An array of liberal and left-wing pundits is already blaming West in advance for the unpopular Biden’s (potential) loss to the (as yet unnamed) Republican candidate next year. Apparently, the conventional wisdom even among most self-described socialists is that it is our job to ensure Biden’s victory, even though he has done nothing to earn it.
Analysis
How to prepare to lose an election: Abraham Lincoln vs. Donald Trump
Trump is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election. For him, winning the presidency is his existential goal. Lose, and any conviction he receives will subject him to financial ruin and prison time.
Support the Loretto Hospital strike!
Wages and adequate staffing are the central issues in the strike. These issues go hand in hand. Wages have to be high enough so that workers will want to stay at Loretto and not move to higher paying hospitals. With the recent state funding, management could certainly pay for the union demands.
What happened to the big UPS strike?
On July 29th, our website posted an article by Adam Shills arguing that the contract is an important victory. Here we post a different point of view by Joe Allen, in an article that first appeared in CounterPunch.
Important union victory at UPS
Both trade union activists and the business press have been closely following the negotiations between UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) for some time. Then, on July 25, the big news came. The IBT had signed a tentative agreement with UPS. The purpose of this article is to explain what is in the new agreement and the attitude that socialists should take.
The US economy: Hesitant and modest growth
Economic headlines present a confusing jumble of news. Commentators speak of avoiding a recession, while interest rates and food prices remain high. There are plenty of Help Wanted signs yet many people are not feeling particularly flush. What’s really going on? The purpose of this article is to examine the current US economic situation.
Supreme Court exposes U.S. democracy’s inner rot
It is no exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is teetering toward the edge of a cliff. But the right-wing fanatics currently enjoying a 6-3 supermajority in the Court do not allow such minor considerations (like accountability) to deter them from achieving their main goal: turning back the clock in U.S. society to the 1950s era, when LGBTQ people were forced to stay in the closet; college students were wealthy, Christian, and white; racial segregation still flourished; and, of course, abortion was illegal.
The cost of living and profits
In the year to Q1 2023, in Europe, unit profits increased more than unit labour costs in manufacturing, construction and finance, and grew at the same rate as unit labour cost in “accommodation food and transportation”.
A ruling class perspectives document
The Republican Party is no longer the most important political vehicle for the ruling class. The Republicans have become so involved in Trump’s intrigues, vendettas, and conspiracy theories that a considerable layer have forgotten their responsibilities to bourgeois democracy and to a stable system of capital accumulation.
June 25 elections in Greece
The June 25 elections in Greece confirmed, but also reinforced, the harsh negative features of the results of the “first round” of the May 21 election. In the new parliament, the sum of the right and the far-right parties reached 200 seats (out of a total of 300), thus creating a correlation of parliamentary forces that is unprecedented in the years following the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1974.
A different road for socialists
Our work has been devoted to essentially arguing a negative point—that it’s fundamentally wrong to see any part of the Democratic Party as the road to social change. This viewpoint obviously poses a major question: if socialists shouldn’t be supporting Democrats, then what should we be doing instead? What is our alternative course of action?
The Package King faces an uncertain summer
UPS has told management and supervisors to be at work in early August to handle a possible strike. So there may be some serious contingency planning behind the “win-win” veneer. Interestingly, UPS competitors, such as FedEx, are positioning themselves to sweep in and grab UPS customers if there is a strike.
Brandon Johnson “a very encouraging start”. Not for us!
Now that the election’s over, evidence is beginning to come in to judge the validity of the different perspectives. The Lavin interview is an important statement by a major ruling class player. It shows that those socialists who stressed the fundamental compatibility of Johnson with the Democratic Party and ruling class politics were on the right track.
A new political terrain in Greece ahead of the new elections on June 25th
The actual class balance of forces, the political balance of forces and the electoral balance of forces are different quantities and qualities to measure. They are interrelated and they influence each other, but they are not identical.
Bedford Park, IL is the place to be
Industrial strikes are rare enough today. So when two occur within a few months of one another and literally a few minutes’ walk from one another, it’s worth paying some attention. This is what’s happening in Bedford Park, an industrial suburb just south of Chicago.