https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1L0_qDfB08&ab_channel=JamarlThomas
Friday, November 13, 2020
W.H.O: Never in history have the results of a vaccine progressed so quickly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcAM318Quis&ab_channel=TeleSUREnglish
Thoughts of the Defeat of Trump
By Ángel Guerra Cabrera on November 11, 2020
The defeat of President Donald Trump in the November 3 elections is an irreversible fact. It was achieved by the tacit alliance of diverse and even antagonistic social forces, which made the reelection of the magnate impossible. So far Trump has not presented proof of the alleged fraud and all the lawsuits filed by his lawyers have been dismissed, except one, but it does not change the results. The victory of the Biden-Harris formula is not overwhelming but it is very clear, as I argued in this space the day after the elections (Goodbye Trump?). At that time, one could already see the sure victory of the Democratic ticket in several key states, or the favorable trends in others, which could provide a victory the Electoral College.
The proclamation of Biden’s triumph by the hegemonic media, including the ultra-right-wing Fox, responds to an old tradition in a country where there is no national electoral arbiter. In the same way, as David Brooks observed, when the victory of Trump in 2016 was announced, he immediately received the acknowledgments with pleasure. The tradition this time has been interrupted when the magnate refuses to accept the published result as all his predecessors have done. This attitude, which several of us had predicted, is not surprising. For months, he himself discredited the postal vote as fraudulent and claimed that he could only lose the election if the Democrats cheated him. It was known that his narcissism, fueled by lunatics like Pompeo, would prevent him from accepting an adverse outcome and lead him to entrench himself in the White House.
The possible victory of Trump’s presidential candidacy did not suit a wide range of forces, different and in some cases very opposed to each other. It did not suit the global financiers because of Trump’s unpredictable and conflicting relationship with America’s traditional allies – particularly the European Union -, because of his support and sympathy for wild right-wing extremists like Bolsonaro or his European counterparts, or because of his refusal to accept – even formally – the rules of multilateralism, which led him to abandon the Paris agreement on climate change, the 6+1 nuclear treaty with Iran, the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council. Neither do the left and progressive forces of the United States accept, from authentically democratic positions, Trump’s unilateralism, his contempt for democracy and human rights, his ultra-wild version of continental neoliberalism, his racist, xenophobic positions, his cruel reinforcement in the midst of the pandemic of the blockades of Cuba and Venezuela, and his denial of the existence of the Palestinian people, among many other outrages that make up a policy that is closer and closer to neo-fascism. Several of these reasons also make the liberals, as well as a majority of young people, women, blacks and Asians, vote for Biden. But even if the Democrats took them for granted it was the massive turnout of Latinos like never before that put them over the top especially in the so-called battle ground states.
Clearly, the millions on Wall Street and the Democratic electoral machine were not enough to defeat Trump. The call to vote for Biden by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocazio-Cortez and other progressive references of the Democratic Party, added to the impulse of Black Lives Matter and other social democratic forces, was decisive. Trump is a scoundrel, a person who has no sense of decency. But he is also an extraordinary demagogue, a great communicator, a connoisseur of the psychology of the average American, which makes him a formidable candidate in a system in terminal crisis, with important sectors invaded with despair, fear, the most hurtful inequalities and, often, great ignorance. Somehow he will leave or be forcibly removed from the White House before noon on January 20, 2020. But if he does not end up in prison for one or more of the many judicial processes he has pending, he will continue in politics with the great capital of his followers, who are not Republican politicians, who depend on him. In any case, the man has managed to assemble the largest right-wing movement with fascist overtones in American history, a serious danger that other lurking demagogues can use.
A Biden administration can look like an overloaded Obama administration, and it is time to build a grand coalition, uniting all democratic and progressive forces to demand free health care and education from Biden-Harris, drastic measures against racism and police violence, downward redistribution of wealth, a grand green deal, international peace policy, and an end to the blockades of Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries. Paradoxically, this is what could perhaps happen with a little more political life to it.
Video: We Need a Collective Response to the Collective Dilemmas of Our Time
by David Harvey
David Harvey and Amna Akbar in conversation about Marx's idea of human freedom
Sponsored by Haymarket Books
11 November 2020
The crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for us to think again about Marx’s idea of human freedom. Emergency steps to get through the crisis also show us how we could build a different society that’s not beholden to capital.
Unless we address the root cause of those problems in the structure of our economic system, we’ll never be able to solve them.
