle batteries and electric F-Series pickup trucks in Kentucky and Tennessee by 2025, employing 11,000 workers. To shore up numbers, the union has brought in university workers in recent years, now accounting for 20 percent of members. University of California graduate employees, coming off a recent strike, went overwhelmingly for Fain, defying local leaders who supported Curry. Graduate worker turnout was very low, however, and they were a modest part of Fain’s vote total, 2.5 percent. GOOD CONTRACTS ORGANIZEThe new leaders will need to fight for stronger contracts at existing shops while launching new organizing campaigns. Scott Houldieson, an electrician at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant and a founding member of UAWD, says these goals are mutually dependent. “When you’re negotiating concessionary contracts, it doesn’t help your organizing strategy at all,” said Houldieson. “In fact, it gives talking points to the anti-union forces. “And while we have to do both at the same time—bargain strong contracts and do new organizing—we will do better at organizing the unorganized if we can first organize to fight back,” he continued. “The rank and file is fed up with our union officers taking the company line, each and every time we have an issue, whether it be contract negotiations or grievance settlements.” The Big 3 are hauling in record profits, but they continue to lose market share to non-union automakers. Electric vehicle battery plants and federal investments that are part of a green industrial policy provide an opportunity to organize workers in new manufacturing jobs. CONCESSIONS KEY BEEFUAWD’s campaign for one-member-one-vote was seen as a long shot when it began in 2019. Even the union’s Internal Review Board once described the union as functioning like a “one-party state.” But then an investigation by the Justice Department laid bare longstanding corruption in the union, including embezzlement, kickbacks, and collusion with employers. Thirteen union officials went to jail, including two former presidents. The consent decree that resulted from the corruption scandals made it possible for members to decide whether they wanted to directly elect their officers, as opposed to a convention delegate system. In December 2021, UAW members voted 63.6 percent in support of electing top officers through one-member-one-vote. But the financial chicanery at the top was not enough to galvanize the rank and file, says retired Local 1700 President Bill Parker. “Corruption was a minor issue,” said Parker. “The real problem was that the union no longer fought the company, going back to the early ’80s when it began granting concessions, and then it all went downhill from there.” The union began giving away concessions at Chrysler beginning in 1979. Ford and GM followed suit with demands for ever-deeper givebacks. “People want the union to challenge management,” said Parker, “not lay down in front of them. So they want the collective power of the union, not just to reform the union, but to aggressively change the union into a fighting institution." RETIREES VOTE FOR CHANGEBut the discontent has had a slow build-up. Take retirees from locals whose factories closed. Parker says they felt abandoned by the union and were favorable to reformers in both rounds of the election. (We can’t tell how most retirees voted because their votes are mixed with those of active members. But we can see how retirees from closed locals voted.) “Forty or 50 years ago, when I started out, retirees were solidly in the camp of the Administration Caucus,” he said, “because at the time, the Administration was doing things like negotiating improvements in the pension and bonuses. “Then in 2007, during contract negotiations, the union agreed to two tiers.” Now “the majority of Chrysler workers are second-tier employees with no pension, no retiree health care, and they’re treated poorly in the plant.” At Chrysler Local 1268, where the company has indefinitely “idled” the Belvidere Assembly Plant where 1,350 UAW members work, workers voted over 70 percent for Fain. “The sad reality of this is, over the last year and a half, since President Curry’s been in power… the company has awarded more than three different products, and Belvidere could have had every one of those,” Fain said on a Facebook livestream last December. “They’ve had ample opportunity to take on the company and to get product there, and prevent thousands of layoffs.” BUILDING HOPE Anger has propelled rank and filers into leadership. But the flip side of anger is lack of hope. “The new administration is going to have to start giving the members some confidence,” said Houldieson. “Right now, they lack confidence, and for good reason—they’ve been beaten down by corporate unionism for decades now. So we’re going to have to work on building a contract campaign that gives the membership more confidence than they’ve had in a long time.” This attitude of resignation partly explains the low turnout in the election (14 percent of the 400,000 active members and 600,000 retirees) and the slim margin of victory. In addition, reformers said that members struggled to get information about the candidates in order to make an informed decision. At first, the AC had relied on the sleepy internal life of the union to protect it from the insurgents and tried to pretend the election wasn’t happening, giving it little publicity. “The Administration Caucus didn’t campaign much in the first round because they thought they had it in the bag,” said Houldieson. “They are used to just having their way.” But they hadn’t faced a one-member-one-vote election before. After the reformers’ victories in December, the AC roused from its lethargy and Curry pulled out all the stops. His strategy was to get Administration Caucus loyalists—appointed and elected officials—to campaign in Ford locals, the home base of his running mate Chuck Browning, who has been the UAW vice president in charge of Ford. Their message was that Fain, from Stellantis, would somehow discriminate against Ford workers. Curry, who was an assembler at Freightliner Trucks in North Carolina before he became a union official, won in Region 1A to the west of Detroit and also won in large Ford plants in Region 8 in the South, where turnout increased by 41 percent in the runoff. Fain took a majority in the union’s other seven regions. REBELLION FROM BELOWPlucked from the shop floor, UAW Members United challenger Daniel Vicente won the runoff vote for director of Region 9, which covers western and central New York, New Jersey, and most of Pennsylvania. What motivated him to seek union office? Vicente, a machine operator and a convention delegate representing Local 644 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, credited a hazardous incident at his current job at Dometic, which makes steering control cables for boats, and the short shrift a local union official paid him once he brought the incident to his attention. His nerve was steeled at the July UAW convention in Detroit when he saw delegates, in the convention’s closing hours, reverse their previous vote to boost strike pay—at the AC’s request. In a heartfelt Facebook post on March 3, Vicente wrote about growing up in a blue-collar family and the bonds of solidarity he has forged with fellow workers on the shop floor, writing about a co-worker, Mohamed Aitqol: “You and I have pulled 12 hours shifts together, we sweated it out in the summers and froze half to death in the winters on these machines.” He promised to carry with him that spirit of solidarity as he travels Region 9 to meet with local members and leaders to together transform the union. “The race is done, so now the hard part begins,” he said. Read an interview with Daniel Vicente here. AuthorLuis Feliz Leon is a staff writer and organizer with Labor Notes.luis@labornotes.org This article was republished from Labor Notes. Archives March 2023  *This is an elongated version of a speech for the International Manifesto Group and Midwestern Marx Institute co-hosted event on the Paris Commune’s Significance. To attend Sunday March 19th at 10 am EST click HERE. You may also find the recording after the event in the IMG’s YouTube Channel HERE and in the Midwestern Marx Institute’s YouTube Channel HERE. I would like to thank the International Manifesto Group for hosting this event, and for inviting me to say a few words about the relevance of that heroic experiment in socialist democracy which took place 152 years ago. My discussion of the Paris Commune’s relevance, and of the relevance of Marx and Engels’s reflections on it, will revolve around three key points. First, the worldview through which Marx and Engels approach the Paris Commune. Second, the conclusions they derived from their study of the Commune, how the Commune helped them refine and concretize their understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and what relevance these have today. Third, if we are faithful to the worldview through which Marx and Engels approach the Commune – and not limit ourselves to simply accepting the conclusions, we come to see that after 152 years since the birth of the Commune, we have had many socialist experiments from which we can learn in ways similar to Marx and Engels with the Paris Commune. The experience of these offers us many lessons – I would like to mention just two of them: 1 – the necessity of developing the productive forces, the sciences and technologies, and the military capacities of the state to protect its sovereignty from imperialism; and 2 – the necessity of adapting socialism to the conditions of the context it is taking root in. 1- Marx and Engels’s Approach to the CommuneAs I am sure most know, in September 1870, six months before the establishment of the Paris Commune, Marx would say that “any attempt at upsetting the new government in the present crisis, when the enemy is almost knocking at the doors of Paris, would be a desperate folly.”[1] In the coming months, as the antagonism between the bourgeois government and the armed workers developed, an attempt was made in March 18th 1871 to disarm the workers. The workers refused to give up arms, and war between Paris and the French government ensued. The Commune was elected on March 26, and proclaimed on the 28th. As the situation unfolded, Marx was turned from a skeptic to an ardent supporter of the Communard’s actions. Less than a month after the Commune was proclaimed, he would go on to say, “what resilience, what historical initiative, what a capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians!” They were “storming the heavens,” and “History has no like example of [such] greatness.”[2] I think the significance of this transition in Marx is often undermined. Over the last century, large sections of the Western left have expected the socialist and anti-colonial people’s movements which have arisen in the global South and East to measure up to their standards of what socialism ought to be. If these movements fail to meet the purity with which socialism is treated in their minds, they are condemned by the Western left as ‘authoritarian,’ ‘Stalinist,’ ‘state capitalist,’ or ‘not real socialism’ (which is my personal favorite because of its paradoxical character). The outlook of the Western Marxists is a complete inversion of the one which mediates Marx’s study of the Commune. The Commune was not ‘pure,’ it had its downfalls and contained serious ideological deviations from Marx and Engels’s thought, not least of which is the influence of Blanquism and Proudhonism. This did not prohibit them, however, from supporting the Commune and learning from it. Lenin, as always, saw this with extreme clarity. He said that “when the mass revolutionary movement of the proletariat burst forth, Marx, in spite of the failure of that movement, in spite of its short life and its patent weakness, began to study what forms it had discovered.”[3] Marx and Engels, Lenin would go on to say, “examined the actual experience of a mass proletarian movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it,” “re-examining [their] theory in light of it.”[4] They did not treat socialism as an abstract ideal they could use to denounce emancipatory movements. Since the middle of the 1840s, Marx and Engels refused to treat communism as a static “state of affairs… an ideal to which reality [would] have to adjust itself.”