Lenin and Trotsky saw the situation differently. The liberal bourgeoisie of Russia wanted a constitutional republic, while the big bourgeoisie had established relations with the monarchy. Your side in that debate would oppose calls for the removal of the Tsar from power because that would only help the liberal bourgeoisie in their aims. This is acting weaker than the weak.

Lenin and Trotsky argued in a strong way for the workers, and that is why they were chosen as their representatives while the SEP is not. They argued that the Tsar /should/ be removed from power. This would allow the workers to organize their own government using their newly founded democratic rights.

Why should we oppose the fall of the Tsar? That would help the big bourgeoisie use the monarchy to crush any sign of working class political activity.

A similar argument was later used by some Bolsheviks, including Stalin, to support the Kerensky’s government. Why pull Russia out of the war? Why end the death and suffering of millions? If we remove the Kerensky’s government from power, that would only help the German bourgeoisie. And so again and again they sacrificed the interests of the workers. For what?For the theory that the workers could not play an active role.

Yet the correct line of thinking was espoused by Lenin and Trotsky, at first as a minority within the Bolshevik Party, but then as the elected leaders of the Soviets. In this way your position was defeated and the revolution gained its permanent victory.

In the middle ages, courts could invent the law. Now, the law is written by congress. Courts cannot write new laws.

What law are you citing? What case?

What court? There is no court for firing people. You can fire people for just about any reason. There’s no law that says we have to hire them and never fire them. Is this a court that invents new laws?

CBS and Viacom split into seperate companies in 2006, a few years after Moonves became chairman. Now, ten years later, the controlling shareholders with 80% of the stock, the Redstones, want to reunite the companies. The entire time, the Redstones were the majority shareholders. The splitting of the company was a trap for investors, with Moonves acting as the leader who led them into the trap.

Moonves had no legal right to attempt to turn CBS non-voting stock into voting stock or distribute voting stock to non-voting stockholders. This was caught by the SEC and prevented.

Anyone who believed these machinations would succeed fell into a trap. The Redstones must have found amusing the scheming of Moonves and his “Pretorian Guard” of lawyers as they created the illusion that the Redstones property could be secretly conquered from them by acts of rape and sudden votes on radical changes to the constitution of the corporation.

Stockholders must have been tiring of this ten-year game and pushed it towards a final confrontation. The false rebellion of Moonves had been uncovered and proven: he would never and could never get the upper hand over the Redstones. His sacking was not accomplished by Redstone, who would have kept him on board or given him a generous severance, but by his own rebellion, over which he lost control because of the limited perspective he offered.

His major purpose, with regard to culture, was to cancel such popular and important shows as Star Trek, which ran for 18 years straight through various incarnations and contained much writing about future society and the advancement of science and technology. In direct opposition to the premise of Star Trek, a united humanity, Moonves was charged with dividing the audience and canceling programs by denying them funding or placing them in uncomfortable time-slots. A new version of Star Trek was released in 2017, available only through On Demand, and focuses primarily on gay-identity issues while editing out most of the technological advances under the premise that it is a prequel to the original, and naming the spacecraft after a NASA space program, Discovery, introducing an element of nationalism.

Why should this executive, who defends only private profit at the expense of culture, receive the support of socialists? The money is there to provide many television shows free to meet every demand in the audience. Ronan Farrow may be an accident of history, not a conscious revolutionary, but there is no doubt that the violence of imperialist war has caused significant and worrying levels of corruption within the corporation and perversion within leading industrialist families. Ronan Farrow’s claims about his father are backed by revelations about celebrity billionaire Elon Musk, whose father also fathered a child with a step-daughter, and now-deceased billionaire Apple-founder and CEO Steve Jobs who sexually abused his step-daughter.

This perversion arises from the breakdown of human relationships and their replacement by the cult-like following of corporate leaders that need to fight at every turn for control over their industries against regulation and science, the workplace against democratic rights, and market-share against foreign corporations and their governments. This leads to unbearable pressure which finds escape in perverted power relations between cult, family, and leader without any moral balance. A campaign against such individuals may be part of an attempt to save capitalism from its own excesses, but the futility of the motive behind the campaign does not prevent it from making important revelations about the extent of depravity in corporate and reformist cultural institutions.

Judging by the Cosby case, it will not be until 2023 before Ghomeshi faces a real trial. The other twenty female victims and his male victim must wait, but hopefully they will not wait in silence.

I think the media has to make the job hazardous, using these cretins, so they can remove anyone involved for some noble purpose. Then they are left with the real wage slaves that must be present and obey orders. Take out the hazardous conditions, and journalist positions, or entertainer positions, might be filled with true believers in humanitarian causes rather than cynics subservient to the oligarchy. Obedience at all costs.

People don’t need celebrity salaries to have such things as food and shelter. These are things they want to deny the women who accuse them and the men who defend those women. These illogical arguments of yours only strengthen the murderers of Anthony Bourdaine, ER actress Vanessa Marquez, who accused George Clooney, and others, as well as the widely reported blacklisting that damaged the careers of many who would not submit to sexual harrassment or sexual or perverted slavery. Doesn’t blacklisting threaten democracy?

A disregard for democratic rights within the Fourth International is as great a threat to the revolution as social-chauvinism was within the Second International. Lenin and Trotsky noted that social-chauvinism was the main culprit allowing Social-Democracy to be brought to the side of imperialism through the theory of Revolutionary Defensism, the theory that the workers have to defend bourgeois rule, bourgeois courts, and bourgeois culture because it is under assault by a foreign country, government, and culture. Only after the workers and the revolutionary party come to power, they argued, should any state or capitalist-funded institutions be defended by the revolution.

The fight to defend democratic rights will determine whether or not the Fourth International could be divided and turned into an instrument of imperialism and the technology corporations Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Disqus, and Google whose logos are featured on wsws.org. As long as revolutionary arguments can be protected from censorship on the Wsws.org, then the revolution will be saved from the social-chauvinism-caused degeneration witnessed within Social Democracy during the first World War. The elimination of some or even all Soviet or US government agents from the party does not guarantee the total elimination of any counter-revolutionary agency within the party. This can only be guaranteed through a constant struggle against the censorship of revolutionary views by the revolutionary movement itself.

Is it the individual, anonymous editors, or is this limitation programmed into the structure of Wikipedia?

Unless you can afford to watch wiki 24/7 and respond to all changes, then those trolls with their wiki-henchmen will always get away with it.

A documentary I recently saw spoke about TCP/IP and an earlier, pre-AOL, pre-internet version of dial-up computer networking called BBS. You can find the 8-part series on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/pla…

The last episode refers to a controversy over the original zip compression program, pkzip, copied from arc, which ended with the death of its owner, Phil Katz. It could probably be retold as, “Death of a Programmer.”

I noticed the same thing about Wikipedia. It is patrolled by trolls.

Put the SEP in charge of the strike! No more sabotage of the workers’ struggle!

This book is reviewed here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/As…

The main argument of the book is that US corporations profited in Nazi Germany, not that the US government fought on Hitler’s side. That is a preposterous rewrite of history. Whatever plans were discovered in secret mitary documents do not prove that the US government could pass those plans through congress, the courts, and the president. These are just theories you are quoting, which could involve many hypotheticals.

The US allied with the Soviet Union against Germany, but did not invade Europe until a year after Stalingrad, when Germany was forced into a long, fatal retreat. Germany was then invaded a year later from the West and through Italy, and in the treaty that ended the war, Germany was divided into East Germany and West Germany.

There was no allied invasion of Stalinist Russia. The same was true in 1968, when, if anything, the CIA suppressed the workers uprising, preventing it from coming under Trotskyist leadership. The Soviet Union was not seen as a revolutionary workers’ democracy, but an autocratic state, led by a self-serving bureaucracy, on the road towards capitalist restoration.

The CIA puppet is you. You cannot confuse all these issues. The issue confronting the people is that of false leadership, not a striving for democracy in Arab or Eastern European countries. The CIA and the US State Dept. base themselves on the ideology of a free market and plutocratic rule and capitalist political parties to marginally represent the people. The people need a socialist ideology based on a functioning democratic workers’ state and a revolutionary party to achieve their historic objectives.

You’re too hateful to be arguing about all this. You need to learn how to argue the right way, then write. Hitler’s army already lost to the Red Army a year before the US landed troops in Europe. Your alternative universe theory will only lead you into madness.

It’s true that German and even American soldiers fought in Russia, but that does not mean Lenin secretly cooperated with them. The Eastern European workers should have our support regardless of the presence of the U.S. government and its agents on their lands.

If anything, the CIA would side with the Soviet Union in the suppression of the workers. The Soviet Union was their ally during WWII, and they signed many agreements, including trade agreements. The U.S. preferred the spread of Stalinist power to a new socialist revolution. It was billed as a new path to Socialism, but in fact was the military suppression of the workers’ socialist aspirations.

This is a slander against Eastern European workers of the same type that was used against Leninists before the October Revolution.

During the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lenin and the revolutionary workers who followed him fell victim to slander by the Tsarist government and Kerensky’s provisional government as German agents undermining the Russian war effort. Stalinism used the same slander against Eastern European and Russian workers who defended political revolution by striking and moving to establish democratic committees to overthrow one-party Stalinist rule. Try defending the workers against this anti-Leninist anti-Trotskyist slander. Striking workers do not constitute agents of foreign governments and the military and police cannot legally suppress their campaigns by force.

William’s “unhealthy legacy” is an inherent part of the political-economic entertainment machine that controls every aspect of Hollywood. The irrational hope is that forgiveness can be conquered, adding layer upon layer to the tragedy. The government can continue its atrocities as long as the revolutionary opposition to the government can be conquered by sentiments. The humanizing and sympathetic quoting of the upper class and the regional executives should be left to the New York Times, who would otherwise demonize anyone delivering the exact same material.

1. If there is one strong criticism of this series, it is that it lacked a strong discussion of Cannon’s motives for ending the Control Commission’s investigation of Callen and the subsequent covering up he did as future revelations appeared. Calling Cannon cowardly and duplicitous hardly explains his behavior, and appears to favor “impartial” observation over thorough, careful analysis. Cannon’s letter to his wife hints at a further analysis but does not develop further.

2. Callen’s history before entering the party, as well as that of the Carleton College members of SWP found room to be discussed. Hansen’s prior life was not. Did the FBI and GPU recruit Hansen after he joined the party? The article suggests this view.

3. When searching for Sylvia for an interview, how did North know when she would return from vacation?

I’m disappointed by this argument. One could defend Stalin with such low standards for arguments. Stalin didn’t go to jail, and neither did Hitler.

I hope you decide to look carefully at the evidence and not prejudge with blind hatred. If you continue with this thread, you will scare some of the readers here. I hope that’s not your intention.

The point is to be invited and gain the power to invite others. After that, multiple attempts can be made using different actors and tactics until the mission is accomplished. A second agent can recruit out of sight, and introduce the assassin to the penetrated agent.

End the censorship of SEP opinions! Put the SEP in charge of the negotiations and the strike!

Put the SEP in charge of the teacher’s strike! End the censorship of their opinions, from Facebook groups and from all online media!

Lenin addressed this problem in Two-tactics: the party is naturally divided into the day-to-day tasks of the revolutionary party and into the theoritical side which defends revolutionary theory. Cannon defended the theory of the party by sacrificing a day-to-day task of investigating agents and involving a grand jury. The grand jury investigation would not necessarily lead to prosecution, but if Cannon was forced out of his leadership position as a result of an open struggle against Stalinist agents, this would have held back the theoritical development of the SWP and attacked it at its basic raison d’etre.

Cannon was concerned that he would be replaced as leader of the SWP, and he feared that members would leave upon hearing of a conspiracy to commit murder developing in the higher ranks of the party. He hid Callen’s identity as an agent, and fired her, letting her leave New York and party headquarters, but did not pursue her to the end-perhaps for fear that he would be targeted or for lack of resources and the required effort.

Also, an important fact to mention, Turkey was the first place Trotsky went after leaving the USSR, and he stayed there for four years. The sale of his former home was reported in 2010. The home was destroyed in a fire in the 30s, and it was never restored leaving only the walls as remains. The property remains in private hands with a price of around $5,000,000.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote that the common reader who read Shakespeare and another poet would not know which is superior. Yet, if they asked the poets which one was better, they would generally agree that Shakespeare is better. Furthermore, why he is better could be exained by poets as well, but others may not reach those sane conclusions on a comparison alone. The same should be said about the wsws: whoever looked at various socialist publications, that is the socialist readership, would generally agree that the wsws provides the most comprehensive and profound analysis available based on socialist principles. One can find poets who have touched on topics or used techniques that Shakespeare did not, but on the whole Shakespeare remains the poet to which one should look for the highest achievements of poetry in the English language.

It was the Wsws, although it may not seem so. In order to argue against socialism, the media must disprove every group that supports socialism seperately. They would prefer to use one representative for socialism, such as Kim Jung Un or Nicolás Maduro, but other Socialists make their way into the argument. The media then proceeds to answer them, but the best representatives have to wait to the end before the media addresses their arguments. The Wsws will not give in, however and will continue to defend their positions against opportunism while patiently explaining them to the public. This backbone of socialism continues to push socialism as a whole forward because its arguments remain unanswered, and so the common observer must assume they are correct.

Let the SEP lead the UPS workers’ strike!

You’re talking about formal procedures created by the unions long ago, meant to cement their role as a mediator to resolve class conflicts peacefully according to rules laid out in contracts. Espartano’s case proves that these rules, like the constitution protecting civil liberties in the Soviet Union, end up useless without a living movement of the working class that openly clashes with the capitalist state. This loophole of “self-employed” Amazon warehouse workers is an example of a common flaw in the rules that exists when the living movement that pushed for their establishment has been cut out, leaving only bureaucratic functionaries who are conscious of their role as defenders of privilege and wealth.

I would like to know why there is no comments section under articles written in or translated into Spanish. Why is it only possible to comment in English on articles written in English?

What do you mean by isolated areas? Training can be formalized, which is really the hard work, and then reproduced with apps like Zoom and YouTube and instantly globalized. There is no reason to divide the world into isolated and unisolated parts. What appears isolated may in fact be more connected. One connection can be worth a million.

No, it’s clear from what I wrote that I meant cities, countries, and various geographic regions. The fact is workers need a leadership that will come to them when they begin to mobilize and inform their struggle with a historical consciousness. Workers cannot be controlled like a herd of animals unless their humanity has been denied to them, not just legally but socially and politically, and finally physically with modern-day bayonets.

In response to point 17:

“The retreat of the Workers Revolutionary Party in Britain in the 1970s from the principles that its leaders had previously defended—in the fight against Pablo and Mandel in 1953 and in opposition to the reunification of the American Socialist Workers Party with the Pabloites in 1963—threatened to destroy the International Committee.”

The retreat from principles also entailed a physical, organizational retreat from many countries in which the ICFI had members and national sections. Opposition to the principles of Trotskyism became an opposition to the organizational tasks related to the construction of affiliated parties. In reversing the positions taken by the SLL and WRP, the ICFI should also reverse the organizational trend of limiting participation to certain countries and cities, while leaving the rest out, balanced by making abstract expectations of the working class or “the people”. This would require confrontations with anarchists, Stalinists, reformists, or other groups which seek to organize and control revolutionary movements through their accidental or systematic presence. Without these confrontations, without a systematic attempt to form a presence in various regions, then the leadership would be leaving the development of class consciousness to chance, representing a break from Trotskyist and Leninist theory.

You don’t have to believe their promises to shift politics to the left. Those are promises made to keep people hooked to their campaigns. The SEP first raised the demand of $15 an hour in 1996, which in today’s dollars should be revised up to $24 or $25 an hour. By 2022, when these policies are expected to go into effect, it should be $26 an hour.

You have to ask yourself why you believe Bernie Sanders, who is a nationalist Senator with a lot of support from the establishment and military, could or would convince the government to suddenly put people ahead of profits. He is aligned with the Democratic Party and pushed for a vote for Hillary Clinton because he is part of the same establishment, and only acts as part of the rebellion in order to control it into voting for Clinton or other leading Democrats. Even if he lost the primary, he could have challenged the primary debates as fixed (using publicly available evidence), then proceeded with an independent campaign against both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He could have, but he would not have because he decided beforehand that his strategy was to uphold the two-party system and the illusion of the Democrats as the left.

It’s important that you reevaluate your own strategy in order to realistically accomplish some of your goals. Usually it happens that you are accomplishing all your goals in quick succession, or you go for long periods without achieving any. This quick succession of accomplishments on behalf of the people can only happen under a revolutionary government.

Convince them to debate the SEP on national television.

