SolidarityEconomy.net

by Jerry Harris, SolidarityEconomy.net

Globalization opens the door on many possible futures. The fundamental changes taking place creates a host of contradictions played out at every level of society, all interlinked and simultaneously affecting one another. The integrative force of global production, finance and technology has qualitatively changed social relations along with culture, politics and the way we see the world and ourselves. Globalization, as a mode of accumulation and wealth has achieved a hegemonic position but its social structure and nationally defined characteristics continue to be formed. This is particularly true of its political expressions and the role of civil society.

Therefore far from a determined and certain future multiple alternatives exist, all dependent on human agency and struggle. On one extreme is the possible collapse of globalization into a world defined by reactionary nationalism, fundamentalist theologies and environmental collapse. Another future may be a long period of relative stability and capitalist transnational hegemony, punctuated by periodic crisis’ that are resolved by the institutional structures that come to characterize the globalist era. The habits, ideas and relations formed during the rise of nation states and (more…)

by Mitchel Cohen, Brooklyn Greens/Green Party, and co-founder, Red Balloon Collective

FORTY YEARS IT’S BEEN. In October 1967, I was an 18-year-old junior at SUNY Stony Brook, organizing students to participate in the first militant demonstration on the East Coast against the Vietnam war. At the Pentagon.

Phil Ochs — my hero — was scheduled to perform at Stony Brook that night. Many students were saying they weren’t going on the march because they wanted to go to Phil’s concert instead. SDS wrote letter after letter trying to get him to change the date. No answer. Finally — oh, how it cut my heart out — we organized a boycott of his records. (more…)

by Rhone Fraser

“The sit-in movement was built upon deep layers of African American organizational experience stretching back generations.”

The American civil rights narrative has too often been reduced to a tale of spontaneous invention, rather than the product of intense debate, meticulous planning and, often, tactical and strategic genius on the part of the organizers. It’s long past time to tell the truth about this watershed moment in the Black radical tradition. (more…)

By Ted Glick

When I first began hearing CNN journalist and news anchor Lou Dobbs being interviewed a month or so ago on radio and TV about his new book, “War on the Middle Class,” I was interested in learning more. I’ve never been a fan of Dobbs given what I’ve picked up were his racially-discriminatory-racist-views on illegal immigration of Latinos from Mexico and Central America. But I was intrigued when, in the media interviews, I heard him castigate the Democrats and Republicans as parties bought and controlled by big business. He called for action to address the health care crisis and took other generally progressive positions.

So I bought and read his book.

There’s a lot in it that is positive. Some examples:

-”I strongly reject unfettered capitalism and those forces that now rampant corporatism has arrayed against our middle class and those who aspire to be part of it.” (more…)

SolidarityEconomy.net’s Carl Davidson debates Mark Solomon, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism on the left, the movement to defeat the right and the future of socialism

Mark Solomon - A Progressive Majority: What it is and How to Build It

At the Jack London Museum in the Sonoma foothills, there’s a large poster on display from around 1907 advertising a talk by Jack London on “The Coming Crisis.” If ever there was an always timely, all-purpose and perennially relevant topic, that’s it.

When we tote up outrages like an administration that abets environmental disaster, a budget resolution that shreds the last vestiges of decent social payments, worsening carnage in Iraq, insane threats to nuke Iran; a White House knee-deep in corruption, chicanery and contempt for the Constitution; a House bill that criminalizes millions of undocumented workers and those who help them; festering brutality, torture illegal rendition and denial of human rights to prisoners held across the world; near-genocidal widespread joblessness and incarceration among African American males; aggressive campaigns to undermine reproductive choice, gay marriage and other personal decisions - the crisis isn’t just coming. It’s here.

But crisis always provokes response - the most visible at the moment, the awakening of undocumented immigrants and (more…)

A leader in the revolutionary left in the US should feel like a fox in a chicken coop.

Increasingly large capitalists (Walmart, Enron, Wall-Street) are being exposed as so destructive to our society. The Bush administration creates global chaos and suffering. Attacks on democratic rights are expanding.

Thoughtful people in all strata of our society realize that there are dangerous trends that need to be met with positive alternatives. Young people, and leaders from all sectors, are open to new ideas including the notion of system change.

In other parts of the world resistance has and is being converted to system change. We see this taking place particularly in South and Central America as countries shift to the left.

In our own country, though, the social movement remains marginal despite deepening anxiety among the majority of our (more…)

1. The World Situation: Brief Outline of its Main Features and Prospects

The world is undergoing vast changes. In the decade following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc, and the end of the Cold War, the world’s political and economic systems have faced expansion and collapse, upheavals and crises - violent and nonviolent - leading to a new global economy and new relationships of power and influence.

(more…)