[5] Instead, their commitment was to “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.”[6] Today, many self-proclaimed Marxists in the West prefer to hold on to socialism as a pure unchanging ideal than to have that ideal be desecrated by the lessons which have arisen from the difficulties of constructing socialism in the imperialist stage of capitalism. Instead of learning from the successes and failures of revolutionary movements in Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, and so on, many are content with condemning these real movements of history because they don’t measure up to the pure ideal in their heads. Samir Amin put it nicely in respect to China when he said that “China bashing panders to the infantile opinion found in some currents of the powerless Western left: if it is not the communism of the twenty-third century, it is a betrayal!”[7] I think it is clear that the truth of this statement spans well beyond just China. It is grounded in the purity fetish outlook – a form of engagement with the world which couldn’t be any further from Marx and Engels’s dialectical materialist worldview. Where Marx and Engels, as dialectical materialists, emphasize the material movement of history, the purity fetish of the Western left emphasizes a static pure ideal. If we are to celebrate, as we are, the Paris Commune by reflecting on the relevance of Marx and Engels’s insights on it, without a doubt the question of the worldview through which they approached the world is of utmost primacy. Without this, their genuine insights are nothing more than dead conclusions, severed from the form of thinking which would allow us to do today what Marx and Engels did 152 years ago; that is, to learn from the dialectical movement of the working masses towards freedom. 2- What the Commune Taught Marx and EngelsIn emphasizing the worldview behind Marx and Engels’s assessment of the Commune I am not saying that the conclusions drawn are unimportant or outdated. Both the worldview and the conclusions must be seen in light of each other, and each in light of their context. Nonetheless, the fundamental lessons of the Commune remain today as relevant and true as ever. In the preface to the 1872 German edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels would make only one correction to that historical document explicit – they said, “One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.’”[8] Previously, Marx and Engels’s comments in the Manifesto on the working class’s conquest of political power said the following: The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.[9] I will return to the question of the development of the productive forces in the following section, but for now, it is important to note how the Commune helped Marx and Engels refine their understanding of the state itself, and more specifically, of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In a speech given the month the Commune was overthrown, Marx would say that as the antagonism between capital and labor intensified, “state power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labor, of a public force organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism.”[10] It was not simply the case that the modern state was “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie,” but also that the state institutions and structures through which this aim was achieved – that is, the “standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, judicature,” and so on, were designed precisely for the sake of this function.[11] The proletariat could not successfully wield state power through state institutions crafted to keep labor subordinated to capital. For the proletariat, as the Manifesto urges, to be organized as the ruling class, it needed to smash the existing bourgeois state and replace it with working class institutions of “a fundamentally different order.”[12] The Commune showed that the state had to be transformed from being “a ‘special force’ for the suppression of a particular class to the suppression of the oppressors by the ‘general force’ of the majority of the people – the workers and peasants.”[13] Hence, Marx says that “Paris could resist only because … the first decree of the Commune … was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.”[14] Qualitative changes of this character were found in the Commune’s transformations of public functionaries, which were now paid “workmen’s wages” and “revocable”; in the application of universal suffrage; in the new judicature; in the making of “education … accessible to all,” freeing science “from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it;” in short, in destroying the state as a “parasitic excrescence” which represses labor for the sake of capital, and putting in its place a genuinely democratic working class state which would use the general force of society to repress the old exploiting classes and administer state functions in the interests of the mass of people.[15] This is what the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a higher form of socialist democracy, entails. This lesson is more vital today in our neoimperialist stage of capitalism – as Cheng Enfu and Lu Baolin label it – than it was in 1871, and perhaps even more vital than it was in 1916 at the time of Lenin’s major writing on Imperialism.[16] Today, any revolutionary process which sustains even the smallest space for bourgeois political parties and participation will be leaving a door open for imperialism’s entry through its collaboration with the national bourgeoisie. Since the tragic overthrow of Salvador Allende’s Chile in September 11th 1973; to the lawfare coups against Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff from 2016 to 2018; to the astroturfed 2018 protests against Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista revolution; to the propping up of the clownish Juan Guaido as ‘interim president’ of Venezuela in an effort to destroy the Bolivarian revolution; to the fascist 2019 coup in Bolivia which killed dozens of workers and indigenous protesters; it is clear that in so far as bourgeois state structures remain – even if under the control of a worker’s or socialist party – a window will always be open for the national bourgeoisie to collaborate with imperialism in bringing forth what W. E. B. Du Bois called a “counterrevolution of property.”[17] It is much more difficult to imagine a figure like Guaido or Jeanine Áñez getting as far as they did under worker states like Cuba, China, Vietnam, and the DPRK. Why is this the case? Let us recall the categorial distinction Mao makes in 1957 between political and economic capital. While sustaining that economic capital does not necessarily have to be stripped all at once, that is, as Marx had already noted, that it can be ‘wrested by degree’ from the bourgeoisie, in accordance with the role it plays in developing the productive forces for socialism, “political capital,” Mao says, must be “deprived … until not one jot is left to [the capitalists].”[18] As Domenico Losurdo has eloquently noted, It is, therefore, a matter of distinguishing between the economic expropriation and the political expropriation of the bourgeoisie. Only the latter should be carried out to the end, while the former, if not contained within clear limits, risks undermining the development of the productive forces. Unlike ‘political capital,’ the bourgeoisie’s economic capital should not be subject to total expropriation, at least as long as it serves the development of the national economy and thus, indirectly, the cause of socialism.[19] This is where revolutions like the Bolivarian, the Bolivian, the Nicaraguan, and others (for all their successes) have fallen somewhat short – they have not been able to fully expropriate the political capital of their bourgeoisie, and neither have they been able, subsequently, to complete the process of the proletarianization of the state, that is, of the construction of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is not a condemnation. I am, like Marx and Engels were with the Commune, an ardent supporter of these emancipatory movements; I consider there to be a lot to learn from them. But as Marx and Engels had already noted with the Commune, in not going far enough in their use of the repressive apparatuses of the worker’s state, the door was left open for counterrevolution. As Engels wrote in 1872, “would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?”[20] Lenin says something similar in 1908, arguing that the Commune, “instead of destroying its enemies it sought to exert moral influence on them; it underestimated the significance of direct military operations in civil war, and instead of launching a resolute offensive against Versailles that would have crowned its victory in Paris, it tarried and gave the Versailles government time to gather the dark forces and prepare for the blood-soaked week of May.”[21] I think a similar question should, and from what I have seen is, asked by our comrades in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and so on – that is, to what extent can the proletarianization of the state prevent the conditions which gave rise to the disturbances of 2018 to 2020? In other words, how can the interests of the bourgeois and landholding sections of the population, those which have consistently collaborated with imperialism’s hybrid warfare to overthrow popular revolutions, be excluded from power in any of the state’s institutions? These are all complex questions which must be addressed organically as these revolutions develop. It is also clear that, in some of these left-wing governments in South and Central America (especially the more moderate ones), certain biases inherited from the sham bourgeois notion of democracy – which reduces democracy to a parliamentarian game of choosing which flavor of bourgeois rule a people will have for the next few years – must be outgrown and replaced by the concrete question of “democracy for which class?”[22] Without a doubt, these recent Latin American experiments in 21st century socialism have succeeded in making this transition in many areas. Who can forget, for example, the eight Silvercorp mercenaries caught in 2020 by Venezuelan fishermen and Bolivarian militias in the coastal town of Chuao? What a better example of the general force of the people taking up the role of repressing the enemies of the revolution? However, the threat presented by imperialist hybrid warfare – it seems to me at least – can be better averted as bourgeois state institutions are overcome, and proletarian and popular ones are put in their place. 3- Learning From the Many Communes of the 20th and 21st CenturySince the fall of the Commune 152 years ago we have seen many Socialist experiments arise, some which are still with us, others which suffered the same fate as the Commune. The ‘Marxists’ of the West, in their majority, have been unable to carry forth the legacy of Marx and Engels’s approach to the Commune. The plethora of Socialist experiments which have arisen have been, in one form or another, condemned for their impurities. This has prevented not only a genuine show of anti-imperialist solidarity, but also the ability to draw lessons from the successes and failures of these experiments. The failures have often been magnified, de-contextualized, and synecdochally painted as the whole experience. Against this theoretical current dominant in the powerless Western left, we must bring forth the living spirit of Marxism to our study of 20th and 21st century Socialist experiments – the vast majority of which have been incredibly successful despite being under the boot of constant imperialist hybrid warfare. Out of this study I think two key lessons must be drawn, both of which are found already in Marx and Engels’s analysis of the Commune in a more or less implicit fashion. First, in the age of imperialism, or Neoimperialism, socialist experiments must focus on developing not only an efficient worker’s state, but also the forces of production, the sciences and technologies, and the securities and defense structures of the state. In China, for instance, these goals were conceptualized by Zhou Enlai as the four modernizations. Without these developments, which are made exceedingly difficult by the reality of imperialism and its global dominance over intellectual property, a socialist project will be unable to flourish. Without these developments, the global inequality between the looting imperialist powers and everyone else – or, to use the despicable metaphor from EU foreign-policy chief Joseph Borrell, the inequalities between the garden and the jungle, will not be bridged, and the imperialist powers will maintain their global position unthreatened. The success of China, which stands today as the beacon of a new, post-Columbian world, testifies to the immense importance of these developments in the battle against capitalist-imperialism. The emphasis on developing the productive forces, of course, is seen throughout the whole corpus of Marx and Engels’s work – their writings on the Commune included. For instance, an important critique Engels levied on the Commune was that “in the economic sphere, much was left undone;” they did not take the Bank of France, which could have put “pressure on the whole of the French bourgeoisie [to have] peace with the Commune.”