I’m surprised there was no reply to this argument. Mexico has gone through a lot of revolutionary turbulence recently, with the spate of deaths of mayors. In addition, it is more apparent than ever that the Mexican government has not been able to defend its citizens working in the U.S. from mass deportation and various human rights abuses. Only a revolutionary government in México can defend the rights of immigrant workers in the U.S., as well as improve the conditions of workers in Mexico to comparable standards to prevent the mass exodus of the poor to greener pastures across the Rio Grande.

Lenin and Trotsky supported bourgeois-democratic demands and predicted that the revolution would begin under the leadership of the bourgeoisie, who would than back out halfway, while the workers continued to press their demands until they established a new state. This foresight allowed them to guide the party to power, not stubbornness over positions or blind hate for everything created by the bourgeoisie.

It’s possible he didn’t act alone and had to die to prevent any investigator from discovering the full scope of his crimes. I can imagine high level officials wanting and gaining “access” to accomplished opera singers through him.

I also wanted to add that before #metoo made it into the media in Oct. 2017, there were the suicides of Brad Bennington of Linkin Park and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Audioslave, who died in Detroit. They died about a week apart, and this was before the emergence of the #metoo movement. The death described in this article has less to do with #metoo and more to do with the privileged elite being called to account, or suffering the brutality of the system they created to amass wealth as predators that feed on the destruction of humanity.

If the media is brutal, that can hardly be attributed to the #metoo movement. Ascribing this death to #metoo is letting the media off the hook while defending the same privileged layer that you are trying to criticize. Haven’t you seen the photos of Harvey Weinstein sitting at the table with Hillary Clinton? So why does #metoo go after Weinstein, aren’t they for the powerful career-driven Hillary Clinton?

Media brutality, like police brutality, has existed for ages, driven by the economic realities of class society. It is not Marxist to ignore the class division in society and defend the privileged for their “talent”, which is to rob people of credit for technical achievements that arise naturally from steady work. Marxism gives credit to the working class and seeks to establish society, with art as a constituent part, upon an equal classless appreciation of the work of all involved.

Your sympathy for Fredrickson stands in stark contrast to your silence on Anthony Bourdain’s suicide. Fredrickson may have risen from a common background, but he did so within a capitalist society that rewarded his allegiance to their values. He pulled himself up from his bootstraps, but he could not create a society that is not divided by murderous ambition. He stood in the way of others’ careers, and he was removed as he once removed those who stood in his way.

https://www.youtube.com/wat…
https://youtu.be/i1SVMLUSWso

These videos will show you that whatever gains were made in the first 10 years of Chavism were erased by the last 3 years. That means the gains were unsustainable.

What you’re seeing in Venezuela could actually be far worse than it seems. It could be a war like Stalinism made against the workers and farmers who are becoming impatient for their socialist demands to be met. The point of starving the people is to make them make right-wing demands over wages and jobs rather than revolutionary demands, including demands to spread the revolution throughout the continent.

By keeping the Venezuelan people in misery, it makes it impossible to argue that the Venezuela model should be repeated throughout the continent, therefore giving socialism and socialists a bad name throughout the country. It is important to argue for a democratic political revolution in Venezuela to remove Maduro from power (not imperialist invasion), and it is important to argue that Maduro’s policies do not represent socialism but a war on the people to prevent their active participation in socialist politics while limiting socialist consciousness throughout the country and defeating it within the borders of Venezuela.

If Maduro had kept the currency stable, he would have had millions of workers and farmers quoting socialist economists and intellectuals, and this could have led to the creation of an international socialist movement. Now, he has created an economic crisis that forces the people to fight his government while he suppresses their efforts through starvation and police repression. This is not only Maduro’s strategy, but the strategy of conservative forces throughout the continent and the world.

Both Colombia and Venezuela would lose in a fight between the two countries. Both have experienced economic failure, and both have provided safe haven for one another in times of need. Venezuela used to belong to Gran Colombia, which also included Ecuador and Panama, as well as parts of various other countries. This larger country was broken and this lead to South America’s weaker position for the next two centuries.

Marxists should not be nationalists, meaning we cannot put our trust in South American governments as a counterweight to US power, but the working class as a whole would benefit from a united South America and a large influx of capital to the region to develop their industrial capacity and per capita income. The world as a whole needs a higher minimum wage to protect against $10 or $15 a day slave wages, and South America would benefit from such a policy. A world minimum wage of $50 a day combined with strict enforcement of a 40 hour work week would protect the working class in poor and rich countries alike.

I looked at your link, and the U.S. has a lower “coefficient of inequality” of 12.9 vs. 19.1 for Venezuela. Venezuela also has a higher (measure of inequality) Gini coefficient of 46.9 vs. the U.S. Gini of 41.1. The U.S., which is a very unequal society based openly on capitalist principles has less inequality than Venezuela, which has had a nominally socialist government for over 10 years. These are facts which cannot be disputed, Venezuela could not build a socialist society based on equality under Chavism, failing to reach the U.S. in measures of equality far less countries such as Sweden or Slovenia.

None of that is to say that assassination of Venezuela’s leaders, the undermining of their democracy, or an open military invasion could be justified. All of those should be opposed in the name of fighting imperialism, not in the name of defending the “accomplishments” of Chavism. The best hope for Latin America is an international revolution redistributing the riches concentrated in the hands of the super-rich especially in the imperialist countries. This would allow for an even development of the economy to allow for higher wages, full employment, fair land distribution, and democratic rights.

A revolutionary party ceases to be a revolutionary party when it calculates the risk of revolution as too high. Risk can be managed at any level, and the essential calculation is that they have nothing to lose. If you deny this, then you are speaking for a small section of Venezuela that actually benefits from the oil reserves, while the rest are treated as savages with no right to their own land or to the products of their own labor. If they are under a constant threat of war, they cannot manage their resources properly and will end up in dire conditions comparable if not worse than those they’d experience in a revolutionary war. At least during a revolutionary war, the revolutionary army could redistribute land, food, and jobs and wages while freeing all the prisoners forced into crime by poverty. In that sense, many lives could instantly be improved by a confrontation with the imperialist system.

If you look at this article, (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/… you’ll see that the Gini index for Venezuela is about the same as that of the U.S., but if you look at the ratio of the income of the top 20% to the bottom 20%, the U.S. is more equal than Venezuela. The U.K., which has a capitalist system is more equal by every measure than Venezuela.

So to say that Venezuela has redistributed the wealth from the rich to the poor is a lie in service of nationalism, not socialism. Whatever improvements made under Chavezism were either unsupportable because of his refusal to tax the rich, driving Venezuela into unsustainable debt, or insufficient and meant only to tell a story to the media.

In my opinion, a socialist society would have a Gini index of 10, and the ratio of the top earners to the bottom earners would be around 3. The closest country on the list is Slovenia (followed closely by famed Sweden) incidentally Melania Trump’s home country. She may not have the most powerful position, but it proves a culture based on equality is valued the world over- even in the United States, where if you’re not rich, you don’t exist.

The starvation in Venezuela is real and a million Venezuelans have already left their country carrying bricks of their worthless currency. They are short on food and medicine, and their production of oil has fallen dramatically. In order to back their currency, they need to maintain their flow of oil.

Right-wing forces may be behind the fall in production, but the blame still lies on the Venezuelan government for not nationalizing all the productive industries, redistributing the land, and building and defending a revolutionary movement throughout the continent and the world.

Maduro and his party rose to power through Chavez, a military officer who did not represent a rising to power of the working class. Chavez was a nationalist who sought a Bolívarian revolution, not an international socialist revolution. The military cannot create a shortcut that bypasses the working class. Only their participation and leadership could force through the changes that the national and international capitalist class uncompromisingly forbids.

In response to point 48: while various forms of identity are not the primary cause of discontent, the primary cause is present among every different identity. Class antagonism plays out in #metoo as it did in the struggle for the legalization of same-sex marriages. Women must struggle against sex as the precondition for employment, as well as for security against threats, harrassment, and rape while on the job.

Gay marriages will help the workers fight against bigotry used by employers to divide the workers, and it will also allow same sex couples to openly declare themselves, relieving them from anti-democratic prying into personal, social, and political lives. From the socialist point of view, these should be seen as positive but insufficient. The history of oppression of homosexuality should be taught to the public, LGBT community centers and groups should be established and massively funded to provide social, legal and psychological or medical services wherever prejudice has been discovered, and employment should be guaranteed to gay and lesbian workers as well as to all workers. Approaching the problem in such a way is not meant to deny the role of workers in the revolution, but to show that the workers’ revolution is the only way to address the grievances of the various victims of capitalist society.

The securing of women will protect the democratic rights of workers as well, allowing them to accuse employers without fear of retribution, and it will prevent employers from illegally punishing women for holding unpopular opinions or associating with anyone who might hold such opinions. The emergence of the #metoo movement coincided almost exactly with the majority of the millennial generation arriving at socialist conclusions. Women are no longer scared to marry socialists, so men no longer fear making socialist declarations. Employer rape of socialist women would reverse this trend, and that is why #metoo is important.

The working class always benefits from increased attention to issues related to democratic rights. Lenin and Trotsky argued that the revolution could begin as a bourgeois-democratic revolution, but that Social Democracy should back such a revolution in order to add to their demands the full slate of democratic demands which would lead to the formation of a worker’s democracy or a socialist state. The response to these movements, therefore, should be to criticize the bourgeois movement as insufficient rather than falsely attribute fascist incentives to popular measures.

The pan-european movement in order to catch on must argue the right way about the rights of small nations. A pan-european movement must be absolutely in favor of the right to self-determination of nations and must support a free association of nations with strong constitutional protections for smaller nations against any central government.

If this position has been adopted by the far-right, that by no means should exclude the revolutionary working class from arriving at the same position. The revolution has its own fixed positions and should not have to adapt to far-right slogans or far-right encroachment. If the party makes adaptations to the far right then it deviates from revolutionary theory, hindering the revolution immeasurably, and must be brought back in a political and theoritical struggle over basic issues.

In the time of the Workers’ League, would the party make demands of and support the campaign of a candidate like Bernie Sanders? It seems more appropriate to denounce them, but I can see how participation in their campaigns could create a road towards a mass party.

It’s not their psychological profile but the weapons deals and the joint training. They also benefit from the protection of the U.S. if they follow the strategy of New York City and the unofficial empire.

However, the reality is not so simple, as their military is not welcomed in every country. Also, treaties have been attempted to reduce the influence of the northern power. In addition, Russia and China offer many types of military equipment as an alternative to U.S. built military equipment.

A revolution in the United States would reduce the pressure on Latin American governments to fight against the demands of their own people. The current strategy would be replaced everywhere with a more socially responsible strategy that alleviates the worst problems of poverty, war, and environmental destruction. This would be far different than the current strategy, aimed at pumping more oil and gold into the U.S. than any of its superpower competitors.

Latin American soldiers recognize this, especially ones in countries with large militaries like Colombia or extreme poverty like Venezuela. Venezuelan soldiers have been seen searching the garbage for food in uniforms.

As for the question of how a military response would be prepared: Latin America has over a million soldiers already, though divided among the various countries. They also have military equipment from the entire world. A revolution would allow them to be used to defend the workers, socialist programs, and a democracy free from C.I.A. manipulation. Recruitment for the military would be easier if it was used for those purposes.

These forces could fight a long war based on avoiding direct confrontation. They would need, however, a revolutionary and not just a military strategy. This would include the protection of worker occupations and the transfer of power to workers committees. It would also include an international strategy, and the fate of the revolution in any particular region would be tied to the fate of the revolution throughout the entire world. The aim should be to unite at least 60% of the world economy under a global socialist system, meaning Europe, the US, China, or Japan would be necessary partners as they control a large share of the world’s productive capital.

I had written a longer reply, but it was suddenly erased. You can read Bill van Auken on Castroism, and rest assured that other groups have made similar criticism of the Cuban government under Castro. They opposed the expropriation of the bourgeoisie under the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Chavistas in Venezuela, and they opposed arming the workers under Allende in Chile. The revolutionary process is paramount in creating political change with a real and lasting impact on the lives of the majority.

For this reason, the mistakes of Castro and Che cannot easily be forgiven. In order for a victorious outcome to be achieved, the entire theoritical heritage of Marxism has to be communicated to the leadership of the revolutionary movement. This allows the workers to make the right decisions in order to pursue their own interests independently of the national bourgeoisie.

The final point I made before was with regard to the failure of the ICFI to establish a leadership within the working class in order to lead them to victory. This failure was in part because of fascism and the military governments imposed on Latin America by imperialism.

The more subjective reason was the split in the ICFI between the SLL of the UK and the OCI of France. The OCI led many of the Latin American sections. The OCI gave in to syndicalism and an underestimation of the importance of the full theoritical tradition of Marxism. The SLL responded bureaucratically, by shutting down discussion and imposing a false unity.

The revolutionary party exists in a real world divided by class and history primarily, and innumerable other factors. Such divisions inevitably enter into the work and decision making of the party. However it was unprofessional to take a lackadaisical attitude towards the future of the party. They should have provided for a full discussion at an earlier point, making possible a revolutionary transformation of political relations both in France and throughout the entire world. This was prevented by bureaucratic dereliction of duty to provide for the freest democratic discussion to fully answer the divided trends forming within the international.

1. Venezuela’s failed government shows that the Chavista or Bolívarian “Road to Socialism” is a fraud perpetrated by Cuba and Stalinism against all of Latin America. The Cuban revolution may have been based on an anti-imperialist agrarian revolution, but its leadership prevented the spread of a socialist agrarian program throughout Latin America as well as the building of the Fourth International based on a working-class seizure of power. Varying “Roads to Socialism” do not exist. In every case, an armed insurrection must remove a broken, useless government from power and install a new one in order to respond to the pressing needs of the population. The exact shape of the insurrection is determined by the specific form of government collapse, but in all cases, the collapse is determined by the overall failure of the global economy and the class-based system of the exploitation of workers by capitalists.

2. Cuba has been in a battle with the U. S. embassy using secret weapons, similar to those used against the U.S. embassy in China. The warming of relations under Castroism is an illusion, since the U.S. cannot accept the redistribution of corporate investments in any country, or they risk their investments in every country. Only a forceful military invasion or C.I.A.-backed coup could bring to power a government that could maintain friendly relations with the U.S. Any other government would be divided by a constant war with its people over daily necessities in order to force them into exploitative cheap-labor employment relations to compete with and sell to multinational corporations.

3. Nicaragua, lead by Ortega of the Sandinistas, faces a similar situation to that of Venezuela. In Ecuador, as well, Leftist populist Correa, brought to power a party that did not base itself on the international revolution of the working class. The “revolution” they created was not based on the theories of Lenin and Trotsky.

These leftist parties brought hope to the middle-class reformers, but they left the power in the hands of the capitalists and did not pursue far-reachinging reforms. Ortega now uses military force to crush the protests of the students and workers, with his wife occupying the vice-presidency in a show of disdain for Leninist party-building. Ecuador’s Moreno, leaving his pro-business outlook aside, once Correa’s trusted vice-president, has turned the Ecuadorian government against its promise to provide asylum to Assange. None of them can promise meaningful, lasting change, because they do not base themselves on a strategy of world socialist revolution and the coming of the working class to power. Lenin wrote extensively on the issues of party building, and they would have us forget all those important lessons of history.

4. The article ended with the following paragraph: “The ongoing upsurge of the class struggle in Venezuela needs to be urgently connected to the increasingly militant struggles by workers internationally and organized independently of all opposing sections of the ruling class and their respective factions in the trade-union bureaucracy and the armed forces, as part of a political struggle to destroy capitalism and for world socialist revolution.” The problem with saying “needs to be urgently connected” is that it lays the blame on people of South America if it is not urgently done. In fact, it is the SEP and the ICFI which must organize a wide distribution of the wsws.org throughout South America. The SEP must connect this effort to the organization of a 1st Congress of the SEP for all of South America or begin country by country, to allow the students and workers to step forward and begin the construction of the Fourth International in South America.

She seems to be combining elements of impressionism with realism. This may have sidelined her more than the fact of her being a woman, since she does not appreciate the fundamental nature of art as a social movement rather than a middle-class profession. Impressionism needed to be adopted wholly in contrast to realism to end the dominance of lesser artists who had only mastered the techniques pioneered centuries earlier.

You quote the curator on Montana Mia: “a sensual image but the disappearance of her lower torso into the hanging mist denies any realisation of male sexual desire.”

Your response is both brusque and shocking in its sensationalism:
“Since when has male sexual desire become a crime to be denied or discouraged?”

From where has the talk of crime entered into the argument? If anyone is acting, it is the artist or even more innocently the woman depicted in the painting. The denial of male sexual desire is an act depicted in art, which does not make the art illegal. The act gives the woman the power allowing her to charge a one-time fee or dominate forever as a mountain does over its surrounding landscape. It could also refer to the prostitution of the environment by the mining and oil extraction industry. Either way, this is definitely a feminist message, but as it is in the hands of the middle-class, could be used to subdue the revolutionary movement at the hands of a female agent or reformist leader.