This a moment where we can use this socialist imagination to construct an alternative society. This is not utopian. Our needs can only be taken care of through collective action.
Speakers:
David Harvey is a distinguished professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His latest books are The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles and The Ways of the World .
Amna Akbar is a professor of law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She writes about policing and social movements, with a focus on grassroots demands for social change.
Socialist Appeal bulletin - 13th November 2020
Welcome to the latest Socialist Appeal weekly bulletin, with the highlights of this week's news and analysis from www.socialist.net.
The capitalists are jubilant at news of Biden's victory and the potential development of a COVID cure. But for workers, a return to 'normality' means a future of austerity, inequality, and exploitation. We have to fight to make the bosses pay for this crisis.
In Britain, Johnson's government is mired in chaos. But instead of fighting the Tories, Keir Starmer is attacking the left. The suspension of Jeremy Corbyn is a declaration of war. Yet faced with this ruthless opponent, the left leaders are vacillating and calling for 'unity'.
This is why we need to build a strong Marxist tendency in the labour movement. We therefore urge all our readers to join us today in the fight for socialism.
The latest issue of the paper (no. 337) is out now, with articles on: reformism vs revolution; Labour's civil war; the Uyghurs, China, and imperialist hypocrisy; and much much more.
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Europe’s COVID-19 second wave: criminal capitalist negligence
Jorge Martin
A second wave of COVID-19 is ravaging Europe. This was not inevitable, but a deadly consequence of governments prioritising the wealth of the capitalists over the health of the population. Make the bosses pay to protect lives and livelihoods!
Brexit deadline looms: Fresh fruit for rotting Tory vegetables
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Negotiations between Britain and the EU are going down to the wire. With Boris Johnson in thrall to Tory Brexiteers, the UK could well crash out of Europe without a deal, creating a perfect storm for British capitalism.
Biden win: No victory for the working class
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Biden has won - to the delight of the establishment, and the relief of ordinary Americans fed up with Trump. But US society remains polarised. And Biden represents the same bankrupt politics that led to Trump’s rise in the first place.
Review: ‘This Land’ – A cynic’s story of defeatism
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Why Capitalism Was Destined to Come Out on Top in the 2020 Election
Richard Wolff
November 10, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/why-capitalism-was-destined-to-come-out-on-top-in-the-2020-election/
No matter who “won” the U.S. election, what will not change is the capitalist organization of the country’s economy.
The great majority of enterprises will continue to be owned and operated by a small minority of Americans. They will continue to use their positions atop the capitalist system to expand their wealth, “economize their labor costs,” and thereby deepen the United States’ inequalities of wealth and income.
The employer class will continue to use its wealth to buy, control, and shape the nation’s politics to prevent the employee class from challenging their ownership and operation of the economic system. Indeed, for a very long time, they have made sure that (1) only two political parties dominate the government and (2) both enthusiastically commit to preserving and supporting the capitalist system. For capitalism, the question of which party wins matters only to how capitalism will be supported, not whether that support will be a top governmental priority.
No matter who won, the private sector and the government will continue their shared failure to overcome capitalism’s socially destructive instability. Economic crashes (“downturns,” “busts,” “recessions,” and “depressions”) will continue to occur on average every four to seven years, disrupting our economy and society. Already in this young century, we have endured, across Republicans and Democrats, three crashes (2000, 2008, and 2020) in 20 years: true to the historic average. Nothing capitalism tried in the past ever stopped or overcame its instability. Nothing either party now proposes offers the slightest chance of doing that in the future.
No matter who won, the historic undoing of the New Deal after 1945 will continue. The GOP and Democrats will both keep reversing the 1930s’ reduction of U.S. wealth and income inequalities (forced from below by the Congress of Industrial Organizations [CIO], socialists, and communists). As usual, the GOP reverses these gains for Americans further and faster than Democrats, but both parties have condoned and managed the upward redistribution of wealth and income since 1945.
The GOP will likely celebrate explicitly the wealthy they serve so slavishly. The Democrats will likely moan occasionally about inequality while serving the wealthy quietly or implicitly. The GOP will “economize on government costs” by cutting social programs for average people and the poor. The Democrats will expand those programs while carefully avoiding any questioning, let alone challenging, of capitalism.