[23] Lenin made a similar critique, saying that the Communards “stopped half-way: instead of setting about ‘expropriating the expropriators,’ [they] allowed [themselves] to be led astray by dreams of establishing a higher justice in the country united by a common national task.”[24] In our age, after the experience of the Soviet New Economic Policy, Yugoslavia’s socialist market economy, and most importantly, of China’s Reform and Opening up – where socialist markets have been developed and private ownership sustains a large but auxiliary role in the development of the productive forces – we have learned that this development can take many forms. In some cases, such as Cuba, the full expropriation of the expropriators was immediately necessary. In other cases, such as China, the development of socialism has always maintained – since the pre-49 liberated areas – a ‘mixed’ economic form, where private property and markets exist within the centrally planned state economy. Far from using cherry picked comments from Marx and Engels to condemn these developments, we should do with them what they did with the Commune. We should learn from them and attempt to understand how these forms have become necessary for the real movement of history which abolishes the present state of things. The second important lesson which subsequent socialist experiments have taught us concerns the relationship of socialism to a people’s national history. I think here, again, the failure of the Western and US left is grounded in a problem of worldview. The dialectical worldview (both in Hegel and in Marxism) rejects the idea of an unchanging, pure, ahistorical universal, and instead urges that universals are necessarily tied to historically changing concrete particulars. Universals are always concrete – that is, they exist and take their form through the particular. “The universal,” as Hegel and Lenin emphasized, “embraces within itself the wealth of the particular.”[25] What does this tell us about socialism? Well, simply that there is no such thing as abstract socialism. Socialism is the universal which cannot exist unless concretized through the particular. In every country it has taken root in, socialism has had to adapt itself to the unique characteristics of the peoples that have waged and won the struggle for political power. In China this has taken the form of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics; in Cuba this has meant incorporating José Martí and the anti-colonial traditions into socialist construction; in Venezuela this has taken the form of Bolivarian socialism; in the Plurinational state of Bolivia this has taken the form of combining Marxism with the indigenous communist traditions which have been around for centuries; in the continent of Africa this has taken the form of Pan-African socialism, and so on. In each case the struggle has been, as Georgi Dimitrov had already noted in 1935, “national in form and socialist in content.”[26] In various parts of the U.S. left, the purity fetish outlook has obscured this historical lesson, and made rampant the phenomenon which Dimitrov called national nihilism. Their people’s history is reduced to slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism, and all the evils of capital and the state. In doing so, they reject drawing from their national past to give form to socialist content. Far from the ‘progressivism’ they see in this, what this actually depicts is a liberal tinted American exceptionalism, which thinks that the struggle for socialism in the US will itself not have to follow this concrete universal tendency seen around the world, where socialism functions as the content which takes form (i.e., concretizes) according to the unique circumstances in which it is being developed.[27] This has prevented the U.S. left from genuinely learning from its progressive history and connecting with its people. A perfect example of this is the fact that, from 1865 to the counterrevolution of 1876, in many previous slave states of the U.S. South, reconstruction developed a dictatorship of labor. This dictatorship of labor was headed by the black proletariat – who had recently freed itself through a general strike that converted the war to preserve the union into a revolutionary war to emancipate slave labor. It was organized by the Freedman’s Bureau and defended militarily by the federal government. It was our Paris Commune; it started before and lasted way longer than the original. Like the Paris Commune, it also fell thanks to a counterrevolution of property. Besides the few on the U.S. left who take the work of the great Dr. Du Bois serious – this legendary experience of a new worker’s democracy, not unlike the Paris Commune, is a largely erased and forgotten period of U.S. revolutionary history, and it has so, so much to teach us, both tactically and theoretically. ConclusionI am honored to have had the privilege of discussing this Titanic event in world-history with all of you today. Whether we consider the Paris Commune the first modern dictatorship of the proletariat, or give that title to the black proletariat in the U.S. South, is somewhat irrelevant. What matters, in my view, is that the Paris Commune, as Lenin argued, by fighting “for the freedom of toiling humanity, of all the downtrodden and oppressed,” is still being honored 152 years after its fall “by the proletariat of the whole world.”[28] This is why, in the words of Lenin, “the cause of the Commune did not die … it lives to the present day in every one of us.”[29] References [1] Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 2021), 35. [2] Karl Marx, “Marx to Kugelmann,” April 12, 1871. In Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol 44, International Publishers., pp. 131-132. [3] V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1970), 47. [4] Lenin, The State and Revolution, 40, 30. [5] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, MECW Vol. 5 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), 49. [6] Engels, MECW Vol. 5, 49. [7] Samir Amin, Only People Make Their Own History: Writings on Capitalism, Imperialism, and Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019), 110. [8] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (New York: Barnes and Nobles Classics, 2005), 45. [9] Marx and Engels, MECW Vol. 6, 504. [10] Marx, The Civil War in France, 62, 61. [11] Marx, MECW Vol. 6, 486; Marx, The Civil War in France, 61. [12] Lenin, The State and Revolution, 35. [13] Lenin, The State and Revolution, 36. [14] Marx, The Civil War in France, 64. [15] Marx, The Civil War in France, 65. [16] Cheng Enfu and Lu Baolin, “Five Characteristics of Neoimperialism,” Monthly Review 73(1) (May 2021). [17] W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (New York: The Library of America, 2021), 697- 762. [18] Mao Tse-Tung, “Talks at a Conference of Secretaries of Provincial, Municipal and Autonomous Regions Party Committees,” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung Vol 5 (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1977), 357. [19] Domenico Losurdo, “Has China Turned to Capitalism?—Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism,” International Critical Thought 7(1) (2017), 18-19. [20] Engels, MECW Vol. 23, 425. [21] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 13 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), 476. [22] Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 28, 249. [23] Engels, “Introduction,” in The Civil War in France, 10-11. [24] Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 13, 476. [25] G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, Trans. A.V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1993), 58. [26] Georgi Dimitrov, The United Front: The Struggle Against Fascism and War (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1938), 61-64. [27] For more on national nihilism and the Western left see my article “The Importance of Combatting National and Historical Nihilism,” Midwestern Marx Institute (February 2023): https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/the-importance-of-combatting-national-and-historical-nihilism-by-carlos-l-garrido or my book The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (Dubuque: Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2023). [28] Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 17, 143. [29] Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 17, 143. Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American PhD student and instructor in philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (with an MA in philosophy from the same institution). He is an editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute and the Journal of American Socialist Studies. Carlos is the author of the forthcoming book, The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023) and edited and introduced Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview: An Anthology of Classical Marxist Texts on Dialectical Materialism (2022). His popular and scholarly writings are usually on topics relating to Marxist theory, U.S. socialist history, and global struggles against imperialism. Archives March 2023 3/18/2023 Exploring Friedrich Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy: Part 3 – Feuerbach. By: Thomas RigginsRead Now (Read Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE) So what kind of Idealism is Feuerbach, according to Engels, peddling? Feuerbach is a materialist who wants to advocate a true religion for humanity. Here is a quote from him: “The periods of humanity are distinguished only by religious changes. A historical movement is fundamental only when it is rooted in the hearts of men. The heart is not a form of religion, that the latter should exist also in the heart; the heart is the essence of religion.” Religion is based on the love that humans are capable of sharing with one another. Heretofore that love has been objectified and projected upon mythical beings and has been the alienated essence of the historic religions as well as the natural religions of primitive times. Now, in the modern world of scientific understanding, we can dispense with the mythical superstitious religious beliefs that dominate the masses (they will have to be educated of course) and have a loving religion of the heart directly practiced by humans, Engels says, “this becomes the love between ‘I’ and ’Thou.’” Sex is the highest way we can express our love; so, sexual relations become one of the highest forms of Feuerbach’s new religion. Sexual attraction and love making are purely natural functions of the human being and they should not be circumscribed by the rules and regulations of the state or of the positive religions (positive = historically existing). All the rules and regulations about sex and the relations between loving humans that are associated with, for example, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism should be dumped as they are based on illusions and mythological premises. But the Idealism that Feuerbach manifests comes from his view that these relations do need a religious foundation, not from the positive or primitive religions, but based on the “human heart.” Speaking strictly as a materialist, the “heart” is a muscle, just as the ischiocavernosus muscle, so Feuerbach is being metaphorical. Anyway, Engels says, the major