For more up to date information on #metoo, I recommend looking up photos of Harvey Weinstein with Hillary Clinton after the 2016 election, as well as a recent segment by Stephen Colbert speaking about the executive Moonves. Is not Weinstein the representative of false feminism in the interest of the privileged Clinton family? Was Colbert not right to quote John F. Kennedy, saying, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable?”

As for your quote from Eleanor Marx, much can be said in reply. First, the palliative may be remedial if taken regularly forever. Second, in her argument, men are the middle-class in revolutionary feminism, meaning they have to set aside their own interests to really represent feminist arguments. Therefore, they must always be held under suspicion and must remove that suspicion on a case by case basis. This does not conform with the views of the article.

In addition, she accuses the feminists of ignoring the working class, in part because they are not a part of it. She says they emphasize sentiment, profession, and property without pointing to their underlying economic basis. Your attacks on #metoo have done the same thing that she accuses the middle class feminists of doing, ignoring the economic basis of the movement as it targets the economic and political elite while defending the workplace security of ordinary women worker. You ignored the connection to the striking teachers, nearly 80% female, who took on the union leaders and the government to push for a fair wage increase and increased funding for public education. You also left out the fast-food workers who sued the McDonald’s corporation and others for systematically ignoring workplace abuses of female employees.

Meanwhile you treat the sentiments of the propertied elites with much care, ignoring their relations to the means of production, which is as equal partners to the investors. They represent the crossing of the line from professional to owner, as they turn on the workers who actually produce the sentiments, symbols, and ideas which make up a brunt of the work that goes into the art world. The assimilation of techniques discovered and perfected by artists of previous generations and turned into education and artist factories by universities and elite academies stole these methods and allowed anyone with an agenda to train artists for their purposes. Annie Swynnerton was one such artist, who worked for the British state in the same way that her father served as a clerk in a British court. There is the temptation to praise the British state or the Anglican church for all their accomplishments, but to the revolution this would be a betrayal of all that could be accomplished by the hidden talent that could finally reach its audience only with the destruction of the British system and its replacement by a government in service of the world revolution. These ideas could not find their full expression within Victorian era art, distinguished by its hypocracy and stuffy aloofness.

Without defending the Russian government or the prevailing economic structure in Russia today, one can defend Russian culture, architecture, history, and the Russian people from an invasion by the U.S. military over gas and oil shipment contracts with Europe. Such a war would not help Europe remain free, nor would it help the U.S. economy, as it would further damn it to dependance on military destruction rather than healthy economic competition. Workers would suffer as resources are diverted to the military, while democratic rights would be trampled on in an effort to eliminate opposition to the government and its war. Only energy corporations and banks stand to profit from an invasion of Russia.

Russia’s support for the right seperatists in Europe are meant to divide Europe prevent Nato and the EU from supporting a U.S. war with Russia. Europe has not proven itself capable of opposing U.S. military plans in the Middle East or anywhere else, so a divided Europe may be Russia’s only hope of denying the U.S. a powerful economic ally to stabilize their economy during its militarization.

The founding fathers opposed the creation of a standing army, but Cortez takes the opposite position, claiming the army is “defending us.” The constitution says everyone should have the right to provide for the common defense and the right to bear arms. Unilateral military force, meaning without the approval of legal governing bodies recognized by the constitution as superior to federal law as the U.S. Is a signatory to a treaty, is illegal and immoral, but she approves it.

Her argument that ending a “perverse monetary incentive structure” can end wars and the financial incentive for wars is another lie, which she should be aware of. As long as the wealth of society is concentrated in a few hands, and private profit reigns over the greater good of society, then corporations and banks will need to destroy accumulated capital on the other side of the border, in order to gain greater access to raw resources for extraction and consumer markets for their finished products. As the most powerful economic organizations, they can naturally rely on the government to defend them from collapse. Only the nationalization of the productive capital of the country and the creation of a planned global economy could end the crisis of capitalist markets crashing and imperialist war arising.

Cortez seeks to foster the idea that we need to have more of a feeling for the people and more of a shift to the left from the establishment. In fact, we must recognize the legitimate right of the people to a revolution and their ability, mental and physical, to accomplish it. We must also see an inevitable shift to the right of the establishment as they try to starve the revolution or drown it in blood.

Podemos is wrong to forgive the PSOE, if they are really serious about trying to save Spanish democracy. These laws they used against the rapper limit free expression, in music and in culture in general.

If they are only saving the Spanish state, then they are allowing the PSOE to rule with a smaller percentage of the vote. The ruling party no longer needs a majority, only a relatively new party with no voting record to support them in a coalition. In that sense, they have served their purpose. They may forgive the PSOE, but who will forgive them?

The attacks of the far right should be answered by giving the SEP more and larger meetings, in Dresden and throughout the world. The best way to ensure free speech is to amplify further the message of those targeted by extremists in attempts to silence, disrupt, or disorganize. Europe must protect the democratic rights of minority groups, or they will lose their democracy and return to the war and economic chaos that destroyed Europe before.

In order to lead a successful strike, the workers need the SEP to lead the movement. Even a movement outside the unions can be brought under control of a group like the Democratic Socialists, the Greens, or the ISO. With them as leaders, or influencing the leaders, the strike can be divided and brought under control of management and the capitalist state.

Let the SEP lead the strike!

The wsws.org should really change its kind on this issue. If you cannot see that fear of reprisal through sexual harrassment and rape as well as tyrannical control of women’s sexuality are oppressive measures that prevent the rise of a workers’ movement then you are ignoring and losing a great deal of Marxist theory. Marx and Engel supported women’s suffrage in their day, and nowadays it is the responsibility of Marxism to defend workplace security, especially in the media, so that women can speak and act freely without fear of sexual assault or harrassment.

Do you not understand that capitalism is a class-based system of exploitation? Whatever weapon you give the employers they will immediately use to keep workers disorganized, fearful, and quiet. By focusing on the means by which this movement can be co-opt ed by the upper middle class, you are giving precisely that section the power. Focus on the means to bring the movement under the control of the SEP so it can best serve the interests of the working class.

If you look at the #metoo website, on their link to resources, (https://metoomvmt.org/resou… you will see it has links to MALDEF and Safe Horizons, which specialize in helping immigrants.

We know why. It was in order to protect Harvey Weinstein, like the cocaine charges against McGowan. Harvey Weinstein’company belonged to a number of billionaire investors who sought to remain above public figures through sexual exploitation and humiliation.

The same story occurred at Fox News, with O’Reilly leaving, and the former CEO Roger Ailes dying after bleeding to death from a head injury, soon before he was to testify in court about the sexual harrassment charges that removed him from power.

It’s best to stay quiet, but the quiet is what drives the soul to scream. In the end it will be Harvey Weinstein and his defenders who will have to remain quiet.

If that’s all you’re arguing, then that’s the problem. The vanguard party formed by Lenin lost the right to lead the world revolution and the working class. If the degeneration of the second or third internationals are irrelevant asides to you, then you are only participating in the degeneration of the Fourth International and not its construction. That should be enough reason for you to shut up about the vanguard party, until you know what it stands for, or is supposed to stand for.

It’s a warning by Trotsky that support for the party may not equate to support for the revolution. Especially if one is supporting a specific individual within the party or a specific policy, the danger exists that support for the party and conformity will replace support for the revolution. Trotsky urges support for the latter over the former. He would not denounce every comrade like Wells as Paul Mattickesque. Such dismissive responses to the arguments of Trotsky will put you in the cross-hairs of the revolution before they would Wells and others who seek to make contributions through independent thought and effort.

Is this in agreement with my comments?

There is a radical hate that emanates from the financial crisis. The unpreparedness of some, as radical it is, becomes a burden to all. The majority must throw off these chains and join together with all humanity free from such derision.

Can you be more specific about which part of this pamphlet you are referring to?

Whether the new leaders are termed secretaries, consultants, or librarians for the new revolutionary government, they will have to meet to discuss decisions that must be made by the state. These decisions relate to such questions as agriculture, supply chains, or war and peace. These decisions will always be made, naturally, by leaders within any given society.

To turn on leadership in general is like turning on all brains because they can potentially become diseased. However, you would not suggest that bodies should have to survive without brains. It is a revolutionary position that some bodies must lose their heads and therefore their brains, but that will hopefully not happen to the revolutionary leaders themselves.

Political parties run the state in a republic, and it will be the same under socialism. The number of people the party and its factions can train will determine how well the workers will control the government. Their leaders need to be trained by the party and given opportunity, through positions in the government, to put into effect their ideas, methods and training.

If all this is true, then there should be an ICFI Latin American Congress planned to unite the revolutionary perspective and organization in South and Central America as well as the Caribbean. How else will parties be formed?

The working class does need leaders as well as a political party to lead a revolution and a new workers’ state.

If organized crime and a political police have made it impossible to practice politics legally within Mexico, Latin America is very large as is the Mexican population in the U. S. Leaders can be found abroad and their messages distributed back home to the people. Lenin and Trotsky spent much of their careers abroad, though their writing was about and directed to their own country. When the political situation changed they returned and participated openly until they achieved their victory.

Trotsky said the guerrilla warriors of the pre-revolutionary period would be incorporated as officers into the revolutionary army. Cartel leaders and guerrillas participating in violent action against the government do not offer a path to victory for the workers, since drug gangs do not compare in size and economic power to an armed working-class defending its democratic right to form committees and a workers’ state.

A revolutionary government would immediately end the drug war, which seeks to associate revolutionaries with a criminal trade, and replace it with a well-funded substitution policy for growers, rehabilitation and therapy for users, and the immediate release of all non-violent or minorly violent dealers and traffickers. Guerillas would be forgiven to the extent that the police and army escaped conviction for crimes committed under the sanction of the previous government.

As for ideas, essentially middle-class, that drugs are necessary for revolutionary thought must be fought. Much research remains to be done on psychological healing before such conclusions can be reached, and the encouragement of such behavior can be a double-edged sword, putting leading revolutionaries into direct confrontation with conservative police-controlled gangs that have deliberately harmful intentions towards our leaders.

On the other hand, Marx and Engel were known to drink together in London pubs. George Washington and other early revolutionaries were known brewers and hemp-growers.

In voting for “left” candidates, the people may be showing their determination to struggle against the capitalist system rather than their faith in demagogic political promises. It is not the people that give up on the revolution but the leaders out of fear and real hardship. The leaders should be blamed and the people defended to the end. That is the Marxist perspective that needs to be brought to the people in order for revolutionary aspirations to become realized.

http://www.foxnews.com/ente…

In this interview Bourdain criticized the Clintons for attempting to silence the accusers and predicted Harvey Weinstein’death. If you believe Bourdain is good, how do you explain his intense hatred for Weinstein?

You did reference the wife of a Roman emperor.

This is a failure on your part to respond to real arguments about real events. Your arguments are mythologizing ancient Roman political leaders in order to argue about some invisible eternal truth that you wish to apply thoughtlessly on top of every argument. You also call everything Bourdain does repellent celebrity culture while praising the great “Oscar-winner” as he openly admits to trading acting roles for sex. Is he also trading sex with his actresses for Oscar trophies?

Why is Bourdain repellant while Weinstein deserves praise? Are you trying to advocate a gangster rape policy for the revolution as opposed to a defense of women? This is cruel provocation!

I also agree with this comment from Dorota. Why is the Wsws policy being ignored by the moderator? My comments have been blocked without any explanation, or they were mistaken for spam, while inappropriate comments contrary to policy have made it through to the detriment of the conversation as a whole. Please consider a new focus or a new moderator, before the majority is chased out by a minority without any regard for proper conduct.

I agree with Dorota’s comment, and I find it strange that her comment should have been partially hidden. Will the moderator explain his decision to allow David’s direct personal attacks?

This is too much flaming and I’m surprised it made it past the moderator. Why was this comment not blocked?

In the 2011 movie Killer Elite, the killers must make the deaths of their targets look like accidents. Nothing has been proven, but it’s possible a similar situation occurred with Bourdaine. The motive is there because he sided openly with #metoo, which lead to the indictment on rape charges of one of Hollywood’s top producers, Harvey Weinstein.

In order to protect due process. Why don’t you care about due process anymore? Isn’t the failure to protect due process a threat to democracy?

Suicide is still illegal in 20 states out of 50 in the U.S. In France, any suicide-related publications are illegal and assisted suicide is still illegal. Furthermore, there are suicide prevention laws.

Even if Bourdain could not be prosecuted for suicide, his friends, one of whom discovered the body, his television program crew, and hotel employees who could have knocked on his door could be guilty of assisting suicide. In addition, his tweets and other published comments could be seen as publications encouraging suicide, which is illegal in France.

The coroner’s report says there was no sign anyone entered the room during the suicide. However with the amount of prostitutes involved in the media, it would not be hard to hide the trail of a prostitute leaving the room. One could be given a room down the hall from the suspect.

2. The coroner’s report says the suicide was carried out with little planning. For someone who produces a show for national television it would seem highly out of character to carry out such a significant event with little planning.

3. He had been treated for depression but it would set a dangerous precedent if anyone who has had psychological counseling should be denied the assumption of innocence.

If imperialism is ever to be pushed into a retreat, then such hearings and discussions need to be had and protected.

Well, in that case the decision to demand his return to Australia should be reversed and the preparation of an exile community should be organized for victims of political persecution of the U.S. and its allies. Evidence should be gathered and presented that intelligence agencies and connected political institutions have interfered with the courts in those countries to deny constitutional, human, and democratic rights to persecuted minorities and dissedents. Such an organized community could prevent torture and assassination on a world scale.

His personal safety is very important, as is his access to Healthcare. These are of primary importance, but in my point of view, in the past 6 years, Australia has proven itself uncaring if not directly complicit. If emergency measures can be effected to secure him, that would be convenient. A simpler plan, however, would be to take advantage of his new Ecuadorian citizenship and move to Latin America as Trotsky did.

You may be right. However, China and Russia would be under an illusion to believe they can replace the leaders of Australia with anti-war anti-imperialist Labor leaders. Only a workers’ revolution will bring to the top responsible leaders who can be trusted not to sacrifice millions of lives in pursuit of profit.

The entire imperialist system has to answer to Washington’s demands. Only an alternative world economy dominated by socialist institutions could change the course of Australian politics away from an imperialist alliance with the US government.

Russia, with its economic sanctions, is closer to open war with the US. However this does not guarantee democratic rights. Julian Assange would not look like a journalist living there, but an agent, even if unwilling, of Russia.

Are you sure they’re not practicing suddenly removing people from welfare? They give this basic income and then they take it away and watch how people react. This could be practice for eliminating programs such as unemployment, social security, and pensions.

I would like to see more on the writing of Ed Winn, even if extracted from personal notebooks, about the unions. Ed Winn was the presidential candidate for the Workers’ League with the most votes in the ICFI’s history of presidential campaigns. He was also a central committee member. In addition, he held an executive position within the transit workers union local, having played a leading role in the 1980 New York City transit workers strike. His death in 1995 preceded the emergence of the SEP and the new assessment of the union organization under a global economy. Would his continued presence affect the theory and position of the SEP on the unions?

Trotsky from First Five Years of the Third International, 1920 speech in reply to Zinoviev on the role of the party:

“We see, on the other hand, that precisely those parties which pretend to speak in the name of the majority of the working class, the parties of the Second International, which express the moods of a section of the working class, compel us to pose the question whether the party is necessary or not. Just because I know that the party is indispensable, and am very well aware of the value of the party, and just because I see Scheidemann on the one side and, on the other, American or Spanish or French syndicalists who not only wish to fight against the bourgeoisie but who, unlike Scheidemann, really want to tear its head off-for this reason I say that I prefer to discuss with these Spanish, American and French comrades in order to prove to them that the party is indispensable for the fulfillment of the historical mission which is placed upon them-the destruction of the bourgeoisie.”

Here, Trotsky counterposes the reformist but large parties of the second international to the scattered, divided syndicalists who really have much more to do with the revolutionary purpose of the party. Trotsky would rather unite them and pass resolutions with them then with the parties of the second international who have made peace with the bourgeoisie, in exchange for a role in their parliament, and supported their imperialist mass-slaughter.

In the following quote, he talks about a specific syndicalist who is opposed to discussion of the role of the party in the revolution.

