By the late 1970s, the rank-and-file rebellion was over, and the “party-building” projects of many groups had collapsed and disintegrated, in many cases with great regrets, anger, and bitterness among people who only a few years earlier had been committed comrades. There are many lessons for today for from this era, both good and bad, but to mine the past requires honesty, sometimes brutal honesty to assess what happened and why, and what were the political consequences.
We oppose any U.S. invasion. We call for an end to the current U.S. blockade of oil deliveries. And we call for an end to the U.S. embargo that dates from the early 1960s. Moreover, if Cubans want to emigrate to the U.S., we welcome them along with all other immigrants who are targets of Trump’s xenophobia.
The United States has grown wary of long-term occupations. Abandoning the pretense of exporting democracy, the Trump administration has chosen to force existing powers to comply with its rule.
Given the victories of the nationalist parties, there is a real possibility of the break-up of the UK in the next few years which would pose huge changes to the structure of politics and society on the British Isles.
For all the liberal tribute paid to the sacrifices of civil rights activists in the 1960s, liberal and Democratic Party leaders have seemed strangely subdued in their reaction to the Supreme Court’s tearing the heart out of the VRA. The solution Democrats offer is to more aggressively gerrymander “blue” states to maintain Democratic parity with the Republicans. Even Black politicians who may find themselves out of office after Republican gerrymanders eliminate their seats have not issued calls for mass opposition to this rights rollback.
At its core, this is a crisis of the existing social order—one that is not temporary or accidental, but historical and structural in nature, and which manifests itself across all spheres, including the economy and politics. Figures such as Donald Trump are not the cause of this crisis, but rather its symptoms.
Though the resolution on the D9 bulldozers failed by a vote of 59 to 40, it was notable the large number of Democratic Senators that voted for it, nearly 80% of them. Yet, the crucial seven votes that killed it also came from the Democratic side of the aisle.
If some of the largest manifestations of opposition to Trump don’t clearly foreground antiwar or anti-imperial messages, it’s because the political presence of a left that raises those demands is weaker than at any time since those politics won a mass hearing during the Vietnam War.
In the short term, global inflation is going to rise. If the conflict lasts longer, then rising inflation will be joined by falling economic growth and the likelihood that even some of the major economies could slip into a slump. Stagflation is certain and slumpflation is possible.
The war will leave behind lasting transformations and dangerous precedents at both regional and global levels—precedents likely to be repeated in the future. Regardless of the outcome, this adventure will accelerate the decline of American imperialism and the disintegration of the existing imperialist order.
The fact is that Donald Trump’s style in world politics looks very much like a mafioso’s conduct on the global arena. Here are some of the Mafia methods applied by Don Trump on the world scene…
The idea that the Democratic Party is the place for leftists didn’t originate with Jackson. But his campaigns provided an entry point for the 1960s/1970s generation of radicals and revolutionaries to be reconciled with mainstream U.S. politics.
Imperialist nations have always been divided into classes, pitting workers and their capitalist rulers into an antagonistic relationship: one class can only gain at the other’s expense. This is the objective reality, which doesn’t change over time.
The Trump administration is betting that overwhelming military pressure, combined with the elimination of several leaders—including the head of state—will tip the balance in favor of pragmatic, non-ideological “moderates”.
This is a war whose potential devastation could eclipse all previous wars and armed conflicts in the region. The kind of destruction witnessed in Iraq, Libya, and Syria now looms over Iran. Meanwhile, only a short distance away, the destruction caused by the Pakistan–Afghanistan conflict continues unabated.