point is “not that these purely human relations exist, but that they shall be conceived of as the new, true religion.” Here Feuerbach is a victim of his era: religion is important, and Feuerbach wants to keep the word around – he thinks it is important to have a society based on “religion.” Engels thinks it’s really ridiculous to try and have a materialist religion, one without a “God” or any supernatural ideas attached to it. The idea that religious changes are what delimit the periods of humanity is, Engels says: “Decidedly false.” For Marxists, As Engels notes, the great epochal changes in history are economically based on changes in class relations and power politics; religious changes only accompanied these events. Meanwhile, there can be no “I-Thou” lovey-dovey relationships between humans as humans based on the natural proclivity for people to love one another, this is because our world and the globalized society we are all living in is still “based upon class antagonism and class rule.” Feuerbach’s writings on the religion of love, Engels points out, are “totally unreadable today.” Religion remains in the 21st century what it has always been— the opium of the masses. We can work with religious people on specific progressive projects, but we should not encourage religious belief because such beliefs are rooted in Idealistic unscientific notions which prevent people from a proper understanding of reality – and this holds back the movement towards human liberation and in the long run only helps the exploiters. Despite his writings on religions, Feuerbach has only really studied one, according to Engels, i.e., Christianity. Not only that, but it is an abstract idealized form of Christian morality which Feuerbach thinks his new religion of the heart, based on sexual intercourse, will instill in humanity. What is this “humanity” that he writes about? It is an abstract and idealized humanity that Feuerbach finds existing in all ages and climes. It is an ahistorical concept – some kind of “human nature” that Feuerbach had deduced by his concept of Christian morality. Engels contrasts the materialist Feuerbach with the objective idealist Hegel, who also writes about Christianity and morals. Despite outward appearances, the materialist is really an idealist and the idealist a materialist. Feuerbach is a materialist because he doesn’t believe in God or a supernatural world on which to base his new religion; he bases it on the materially existing species of man on our planet and on nothing else. Sexual intercourse is at the heart of the heart of the new religion. It is really rooted in material existence. Yet his moral system is an abstract one deduced from an ideal Christianity. Christianity, Jesus, God, etc., is nothing more than a human reflection projected into the sky for Feuerbach – the human family Is the source of all the ideals about the Holy Family, morality is just this reflection coming back to us of our own dreams and ideals. But for Engels, this reflection is devoid of the actual behavior of Christians throughout history who, besides engaging in sexual intercourse, have done a lot of unsavory activities inspired by their religion. Feuerbach who “preaches sensuousness, immersion in the concrete, in actuality, becomes thoroughly abstract as soon as he begins to talk of any other than mere sexual intercourse between human beings.” So, the materialist has produced a philosophy based on abstract mental constructions he has deduced from the Christian religion which is the basis for his morality. This is why the materialist is an idealist! A living breathing unity of opposites. (At least until 1872). And what of Hegel? Was Feuerbach actually an improvement on Hegel? Well, here is Feuerbach’s morality in a nutshell. All human beings have an innate desire for “bliss;” but we can’t attain bliss without knowing how not to overindulge our desires, and we must also respect the social rights of others to also attain bliss – and this we do through love. Engels writes, “Rational self-restraint with regard to ourselves and love in contact with others— these are the basic rules of Feuerbach’s morality; from them all others are derived.” Despite all Feuerbach’s comments about materialism, these rules about morality are, Engels says, banal. You can’t find “bliss” by just thinking about yourself and it is impossible to practice “love” towards others in the real world due to the actual social and economic systems humans live in. Feudal lords and surfs, slaves and masters, and in our age capitalists and proletarians are proof of the banality of Feuerbach’s pretensions to morality. Ruling (and exploiting) and ruled (and exploited) classes existing under the same social totality means that the masses will always be deprived of the material needs they require – both to find a blissful life for themselves, or to properly be able to practice unselfish “love” for others, especially for those who oppress them. In this respect Hegel was more advanced than Feuerbach. Hegel saw morality as advancing through historical stages driven by humanity's “greed and lust for power.” Hegel explained how in each stage this struggle produced contradictions that could be resolved only by moving on to a higher stage of moral consciousness, until we reached Hegel’s day, when the idea of human equality had reached its highest bourgeois level (with the French Revolution) – all men are equal before the law (the level including women was yet to come). There was an innate drive here also, the struggle for human freedom – which was an idea struggling to come to human consciousness and history – was the result of this struggle. This was Hegel’s idealism. For Marxists, it will be the class struggle objectively working in the material life of human beings at any point in history that is responsible for “moral” progress. “The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach’s new religion, had to be replaced by the science of real men and their historical development. This further development of Feuerbach’s standpoint beyond Feuerbach was inaugurated by Marx in 1845 in The Holy Family.” [Although this work was a joint creation of Marx and Engels, Engels here credits Marx with the breakthrough beyond Feuerbach’s materialism to what was to become Dialectical Materialism.] Next: Part Four “Marx” AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. Archives March 2023 For the first time in nearly 60 years, a state is poised to reverse its “right to work” law and begin to undo the damage of a corporate-driven anti-union trend.  Michigan is expected very soon to reverse its so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) law. The repeal, led by Democrats and passing along strictly partisan lines, is a concrete outcome of the liberal party winning a narrow majority of seats in the state’s House and Senate last November and Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer winning reelection. Democrats managed to outdo Republican-led gerrymandering on Election Day and now hold a two-seat advantage in each chamber. Showing more party discipline than their counterparts have tended to muster at the federal level in recent years, Michigan Democrats have wasted no time in using their slim legislative advantage in pushing through a repeal of their state’s RTW law. Whitmer is expected to approve the repeal when it reaches her desk. RTW laws are a particularly insidious conservative ploy to undermine unions. The idea, which conservatives glibly couch in terms of “freedom,” is to prevent unions from collecting mandatory fees from members to sustain themselves. Unions require such fees in order to fund the operations of serving and representing their members. It’s the same with any club that offers perks—membership dues fund operations. Unions gained the right to do this under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. But less than a decade later, that right was eroded when Congress passed the 1947 Labor Management Relations Act, also known as Taft-Hartley, which first opened the door for RTW laws. In 2018, conservative justices at the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of such laws for public sector workers, adding momentum to the rightward shift. The National Labor Relations Board explains the current state of the Republican-led anti-union trend in this way: “If you work in a state that bans union-security agreements, (27 states), each employee at a workplace must decide whether or not to join the union and pay dues, even though all workers are protected by the collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the union. The union is still required to represent all workers.” Imagine calling AAA and demanding its roadside benefits without paying the auto club’s modest yearly fee. Recognizing that dues are a source of unions’ financial power, Republicans used every advantage, including ill-gotten ones like gerrymandered districts, to push through RTW laws in more than half of all states. They used deceptive language—who doesn’t want the right to work?—and convinced voters it was in their interest to weaken unions without saying the laws were intended to weaken unions. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative pro-business think tank that we are expected to believe cares about workers’ rights, claimed that RTW laws were about “permitting workers the freedom to decide for themselves whether they want to join a union and pay dues.” For years, I was required to pay dues to my union, SAG-AFTRA, because California, where I live, is not an RTW state. I did so happily, because even at the nonprofit community radio station where I worked, management was continuously trying to lower operating costs at the expense of workers’ wages and benefits. Union representation helped stave off staff cuts, represented workers in grievance filings, and became our collective voice during contract negotiations. Unions are not just for corporate or government workplaces. They are not just for poorly treated or underpaid workers at Amazon, Starbucks, or Walmart. All nonmanagement workers deserve the kind of power that a union brings. And it’s precisely that power that conservative lawmakers have been (successfully) chipping away at. The data is clear: those states where RTW laws have been on the books show lower rates of unionization and lower wages overall. A June 2022 paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research examined five states where such laws had been in effect since 2011. The researchers concluded unequivocally that, “RTW laws lower wages and unionization rates.” According to the Economic Policy Institute—which has come to similar data-driven conclusions as the aforementioned paper--Michigan’s reversal of the GOP’s anti-union statute would be “the first time a state has repealed a RTW law in nearly 60 years.” The victory is all the more significant because of the state’s historic position as having had “the highest unionization rate in the country” and correspondingly high median wages before Republicans passed an RTW law in 2012. But in the past decade, unionization rates and wages both fell in Michigan. In other words, the state’s RTW law had its intended result. Now, following Michigan, Democrats in other RTW states such as Arizona and Virginia have introduced laws to restore union power. At the federal level, Senator Elizabeth Warren has reintroduced the Nationwide Right to Unionize Act, which would repeal all RTW state laws. The PRO Act would similarly restore the right of unions to collect member dues nationally. Conservative Republicans are likely terrified of how Michigan might embolden pro-union momentum across the country. Unsurprisingly, Fox News published an op-ed by billionaire Doug DeVos denouncing the repeal of Michigan’s anti-union law. DeVos’s Michigan-based family made its fortune on Amway, a business that Jacobin’s Rachel T. Johnson called, “the world’s biggest pyramid scheme.” (If the name sounds familiar, he is indeed the brother-in-law of former Education Secretary under Donald Trump Betsy DeVos.) Doug Devos’s Fox News op-ed is titled, “I know firsthand how much right to work matters,” which might be a true enough statement coming from a billionaire whose family made its fortune on the backs of workers. He also identified precisely that “What’s happening in Michigan is the direct result of the November elections. Democrats won control of the legislature for the first time in nearly four decades.” But then he veered into the kind of unproven claims that only a pyramid schemer might have the gall to make openly, that “right-to-work states have seen faster job growth, faster income growth, and faster population growth.” He also cited, without proof (after all, it’s Fox News!), that Michigan’s RTW law led to “rising incomes,” and “falling unemployment and poverty.” Ultimately, DeVos is worried that “Repealing right to work will send a message that our state… will suffer from… less freedom.” And there again is that vague buzzword, freedom. What DeVos really means but doesn’t say is that he thinks workers deserve the freedom to live under the thumb of their corporate bosses, the freedom to remain in jobs that pay less and less, and the freedom to walk away from poorly paid jobs. Freedom is the blank slate on which conservatives have projected their wildest profit-driven fantasies. But those fantasies are the flip side of their fears of worker power. It’s no surprise that RTW laws stemmed from the Taft-Hartley Act, a pro-business law intended to curb the power of multiracial worker movements. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. presciently said, “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.” In the war of words over freedom, Dr. King beats DeVos any day. AuthorSonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Archives March 2023 3/18/2023 The US and UK’s Submarine Deal Crosses Nuclear Red Lines with Australia By: Prabir PurkayasthaRead Now The recent Australia, U.S., and UK $368 billion deal on buying nuclear submarines has been termed by Paul Keating, a former Australian prime minister, as the “worst deal in all history.” It commits Australia to buy conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines that will be delivered in the early 2040s. These will be based on new nuclear reactor designs yet to be developed by the UK. Meanwhile, starting from the 2030s, “pending approval from the U.S. Congress, the United States intends to sell Australia three Virginia class submarines, with the potential to sell up to two more if needed” (Trilateral Australia-UK-U.S. Partnership on Nuclear-Powered Submarines, March 13, 2023; emphasis mine). According to the details, it appears that this agreement commits Australia to buy from the U.S. eight new nuclear submarines, to be delivered from the 2040s through the end of the 2050s. If nuclear submarines were so crucial for Australia’s security, for which it broke its existing diesel-powered submarine deal with France, this agreement provides no credible answers. For those who have been following the nuclear proliferation issues, the deal raises a different red flag. If submarine nuclear reactor technology and weapons-grade (highly enriched) uranium are shared with Australia, it is a breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which Australia is a signatory as a non-nuclear power. Even the supplying of such nuclear reactors by the U.S. and the UK would constitute a breach of the NPT. This is even if such submarines do not carry nuclear but conventional weapons as stated in this agreement. So why did Australia renege on its contract with France, which was to buy 12 diesel submarines from France at a cost of $67 billion, a small fraction of its gargantuan $368 billion deal with the U.S.? What does it gain, and what does the U.S. gain by annoying France, one of its close NATO allies? To understand, we have to see how the U.S. looks at the geostrategy, and how the Five Eyes—the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—fit into this larger picture. Clearly, the U.S. believes that the core of the NATO alliance is the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada for the Atlantic and the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia for the Indo-Pacific. The rest of its allies, NATO allies in Europe and Japan and South Korea in East and South Asia, are around this Five Eyes core. That is why the United States was willing to offend France to broker a deal with Australia. What does the U.S. get out of this deal? On the promise of eight nuclear submarines that will be given to Australia two to four decades down the line, the U.S. gets access to Australia to be used as a base for supporting its naval fleet, air force, and even U.S. soldiers. The words used by the White House are, “As early as 2027, the United Kingdom and the United States plan to establish a rotational presence of one UK Astute class submarine and up to four U.S. Virginia class submarines at HMAS Stirling near Perth, Western Australia.” The use of the phrase “rotational presence” is to provide Australia the fig leaf that it is not offering the U.S. a naval base, as that would violate Australia’s long-standing position of no foreign bases on its soil. Clearly, all the support structures required for such rotations are what a foreign military base has, therefore they will function as U.S. bases. Who is the target of the AUKUS alliance? This is explicit in all the writing on the subject and what all the leaders of AUKUS have said: it is China. In other words, this is a containment of China policy with the South China Sea and the Taiwanese Strait as the key contested oceanic regions. Positioning U.S. naval ships including its nuclear submarines armed with nuclear weapons makes Australia a front-line state in the current U.S. plans for the containment of China. Additionally, it creates pressure on most Southeast Asian countries who would like to stay out of such a U.S. versus China contest being carried out in the South China Sea. While the U.S. motivation to draft Australia as a front-line state against China is understandable, what is difficult to understand is Australia’s gain from such an alignment. China is not only the biggest importer of Australian goods, but also its biggest supplier. In other words, if Australia is worried about the safety of its trade through the South China Sea from Chinese attacks, the bulk of this trade is with China. So why would China be mad enough to attack its own trade with Australia? For the U.S. it makes eminent sense to get a whole continent, Australia, to host its forces much closer to China than 8,000-9,000 miles away in the U.S. Though it already has bases in Hawaii and Guam in the Pacific Ocean, Australia and Japan provide two anchor points, one to the north and one to the south in the eastern Pacific Ocean region. The game is an old-fashioned game of containment, the one that the U.S. played with its NATO, Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), and Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) military alliances after World War II. The problem that the U.S. has today is that even countries like India, who have their issues with China, are not signing up with the U.S. in a military alliance. Particularly, as the U.S. is now in an economic war with a number of countries, not just Russia and China, such as Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia. While India was willing to join the Quad—the U.S., Australia, Japan, and India—and participate in military exercises, it backed off from the Quad becoming a military alliance. This explains the pressure on Australia to partner with the U.S. militarily, particularly in Southeast Asia. It still fails to explain what is in it for Australia. Even the five Virginia class nuclear submarines that Australia may get second hand are subject to U.S. congressional approval. Those who follow U.S. politics know that the U.S. is currently treaty incapable; it has not ratified a single treaty on issues from global warming to the law of the seas in recent years. The other eight are a good 20-40 years away; who knows what the world would look like that far down the line. Why, if naval security was its objective, did Australia choose an iffy nuclear submarine agreement with the U.S. over a sure-shot supply of French submarines? This is a question that Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating, the Australian Labor Party’s former PMs, asked. It makes sense only if we understand that Australia now sees itself as a cog in the U.S. wheel for this region. And it is a vision of U.S. naval power projection in the region that today Australia shares. The vision is that settler colonial and ex-colonial powers—the G7-AUKUS—should be the ones making the rules of the current international order. And behind the talk of international order is the mailed fist of the U.S., NATO, and AUKUS. This is what Australia’s nuclear submarine deal really means. AuthorPrabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the free software movement. This article was produced in partnership by Newsclick and Globetrotter. Archives March 2023  As the state of international relations continues to shift rapidly, and new contradictions are made apparent daily, it is of utmost importance to pay attention to the actions of one's government and to hold them accountable for their crimes. Analyzing and criticizing other countries is also necessary in contextualizing current events, but before judging others, make sure your house is in order. America routinely ignores international law, and as Americans, we should exercise our power to hold our government responsible for these misdeeds. America is now accused of sabotaging the Nord Stream Pipelines in September 2022. This unprecedented leak of natural gas has led to significant negative consequences for the economies of Russia and much of Europe, as well as the most released methane emissions for any event in history. The pipeline's destruction furthers much of Europe toward American liquefied natural gas for their energy needs. Once the context of economic and political international relations is analyzed, the United States appears to be the perpetrator. Nord Stream 1 and 2 are each a pair of natural gas pipelines that run from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. The project is designed to bypass traditional transit countries like Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland. Nord Stream 1 is owned by multiple companies, including Gazprom, Wintershall, E.ON, Gasunie, and GDF Suez. Nord Stream 2 is also owned by Gazprom, but it has different partners, including ENGIE, OMV, Royal Dutch Shell, Uniper, and Wintershall. Each pair of pipelines can transport 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas annually to Europe. The second most productive pipeline from Russia to Europe is the Yamal-Europe Pipeline, which runs through Belarus and Poland to Germany. It has a capacity of 33 bcm per year. The gas transported through Nord Stream is sold on the European spot market, making it available to buyers across the continent. The gas can be purchased by utilities, industrial companies, and other consumers that use natural gas as a fuel source. Nord Stream 2 could double the amount of natural gas transferred, which would be enormous for all countries involved. With Nord Stream 1 being in service since 2011, we can infer what impact Nord Stream 2 would have on the Russian and European economies. It isn't easy to provide an exact percentage of Russia's yearly revenue generated by Nord Stream 1, as the revenue generated by the pipeline is not reported separately from other revenues generated by Gazprom. However, it is estimated to make up 40% of Russia's annual income. According to a 2018 study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), the construction and operation of Nord Stream 1 generated around €2.2 billion ($2.3 billion) in economic activity and supported around 12,000 jobs in Germany. The study also estimated that the pipeline generated around €200 million ($213 million) in tax revenue for the German government. In 2020, Nord Stream 1 supplied Germany with approximately 8.8 cm of natural gas, accounting for around 19% of Germany's total natural gas imports that year. While Germany is the endpoint of the Nord Stream pipelines, the gas transported through the pipelines is distributed to other European countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom. In 2021, Russia provided nearly 40% of the EU's natural gas supply through Nord Stream 1. The United States has opposed the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, arguing that it would increase Europe's dependence on Russian energy and undermine Ukraine's