“Comrade Pestaña [3] says: “I don’t want to touch this question. I am a syndicalist and I don’t want to talk politics, still less do I want to talk about the party.” This is extremely interesting. He does not want to talk about the Communist Party so as not to insult the revolution…

…He will then present them with the theses and ask them to vote the resolution up or down; and those Spanish syndicalists, who unite on the basis of the proposed theses, will form nothing else but the Spanish Communist Party…

…The same thing applies to the agrarian question, the question of supplies, and all other questions. Who will decide these questions in Spain? The Spanish Communist Party – and I am confident that Comrade Pestaña will be one of the founders of this party.”

The founders of the revolutionary party may be opposed to parties in general until they become introduced to the living movement of the world revolution. This could be forgiven because of the betrayals of the Second International under Kautsky and later the Third International under Stalin. Those convinced of the necessity of a party may not be convinced of the necessity of the revolution. The majority of the working-class, under conservative conditions, will use this to turn against parties in general and be wary of future associations.

Notwithstanding, as Trotsky said, “the party is indispensable for the fulfillment of the historical mission which is placed upon them-the destruction of the bourgeoisie.”

1. There is no suicide note.

2. Bourdaine’s loved ones said there was no indication he was planning to commit suicide.

3. No trace of drugs were found in his body.

If you do not have evidence to prove his death was caused by suicide, then you should assume he is innocent rather than assume he is guilty of suicide. Are you now opposed to due process? Is this not biasing a jury through the media? Where is Bourdaine’s lawyer, if he is permitted to have one in your version of a fair trial?

Bourdain was, it appears, killed. McGowan, another witness, was indicted for cocaine possession and faces a year in prison. Others have been beaten in a suspicious manner.

You seem to be condoning mob violence in what appears to be a murder of a key witness’s romantic partner. That is not idle gossip but an important observation to make in the Weinstein trial. How long will you support the intimidation of witnesses through murder as a form of due process? Where in the constitution does it say murder is permitted to silence testimony?

A professional can only accomplish what is reasonable for his profession. He is not a superhuman miracle worker. You cannot open the yellow pages and find a lawyer that you can pay and be freed no matter what crime you committed. The same is true of actors in hollywood: you can’t pay an actor to guarantee you 10 million ticket sales. If someone is accomplishing these feats, there is more there than meets the eye.

Whatever you believe about their talent, you have to understand that the system is being rigged by these actors to give them the roles, scripts, and distribution to conquer market share and audience eyes and attention. To deny this is to undermine or erase all the revolutionary ideas that should go into your criticism of their work.

I’m talking about both the subject of the article and your comment. I’m adding to your argument by discussing the merits of his acting, the content of his character, and the general social context, as well as his social conscience being Roosevelt-inspired rather than inspired by Marxism.

Besides Anthony Bordain, there is also McGowan, who was threatened and allegedly framed for cocaine possession, now facing up to a year in prison if convicted. This is while she may be a potential witness in the HW trial.

Chaplin’s recurring role of the tramp is a slight and a detriment to acting as a whole. Every actor should have varying roles and steadily grow their repertoire. His acting is like that of a lawyer who can free any murderer or a doctor that can give anyone any surgery. Why do you give one person so much power and so little responsibility? They’ll only do the same thing over and over again. That one thing would be the procedure which does most to increase their own power and take from those who dare to compete.

His character, a mockery of the poor just for being poor, can only be explained by the criminal role of the American ruling elite, which remains the same throughout history and throughout the world. From slavery, to genocide against native Americans, to imperialism in modern times, their role always remains that same. The point is to mock the poor for being poor, for not being able to spend the same sums as those provided by the ruling elite, and therefore succumbing, supposedly, to every degradation.

This is a narrow-minded view. Workers’ intellects do not succumb but persevere and achieve equity in society through unceasing struggle. Any new tragedy for the worker, they seem to say, would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. In fact, capitalist society has born a great deal of tragedy and much more always looms around the corner; like another market collapse even before a complete recovery from the crash of 2008. If you look at Sprint’s stock, or that of Deutsche Bank, these people lost over 90% of their money. Those undoubted talents of economic leadership with hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of employees have only created more hungry mouths.

Chaplin, who appears like a controversial monument for the oppression of workers, had talent as an individual, yes, and many more unnamed talented people labored below him without recognition. The monument should be allowed to stand. Yes, for history’s sake, because it is undeniable that he held the people’s attention and managed to command a labor force through depression and war. Yet, like Churchill, after the war, he was discarded by a new, more diplomatic elite following an upgraded version of imperialism under the United Nations rather than the League of Nations.

It wasn’t an accident that Lenin and Trotsky became the leaders of the Bolsheviks and the revolution. The Bolsheviks were a small party, but because of their dedication to presenting the best theory to the working class, their presence grew exponentially.

It’s one thing to say that history could have happened differently, but it’s another to prove it. That means you have to show the writing of other Bolshevik leaders and compare it to that of Lenin and Trotsky. Then you would have to explain why their writing, or their particular opinions, could have had a larger effect than theirs.

Only Lenin and Trotsky consistently represented the working class in its revolutionary aspirations. Their policies, also, were not accidental. They had the help of the Bolshevik party and later the military and state in Russia. Their policies came from an analysis of what the best course would be for the workers through the revolution and afterward.

What later interfered with their theory, the theory of the Soviet Union, was the independent interests of the state substituting for the interests of the working class. The state bureaucracy prevented a return to democracy after the civil war, preferring to concentrate the power in the hands of one man to pursue their own interests through him.

This perspective won out against the position of the Left Opposition led by Trotsky because of the poverty, backwardness, and isolation of Russia. The Soviet Union managed to survive through a deal with imperialism, in which it would betray the world revolution in return for holding on to government power.

What remained in the Soviet Union of the workers’ state was nationalized industry and various protections for the working class. Yet this could not replace what was lost, which was a real leadership for the revolution based on the party, the working class, and the state.

The replacement finally came slightly before WWII, in the form of the Fourth International. Yet its small size made it susceptible to the assassination of Trotsky, and they could not take the power in the aftermath of the catastrophe of the war.

To sum up, the decision to study Trotsky is not just made by every individual in a vacuum. The decision is made by society as a whole, because he showed the way forward for the working class after the decline of democracy in the Soviet Union. That is not to say that others could not have done it, but certain tasks must be accomplished by one man with the help of many. He bears the responsibility for the failures and enjoys the credit for the success of many.

It seems as if Chaplin borrowed heavily from the communists and refused to join the revolutionary party as a member. It would be masochistic for Marxists to excuse this position.

Furthermore, it made him an agent of his own oppression. How could he experience the FBI and the anti-democratic actions of the state against him and still call for gradual reform? As he was an agent of his own oppression, he should have experienced a very strong feeling of guilt and a tell-tale heart when confronted by the revolution. Perhaps this conflict resulted in his “sexually deviant” twisted mind, his recurring persona and resultant humor, and his counter-revolutionary stance against the party.

“Who are the great leaders of MeToo who have been beaten, jailed and even murdered?”

Anthony Bourdain, who was commended by the WSWS.

(http://www.wsws.org/en/arti…

He praised and dated Argento, a Weinstein and Co. rape victim, cooked for a meeting between Argento, McGowan, and Sciorra, and mocked Weinstein as he was cuffed and taken to court, as well as indicted by the grand jury. He also expanded #metoo into the restaurant industry. (https://www.cnn.com/videos/…

Despite what Weinstein’s lawyer said, indictment is more than a formal accusation, but less than a conviction. It ascribes guilt to the defendant and deems him worthy of condemnation. The defendant may walk, however, because of a shadow of doubt in the minds of the trial jury.

“The WSWS was especially impacted. In the year running up to this announcement, our site had received nearly 10 million visits. The month before, over 900,000 individual users visited the WSWS, reflecting a 25 percent increase in just four months. Within a matter of days, we would go on to publish our first video that received more than one million views.”

This growth in the audience for the wsws has led to suppression of free speech at Google and in the military as well. The military gave an “other-than-honorable” discharge to an openly Marxist West Point graduate and Army officer.

(https://www.google.com/amp/…

However, the root cause of the growth is in the failure of the capitalist system and any military strategy to continue its expansion. The growth in revolutionary and socialist sentiment will only find its fullest expression in the work of the WSWS and the SEP.

When Trotsky rejoined Lenin in the Bolshevik Party in 1917, he brought with him talented people who had worked with him while they were divided from Lenin. As more well-known people join the SEP, in campaigns or in direct membership, they will bring with them talent of a similar sort that will enable the SEP to overcome any drawbacks or deficiencies imposed on it by historical development.

The ISO support for human rights imperialism or left imperialism is in line with their anti-marxist conclusion that the Soviet Union had become dominated by a new class. This was a break with any defense of the October Revolution, and an alignment, covered with socialist phraseology, with imperialism. If the attempt to create a worker’s state led to nothing but another oppressive class system and no alternative to imperialism, then revolution could produce no progressive outcomes.

Having met these people in person, I can tell you that they do not show interest in discussing theoritical differences or drawing any conclusions about the result of their campaigns. Rather, they just seek to surround themselves with the inexperienced, and aim to push through protests as a form of opposition to the activity of the SEP. This undermines the work of the of the SEP, which aims to heighten the awareness of the people to the possibility of a revolution. The mindless approach of the ISO is tiring and drains inspiration.

This book will be used to organize events to draw in the inexperienced. A forced intellectualism will serve as excuse-practice for imperialist policies around or amidst its natural opposition. Students should be warned to steer clear and not waste their energy.

Now I’m agreeing with you. But you can take the logic of “even if the [Catalan Seperatists] win the day” a step further. Why do they win the day? Because seperatism from imperialist states is progressive and conducive to world revolution. For that reason, the SEP should do more than just defend seperatists from oppression by the state, they should argue that seperatism from imperialist states is part of the world revolution. In addition, pro-capitalist policies will hinder any national movement against imperialism because the system of world capitalism leads, according to iron economic laws, to imperialism. As Lenin said, Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.

This is a great show of support for the SEP! Thank you, volunteers, for the many hard hours of work you put in to make this campaign possible.

A response to three quotes above:

“In the late 1970s, he became the national secretary of the Workers International League, the Greek section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). His elevation to this position came after the removal of two previous leaders over political differences that were never clarified within the ICFI.”

What political differences? How was the removal achieved? Can we see more theory and discussion about this topic of “political differences that were never clarified” or the absence or curtailment of discussion?

“The glorification of Stalin as a great national leader has far more in common with fascism than anything that could be legitimately described as socialist.”

See Trotsky’s “Their Morals and Ours”, warning against the confounding of Stalinism and fascism.

“Underlying this neo-Pabloite perspective is the conception that Putin has the potential to present some sort of anti-imperialist alternative, a counterweight to the domination of US imperialism. Under conditions in which both China and Russia have attempted to expand their influence within Latin America, this outlook has concrete implications in terms of state policy.”

Thank you for clarifying this position. In other articles, there were arguments that because of China’s low level of foreign direct investment or Russia’s relative economic weakness, they could not be classified as imperialist and were therefore creating a counter-balance to imperialism. However, whatever their weaknesses are, they can be used as the cutting-edge instruments of imperialism for that precise reason. They can serve as economic or political excuses for imperialist intervention, or follow in the lead of the imperialists by expanding their power over colonial possessions or “corporate investments” or “extraction contracts”, as they would call them.

Anybody in the PTS who is opposed to the alliance with Stalinism should organize and prepare to split with the PTS and organize a group to found an SEP as a branch of the ICFI. For most people it would seem absurd for Trotskyism and Stalinism to join forces, as they are divided by a “river of blood.”

However, considering Latin American history and the intervention into politics of fascist dictators, one may be reminded of the tactics of the Fourth International during the Spanish Civil War, the policy of a United Front in opposition to fascism. This occured, however, after Hitler’s rise to power and the intervention in the Spanish Civil War of the German military.

General Franco, however, succeeded in taking the power over Spain militarily, inspiring future military dictators in the process. Under these conditions, Trotskyists and Stalinists may be forced into similar positions, making possible a coalition of political parties or a United Front.

However, a major reason for Franco’s victory, it should be remembered, is Stalin’s intervention to purge Trotskyists or suspected Trotskyists or their associates from the ongoing civil war effort and then call off and disband many armed military groups fighting for revolution. This was done as a service to imperialism, making possible the Stalin-Hitler pact as well as Stalin’s later arrangements with the UK and the USA over the war effort and the redivision of Europe.

This should not and cannot equate, however, to breaking up or hiding the sections and parties making up the Fourth International as led by the International Committee. The presence of Stalinists, as leaders and speakers especially, should be seen as an almost direct threat to those gathering in the name of the Fourth International.

This is sophism not Marxism. Marxism analyzes class relations better than any other form of social science. Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolshevik Party in their Program from the Second Congress, all believed in defending the rights of nations to self-determination. This has to do with the democratic content of the revolution. The working-class benefits from breaking down the oppressive state and the imperialist order and allowing for free association among individuals and nations.

The working-class should not be bogged down by the argument about taxes; the main question is over control over the means of production. It can be proven, through macroeconomics, that lower taxes benefit the workers, as long as you accept the capitalist relations of production.

High taxes do not equate to transferring control of mines, factories, refineries, power plants, and other production centers from private property to public (or common) property, ending capitalism and beginning socialism. Many reformist socialists and even conservatives have argued for higher taxes, but that never meant the implementation of socialist policies. On the contrary, only changes to capitalism were effected.

Higher taxes can be a socialist demand, but a they are a minimum demand meant to gather the most forces to the side of the revolution. However, a minimum demand can be granted by the government, allowing it to remain in power and dissipate the revolutionary forces.

The argument from Brussels is that Spain cannot be divided and that the secession movement is unconstitutional. They fear the direct suppression of such a movement, and allow the leaders to remain free in other countries. However, the decision not to use too much force to suppress the rebellion prevents the movement’s immediate spread throughout Europe. The EU seeks to suppress such movements carefully in order to convince member states of the value of their membership. They will not be broken up because the EU has their back.

The CUP, a Catalan party on the Left, cast the deciding four votes in parliament to allow the independence movement to go forward. Had they voted according to your policy, the independence movement would be successfully suppressed by a vote in parliament and the conflict would be over. Rajoy, a conservative of the PP with links to fascism, would still be in power in Madrid. The high unemployment, austerity, and destructive levels of inequality would continue and find no expression in national politics of any great significance.

The breakdown of the Spanish state is a sign of the breakdown of capitalism and the coming revolution. The democratic content of the revolution must come first if there is to be a working class revolution. As long as you aid in the suppression of the democratic content of socialism and the revolution, you give support to Stalinism, imperialism (the Spanish monarchy), and all the forces of the counter-revolution.

Actually, I am arguing for the theory of Karl Marx, which states that the collapse of the capitalist system is not the conscious work of revolutionaries but an inevitable economic process. You are arguing that Podemos should gain the power because of their organizational activity, but the power has to go to the working class and therefore the party that best articulates their interests.

It is not possible for the workers to settle with Podemos because of their position as a left prop for capitalism and the austerity polices of the PSOE. Their government will be like that of Syriza’s in Greece, with 50 general strikes and oppressive policies at the behest of the ECB.

This does not end the task of the ICFI, which is more than just to continue to exist. The ICFI must battle against opportunism, revisionism, and the essence of Stalinism which is bureaucratism. The revisions with regard to the Catalan independence movement and independence in general should be seen within the context of opportunism derived from an upswing of working class political and strike activity and the entry of untrained minds seeped through with bourgeois ideology. The battle against opportunism can take a mechanical turn, through arguments about journalistic productivity, leading to an unresponsive bureaucracy, which eventually creates splits and organizational defeat without discussion on the model of the 1971 split between the OCI and SLL.

As for Spain, it’s important to see that the working class is making political progress by bringing down the Rajoy government and gaining national independence for Catalonia. The new Catalan government will be a constitutional democratic republic unlike the monarchy in Madrid. The new Spanish government will be highly unstable in its dependence on Podemos, which the government argues can be “taken hostage”, figuratively speaking, by revolutionary social forces. To deny this is to break from Marxism, which argues for the necessity of the revolution rising from the capitalist system itself, not the desires of revolutionary striving.

“Catalan workers should oppose the Catalan bourgeoisie’s attempt to use the regional apparatus of the Spanish state to implement their secession plans…” This new argument is in opposition to the position taken by Lenin and Trotsky on the rights of self-determination of nations and the defense of small nations. The “Programme of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party” adopted at the Second Congress of the Party (1903), paragraph 9 of the proposed constitution: “9. Right of self-determination for all nations included within the bounds of the state.” (https://www.marxists.org/hi…

Workers should support the secession and argue that the bourgeoisie cannot provide for real independence and for the right to self-determination because they fear the power of the workers more than they seek to represent the interest of the nation and its people. In that sense, the process of the creation of an independent state can only be completed through the implementation of socialist policies within the context of a successful workers’ revolution. Internationalism is a progressive step arising from and proceeding further than nationalism, which raised people from tribalism and serfdom, making possible the well-known socialist demand of “nationalization of industry”.

