By CLAUDIO KATZ In the middle of his term, Argentinian president [Mauricio] Macri cannot hide the monumental abyss between his promises and reality. The promise was of an influx of dollars to lower inflation, with high growth, job creation, an entrepreneurial boom and eradication of social assistance. A drastic reduction of the fiscal deficit and…
By BARRY WEISLEDER The world’s debt load has ballooned to a record $164 trillion, a trend that could make it harder for countries to cope with the next capitalist recession and pay off debts if financing conditions tighten, the International Monetary Fund said in April. Global public and private debt swelled to 225 per cent…
UPDATE, May 26 — Votes are still being counted, but exit polls predict that the repeal of the Eighth Amendment has won overwhelmingly. It is expected that the “yes” vote will amount to about 68 percent of those voting. It is a great victory for women’s right to choose. Socialist Democracy urges all socialists and…
By ANDY BARNS The more pervasive and unchallenged propaganda is, the more effective it becomes. As a salesman by trade, I handle a lot of promotional materials for the products we sell at my workplace (booklets and product samples). These range from decking, to fasteners, all the way to kitchen faucets. I have a front-row…
By DEWITT KENNARD The total number of the world’s displaced people is at an all-time high. Fear of persecution caused by war, race, religion, or political affiliation is a force that drives these people from their homelands. El Salvador, a country that lost about 25 percent of its population to migration during its civil war, is…
By JOHN LESLIE The Great Return March culminated on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, known to the Palestinian people as the Nakba (catastrophe). Israel hit Gaza with air strikes and tank fire, claiming to be targeting Hamas positions. A day earlier, a mass mobilization of more than 100,000…
For more than 70 years, Palestinians have endured the crimes of ethnic cleansing, dispossession, disenfranchisement, destruction, and death at the hands of apartheid Israel, with the unqualified backing of the United States, as well as the tolerance of this ongoing trampling on humanity and justice by the international community. As Israelis celebrate the May 14,…
By ERWIN FREED On May 8, CT Bail Fund called a rally outside of York Correctional Institute, a women’s prison in Niantic, Conn. Eleven other groups were listed as co-sponsors on the events facebook page and around 40 people showed up in solidarity. The rally was called in conjunction with the Bail Fund’s successful effort…
By ERWIN FREED At the beginning of 2018, Iran saw the largest uprising of labor militancy in a decade. The Islamic Republic’s armed goons managed to smash the resistance of workers and peasants, killing dozens and jailing hundreds in the process. But Iranian workers have remained mobilized, while the social conditions in the country remain…
By LISA LUINENBURG When I became a mother three and a half years ago, I began to feel my oppression as a woman in capitalist society more acutely. All of the endless demands on my time began to add up—the sleepless nights, the feedings, child care, cooking, housework, errands and laundry around the clock. And…
By CHRISTINE MARIE “Karl Marx once said that there must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without decreasing its misery.” With these words, the Socialist Action candidate for U.S. Senate from Connecticut, Fred Linck, began his April 28 talk to a roomful of students at the…
By BRUCE LESNICK The U.S. and its Gulf and NATO allies have been fighting a war of aggression against Syria for over five years. Plans to replace the Syrian government with one more subservient to the needs of U.S. corporate interests began well before that. The Pentagon has spent $41.1 billion in Syria since 2001,…
By JEFF MACKLER It’s been a long while since anyone alive has seen working people successfully fight back against capitalist cruelty with winning class-struggle strategies and tactics. Today, teachers, and their allies among state workers and working-class families in West Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Colorado have set an inspiring example for the entire U.S.…
By DAVID KIELY Our dear comrade Annette Gagne died in Providence, R.I., on March 14, the 135th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death in 1883. In her last moments, Annette was surrounded by friends and comrades. All were people who, as a close friend of Annette said, “meant the world to her.” Annette’s political legacy as…
By JOHN LESLIE The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office continues to stonewall in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. At a court hearing on April 30, prosecutors failed, once again, to produce a memorandum allegedly signed by former Philadelphia District Attorney and retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille. Under the 2016 Williams v. Pennsylvania…
By ANN MONTAGUE — LONDON — Every day here in Britain there is more news about the Windrush scandal. Workers arriving in the United Kingdom between 1948 and 1973 from Caribbean countries have been labeled the “Windrush Generation.” This refers to the ship HMT Empire Windrush, which first arrived in England in June 1948, bringing…
By KEITH COOK Reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer (May 1, 2018). I was stationed in Europe 37 years ago when I received the call that all black families dread. My little brother, Mumia Abu-Jamal, had been shot by the police and was fighting for his life. Mumia was the kindest and gentlest of my five…
By YVES ENGLER Progressive on-line commentary about the April 23 van attack in Toronto has focused on the influence of “toxic masculinity.” The analyses should be expanded to include the alleged perpetrator’s ties to a powerful patriarchal institution that is Canada’s biggest purveyor of violence. Early reports suggest alleged mass murderer Alek Minassian may have targeted…
By MARK BRUNT When West Virginia teachers walked out over health insurance premiums, few people predicted that, after feeling betrayed by union bureaucrats, the rank and file teachers would rebel and turn the strike into a wildcat action that would substantially increase their gains. Fewer still anticipated that the walkout would spark coordinated labor actions…
By JEFF MACKLER Antiwar and social justice activists mobilized for the April 14 and 15 spring regional protests across the U.S. to demand an end to “U.S. Wars at Home and Abroad.” The broadly sponsored and nationally coordinated protests were organized in some 40 cities, in an effort initiated by the United National Antiwar Coalition…
By BARRY SHEPPARD The most effective way to counter Donald Trump’s reactionary policies is through mass action. The Democratic Party hopes to steer movements and individuals opposed to Trump into support of its candidates. While this trap of “lesser evil” politics has proved to be a failure over and over again for the past eight…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE Declining empires are dangerous, and the U.S. is an empire in decline. If the U.S. ruling class can avoid the Thucydides Trap with China (the tendency for a declining empire to go to war with a rising empire), they still must face their own decline as the center of the capitalist system.…
By CLIFF CONNER Following World War II, a think tank named the RAND Corporation took the lead in formulating policies guiding military-industrial Big Science. Some of the titles of books and articles about RAND provide a hint of what it represented in the public imagination: “The Think Tank that Controls America,” “America’s University of Imperialism,”…
On April 13, the U.S. and its imperialist allies, France and Britain, launched what was reported to be around 100 missiles on targets in Damascus. The following statement was immediately issued by Spring Actions 2018, a broad national antiwar coalition that is endorsed by over 200 organizations and prominent activists, including Socialist Action and…
By MARTY GOODMAN In a massive display of working-class power, workers throughout France walked off the job on March 22 and on April 3, launching a long-term series of one-day strikes. The strike wave is aimed at the anti-working-class attacks of the neoliberal French president, Emanuel Macron. The strike action gained tremendous force on March…
