The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism

  In the last few decades there has been an enormous shift in the capitalist economy in the direction of the globalization of production. Much of the increase in manufacturing and even services production that would have formerly taken place in the global North—as well as a portion of the North’s preexisting production—is now being offshored to the global South, where it is feeding the rapid ...
Posted on December 8 2011 Keep Reading...

Who Controls Capital? What Does Capital Control?

  Who controls capital, and what does capital control?  The concept of "capital" in this context must be corporate enterprise.  By this metric the commanding heights of capital in the United States would be the Fortune 500 or 1,000, perhaps a thousand or so more, with an array of satellite firms numbering in the tens of thousands. How should control of capital be measured?  To begin with, ...
Posted on December 8 2011 Keep Reading...

The Agonizers: 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer

  The challenge for this new generation cutting their political teeth in the tent cities around the world will be to learn the lessons Mann tries to teach in this book.  One of the most important?  "Transformative organizers," Mann says, "know a most precious truth: that much of the deepest healing, transformation and rejuvenation comes from within the work itself."   Eric Mann.  Playbook for Progressives: 16 Qualities ...
Posted on December 8 2011 Keep Reading...

Contradictions of Finance Capitalism

  Over the last thirty years, capital has abstracted upwards, from production to finance; its sphere of operations has expanded outwards, to every nook and cranny of the globe; the speed of its movement has increased, to milliseconds; and its control has extended to include “everything.” We now live in the era of global finance capitalism. The term “finance capital” comes from Rudolf Hilferding, the Austro-German Marxist ...
Posted on December 6 2011 Keep Reading...

Labor Wars in Longview, Washington: “No Wisconsin Here”

  When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun; Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, But the union makes us strong. We have passed by Longview, Washington many times on our way to Seattle or Mt. Rainier. We never knew about its rich labor history, and we would never have ...
Posted on December 6 2011 Keep Reading...

The Unifying Element in All Struggles Against Capital Is the Right of Everyone to Full Human Development

  Interview by Michael A. Lebowitz The following is a portion of an interview that took place in Caracas, December 4, 2009, published in Hak Mücadeleleri, edited by Yalçin Bürkev, Metin Özugurlu, Yasemin Özdek, and Ersin Vedat Elgur (Ankara: Note Bene Yayinlari, 2011) —Ed. Let’s start with your ideas about rethinking Marx, capital’s logic, and the logic of the working class? And how we can relate these subjects ...
Posted on December 2 2011 Keep Reading...

Lessons from a Long History of Dissent: From the Early Twentieth Century to Occupy Wall Street

World Peace Forum Teach-In, Vancouver, Canada, November 12, 2011 (Modified from Notes) We are at what social theorists call a "historic moment," in which real change suddenly seems possible.  It is therefore all the more important to learn from past struggles.  One of the first lessens of a long history of dissent from the early twentieth century to the current Occupy Wall Street movement is that ...
Posted on December 2 2011 Keep Reading...

The Occupy Wall Street Uprising and the U.S. Labor Movement:

  An Interview with Steve Early, Jon Flanders, Stephanie Luce, and Jim Straub by Farooque Chowdhury and Michael D. Yates The Occupy Wall Street uprising has taken the nation by storm, beginning in the Financial District in Manhattan and then spreading to cities and towns in every part of the country and around the world.  The anger over growing inequality and the political power of the rich ...
Posted on December 2 2011 Keep Reading...

GENERAL STRIKE

  General strikes were common in Europe and in the U.S. towards the end of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century.  They provoked great debates within the labor movement and within the revolutionary parties and movements (anarchist, communist, socialist). Much discussed were the importance of the general strike in the social and political struggles, the conditions for its success, the role ...
Posted on December 2 2011 Keep Reading...

Pessimism of the Reality, Optimism of the Ideal

  I. It seems to me that José Vasconcelos has found a formula on pessimism and optimism that not only defines the feeling of the new Ibero-American generation in the face of the contemporary crisis, but also corresponds to the absolute mentality and sensibility of an era in which, despite the thesis of José Ortega y Gasset on the "disenchanted soul" and "the twilight of revolutions," millions ...
Posted on December 2 2011 Keep Reading...