The Catalan workers should provide their own secession plan to serve as an example and to counterpose to the secession plan of the capitalist exiters and the far-right secessionists. Secession led to the break-down of the U.S. federal government and the outbreak of civil war.

Underlying the secessionist movement in the U.S. was the fundamental economic issue of slavery. Underlying the breakdown of the EU federation of states is the fundamental economic issue of capitalist exploitation of the working class, the modern version of slavery.

The ICFI should take the leadership position on this issue, providing a framework for secession that leads to the creation of an opposition “Confederacy” that puts workers’ rights, especially full employment, through public works and living wages for all, first on the agenda of the government. There is no reason to maintain the lie that a socialist federation can be built from the corporatist oligopoly that is the EU parliament.

This news of the collapse of the Spanish government is in line with my argument of 7 months ago: “The Spanish workers do not benefit from the national oppression of Catalonia, and, in fact, they benefit from its secession.” The secession of Catalonia is directly responsible for the unprecedented no-confidence vote and the fall of the Spanish government. The collapse has primarily taken a political form, with the division of the two main parties into four, the endless deadlock, and now the no-confidence vote bringing down Rajoy. Yet underlying this was the economic crisis, evidenced by extremely high levels of unemployment, from which Spanish capitalism could find no escape.

The European Union, a capitalist government, cannot succeed in stabilizing the European economy because it bases itself on unifying the European economy in an effort to gain an advantage over the US and China. This is inherently unstable, as the US and China fight simultaneously for their interests throughout the world. This monopolistic competition blocks foreign markets to European companies while competing in Europe with lower priced products derived from slave-labor sweatshops.

As a result, European companies must act as monopolies and increasingly like sweatshops, undermining the post-war agreement between labor and capital. These forces led to the collapse of the Spanish government more than any mistake by Rajoy or any plot planned by Iglesias. Catalonia’s secession can provide it with a temporary reprieve from the Spanish collapse, but similar conditions will emerge throughout Europe, undermining the post-war order and creating painful class conflicts. The only solution is to respond to the underlying problem, the unplanned global economy.

The ICFI should not act to hinder the freedom of self-determination of nations, but work instead to remind the workers that they can provide a solution and re-unify Europe and the world on a sustainable, lasting basis. Only the workers organized internationally for a revolution can provide leadership during such a transition.

Always was a Pink Floyd fan.

“There is not a single political tendency in America that is concious of its actions and the historical forces that are motivating them outside of the SEP.”

This is a theoretical mistake with great significance. The capitalist class is more conscious than the working class because it is the oppressor class. They fund the universities and the media to study history and trends in society. They constantly seek to manipulate the people in participating in their causes and campaigns.

What your theory really implies is that no one is capable of understanding their own place in the world or within history. This is nihilistic and pessimistic in the extreme, and must be done away with in order for the revolution to succeed. The capitalists, furthermore, are aware of the SEP and its positions and history. They actively fight the SEP to prevent it from gaining leadership over a mass movement that could threaten the rule of the banks and corporations. If you seek to blind revolutionaries to this threat from above, then you are damning the SEP and ICFI to ignorance, backwardness, and defeat.

The first failed attempt on Trotsky’s life, involving shooting into his bedroom with machine guns, was carried out by musicians. Musicians are capable of acts of violence, violent imagery and lyrics directed at specific targets of the government, and further, middle-class rage at a population that puts their own interests above the drive of the super-rich to accumulate massive sums at their expense, while offering crumbs off their table to the musician.

Musicians can be perfectly aware of their corporate masters political leanings and serve them by violent means, riling up a crowd against a supposed enemy. At the same time, the people can get involved in shaping their leanings, turning them at times towards a sensible liberal or even a revolutionary outlook. This is by no means a substitute for the construction of a revolutionary party, nor is it particularly reliable as it is not based on a specifically political mass movement.

It is a middle class rebellion, and the musicians and their audience are to blame as well. They are as reckless as the censors and the police. The bourgeoisie does not originate everything, but fails to come up with a workable solution.

Fascism is rooted in the rebellion of the middle class as it loses its position in society, and only the creation of a workers’ state to cure the social ills created by capitalism can take away the underlying source of these recurring problems.

The liberal bourgeoisie is capable of defending freedom of expression, including with support from the state and police, but they can also be shouted down and ignored based on a false pretext of creating riots and combatting riots. This can be done by music industry and broadcasting management, google technicians, and the middle ranks of the armed forces and police with various investments in agriculture or finance.

Such rioting is not based on the working class revolution, but on the demands of middle class position holders who are being undermined and marginalized. They want to destroy society one day and censor it the next. They fight the existing order without a better order in mind.

Please read Lenin’s Imperialism to understand the Marxist theory on the relationship between imperialist war and economic collapse. It is not the spending which lifted the country out of depression but the destruction of competing economic powers, allowing the US to control over 50% of the world’s industrial output at the end of the war. The air-raids and artillery bombardment of European cities prevented them from exporting manufactured products and importing raw-materials as per the previous colonial power relations.

With hundreds of millions of euros of slush fund money going around, it’s no wonder the Spanish parliament and its leaders will not relinquish power willingly. They have to be forced out, as the Spanish people have done brilliantly.

What remains is to show Podemos opposing the Catalan referendum, as well as issues regarding the end to austerity, and keeping the “center-left” PSOE in power as they attempt to subdue Catalonia and the European working class. Without the unconditional support offered by Podemos, the PSOE would lose the power to rule as well.

A revolution in Greece could spread throughout Europe and the Middle East.

I don’t think Roseanne is as confused as she appears. She is surrounding herself, on Twitter, with the confused as a comic exercise. Her approach seems to be to move towards the creation of a pseudo-right, which would create a false support for the Trump administration. In that way, she could break through the censorship regime, and continue the battle against leading politicians, especially Democrats who are offended by her interest in poor workers, her fan base, and her break from the two party system in 2012. However, truly turning against the two-party system would mean standing strong against right-wing populism as well, with its appeal of turning hard against the “left” establishment and her political enemies.

If you demand an explanation, I will support you in your demand. I thought this was only happening to me.

The same thing happened to me. It feels like google is erasing my responses.

This is true. However, as long as Hollywood (or philanthropy in Bernie Madoff’s case) absorbs enough of the world’s attention, then it behooves us to address the public that finds themselves stuck at that level. The correct conclusion to draw, however, is the opposite of what the writer has written.

Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer argued that the court and the jury might be “consumed by the movement that has overtaken this case.” If anyone is threatening due process and the court as a whole, it’s Weinstein’s lawyer, who questions the legitimacy of the court and the competency of the jury.

He also said that Weinstein has not “intentionally violated the law”, which is besides the point. Asking at what point the violation became intentional does not change the express purpose of the trial, which allows the accusers and defendants to present testimony and evidence as well as cross-examine. The right to argue has not been diminished by the presence of a living movement, it has finally gained import because the arguments can finally lead to a conviction.

Weinstein’s arrest should not be compared to the arrest of immigrant children, their harassment, torture, and rape. Nor should Weinstein’s arrest be compared to the Israeli bombing of Gaza. In fact, his cornering of women resembles the immigrant problem, and his contracting of ex-Mossad agents resembles the intelligence which was used to plan the bombing of Gaza.

Allowing the Times and Ronan Farrow to run the #meToo movement unopposed gives the writer free room to enter into a quid pro quo agreement with Hollywood. However, the #meToo movement should not be isolated and controlled by Farrow and the Times, rather it should be compared to movements like those of the striking teachers (76 percent female) and the legalization of abortion in Ireland. (The “culmination of a quiet revolution.”)

Such movements show the rising power of the working-class, though in what Lenin would call “embryonic” form. Rather than kill them in the early stages, using the intrusions of Farrow and the Times as an excuse, they should be protected and encouraged to grow into what they are meant to become, the working-class revolution, the embodiment of the democratic aspirations of the people.

As an aside: the order of events is suspicious. Harvey Weinstein investigated; no prosecution; Eric Schneiderman, Attorney General of New York falls; Weinstein arrested in New York. Was Weinstein protected by Schneiderman?

And another aside: Why is there no outrage over a $1,000,000 bail being posted? How many people have that much money to post bail? This is a recipe for imprisoning the majority and letting the minority that has millions of dollars to spare go free.

Two good quotes:

“Pulitzer’s choice to recognize the rapper cannot be viewed as anything but a nod to identity politics and the Democratic Party.”

“That kind of wealth and the doors it opens, including the one leading to the Oval Office, often have a deeply damaging effect on one’s outlook and the ability to create serious works of art.”

I wish this kind of objectivity was used to assess the work of Weinstein and Co. These people’s outlook and ability are /deeply damaged/. Oscars and Pulitzers are not indicative of supreme talent by any means; they’re a shiny distraction designed to “overrate” the capitalist and “overlook” the worker.

As for the argument about bragging, blues music reflected the opposite trend, always lamenting. The bragging in rap is a form of comedy, meant to signify the emergence from slavery and poverty through a gangster ethic of unbridled ambition. This seems like it would be an endless source of tragedy, but rap brings comedy and hope to this story. The character of tragic blues, with his near perfection and eminent relatability, served to mask the older, more brutal form of economic accumulation: that of the tenant farmer and plantation owner.

In the history of French Opera, there was a change from tragic to comic as well, in the form of the Querelle des Bouffons (“Quarrel of the Comic Actors”). The differences in the music styles entered into French philosophy as well, dividing the defenders of the regime, led by Rousseau, from the more progressive, known as the Encyclopedists, led by Diderot. The entrance of Italian Opera brought with it the traditions of Italian republics as well as the ancient Roman Republic. Italian Priest Lorenzo Da Ponte was the Librettist for Mozart’s famous comedy the Marriage of Figaro.

The direct confrontation between Blues and Jazz artists and Hip-hop artists seems to have been left to the socially conscious side of rap, and whatever battle was had did not take an overt form. Rap, with its comedic elements obviously won, taking the larger audience for itself. A possible explanation could be the “New Great Migration”, the gradual return of black people to Southern States and their re-introduction to country and folk. This renewed the music’s focus on the poor, the culture of the people, while Jazz increasingly became dominated by the Academy, elite universities and the elite that fund them.

It’s a strange fact that many northern cities have few if any country music stations. New York City had no country music station from 1996 until 2013. This was not for lack of demand, because New York City is a large market for country music. However the disconnect led to the emergence of a new culture derived from the parties of the inner city. Lack of musical education and the new abundance of recorded music, microphones, and powerful speakers lent themselves organically to the new form.

In that sense, rap is a step forward from Jazz and Blues. The tragic self-hate contained in the lyrics of Louis Armstrong in “Black and Blue” would seem unconscionably unhip, due to their acceptance of racism, in the world of rap. Almost 40 years since the emergence of rap, however, the attempt to resolve cultural deficiencies through the shifting of styles has proven insufficient.

The philosophy unleashed through this musical break-through, however, will lead to a social movement independent of musical style with sufficient intellectual rigor to achieve its true aims. Italian Opera reintroduced the ideas of the Roman Republic to France in time for the French Revolution, and rap, in a similar manner, has returned to the forefront the voice of the angry, oppressed poor, armed with a comic edge, and conscious of the need for fundamental change.

Kendrick Lamar falls into this picture, sadly, on the side of the academy seeking to reconquer rap. The reason is addressed in the article: he is unsure, wavering, and actually quite sad. In addition, he fails in the larger picture, to tell a significant story of a romantic type. The gangster seems to have made it to the adventure on the high seas, but has found no significant reason to return to shore. This endless epic is appealing to the elite in that it returns the people’s hero into a struggle without lasting meaning, devoid of a multi-generational outlook or a devotion to multi-generational change.

As with the US teachers’ strike, the Brazilian truckers have broken from the union in order to press for their demands. After the unions will come the radical left, which will try to control the workers’ tactics and arrange a return to work under the capitalist state. Only the ICFI would advocate a revolutionary solution, based on the creation of rank-and-file committees and a workers’ state. Such a revolution in Brazil could unite the entire South American continent under socialist principles.

The struggle of Trotskyism against Revisionism means defending the positions of Lenin and Trotsky on nationalism as well. Read Trotsky’s short 1916 article The Big Lie: The Defense of Small Nations. (https://www.marxists.org/ar… Is this not a moving defense of the Serbian nationalist movement? So why contradict Bill van Auken and side with revisionism over Trotskyism?

Your other statement is revealingly anti-Marxist: “It reads as though socialism is attained by honorary lawyers and career politicians who are familiar with the machinations of state, not by the working class themselves.” Socialism is not achieved by the state? This is a glaring theoretical flaw. In the final analysis, your opposition to the socialist state is a defense of the Spanish state.

You wrote, ” The majority of youth in many EURO countries have revealed they would participate in a “mass uprising” against the current order. The critical question is building revolutionary leadership for mass struggles which are already breaking free of the trade unions.” How can a revolutionary leadership for mass struggles be built if the mass struggles only receive derogatory names and dismissive atheoretical reproach? Mass struggles must be supported in order to be led, as Trotsky did with the Serbian “black hand” movement.

1. Trotsky: “In this the Bolshevik Party did not by any means undertake an evangel of separation.”

Your response: “That is, the Bolshevik Party does not support national movements by default, but it does oppose their oppression.”

Actually, you are misinterpreting this quote. He is saying the Bolshevik Party supports almost all national separatist movements, but they do hold open the possibility of an exception, as in during a civil war. This was not something they just wrote in their notebooks, it became the official party program, “that famous paragraph 9” as Trotsky called it, for which Lenin “stubbornly fought– most particularly against Rosa Luxemburg– .” If Lenin is fighting Rosa Luxemburg over the official party program, it’s not a light matter, it’s something important.

2. National separatism does not lead to Balkanization, Stalinism does. The Balkans had been organized into a single state called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 by Peter I, who was the King of Serbia from 1903 onward. His son Alexander I oversaw the renaming of the kingdom to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. Under Churchill, in 1944, while the monarchy escaped the Axis powers hiding in the UK, the country was renamed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, while in 1945 it was finally renamed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

In other words, the unity of the Balkans was accomplished under a Monarchy, a result of the balance of power between Austria-Hungary and Germany on one side, and France, the UK, and the US on the other (after the Russian Revolution). Austria-Hungary sought to “unite” Southern Europe under its imperial rule. Austria-Hungary’s loss lead to the formation of the new /monarchy/ over the entirety of Yugoslavia. Effectively the power was transferred from Austria-Hungary to Italy and kept from the hands of the people.

The unity of the Balkans was Tsarist foreign policy. Trotsky wrote in his 1916 article, “The Big Lie: The Defence of Small Nations,” “Agents of the Romanovs in the Balkans, as is well known, have never stopped using dynamite.” He also said defenders of Serbia too often fell into the same abyss as Plekhanov, and “discovered their vocation as advocates of tsarist diplomacy in the era of its greatest crimes.”

Balkanization was accomplished by Stalinism, a walk-out from the party congress and a party division by future presidents Kucan of Slovenia and Racan of Croatia, as a favor to the imperialists, breaking up the unified region to destroy the possibility of a revolutionary movement coming to power throughout the region in the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinism. It also diminished the chances of a world war by allowing Europe to divide the region rather than fight for total dominance for one country over the entire region. In exchange, these Stalinists could go on to become leaders of parties in a multi-party democracies and presidents of countries themselves. More politicians could accomplish their personal ambitions, and Europe could more easily pressure Southern Europe into a semi-colonial cheap-labor platform.

Further on in “The Big Lie”, Trotsky wrote: “During trips to the Balkans I have often heard from the people there, especially from Serb socialists (particularly from my unforgettable friend, Dmitry Tucoviča, killed serving as an officer during the war), indignant complaints that the Serbian bourgeois press all gloatingly quoted the chauvinistic rhetoric of the Arbeiter Zeitung against the Serbs, as proof that international solidarity of workers is only a fairytale.”

The Arbeiter Zeitung was the newspaper of the Social Democracy of Vienna. They advocated, against the position of Lenin and Trotsky, that Serbia “unite” with Austria-Hungary. This was imperialism, but it found support in the Vienna Workers Paper.

Trotsky rather than “vigorously oppose” these movements for the national liberation of small nations, spoke glowingly of them.

“From him [Serbian Revolutionary, volunteer translator in French Navy, friend Dmitry Tucoviča] I learned many details about the internal life of the South-Slav revolutionary organisations and, in particular, about the group of boys who killed the heir to the Habsburg throne, the head of the Austro-Hungarian military party.