No matter who won, what U.S. politics lacks is real choice. Both major parties function as cheerleaders for capitalism under all circumstances, even when a killer pandemic coincides with a major capitalist crash. Real political choice would require a party that criticizes capitalism and offers a path toward social transition beyond capitalism. Countless polls prove that millions of U.S. citizens want to consider socialist criticisms of capitalism and socialist alternatives to it. The mass of voters for Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other socialists provided yet more evidence. However, the system allowed and enabled a near-fascistic right wing to take over the GOP and the presidency. At the same time, it aided and abetted the Democrats in excluding a socialist from even running for that presidency. Trump and Biden are long-standing, well-known cheerleaders for capitalism. Sanders was, in contrast, a critic.
A new political party that offered systemic criticisms of capitalism and advocated for a transition to a worker-coop based economic system would bring real choice into U.S. politics. It would place before the electorate a basic question of vital importance: what mix of capitalist and worker-coop organized enterprises do you wish to work for, buy from, and live with in the United States? Voters could thereby genuinely participate in deciding the range of job descriptions from which each of us will become able to choose. Will we mostly have to accept positions as employees whose jobs are designed exclusively by and for employers? Or will all job descriptions include at least two basic tasks: a specific function within an enterprise’s division of labor plus an equal share (alongside all other enterprise workers) of the powers to design and direct the enterprise as a whole?
Any community that wishes to call itself a “democracy” for more than rhetorical, self-promotional reasons should welcome a one-person, one-vote decision-making process governing how work is organized.
Most adults spend most of their lives at work. How that work is organized shapes how their lives are lived and what skills, aptitudes, appetites, and relationships they develop. Their work influences their other social roles as friends, lovers, spouses, and parents. In capitalism, the work experience of the vast majority (employees) is shaped and controlled by a small minority (employers) to secure the latter’s profit, wealth accumulation, and reproduction as the socially dominant minority. In a real democracy, the economy would have to be democratically reorganized. Workplace decisions would be made on the basis of one person, one vote inside each enterprise. Parallel, similarly democratic decision-making would govern residential communities surrounding and interacting with workplaces. Workplace and residential democracies would have significant influences over one another’s decisions. In short, genuine economic democracy would be the necessary partner to political democracy.
Many “capitalist” societies today include significant sites of enterprises organized as worker cooperatives. What they need but lack are allied political parties to secure the legislation, legal precedents, and administrative decisions to protect worker coops and facilitate their growth. Early capitalist enterprises and enclaves within feudalism likewise had to find or build political parties for the same reasons. Anti-feudal and pro-capitalist parties contested with feudal lords and their monarchs first to protect capitalist enterprises’ existence and then to facilitate their growth. Eventually, pro-capitalist parties undertook revolutions to displace feudalism and monarchies in favor of parliaments in which those capitalist parties could and did dominate.
Today, pro-capitalist parties publicly deny but privately fear that their political dominance is threatened. Mass disaffection from capitalism is growing. One reason is the relocation of capitalism’s growth from its old centers (Western Europe, North America, and Japan) to new centers (China, India, and Brazil). Globalization—the polite but confused term for that relocation—generates economic declines in the old centers that destabilize communities unable to admit let alone prepare for them. There, vanishing job opportunities, incomes, and social services provoke increasing questions and challenges confronting capitalism. These are now leading to broad and growing disaffection from the capitalist system. Polls and other signs of that disaffection abound. In the United States, on the one hand, the Republican Party lurched to the right. Trump-type quasi-fascism wants to impose a nationalist turn to “save” U.S. capitalism. On the other hand, the old, pro-capitalist establishment running the Democratic Party blocked Bernie Sanders and other socialists from any real power or voice. Saving capitalism was and also remains that establishment’s goal.
Capitalism eventually defeated and displaced feudalism by combining micro-level construction and expansion of capitalist enterprises with macro-focused political parties finding ways to protect those enterprises and facilitate their growth. Capitalists’ profits funded their parties’ activities. Socialism will defeat and displace capitalism by a parallel combination of expanding worker coops and a political party using government to protect them and facilitate their growth. The worker coops’ net revenues will finance their parties’ activities.
The emergence of politically significant socialist parties is well underway in the United States. Besides the small remainders of past socialist parties, Occupy Wall Street, the recent growth and prominence of the Democratic Socialists of America, the two Sanders campaigns, and the rise of other socialist politicians such as Ocasio-Cortez are all signs of socialist renewal. But those signs also reveal a huge remaining problem: disorganization on the left. The social movements, labor unions, and the new socialist initiatives need to coalesce into a broad, new socialist party. If that party could also become the political voice of a growing worker-coop sector of the economy, many key conditions for a transition beyond capitalism will have been achieved.
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