energy security. The U.S. imposed sanctions on companies involved in the pipeline's construction, including some European companies. In December 2019, President Trump signed the Protecting Europe's Energy Security Act (PEESA), which imposed sanctions on companies involved in the construction, financing, or maintenance of Russian energy export pipelines, including Nord Stream 1. The law "requires the U.S. government to identify and sanction companies that make investments or provide goods, services, or support worth more than $1 million or $5 million over 12 months in the construction, modernization, or repair of certain Russian energy export pipelines." On July 21, 2021, the United States and Germany agreed to allow the completion of the pipeline in exchange for German commitments to invest in Ukraine's energy sector and take action if Russia uses energy as a weapon against Ukraine. The agreement was the result of months of negotiations between the two countries. Under the agreement, Germany committed to taking several actions to mitigate the impact of the pipeline on Ukraine and to support Ukraine's energy security. These actions included investing at least $175 million in a new "Green Fund for Ukraine" to support renewable energy projects in Ukraine, providing $70 million to Ukraine for energy security and energy efficiency measures, engaging in diplomatic efforts to extend Ukraine's gas transit agreement with Russia beyond 2024, and using all available leverage to prevent Russia from using energy as a weapon against Ukraine. In return, the United States agreed to lift sanctions on the company responsible for laying the pipeline and its CEO, which had effectively halted construction of the channel for over a year. Biden, at a white house press conference on February 7, 2022, said, "If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the ... border of Ukraine again, then there will be ... no longer a Nord Stream 2. We, we will bring an end to it," When asked how that would work, Biden responded, "I promise you, we'll be able to do it." On September 26, 2022, a series of explosions occurred on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea, causing significant damage. This happened in international waters, not within any country's territory. However, it did occur within both the Danish and Swedish economic zones. Both countries, along with Germany, have been investigating the area, although Russia has been excluded from having its experts analyze the scene. Overwhelming evidence confirms the use of explosions and rules out any natural causes, such as earthquakes. According to the Geological Survey of Denmark, the detected tremors were much more similar to those of explosions than underwater earthquakes. Björn Lund, Associate Professor in Seismology at The Swedish National Seismic Network, said, "there is no doubt that these were explosions" with an estimated equivalent of 100 kilograms (220 lbs) of TNT. According to a report by Wired in November 2022, satellite imagery revealed two large unidentified ships with their AIS trackers turned off around the site of the leaks days before the incident. Swedish authorities announced in November that remains of explosives were found at the site of the leaks, confirming sabotage as the cause. Two weeks before the sabotage occurred, the German government received a warning from the CIA that the pipelines may be attacked. While the United States has denied any involvement, it has vehemently opposed the UN investigation into the act of criminal sabotage. And while the United States has accused Russia of being the perpetrator of the attack, Russia has been very eager to have the UN investigate. China, likewise, has called for the UN to investigate this "deliberate sabotage." On February 8, 2023, an American veteran and investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, published an article in which he presented leaked information from an anonymous source within the American military. Hersh has a history of uncovering American military crimes and has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for exposing America's role in the My Lai Massacre. From his article¹: "The Norwegians were key to solving other hurdles. The Russian Navy possesses surveillance technology capable of spotting and triggering underwater mines. The American explosive devices needed to be camouflaged to make them appear to the Russian system as part of the natural background—something that required adapting to the specific salinity of the water. The Norwegians had a fix.' 'The Norwegians also had a solution to the crucial question of when the operation should occur. Every June, for the past 21 years, the American Sixth Fleet, whose flagship is based in Gaeta, Italy, south of Rome, has sponsored a major NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea involving scores of allied ships throughout the region. The current exercise, held in June, would be known as Baltic Operations 22, or BALTOPS 22. The Norwegians proposed this would be the ideal cover to plant the mines.' 'The Americans provided one vital element: they convinced the Sixth Fleet planners to add a research and development exercise to the program. The exercise, as made public by the Navy, involved the Sixth Fleet in collaboration with the Navy's "research and warfare centers." The at-sea event would be held off the coast of Bornholm Island and involve NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them.' 'It was both a useful exercise and ingenious cover. The Panama City boys would do their thing, and the C4 explosives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22, with a 48-hour timer attached. All Americans and Norwegians would be long gone by the first explosion." While these allegations are not proven, the fact that BALTOPS22 was in place at the time reported is public knowledge. While the EU has received the plurality of its gas from Russia for years, the United States is motivated to sabotage the Russian pipelines, especially as it strikes deals with the EU to increase its supply. In March 2022, the United States said it could supply 15 bcm of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the European Union this year, a process which is much more complicated and expensive due to transport costs, lack of proper infrastructure, and the significant mark-ups that provide European third party companies plenty of profits. Additionally, this has been a leak with unprecedented environmental effects. "It dwarfs the previous known leaks," says Ioannis Binietoglou of the Clean Air Task Force. Upper estimates put the methane released at half a million tons, five times more than the previous most significant leak. It also released a massive amount of carbon dioxide, with estimates ranging up to a loss of 15 million tons. For reference, Denmark was responsible for 44 million tons of CO2 emissions in 2021. Animal life in the area has also been deeply affected. Small whales and porpoises native to the site are critically endangered, and even the loss of a single one could be disastrous for their populations. The explosion's shockwave killed all marine life within a radius of 2.5 miles and damaged the hearing of animals up to 31 miles. At this point, investigations are ongoing. Even without examining all the facts presented here, a basic understanding of contemporary politics along with the age-old question, "Who benefits?" indeed points towards America as the leading party responsible. As Americans, we must hold our government accountable for its actions. The most patriotic American should demand a thorough investigation to prove America's innocence and reaffirm strict dedication to international law and justice. Hans Sanderson, Michał Czub, Sven Koschinski et al. Environmental impact of sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, 10 February 2023, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2564820/v1] Hernandez, America. "Why Cheap US Gas Costs a Fortune in Europe." Politico, 15 Nov. 2022, www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.eu/article/cheap-us-gas-cost-fortune-europe-russia-ukraine-energy/amp/. "Text - S.1441 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act of 2019." Congress.gov, Library of Congress, 31 July 2019, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1441/text. Renshaw, Jarrett, and Nina Chestney. "U.S., EU Strike LNG Deal As Europe Seeks to Cut Russian Gas." Reuters, 25 Feb. 2022, seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream. Shalal, Andrea , et al. "Biden Pledges End to Nord Stream 2 If Russia Invades Ukraine." Reuters, 8 Feb. 2022, www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-unified-front-against-any-russian-aggression-toward-2022-02-07/. Ganz, Jared. "Swedish Say They Found Evidence of Explosives in Nord Stream Pipelines." The Hill, 18 Nov. 2022, thehill.com/policy/international/3742163-swedish-say-they-found-evidence-of-explosives-in-nord-stream-pipelines/amp/. Duffy, Kate. "The CIA Warned Germany Weeks Ago about a Possible Attack on the Nord Stream Natural-gas Pipelines, Report Says." Business Insider, 28 Sept. 2022, www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/cia-warned-germany-attacks-nord-stream-pipelines-leak-sabotage-report-2022-9%3famp. Alkousaa, Riham. "CIA Warned Berlin about Possible Attacks on Gas Pipelines in Summer - Spiegel." Reuters, 27 Sept. 2022, www.reuters.com/world/cia-warned-berlin-about-possible-attacks-gas-pipelines-summer-spiegel-2022-09-27/. Xiaoming, Zhou . "If the US Is Not behind Nord Stream Explosions, It Should Have No Reason to Block a UN Investigation." South China Morning Post, 3 Mar. 2023, www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/comment/opinion/world/article/3211959/if-us-not-behind-nord-stream-explosions-it-should-have-no-reason-block-un-investigation. Kasprak, Alex. "Alex Kasprak." Snopes, 10 Feb. 2023, www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/10/hersh-nord-stream-sabotage/. Renshaw, Jarrett, and Nina Chestney. "U.S., EU Strike LNG Deal As Europe Seeks to Cut Russian Gas." Reuters, 25 Feb. 2022, seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream. Hernandez, America. "Why Cheap US Gas Costs a Fortune in Europe." Politico, 15 Nov. 2022, www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.eu/article/cheap-us-gas-cost-fortune-europe-russia-ukraine-energy/amp/. Benshoff, Laura. "The Nord Stream Pipelines Have Stopped Leaking. But the Methane Emitted Broke Records." NPR, 4 Oct. 2022, www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126562195/the-nord-stream-pipelines-have-stopped-leaking-but-the-methane-emitted-broke-rec. MATHIESEN, KARL, and ZIA WEISE. "8 Things to Know about the Environmental Impact of ‘Unprecedented’ Nord Stream Leaks." Politico, 28 Sept. 2022, www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.eu/article/8-thing-know-environmental-impact-unprecedented-nord-stream-leak/amp/. Svantesson, Sara. "EMISSIONS OF GREENHOUSE GASES." Danmarks Statistik, 4 Oct. 2022, www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/temaer/klima#:~:text=I%202021%20udledte%20vi%2044,indbygger%20i%20Danmark. Hans Sanderson, Michał Czub, Sven Koschinski et al. Environmental impact of sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, 10 February 2023, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2564820/v1] AuthorChristian Jacobson is one of the founding members of the People's Glorious Reading Group of Sublime Understanding, along with James Hammond and Matthew Stooksbury. The Marxist-Leninist group is a constantly expanding, Orlando based book club, dedicated to reading, analyzing, and discussing texts they democratically determine will be helpful to the particular members' understanding of history, marxist theory, and current events. Christian is also a current student at Full Sail University, and is pursuing a career in writing and directing, and is currently working on several projects. Archives March 2023 The right has narrowed the parameters of discussion on student debt forgiveness, and President Biden is not fighting back aggressively enough. We should, in fact, center the idea of fairness in this debate.  “Nobody’s telling the person who is trying to set up the lawn service business that he doesn’t have to pay his loan,” said U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts during oral arguments about President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan. Roberts continued his logic on behalf of this hypothetical lawn service operator, saying, “he still does, even though his tax dollars are going to support the forgiveness of the loan for… the college graduate, who’s now going to make a lot more than him over the course of his lifetime.” It’s remarkable how concerned Roberts and other conservatives have been about the exploitation of the average American when it comes to loan forgiveness. The Supreme Court’s chief imagines that college graduates will go on to make enough money to pay back their loans and they are choosing not to—apparently in order to take advantage of business owners like lawn care operators. Does Roberts not think the lawn business operator may be college educated and have student debt? Or that perhaps a college graduate might like to open a business but is financially stuck paying off huge loans? Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest member of the court and the first Black woman in the nation’s history to be appointed, had a very different take. She rightly asked, “I’m wondering whether or not the same fairness issue would arise with respect to any federal benefit program.” Indeed, why is it fair for only people over the age of 65 (and a few other categories of people such as veterans and very low-income people) to qualify for government-funded health care? Those who don’t qualify for such government programs pay for others’ benefits via our taxes because that’s the point of taxes—to pool together a cut of everyone’s personal income and help pay for the things that make society better, fairer, more livable. But it’s this very point that conservatives see as anathema to their grim worldview, the one that Ayn Rand brought to life in her (unintentionally) dystopian novels. Justice Jackson continued her thought process, saying, “I just don’t know how far we can go with this notion of, to the extent that the government is providing much-needed assistance to people in an emergency, it’s going to be unfair to those who don’t get the same benefit.” Indeed, student debtors are in trouble precisely because they didn’t get the same government benefits compared to their predecessors. According to Business Insider, “From fall 1973 to spring 1977, boomers paid around $39,780 in today’s dollars for four years of public college. That’s a little more than half the cost for millennials attending public college from fall 2006 to spring 2010: $70,000. And what Gen Z is paying today is more than double that: $90,875.” This is directly the result of the federal and state governments paying less toward the cost of higher education and shifting more of the cost of college to individuals. If Roberts’s hypothetical lawn care business owner hails from the baby boomer generation, then the question of fairness is turned on its head: Why should older generations have benefitted from tax-subsidized college education (thereby helping them avoid debt), when younger generations have not had the same advantage? If the Rand-ians could travel back decades in time to rectify this, they certainly would roll back all government benefits aimed at middle- and working-class boomers. If Biden could go back a few months in time, he would have done better to be more aggressive in his approach to debt relief. In August 2022, after dragging his feet for years to make good on his campaign promise, the president invoked emergency powers in light of the COVID-19 pandemic—a weak basis—for justifying debt cancellation. Debt experts like Harvard Law School’s Eileen Connor make a persuasive case that Congress has given the secretary of education the authority to make—or waive—college loans. In other words, with the stroke of a pen, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona could forgive all student debt. According to Connor, he would have the legal right to do this under the 1965 Higher Education Act signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Instead of using the 1965 law as the legal basis for his actions, Biden chose the 2003 HEROES Act, saying that he had the authority to pause student loan repayment because of the emergency conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Dalié Jiménez, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, called this an “unsurprising compromise,” and added that “[t]ime will tell if it was the right thing” to do. Time will indeed tell. Emergencies are, by definition, temporary. In August 2022, Biden used the pandemic to make his case for debt cancellation. Then, in September, he declared the pandemic over. He ran out his own clock. Nebraska’s Republican attorney general, Mike Hilgers, pointed out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that, “The president can’t have it both ways. He can’t tell the country the pandemic is over while claiming that it justifies this unilateral action.” As I explained in an analysis last year when the president first announced his plan, it was a paltry gesture that could have gone so much further. Given that Biden would face the same stiff opposition whether he forgave $10,000 or $100,000, he should have aimed higher and been more aggressive. Instead, his actions indicate that he too may be unswayed by the unfairness of student loan burdens. Conservatives are also predictably touting the high cost of debt relief—“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans,” reminded Justice Roberts during the February 28 oral arguments. Lawmakers, including most of the liberal ones, rarely balk at the much, much higher annual cost of funding the Defense Department. Unlike the cost of maintaining a perpetual war machine, Biden’s (far too modest) debt relief can impact the lives of 43 million living, breathing human beings. One debtor, 26-year-old Ella Azoulay, told Associated Press that her 2018 degree from New York University has left her with $40,000 of debt. Her father is even worse off, having taken out more than $400,000 in loans to educate his three children. For many borrowers, Biden’s plan would eliminate just a fraction of their debt. What does $10,000 to $20,000 in debt forgiveness mean for an individual? For those people whose repayment plans were paused during the pandemic, a CNBC survey found that resuming payments would impact their ability to pay off other loans, as well as save for retirement or buy a home. A small minority said it would impact their decisions to get married or have a child. So, we’re talking about serious life decisions. Ayn Rand, near the end of her life, benefitted from the same welfare system she railed against. Government benefits are easy to dismiss and denounce—until you need them. Meanwhile, what does $10,000 to $20,000 mean for the wealthiest Americans? So little that it would not even cover the price tag of this $32,500 Hermes handbag. According to the Financial Times, the market for luxury goods is booming. Further, “wealthy people have more time in which to spend their money, since they now live roughly a decade longer than their low-income counterparts, thanks to better health care, diet, nutrition and rest.” There you have it. If fairness is the basis for deciding whether or not to forgive student loans, conservatives would do well to examine such disparities. AuthorSonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Archives March 2023 3/14/2023 Xi Calls for Accelerated Technological and Military Growth in Response to US Threats By: Misión VerdadRead Now Chinese Head of State Xi Jinping. Photo: AFP. The president of China, Xi Jinping, called for accelerating the development of science and technology to ensure greater self-sufficiency and strengthen the country’s army in the face of the unprecedented siege that the United States has been applying, circumstances that require adapting to new challenges. In the context of the 14th National People’s Congress, from where the destiny of the country is decided and in which Xi was re-elected for his third presidential term, he said that Beijing must apply the new philosophy of strengthening all fronts, and intensify efforts to create a new pattern of growth. “China must ultimately rely on scientific and technological innovation,” Xi said. He also spoke about the need to shield China from a military and technological point of view. He spoke of turning the armed forces into a “great iron wall” that effectively safeguards national sovereignty, security, and development interests. Regarding this last item, we must mention the strategic importance of Taiwan and the support of the United States for its false autonomy. Regarding gringo interference, he warned that China remains determined to prevent outside agents from getting involved in separatist activities on the island. In relation to the economic dimension, he asked officials to promote the construction of a new growth framework that prioritizes domestic demand, innovation, and self-sufficiency in science and technology, in addition to improving the industrial sector and promoting innovation to reduce carbon emissions. After being re-elected for his third term as president of the National Popular Assembly, this body elected him as president of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and made him the commander of the two million-member People’s Liberation Army (PLA). AuthorMisión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution This article was republished from Orinoco Tribune. Archives March 2023 3/14/2023 The American Lenin - The Falsification and Reclaiming of Du Bois’s Revolutionary Science in Modern America. By: Noah KhrachvikRead Now This is a transcript from Noah’s presentation at the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation’s Symposium on W. E. B. Du Bois. You can see Noah’s presentation HERE. Hi. I’m Noah. Before I begin, I just want to say it’s an honor to be here with all of you today, to represent the Midwestern Marx Institute, and to be able to share our views and learn from all of you. The subject of reclaiming WEB Dubois, and his most important works, Black Reconstruction in America and The Souls of Black Folk is of primary importance in our era. I’m genuinely honored and humbled to be a small part of that project. You know, one of the things I admire most about Dubois, and I’m sure you’ll hear this a hundred times today, was that his knowledge, his study, the social science he basically founded in our country, it wasn’t for its own sake. It wasn’t Dubois simply wanting to understand how things work from a privileged position of comfort. Instead, for Dubois, all of it, and I mean all of it, was in the effort of direct necessity, the struggle for freedom and liberty from the most brutal forms of oppression, exploitation, and domination in human history. A shining example of Marx’s iconic call in his 11th thesis on Feuerbach. Marxism views this as a concrete, particular form that the universal process of class struggle arises in, due to the material history that creates it, the things that condition what it looks like and how it moves and changes over time. It is a struggle of a nascent class that carries with it the future of society against a decaying class that no longer serves a purpose. Or, to put the concept of universal and particular in Dubois’s own words, “There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all.” Our entire society is, of course, based on class struggle, whether we call it the struggle for democracy, the struggle against imperialism, or the class struggle. All forward motion in American history has been because of this struggle, and WEB Dubois, whom our Institute refers to as the Father of American Marxism, is THE central and pivotal figure for understanding this struggle in our context. Understanding the theory of Dubois as a class project - for the poor, working class, and oppressed peoples of America in our necessity, and for the imperialist ruling class of distortion, ideological limitations, and subterfuge, is, for us at Midwestern Marx, anyway, the first step towards a new society. So, with that in mind, I’d like to begin with a quote from VI Lenin, who said: there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle… To expect science to be impartial in a wage-slave society is as foolishly naïve as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers’ wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital. We