The organisation, with the romantic name, Crna Ruka (the Black Hand), was built on strictly conspiratorial Carbonari(3) principles. The new members went through mysterious rituals: a knife was put to the bared chest, an oath of loyalty was taken on pain of death, etc. The strands of this organisation, which had branches in all the South-Slav provinces of the Habsburg monarchy and was filled with self-sacrificing students, were gathered in Belgrade, in the hands of officers and politicians equally close to the Serbian government and to the Russian embassy. Agents of the Romanovs in the Balkans, as is well known, have never stopped using dynamite.”

I hope this was enough to prove that Catalan workers and Spanish workers can only unite based on the idea of national independence and a federation of equal nations. The oppression of the Spanish state can only be broken by the working class led by a theoretically sound revolutionary party. Opposition to the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky do not aid in the construction of such a party, but interfere egregiously.

I wrote a reply to Bill van Auken’s speech here:
http://www.wsws.org/en/arti…

I will reply more directly to you in the coming days or maybe weeks.

Professionalism is not a myth, it is just rare due to the heavy promotion of the incompetent through nepotism and other forms of corruption. Lenin argued for professional revolutionaries in his fundamental disagreement with the Menshiviks. While Trotsky in 1903 sided with the Menshiviks, he in 1917 admitted Lenin had taken the right course, while he himself erred in trying to find common ground with the capitalist reformists of the Second International.

Lenin alone succeeded in bringing the revolution to power in 1917 because of his theories on the professional revolutionary, elaborated in What is To Be Done and One Step Forward Two Steps Back, among others. You cannot follow Trotsky’s decision to form the Fourth International without understanding Lenin’s insistence on forming the Bolshevik Party apart from the Menshiviks.

Professionalism for the revolution at its base involves paid service to the revolution, mostly in the form of writing and journalism, but may also include organizing. As long as this is considered a myth, then Lenin’s method, and by corollary Trotsky’s method, has been abandoned.

If you are saying that the fundamental difference can be found in any single argument, then it would have to apply to every argument. If he’s a liar in saying he agrees with Trotsky, then he’s a liar when he says he agrees with the #metoo movement.

He, in fact, is in fundamental /disagreement/ with the #metoo movement for his own class position rather than for the discovery of the best position for the working class.

The article itself says, “So Steiner was. And so he is today.” But you say: “No, because the arguments Steiner supports today, as opposed to the arguments he supported in the past , are not rooted in the class position of the ICFI.”

The roots of the arguments, the parts that are not apparent but from which the arguments are derived, are not the same because of class differences, hidden from view of those only reading about theoretical differences. Still, there is a unity, which was also an admitted official unity, including a leadership role co-writing pamphlets.

That alone proves my original point, which is that agreement between Steiner and anyone else does not prove them wrong. Your insistence to the contrary does not change this proof, but only undermines the position you are trying unsuccessfully to defend.

If you are saying that the fundamental difference can be found in any single argument, then it would have to apply to every argument. If he’s a liar in saying he agrees with Trotsky, then he’s a liar when he says he agrees with the #metoo movement.

He, in fact, is in fundamental /disagreement/ with the #metoo movement for his own class position rather than for the discovery of the best position for the working class.

The article itself says, “So Steiner was. And so he is today.” But you say: “No, because the arguments Steiner supports today, as opposed to the arguments he supported in the past , are not rooted in the class position of the ICFI.”

The roots of the arguments, the parts that are not apparent but from which the arguments are derived, are not the same because of class differences, hidden from view of those only reading about theoretical differences. Still, there is a unity, which was also an admitted official unity, including a leadership role co-writing pamphlets.

That alone proves my original point, which is that agreement between Steiner and anyone else does not prove them wrong. Your insistence does not change this proof, but only undermines the position you are trying unsuccessfully to defend.

It could also be pointed out that his site is named permanent revolution, based on Trotsky’s theory. Does that make the class position of Trotsky’s theories anti-worker? What about his years of participation in the ICFI? Was the ICFI turning on Marxism or the working-class by participating with him and publishing his work?

By helicopter, dropping a ladder to his balcony.

Encouragement comes in many forms. I find it encouraging that he responded to a comment written in the Comments Section of another website.

If Steiner is as unsavory a character as he is portrayed, his agreement or disagreement on any issue should not be held against those he agrees or disagrees with. After all, he does choose to reply to your opinions and associate himself with you. So maintain a respectful and professional approach to other people whose opinions differ from your own. The “old liar” insult came from him and represents his attitude and weakness with regard to professionalism.

1. I cannot find any evidence to prove that Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa “hand-picked” Lenin Moreno. From what I read, Correa was a founder of Alianza País, whose leaders elected him and Lenin Moreno. Later Correa and Moreno, while in a feud with one another, were both ejected from the party, though Moreno continued to hold the office of President.

As a side note, Rafael /Carrera/, was a Caudillo of Guatemala, in the 1800’s. Caudillos were autocratic military leaders that replaced the four Spanish Vice-Royalties of the Americas. Caudillos received their support from the British, Belgium, and other colonialist powers. They often sided with the church, but some were “liberal” in that they favored secular education and redistribution of land, rather than a concentration of land-ownership into a small and very powerful landed aristocracy that ran a plantation system.

Caudillos formed and still form a large part of Latin American history, whether as national leaders or as regional governors. It would be misleading to argue that South America developed in a parallel way to the United States, forming constitutional republics that developed in a relatively uninterrupted way with the exception of a civil war over slavery and the labor and anti-war movements. Latin America remained divided and their governments, often formed through coups disguised as revolutions, remained dependent on European and later American, direct and indirect, military and financial support.

In other words, the bourgeois democratic revolution in Latin America is not complete. However, the democratic rights the proponents of constitutional republics promise cannot be secured without the coming to power of the working class, although every revolution will necessarily begin as a bourgeois democratic and nationalist revolution. These will inevitably face defeat at the hands of imperialist-sponsored counter-revolution and IMF-sponsored neo-liberal reform.

The working class cannot come to power or bring meaningful reform without recognizing the international character of the revolution based on the global economy and the international working class. They need to unite across borders to build federations of workers states in alliance with the working class of Europe, the US, and other imperialist powers. This can only be done consciously, through the leadership of revolutionary parties working in unison through the ICFI.

2. I also would like further proof, if it exists, of this claim: “It served to divert a layer of radicalized youth away from the struggle to build a conscious revolutionary leadership in the working class, and into grossly unequal armed confrontations that claimed the lives of thousands and helped pave the way to fascist-military dictatorships throughout the continent.”

As I stated before, Caudillos, or military dictatorships, have been a distinguishing feature of Latin American governments since the breakdown of the four Spanish Vice-Royalties. When in 1941, Nimio de Anquín, leader of Argentine fascism, wrote that “by the work of the great Hitler, liberalism and ugly democracy have died,” he put himself in the tradition of pro-Catholic Latin American dictators, or Caudillos, which had held power for the past 100 years, and the Spanish monarchy and aristocracy before them.

The destruction of Marxist leadership in “grossly unequal armed confrontations”, therefore, could not derive solely from mistakes on the parts of revisionist formerly Marxist leaders. The formation of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and the destruction of democracy in the Stalinist parties throughout the world, including South America, occurred because of the objective economic isolation of the Soviet Union and the consequent destruction of the revolutionary leadership of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The betrayal of Pablo-ism did disarm the workers theoretically and organizationally, as did the unprincipled division of the ICFI in 1971. The OCI took with it Latin American sections of the ICFI and disolved them into alliances with Stalinism. This all had to do with the objective economic isolation of the October Revolution and its greatest defenders in theoretical debate and revolutionary activity, the ICFI and the predecessors of the SEP.

All this however, does not take away from the real historical achievements of Trotsky in the October Revolution of 1917 and the Trotskyist movement as it expanded and grew in influence despite the political genocide attempted by Stalinism and Fascism. Workers, driven by objective necessity to struggle against capitalism, will necessarily return to the Trotskyist movement and build mass parties based on the program and perspective of the Fourth International. It is important, then, to emphasize revolutionary leadership in the positive sense, its resiliency and its objective and irascible roots in the ever-present class struggle, not its fragility and demise under the forces of oppression and the temptations of opportunism.

The workers will see the many errors of the Pabloite perspective during their confrontations with the capitalists and the state, especially the Pabloite reliance on bourgeois nationalism and Stalinism. This will lead to the formation of new parties providing political clarity, which is the basis for unified action. The weaker strains of disunity and nationalism will necessarily fall in line with the stronger unity and internationalism, leading to real and permanent victories for the working class.

The comments on Ronan Farrow serve as a good exposè, but they seem extensive in article ostensibly about Eric Schneiderman. While it is not unreasonable to assume that Schneiderman may have conflicted with interests on Wall Street, his story lends more credibility to another argument about his downfall. Schneiderman’s personal relationships, unusual because of his long history of avoidance of marriage, made him ill-suited to prosecute sexual misconduct, which became a problem of overriding concern. Harvey Weinstein should be in jail awaiting his trial, but the prosecution has been delayed by men like Schneiderman who seek to undermine the prosecution from within. His fall is more of a sign that the #metoo movement could not be co-opted by a hypocrite and killed with scandal. The failure of Schneiderman is a sign that the political establishment is losing its grip on power under the pressure of demands for workplace security and for justice in sexual abuse cases.

The decision by the mainstream media, especially MSNBC and the New Yorker to drop the story in the lap of Ronan Farrow should not distract people from the content of the story. His own abuse-prone life and his prostration before Holbrooke and state power in general certainly undermine his journalistic integrity, but that form of innuendo and personal politics against a representative of the elite cannot replace disciplined support for a movement for worker’s power.

This is a strong response to the article and deserves a wider reading.

By “greater weight” , they mean greater weight will be given to testimony rather than the abolition of the presumption of innocence. This means that innocent witnesses will not be falsely accused of hearsay. Testimony should be heard, not silenced, that is the main principle at stake.

Furthermore, the Cosby verdict is not a total conviction of all suspects. It does, however, return the power to the innocent and their defenders, to workers engaged in work-related activities, and take the power from the predators and violent overseers. This increases productivity, helping the economy as a whole, but may be politically prejudicial to the owners of businesses who use their position for antisocial psychological power games.

Favoring the prosecution, furthermore, does not do away with the presumption of innocence. The presumption of innocence remains as a protection for every defendant, but not all observers therefore need side with the defense. That is an unfair standard to put on society as a whole and would damage political relations between the party and the people if strictly enforced. The presumption of innocence is a standard to hold court proceedings to so as to make sure the evidence and testimony are gathered and presented properly, so as to best protect the interests of the public, so as to protect against illegal prosecution /contempt for the law./ Applying your confused argument over court proceedings to journalists and society in general, as if the whole world was a courtroom, you would be held for contempt of court for interrupting the testimony of the witnesses.

A better historical parallel for the#metoo movement is the coming to power of Kruschev and the consequent revelations of Stalin’s abuse of power. Ronan Farrow and the New Yorker bring forward and appoint the damaged and implicated children of the 80s counter-revolution to accuse their predecessors. They continue the chain of repression, but they also bring to light the excesses of the show trials whose purposes were to allow bourgeois terror to walk.

The cuts to education turned out to be permanent rather than temporary and much deeper than expected. The cancellation of vaccinations for Colorado students proves that the wars of the US do not contribute to national security but instead, due to their predatory nature, only threaten the lives of many Americans.

The teachers need the SEP as their leaders in this struggle in order to effect real change and return the stolen billions in school funding. Raising wages does not balance the reduction in spending per student. That money will not be returned, however, as long as the pro-war Democrats supposedly lead the left. The leadership of the SEP over the mass movement can have no substitute.

But to return to the quote: “It merely assumed an obligation to struggle implacably against every form of national oppression, including the forcible retention of this or that nationality within the boundaries of the general state.”

Those were Trotsky’s own words, which should have added significance here because they are the words of the founder of the Fourth International.

Further on in the quote he says: “While flatly refusing to the bourgeois states the right to impose compulsory citizenship, or even a state language, upon a national minority…” Bolshevism supported unity across nationalities, meaning the fullest sympathy and alignment with Catalan Independence as opposed to national oppression of Catalonia by the Spanish state. The point to be made is not that the new state may be disappointing in some way, a Utopian and anarchistic point, but that it would break the centralized oppression of the Spanish government. Even more importantly, it could be said the national liberation of Catalonia cannot successfully reach completion without the work of the revolutionary party, especially with the Bourgeois Republicans landing in prison or exile while independence remains on the agenda.

If a reformist leader raises the minimum wage, do we oppose higher wages on the principle that it only leads to higher prices?
Marx argued against this outlook in Value, Price, and Profit. The evidence does not support this view. In the same way that a new higher wage rate does not lead to increases in prices and constant consumption, a new bourgeois republic does not necessarily lead to the creation of a new financial oligarchy to reduce democracy to its corrupt servant. The new republic, like the one created by the February revolution in Russia can lead to the growth of a mass socialist movement and the consequent rise to power of a new socialist government.

Revolutionaries should push for reforms that benefit the workers until the state becomes incapable of further improving their lot. At this point reformist leaders fail to deliver on their promises and the necessity of the revolution becomes apparent.

It is utopian to believe that every nationalist leader must be a well-informed Trotskyist before their independence from the oppressor nation can be achieved. The destruction of the oppressor state, its loss of territory and official power, will improve the situation of workers struggling under conditions of a war on their democratic rights. The Spanish state is equally guilty, and this has brought the leaders of Catalonia into a direct conflict with the capitalist system itself.

This can be seen in the behavior of other European states who all prioritize territorial integrity and care nothing for democratic rights and election results. The Spanish government is extremely unpopular because it allowed over 20% unemployment for years without treating it as an emergency. If that rate were lowered to the European average of around 10%, millions of lives would be improved, making the revolution /more/ possible.

Also, it does not suffice to take the anti-Stalinist position, no socialism in one country. Trotsky said we should focus our efforts on forming the future state, not making deals with the state that holds the power now. The revolutionary organization, he said, is the tool for creating that new state and does not consist itself of that new state. In Catalonia, while all of Europe turns away, the revolutionary should be there writing their constitution and deciding their laws and customs. If this is not possible, then they should warn the workers that socialist politics are being excluded by the private banks, corporations, and other organizations of the super-rich.

Once the new state forms, if it is not to the liking of the revolutionary and his role becomes reduced by the machinations of its Bureaucracy, he can return to building the party organization and defend the workers against the state.

We could make a collection and order pizza.

I hope there are no shortages in the US, but it seems like California and New York have a housing shortage. That is why a million people left each of those states. Is there a similar shortage in Japan? Why did their population shrink by a million? It seems the market may hide the shortage by raising prices, but the shortage still exists.

This explains why Harvey Weinstein isn’t in prison.

The basic income idea would reduce the stress experienced by the workers, but this would hurt the capitalists in their negotiations over wages and positions. That’s why a universal income is impossible under a political system controlled by two pro-capitalist parties.

Capitalists have parties allowing them to exercise power over the state. Workers need to organize a party in order to control the state in their own interests.

Furthermore, if you look at Cambridge Analytics, their views on Hitler are very sympathetic and so distorted that they’ve crossed over into denial territory. They also belong to parent company SCL Group, known to conduct psychological warfare operations on a contractual basis.

We demand facebook return all the rights they have taken from the teachers.

But that service does not have 2.2 billion users.

The district has been gerrymandered into a very lopsided figure. Nevertheless, the placement of District 51, on the border with Mexico, will make it a nationally relevant race.

The US-Mexico border should be opened to the people, and so should the US election. The US suffers daily because of the idea, upon which much of its social organization is based, that some must be excluded from the fruits of their labor so others can profit at their expense.

With modern technology and the large amount of accumulated capital available, everyone can benefit at a low price from the mass production of food, housing, energy, medicine, and all other necessities of modern life. This is hidden from the people using artificial borders and a demand that they fight each other across those borders for a shrinking share of the international pie.

The article rightly points out that local solutions do not stand a chance at solving these worldwide problems, caused by multinational management corporations. In addition, it seems as if Britain’s food may be targeted as a punishment for Brexit. No one, even British protectionists, can stand in the way of the accumulation of capital for the few, without receiving a severe thrashing.

Shutting down these factories in the name of profit ignores the rising severity of world hunger, which must be battled by producing more food, not less in a bid to raise prices. A world food agency should be established to respond to emergencies such as this, in order to turn the rights to produce in these, and more profitable, facilities over to the workers.

Rights are self-evident and absolute, arising from our co-existence in the biosphere, and governments that do not recognize them fall from power as more responsible governments rise in their place.

This “democracy of dunces” argument is extremely conservative, and I worry that your viewpoint flows directly from that of the WSWS.

We will not change the rules of evidence, but reactivate the atrophied muscles of democracy. It is an inherent trait of human nature to be able to form democracies and act together according to the will of the majority. However, it is also possible such mechanisms wear themselves away with time, and this process can only be reversed through revolution, not tinkering with rules.

The revolution awakens a social force and calls it into participation, thus solving one problem and creating the possibility of solving a whole host of problems in quick succession. While abstract, this theory is based on observation of real historical movements which have shaped history categorically.

Notional rights are almost by definition insufficient. Me too builds itself on law that is on the books, law that is not being enforced because of a cultural failure or crisis and collapse. It’s easy to say that women have always been abused, but it’s more accurate to say that harassment, violent retribution against witnesses, rape and inequality are at an all time high. This is because the stakes have never been higher. A natural distribution of power would eliminate the need for massive rape campaigns, but the domination of the world’s resources by a tiny elite, 3 individuals controlling more than half the US, and a few more controlling more than half the world, forces rape as a means to secure submission to such an unequal system.

You still haven’t proven that Cosby was denied due process. Where is the proof? This is a baseless accusation. It’s extremely threatening.
You ruin careers with your bottomless well of hate.

The founding fathers would have shot Cosby in a duel to defend women’s dignity and chastity, or sent him running back to monarchist, aristocratic Britain where such crimes are tolerated in the name of privilege. They would have stayed one step ahead of him, ruining his terror-reign over comedy.

No, you are not clear and you should be aware of that.

This is a misquote out of context. You were arguing rape is difficult to prove. But events showed the fault in your argument, and rape /can/ be proven.

If you don’t understand celebrity, you don’t understand the difference between night and day. Anything you hear everyday, or see everyday on the radio or television, or read about in the news and magazines is dominated by celebrity. Films, books, concerts, and theater round out the list.

The public reaction must be /very/ critical if they convicted “America’s Dad”, Dr. Huxtable from the Cosby Show, which had 30,000,000 weekly viewers at its peak and aired in re-runs for many years. That critical view allowed them to overcome programming by the mass-media to worship the crusader hero chosen for them from on high. Instead they just viewed the evidence and voted on their verdict.

In reality, you are defending Big-Brother Cosby so he can drug and rape any suspected potential dissenter. I’m surprised anyone but his lawyer still maintains his innocence after he was found guilty in court, in front of a jury, after a mistrial and almost 15 years delay, time he spent free to continue his never ending human-hunting expedition.

If people lack medical care and homes, are they supposed to rape their way into people’s homes and medical supplies? How long can that be your solution?

The law comes from something greater than class interests alone. In that sense, it can never fall completely under the influence of the capitalists.

The solution to the problems in India will not come from an invasion but through the effort of the Indian people themselves to lift themselves from poverty and break from whatever traditions trap them in a cycle of poverty. It is one thing to fear invasion, but something completely different to use fear-mongering into scaring the population and then invading them with their own military-media apparatus, in that way temporarily preventing a foreign invasion. Xenophobia does not serve the nation or its people but paralyzes them and conquers them with a paternalistic protector that enslaves them.

Everybody learns about India at some point or another; the point is not to get kidnapped and held captive in Sri Lanka. And if this should happen, then one must have the bravery to go there and confront the captor and free one’s family. Those who don’t are slaves. This is not a case for invasion but for revolution. Relations as they stand, though they have been in place for years, are not permanent.

The working class struggled to improve its condition in ways that slaves never could. It is only the working class that can confront fascism, create a new state, and end the oppressive traditions inherited from the times of slavery. The end to these traditions must come from an impulse within India itself, not from a military invasion and the forced imposition of Stalinism. That is not mindlessness, that is a generally held opinion about defense of freedom, defense of the people in the act of rebellion or in the act of forming their own government, and defense of women who seek positions in the spotlight, refusing to be shamed for their opinions or for their female anatomy.

Cosby was convicted yesterday, so rape and sexual assault can be proven. Should his career matter more than the careers he ruined through his crusade? He lost his honorary degrees, except ironically the one from Temple University, where he committed the crime.

A class of workers can be replaced, but not the working class. A class of workers will engage in a specific kind of work, but work in general will always need human input in order to produce output with value for human beings. Robots and machines doing more of the work will always function in an assistant or tool capacity, overseen or controlled manually or digitally by humans.

If one human, with the help of robots, can produce enough to feed, house, and give energy to a million households, their wages too would have to be distributed among all those people. So their wages would have to rise exponentially, the taxes would have to rise to over 99%, and these taxes would be used to subsidize free, though limited, access to these resources. Otherwise, those millions of people would mob that one person with a job and extremely high wages.

Those millions of people, now freed from material want, can still participate in gainful activities by incentivizing it in each other and further dividing labor into services, such as research into new types of robots or entertainment.

You are jealous because the predictions of the WSWS came true and they were prepared for this event. While you were organizing with the union bureaucracy and ascribing to them socialist principles, the WSWS appealed to the workers to break from the unions and organize independently.

Now they are urging the workers to build committees, but you would have them remain tied to ad-hoc, formless facebook groups with no formal or official power. These new groups are a step forward in the process of creating truly revolutionary organizations. They are not the same as the “traditional committees” or worker/socialist groups only in name, which have been co-opted by the bourgeoisie to control rebellion.

You will not break the will of the workers. They will continue to build powerful movements and the SEP will continue to warn them of the dangers that lie ahead. Put the SEP in charge of the teachers’ strikes!

Put the SEP in charge of the teachers’ strikes! Make it official, the SEP is the best party to expand the strikes into a social movement for lasting change. Otherwise, all increases in wages will be offset by out-of-pocket cost increases, price rises, and increases in social misery. The union bureaucracy will grow richer while students lose funding. Education will be privatized and then militarized, wasting a very valuable public good.

You should distinguish between American Marxists and Americans tied to the KKK. To lump all Americans together as lynch-mob advocates does more to help the KKK and the extreme right than it does to clarify some philosophical propensity. America does build itself on the foundation of liberty, and this may be taken to the extreme of lynch-mobs and murder. However, America has a moral side, and this is what you should appeal to rather than respond to injustice with blanket hatred.

Human behavior is a product of human decisions. We have to make better decisions and create a social environment that encourages everyone to make the best decisions for themselves. Then the use of weapons and war can be relegated to a last resort.

In addition to the problems you mentioned, India also has the world’s worst problem with regard to slavery. If it seems forcing women and threatening their families is the worst thing you can do, there is one thing worse: take groups of women captive and keep them as slaves without ever letting them see their families. Termed human trafficking, modern day slavery is a very large and growing problem.

Wherever you see extremely low rates of enforcement for certain violent or perverted crimes, that must signify a tacit understanding between the authority and human traffickers to enslave the population.

The slave population and the refugee population number in the 10s of millions and together over 100 million people. This is more people than the UK, Japan, France, or Germany. This amount of rightsless people can exist without being saved because of the billion people suffering food or water insecurity.

This rape of a child, followed by the murder of her and her father took place within this context. It has to be seen in all the world’s democracies that if women aren’t protected by the law then democracy is not safe. Top politicians and media leaders can be taken down through the unrelenting force of a movement for equality and permanent societal change.

You’re not using common sense or any sense at all. What’s necessary is not just avoiding conviction but the civil responsibility so as not to be accused, much less oft accused. What you have to prove is your accusations that all those women were lying, as were their families and friends.

Thank you for reporting on this incident, especially the part about the child victim’s father. You wrote, “This did not deter associates of the BJP MLA from visiting the rape-victim’s village last Saturday and threatening residents not to give statements.” In this case, the WSWS admits that rapists from the government do in fact try to silence victims and witnesses. Does this admission constitute advocacy for mob rule? Is it social chauvinism that leads them to accuse Indian politicians but defend Western politicians and media personalities guilty of the same crimes?

Additional facts about the problem:

https://theconversation.com… :”Research for the Home Office suggests that only 4% of cases of sexual violence reported to the UK police are found or suspected to be false. Studies carried out in Europe and in the US indicate rates of between 2% and 6%” :

From another article ( https://www.huffingtonpost…. ):

“Out of every 1,000 rapes in the U.S., only six assailants will see jail time, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. Research shows that perpetrators of sexual violence are less likely to be incarcerated than any other criminal.”

1. I agree with many of the points, especially that the “theoretical understanding” of socialist consciousness and revolutionary movement “was developed to its highest level by the Bolshevik Party in Russia.” It is very important to base the work of the SEP on the writings of Lenin and Trotsky as well as their co-thinkers of that period to reach the depth of understanding necessary to build the revolutionary movement in opposition to the consciousness imposed on society by the bourgeoisie and their state.

2. I agree with your decision to make the Committee for Public Education, although I would not call them action committees. The term “action committee” recalls the syndicalist position advocated by parts of the ICFI that led to the split between the SLL and OCI. How are you addressing this issue in the current situation to prevent another split?

3. I also agree with the following:
“Rather, the central effect of identity politics has been to elevate a privileged indigenous minority and entrench its selfish interests.” However, this goes against your decision to defend the indigenous or Native American author Sherman Alexie and black talk-show host Travis Smiley. The Bolsheviks opposed social chauvinism and national oppression. However, in defending these figures who are aiding national oppression through the use of a privileged minority and supporting social chauvinism by ignoring the role of sexual oppression and rape to minimize the influence of women and tear apart unity by demanding their allegiance even after enduring humiliation and violence. Unity is best served through secure discussions and open, reasonable, mutual agreements, not non-disclosure agreements, threats, and enforced silence.

The problem in the US is much worse. The US has as its task the destruction of trillions of dollars of “excess capacity”, that is productive assets around the world. Either that, or it has to dictate every price of every major commodity, which is far less likely, and also probably more self-destructive.

South American governments do not have to reorganize the world in such a way. The more right-wing governments such as Temer’s in Brazil are not the military style dictators of the cold-war era. At that time, governments were forced in and out for fear of a Soviet-backed dictatorship on the model of the Cuban government. Now the left has simply run out of ideas which can be accomplished without international unity, based on limited national economic programs.

Bilateral agreements are preferible to the United States over direct military rule. This allows them to present the situation as freedom for each nation. However the rights of South American nations cannot be protected if they are not able to reach agreements exclusively as a union of nations, since this would be the most economically beneficial arrangement.

Correa is tied to both capitalism and criminality. His vice-president and the current president is tied to neoliberal pro-business positions. He is now also seen as turning on Assange at the request of the British. While Correa came to power on the back of a real confrontation between Ecuadorian nationalism and imperialism, this does not mean the international socialist revolution has a strong foothold in the country. His ascent to power, and the consequent dismemberment of his party should be seen as a valuable lesson for the real revolution.

Only the building of the 4th International and the SEP, built through the historic struggle against opportunism and Stalinism, will provide for the people a party which will not be turned on itself and the people and forced to retreat from revolutionary positions on economic policy and international relations. The turn on Assange and the return to reformism and neoliberalism are interconnected and inseparable. In order to build a revolutionary movement that is not torn by internal division, it must be built upon the theoritical foundation of Marxism and in an /open struggle/ with the representatives of nationalism and Stalinist counter-revolution.

It isn’t false. “In this context, Moreno positioned himself as leader of a de-Correafication process. It gave him – the ruling party’s chosen successor – a way to offer both change and continuity as well as to undercut the opposition’s monopoly on exploiting Correa fatigue.”

https://theconversation.com…

You wrote: “The formation of a Catalan capitalist republic, led by politicians who have long supported austerity and imperialist war, will do nothing to resolve this international crisis.”

This position is a combination of utopianism and anti-Stalinism, but is not in line with Trotsky’s position on the issue. You have said that we are living through the same historical period, with the same unfinished historical tasks, as those confronted by Trotsky. A break from his studied view of the subject deserves an explanation.

From the quote below: “A revolutionary organization is not the prototype of a future state.” That is, to demand a break from nationalism among the leaders of the revolution does not mean the party cannot defend national independence when “the task is to destroy the centralised oppression of nationalities.”

Trotsky wrote in The History of the Russian Revolution, V. 3, ch. 39:

“Lenin early learned the inevitability of this development of centrifugal national movements in Russia, and for many years stubbornly fought – most particularly against Rosa Luxemburg – for that famous paragraph 9 of the old party programme which formulated the right of nations to self-determination – that is, to complete separation as states. In this the Bolshevik Party did not by any means undertake an evangel of separation. It merely assumed an obligation to struggle implacably against every form of national oppression, including the forcible retention of this or that nationality within the boundaries of the general state. Only in this way could the Russian proletariat gradually win the confidence of the oppressed nationalities.

But that was only one side of the matter. The policy of Bolshevism in the national sphere had also another side, apparently contradictory to the first but in reality supplementing it. Within the framework of the party, and of the workers’ organisations in general, Bolshevism insisted upon a rigid centralism, implacably warring against every taint of nationalism which might set the workers one against the other or disunite them. While flatly refusing to the bourgeois states the right to impose compulsory citizenship, or even a state language, upon a national minority, Bolshevism at the same time made it a verily sacred task to unite as closely as possible, by means of voluntary class discipline, the workers of different nationalities. Thus it flatly rejected the national-federation principle in building the party. A revolutionary organisation is not the prototype of the future state, but merely the instrument for its creation. An instrument ought to be adapted to fashioning the product; it ought not to include the product. Thus a centralised organisation can guarantee the success of revolutionary struggle – even where the task is to destroy the centralised oppression of nationalities.”

While this quote says enough, I have two more here: https://randomposter33.word…

If you feel that Ecuador needs more coverage from the Wsws, then you should talk directly to them about becoming a writer for the website.

Correa is still ex-president, and he was the one who let Assange into the embassy. He also should have had an escape plan. Also, the UK should not have impossible to escape aporous borders.

They seem to be taking their aggression out on Assange because their secret surveillance plans were spilled by Facebook. Some say the decision to cut off his internet connection was made by a British MP.

As a case in point, you have this article as well: https://www.yahoo.com/news/…

The BJP is a right-wing Hindu nationalist party. They raped a child and murdered her after she made her accusations public. They also killed four protesters after murdering the child. In the end, one of their lawmakers is going to prison. If anything, the trial will be tilted in his favor, since he is a lawmaker, but there is no doubt he will receive a trial, having been arrested.

If it was not for the protests forcing the government to act, the ruling BJP would have been able to silence the prosecution and allow the lawmaker/suspect to go unpunished.

The victims of harassment are subject to ruin if they seek out an authority to redress the wrongs committed against them. This includes threats of physical violence. When these media leaders are removed from their positions, that serves to protect all their victims and the witnesses otherwise silenced by fear. The police does not have to wait for a trial to remove a suspect from the crime scene. That is not the essence of the right to a fair trial.

How much debt should be allowed and how much interest should be charged is decided by the capitalist class, and these rules always change in ways that rob the majority and redistribute the wealth to the rich minority. The only exception to the rule is the success of the revolution and the coming to power of the working class.

The $164 trillion of debt will have to be paid one way or another, but the capitalist solution will be to delay payment and speed up the destruction of the planet. A planned world economy would mediate payment plans and give every economy a productive role and a fair manageable payment plan. This cannot happen in a world divided into nations that have to destroy each other to prove that /they/ can repay /their/ loans while the other can’t. Everyone should be able to repay their loans or they should receive new sources of income.

A financially balanced world would be a world of even, sustainable development. The differences between countries, regions, and even neighborhoods within cities will remain stark and disturbing under the reign of imperialism. To develop the countryside, to save economically devastated urban areas, to bring lasting progress to the masses around the world, the world economy would need to be planned.

Those who benefit most from loans are those that are least able to repay them. That’s why many loans could be replaced by subsidies and taxes. This already characterizes much of the relationship between big business and the government, also known as corporate welfare. They not only decide their own interest rate, but also their own tax obligations and rate of subsidization. This system of self-policing leads to enormous unplayable debt-loads, which are the financial side of the destruction of the world as a whole.

The working class should have the same rights, and more so under socialism, as the capitalist class to form parties that will write laws, make appointments to judicial and other positions, as well as execute the law according to the office they were chosen for.

You would deny the working class this basic right, the right to form its own party, only because of a right-wing assumption that Lenin is leads to Stalinism. This assumption has been disproven since 1923 and Trotsky’s formation of the Left Opposition. The Left Opposition sought to combat Stalin’s power by returning control over the state to the workers. The workers lost control of the state as a result of the Civil War and the economic isolation of the Soviet Union. Only the return of the revolution to Russia or its growth into Western Europe could have saved it from the bureaucratization and counter-revolution that followed the death of Lenin and expulsion of Trotsky.

This history and understanding explains why the Bolshevik Party of Russia failed to defend the democratic rights of the workers and the democratic traditions and roots of the revolution. However that failure would not be corrected by a failure to support the right of the workers to their own party to politically lead the construction of a new socialist state. Defend that right so that a new workers state can be successful!