can’t very well reclaim Dubois if we don’t understand how he has been taken from us, and this poor excuse for a duct-taped-together, papier mache mannequin that the institutions of the capitalist class have called Dubois given back to us in his place, and so this is what I’ll briefly try to explain here. The first thing we must examine here is the class nature of “the left”. We don’t have time to get into how and why now, of course, but over the last period of American history, any real forces in our society we could call a “left” have been replaced by what CIA whistleblower Thomas Braden has called “the compatible left”, or a synthetic creation coming from the institutions and knowledge production apparatus of the capitalist class that is forced to retain a radical-looking exterior by the demands and necessities of the working class, but the substance of which is fully of, by, and for the upper classes. The forces most commonly referred to as “the left” in American society today are the children of CIA operations like the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the think tanks and foundations owned by the Ford and Rockefeller cartels (among others). The primary methods of the distribution of knowledge in modern America are through these think tanks, foundations, and more and more importantly in the internet age, the bourgeois academy. And it is how they treat the life’s work of Dubois that is the problem here. Coming from the class institutions of the bourgeoisie, it is rife with mistakes typical of bourgeois ideology. What seems to happen is that they take bits and pieces of Dubois’s thought and re-ify it, especially in his early work, divorcing it from its context and what gave rise to it and how it changes over time. We often call this sort of mistake one of “metaphysics” in Marxism, but I’ve always kind of secretly hated that term because it’s so easily misunderstood, so we’re going to use one of our own: the purity fetish. So, in their discussions of Dubois on the subject of race, they remove the early concepts from their movement and change, and re-ify them at that point, isolating this section and freezing it in time. For them, this becomes essential, becomes Dubois, as it justifies their preconceptions and ideological dogmas, so they can safely toss out the fact that Dubois refines and concretizes his views on race throughout his entire life, and even explicitly says as much in his biographies. This is a fundamentally anti-dialectical reading, of course, as it fails to take into account the entirety of the concept. It’s archetypical of the purity fetish. For them, this is Dubois before his purity was taken, tainted by his growth into socialism, Pan-Africanism, and Marxism. (Of course, they do the same thing to his Pan-Africanism, but that’s a whole nother bag of bananas.) Which leads me to my second point. This ideological, re-ified, purity fetishized papier muh-shay version of Dubois is in direct contradiction to the real life’s work of Dubois. A comprehensive, dialectical, and materialist study of Dubois shows us that he was ALWAYS moving forwards, ALWAYS refining, ALWAYS overcoming internal contradictions in his theory and creating something better. This is how he worked, because this was the necessity of the work he was doing. Real liberation REQUIRES such constant refinement and motion, REQUIRES overcoming our mistakes. Necessity understands that even if a thing was correct then and there, it may not necessarily still be correct here and now. And let’s be real. There is no necessity in the comfortable, 200k a year salary academics of the bourgeois academy that falsify and parade around the pure, papier mache Dubois through their institutions like they just won the Stanley Cup. The necessity of change in post-Civil Rights Revolution, 2000’s USA, however, the necessity of the era of re-proletarianization, THIS creates for us the possibility of a deeper understanding. One that is hyper-aware of the crimes of these so-called progressives: that they deepen and proliferate the very divisions in American society that Dubois sought to overcome! In their purity fetishization, they essentialize and ontologize what Dubois, instead, explains the creation and inner mechanics of: things like imperialism, racism. His concept of the psychological wage of poor whites was not calling it an inherent and essential aspect of their skin color or ethnicities, as many of these “academics” treat it, reducing their thought to what Henry Winston would call a ‘skin strategy’. Precisely the opposite! Dubois’s theorizing of these schisms in American society was done in order to understand what gave rise to them, how they function, and HOW THEY CAN BE OVERCOME! Far from a binary good/evil moral condemnation of poor whites and there being some essential content inherent within a race (such as the many, many things people just took as fact that he talks about in Black Reconstruction that sound crazy to us modern Americans), Dubois had extreme sympathy for this forgotten class of people while still recognizing the capacity for harm and reaction, and he put his hopes in its ability to form an alliance with the black working class in the north AND south (and also the immigrant petty bourgeoisie of the west). This, for Dubois, would be a force the capitalist class could not stop, and the only one capable of fulfilling the democratic ideals set down in the Declaration of Independence. And this brings us to today, where we believe that alliance is more possible than ever before. We have gone through three revolutions in this land. The first, bourgeois revolution to overcome British imperial rule. The second, the civil war, which became the revolution of the freedmen and the destruction of the moribund planter class. And the third, the political revolution we refer to as the Civil Rights Movement. The effects of this political revolution cannot be understated, even though they seem to be downplayed in the service of reinforcing the old divisions of American society by these same faux progressives. All of these represent leaps in the form of American social relations (and I wouldn’t be a Marxist if I didn’t irritatingly note that all three followed great leaps in technology and production–sorry). Anyway, this history, our history, of two and a half hundred years (give or take - I’m bad at math, sorry) is the American people becoming, well… the American people. Taking back Dubois, taking back Black Reconstruction, from the institutions of the class standing in the way of completing that process, who falsify and distort his theory, is taking back the ability to understand our own history and how we have gotten to where we are, which is, of course, essential if we want to figure out how to move forward. So where are we? In Black Reconstruction in America, Dubois describes a white working class that was taught that we weren’t even the same species, and a black working class that was kept from being taught altogether. Our society, based on class struggles, has won tremendous victories in those struggles since then. Now, in 2023, kids aren’t taught that we’re a separate species, or even that one race is superior to another (as it was even when my father arrived here as a child). Now, kids are taught that we are the same. Of course, we cannot speak of American history without at least briefly touching on the middle classes, based as they were in what amounted to American apartheid, and Jim Crow, but these are all whole discussions of their own. What I want to focus on is the same necessity that drove Dubois, and that is the necessity of now, the era of the destruction of the middle classes; the era of re-proletarianization. It is this process, of imperialism reaching a moribund stage, of full financialization, de-industrialization, and the impossibility of continuing on in the old way that leads us to this necessity, that has over over 60% of the country struggling paycheck to paycheck, a complete loss of faith in the system, and a rapidly decreasing standard of living. This is necessity. It opens up a possibility that the middle classes never had. The last point I want to make is on the recovery of Du Bois’s internationalism. Today, Du Boisian scholarship, grounded in the academy, comfy PMC positions, and the purity fetish world outlook, is tied up inherently in American imperialism. This couldn’t be any farther from Du Bois, who was an anti-imperialist thinker through and through - who connected the struggle of the working class in America to the struggles of colonized peoples abroad. Today, what passes for Du Boisian scholarship is not only limited to the halls of academia, far away from the dirtiness and vulgarity of real working class life and politics, but when it does comment on real life and politics, it simply paints a radical-looking veneer over the narratives of the American empire. And for me, it doesn’t really matter how cool and hip and radical your words sound, if the content and practical implications align fully with imperialism, as theirs do in the cases of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and, really, any country which dares to exist outside of the spheres of influence of US/NATO imperialism, then it is imperialist. (Ideologically speaking, this is a new, modern, “woke” liberal form of the reaction to Reconstruction from the ruling class.) Du Bois, on the other hand, was an ardent supporter of those undergoing the difficult task of constructing an alternative order outside of the sphere of influence of empire, and constantly under attack from hybrid warfare arising from imperialism. Du Bois was unapologetically supportive of the revolutionary movements in Africa, of the Chinese revolution, of the Soviet revolution, and of all projects for liberation which ran counter to the claws of empire - a support which well predates his turn towards a more explicit Marxism in the mid-1930s. This attitude required not only an exclusion of purity as the standard through which we judge projects abroad - but also an incredible amount of courage, something which many Du Bois scholars lack. Du Bois was excommunicated from the country for being a revolutionary, asking for peace, and supporting actual socialist experiments. Not to mention that they kept kicking him out of their institutions for refusing to compromise his radicalism, a very big difference to the academics being funded by those institutions who use his name now. Today, Du Bois scholars live comfortable middle class lives in the heart of the empire, and are used as what Carlos Garrido calls the controlled counter-hegemonic agents of empire, who present themselves as radical, but always side with the exploiters, the colonizers, the imperialists. Du Bois has been taken from us, but only in form. The Du Bois they hold onto is not actually Du Bois, but a caricature of his they have created in order to domesticate his radical ethos, a papier mache facsimile, a phantom. The project, then, for me, is maybe less taking back Du Bois, and more, sort of… re-discovering Du Bois. Today the task is to go back to the real Du Bois, and to use this real Du Bois in the project of smashing the phantom, and gaining ideological clarity in our confusing and contradictory times. Du Bois, today more than ever, is the most important weapon the American people have if they want to fight for a world of genuine, positive peace, where democracy is expanded, and regular working class people, not capital, is in control. This Du Bois, for us at the Midwestern Marx Institute, is the father of American Marxism. The American Lenin. If we are to win the class struggle, abolish empire, and achieve a higher form of democratic life - one in line with the ideals of the founding of the country, then this is our first step. AuthorNoah Khrachvik is a proud working class member of the Communist Party USA. He is 40 years old, married to the most understanding and patient woman on planet Earth (who puts up with all his deep-theory rants when he wakes up at two in the morning and can't get back to sleep) and has a twelve-year-old son who is far too smart for his own good. When he isn't busy writing, organizing the working class, or fixing rich people's houses all day, he enjoys doing absolutely nothing on the couch, surrounded by his family and books by Gus Hall. Archives March 2023 |
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