Either you want to provide a left cover for the regime and emphasize unity at all costs, or you want to expose the government and all the political parties in power. The SEP is choosing the right path by standing apart and building the party that workers need to bring their government into power.

It would be a great feat accomplished if the SEP could finally win a seat in government, showing clearly the revolutionary power of the working class. However, such an accomplishment will only happen when the government is shaken to its core and on the verge of total collapse. The SEP recognizes that such such a victory should not be seen as a substitute for the revolution itself, which will concentrate all power in the hands of the revolutionary party.

Cotus seems more interested in raising Zuckerberg’s stock, gabbing amicably, rather than hunting down criminals targeting 10s of millions of Americans. They underestimate however the people’s resolve to communicate freely, and comically act as if every one is for sale. Their spying programs are being fought and they cannot change their program’s names often enough.

He should be able to escape under the cover of night on an Uber to the airport, then on to Correa’s presidential plane. If Ecuador can have him in the embassy, why not in the country itself? The US government is losing its right as the world’s policeman by not policing big companies like Facebook while they place digital chains on the people to return them to slavery.

It would be nice if some action was taken to restore communication to Assange.

“What, in fact, elected Trump was disillusionment and disgust with the Obama administration and the right-wing, anti-working class campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2016. The collapse in support for the wretched Democrats allowed the billionaire know-nothing Trump to win the White House, much to his surprise.”

While this may be partially true, it lacks an explanation for Trump’s victory against the other Republicans in the primaries. An inexperienced “know-nothing” won against all the other candidates the capitalist class had to offer? Trump represented a collapse of support across the board for all the trusted representatives of the two capitalist parties. His inexperience, outsider status, and evident hostility from the mass media served as surprise assets which allowed him to far surpass all other candidates. Bernie Sanders’ support for Hillary is what gave her a chance, though her campaign suffered from many internal flaws.

Trumps victory served as entertainment for most onlookers. He was hated by the establishment for being too open about the weakness of the field of candidates and too funny in putting down public figures who represent the “respectable crowd” within the authority. His appeal to workers was seen as populism rising from inexperience or unwillingness to accept established standards of conduct. That is the temptation was there, and he saw no reason why he should not give in. Traditional politics would forbid consideration of such a scheme.

Roseanne, therefore, continues the comic element of Trump’s presidency by putting his demographic cross-section in full view. He appealed to them and they have no awoken. Roseanne cannot be expected to fulfil the entire responsibility of showing their perspective on her own, or through her show. However the large audience for her show will make her the most well-known representation of the people who put Trump in power.

I do not see Roseanne moving in the direction of the far right. Even the alt-right theories she supports about attacks on children and their rights do not seem so far-fetched considering their documented attacks on women. Roseanne cannot make the jump to Marxism because of the extreme pressure and weight of expectations imposed by the mass media, but that seems to be the general direction she is moving in after her rejection of the Green Party. If she couldn’t lead it, then it could not be her party. This was not her ego talking, but her dissatisfaction with their platform and political approach.

It seems her revival of the show might give her a break from politics, but it will not reverse the process underway within American politics in general. Dissatisfaction with the political setup eventually must lead to the emergence of new, viable options. It is ironic that in such a large country, so few options should be available. This may be funny to some, or many, but reality cannot exist as a joke and nothing more. Roseanne, her fans, and others will eventually find a way to bring forward representatives from the people who satisfy the demand for legitimate, qualified candidates with the interests of the proletariat in mind.

I also want to add that your position matches Rosa Luxemburg’s. Under a capitalist system, capitalist parties will dominate every political process, even initially the revolution. For this reason capitalist parties dominate the independence process, but that does not mean the revolution or national independence are against the interests of the working class.

Rosa Luxemburg opposed national independence, perhaps responding to the virulence of anti-communism within the Polish nationalist movement, necessarily dominated by the bourgeoisie. However in opposing national independence she wrongly appraised the balance of power between the forces of world revolution and conservatism. In so doing, she replaced the objective need of the working class to enter into revolutionary struggle with the subjective participation of the professional revolutionary. This led to her decision to lead a failed uprising when she should have, like Lenin, held the revolution back as much as possible to ensure that the workers truly had sufficient forces mobilized for victory. Believing in the objective weakness of the system, increased exponentially by national divisions, would have called for different tactics.

Lenin and Trotsky recognized this, and therefore held back the revolution until it became necessary to end the chaos caused by the worldwide crisis of capitalism. The nationalist forces were exhausted by the fight against imperialism, and then the international working class could act to organize a new government and a new economic order. They focused mainly on the fight against the extreme right, the early forerunners of the fascist movement. Trotsky defended this perspective until his death in 1940.

His struggle against Stalin was also a struggle against the opposite extreme- the breaking of the independent mobilization of the working class against imperialism. The observation that imperialism must clash violently with national independence movements should lead to the conclusion that revolutionary socialist parties should end the struggle for workers’ power within nationally oppressed regions and former colonies. Leaving the national independence struggle to the bourgeoisie would weaken those essentially democratic and progressive movements as well as the world socialist revolution. This meant that the 4th international should be organized in every country with the purpose of taking the power for the international working class.

I also found this quote from Trotsky’s Between Red and White, ch. 9: “Wherever class oppression is complicated by national subjection, democratic demands take first of all the form of demands for national equality of rights – for autonomy or for independence.
The programme of bourgeois democracy included the right of national self-determination, but this democratic principle came into violent and open conflict with the interests of the bourgeoisie of the most powerful nations.”

You’ve raised a number of points which I’d like to respond to. Please allow me to present two quotes from Lenin’s Right of Nations to Self-Determination.

“The close alliance between the Norwegian and Swedish workers,
their complete fraternal class solidarity, /gained/ from the Swedish workers’ recognition of the right of the Norwegians to secede. This convinced the Norwegian workers that the Swedish workers were not infected with Swedish nationalism, and that they placed fraternity with the Norwegian proletarians above the privileges of the Swedish bourgeoisie and aristocracy.”

In other words, the Catalán should see that the Spanish are not infected by nationalism, and fraternity surpasses the privileges the Spanish workers gain over the resources and industrial capacity of Catalonia. Those resources and industry only serve to enrich the capitalists or, if that wealth is redistributed, it will be done so by the bourgeoisie in the interests of the bourgeoisie.

“To accuse those who support freedom of self-determination, i. e., freedom to secede, of encouraging separatism, is as foolish and hypocritical as accusing those who advocate freedom of divorce of encouraging the destruction of family ties.”

The point is to defend and spread democracy as far and wide as possible. Associations should be free and natural based on production and distribution, and associations of nations forming federations will be a natural part of the global economy. Under Lenin’s plan, Catalonia would become a seperate nation free from national oppression, and a free member of the United Socialist States of Europe. Secession would not be an issue, and the focus would be on correcting the uneven development caused by capitalism. If Barcelona has more industry than Madrid or Seville, that can be corrected by a planned socialist economy that would emphasize even development.

Trotsky’s phrase, “impoverished provincial zoo” was about Europe in general and Germany’s “cage” within the European system. He spoke about this to emphasize the importance of fighting German militarism. We cannot let the wild animals out of the zoo.

By dividing the Spanish state, we make the Spanish military and police weaker, we make the monarchy and the PP weaker. By dividing these forces, we can weaken them and stick them into the cages where they belong, saving the people from their wrath.

It is obviously in the vital interest of the Spanish state to maintain territorial unity so it can unleash its fascist terror over a wider territory. Why do you make it easier by fighting the majority of Catolonia that voted for freedom? We should not override the vote of the people with massive police invasion. If more discussion was necessary, it could have happened as Puigdemont rightly suspended independence until a conversation with the Spanish government was had to uncover a constitutional course to proceed with the independence process. Clearly, it was the Spanish that veered from the constitution by calling for the arrest of the regional president and other leaders of the regional government.

The question is what does Spain offer the people it claims to unite? 20% unemployment? That’s an incredibly painful amount of unemployment. How do the Spanish workers benefit from the subjugation of Catalonia? They would benefit more from the unity created through giving the Catalán equality. By arresting Puigdemont, Germany is embarking on the path of the Nazi government of the 1930s. This can only end in defeat as they attempt to substitute nationalism for democracy.

In the end, it was proven that Correa was unrealistic, and his promised revolutionary change was undone by his own party. That is why Lenin’s (Vladimir Lenin) work in building the party was so important to the revolution. The many years of struggle for theory, political clarity, orientation to the working class, and the internationalist perspective against opportunism and the penetration of bourgeois ideology: these paid off though Lenin may have been criticized as unreasonably thorough and demanding.

What is unrealistic is that a small, poor country like Correa’s with a GDP of $100 billion could make a revolution without Lenin. They needed Lenin though they tried to do without him. The ICFI carries forward the work of Lenin and his greatest cothinker, Trotsky, into the 21st century.

Correa came to power as a result of a popular revolt and represented a real affront to the weakening US empire. Of course the US would respond, and eventually Correa had to admit he could not construct a revolutionary party without a direct partnership and union with the ICFI. His “revolution” was not a US plot, but a petty-bourgeois plot based on nationalism, or pan-Andean or Bolívarian nationalism. This limited perspective prevented him from finding a good successor who would continue to struggle against US imperialism in the region. Only the ICFI conducted a persistent struggle against opportunism and nationalism to the extent where they would have a deeper roster of leaders prepared to take up the struggle for unity against imperialism and for international socialism. Once they lost their star, they lost all hope.

There is a problem with calling Lenin Moreno Correa’s hand-picked successor. He ran promising to De-Correafy the country, and publicly fueded with Correa until he was kicked out of his own (Correa’s) party. He was vice-president under Correa, but this does not prove the mentioned claim.

Furthermore, it is not clear from this article what charges the British government is using to keep Assange confined to the embassy.

Also, to be fair to the Ecuadorian government, no other government is defending them against the US, making it inconceivable that they should not bow to their demands at some point. A small country should not have to stand up to the world’s superpower alone forever.

This looks like a great idea. I hope to see the SEP expand in every direction.

“There is little doubt that the accounts by Zervos, McDougal and Daniels are substantially true. Trump has already demonstrated this by attempting to suppress their stories, either through legal action or by purchasing their silence, directly or indirectly.”

I wish this standard of reasoning had been applied to the #metoo controversy. It’s obvious these predators committed the acts in question. The proof is in the non-disclosure agreements. What #MeToo lacks is the same as what the recent protests against school gun violence lacked: a logical connection between the outrage felt and the root cause of extreme outbursts of violence and extreme forms of sexual oppression.

These issues cannot be confronted by law enforcement alone. They must be tackled upstream, in the way we organize education and work for the masses. Faulty wiring or a faulty pipe are bound to explode- this must be prevented by adequate planning, socialist planning, and maintenance, the costs of which must be paid through the massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. This may be the only way to save the wealth from burning to ashes in a market “correction.” Who decides what is correct and what is to be corrected?

Clinton had 48% of the 60% of eligible voters that actually voted, meaning she had around 30% of eligible voters’ votes or only 20% of the total population. Furthermore, the overall approval of the government is at an all time low, falling below 10% in some categories. This low rating hurts both the Republicans and Democrats, of which she is a leader.

Assange should be free to go. The arrest warrant is based on charges that were dropped last year. If the arrest warrant is not removed, then we have people being arbitrarily arrested in the UK, where democracy must be kept safe.

It is the socialist movement and the SEP which are defending democracy while the city government and Parliament push their powers to the limit without regard for the rights of the people. Such a government is living on borrowed time, since a government whose rule is based on fear alone could never be tolerated in the UK.

Is this an emotional response from the authority or part of a stated policy? Is there a freedom of information suit that shows where these orders are coming from?

The union bureaucracy will suffer greatly for its criminal war on the workers and democracy.

I agree with your criticism of Stephen Hawking and believe that it can be taken further in a number of ways.

First, with regards to BDS, Stephen Hawking must be hiding his guilty conscience. From the Patriot Ledger: “He was inducted into the Royal Society in 1974 and received the Albert Einstein Award in 1978. In 1989, Queen Elizabeth II made him a Companion of Honor, one of the highest distinctions she can bestow.” In addition, he was: “one of Isaac Newton’s successors as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University.”

While he served the British state with honors, the same government treated the Middle Eastern population most brutally with its sanctions, bombing, invasion, torture of prisoners, and support for cruel dictators as well as corruption and subversion of democracy. However, rather than attempt to impose a boycott, divestment, and sanctions on its scientific community, he lead that community. He should have seen that Israeli scientists should be turned on their government rather than shunned and forced into the protection of their government.

To take a step back, the article notes the friendship between Hawking and Robert Graves, a poet. However, literally nothing is said about the symbolism inherent in the work of Stephen Hawking. Since the Ancient Greeks described the constellations in the sky as the presence of their Gods, the study of the universe and the search for a “unified theory” has said as much about the views of the researchers and thinkers, as well as those who approved and financed their studies, as it did about the subject itself, which by virtue of its distance proved difficult to study without such intrusions. The symbolism in Hawking’s work deserves then, more commentary than that provided by the article.

The black hole described by Hawking differs from previous descriptions in that the gravitational force of the black hole can be escaped. That is the destructive force is not complete, what was once considered world-ending, like an imperialist war, could now be seen as emitting energy and even matter. This would change the very definition of what a black hole is, categorizing it more as a black star that emits radiation and mass as any star would, but trapping light.

Furthermore, there is the singularity of infinite mass, which like the authority at the center of an expansive empire, seems to be an unending source of attractive power, bringing all the resources of the universe to it. However there is no proof of such singularity, and it contradicts what is known about matter and energy. In other words, he underestimated the destructive power and overestimated the longevity of the black hole, creating an apology for the British and American empires and defending them, from a moral standpoint, into eternity.

As Engels wrote in Anti-Duhring:
“Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter.” Yet Hawking imagines such a matter without motion, like an empire without destruction.

Of the singularity, which Hawking asserts led to the big bang, or Duhring’s “original state” where matter and mechanical force remain unseperated, Engels writes:
“We still do not know where mechanical force was in that state, and how we are to get from absolute immobility to motion without an impulse from outside, that is, without God.”

Hawkings’ theory ties us to a God, even while he denies its existence, much in the same way as many liberals deny the existence of an American empire, yet tie the left to an acceptance of its policies.

Duhring, like all Germans elaborating a new doctrine, “…has to prove that both the first principles of logic and the fundamental laws of the universe had existed from all eternity for no other purpose than to ultimately lead to this newly-discovered, crowning theory.” Hawking, in supporting BDS, the NHS, and other Labor Party or “socialist” ideas was acting as a British materialist Duhring. Duhring converted to socialism and organized a nucleus around himself to divide the newly united socialist party. The unity of Labor under Corbyn and its substitution for Socialism is part of the same process. The unity of socialism must be defended through criticism of such sects and the reaffirmation of the scientific conclusions of Marxism.

A patriotic defence of NHS defends British nationalism, it’s right-wing agreement with the British working-class, and undermines the international unity of the working-class and the goal of providing all people, regardless of national background, with modern, quality medical care. “Only in the UK”, his life story seems to say. And “argue at your own risk”, his condition seems to imply.

However it must be said: the center of the black hole is a core, not a singularity, and it has reached critical mass, not infinite mass. The destruction of the core of a black hole would release an enormous amount of mass similar to a big bang, but in the mean time it absorbs all mass and energy with its gravitational pull and does not allow it to escape. There is no resurrection of the matter, the stars and planets, destroyed. The light and matter which escape the black hole, by maintaining their distance and never entering, lead to the expansion of the universe, preventing a complete, all-destructive contraction.

With Travis Smiley, the victims were African Americans, and with Sherman Alexei the victims were Native Americans. To notice this pattern of abuse is not to be guilty but to understand. These men were contracted to give them the power to abuse their own communities rather than represent them or for their talent in general.

This is a system much like the casino gaming industry, where the house always wins. It brings people in, convinces them to try their hardest, and in the end turns them away with sexual abuse. More temptation is then offered to bring them back, only to once again shame them. All the while, plagiarism, harassment, and abuses of every criminal variety confront the artist or journalist in search of funding or respect for their original work.

Only writing and reporting of a revolutionary nature for the revolutionary cause can rid the talented of their parasitic oppressors and provide them the motivation they need. Rape or pimping can only excite the body and induce a faster pulse for so long; it can only underpin a creative community for so long. Eventually the kingpin must be brought down and the creative process must find a deeper, purer source: that of intellectual agreement and the acknowledgment of all those present and participating.

Funding for education was reduced under Obama and protections for workers were reduced under the unions. Workers are learning from their experiences and organizing apart from the unions and Democrats. This is a process we encourage.

I think we’ll see during this economic war that the workers defend democracy, legal peaceful relations, and the accumulated property that their work has produced. The capitalists, who claim to defend ownership and the rights of owners, are engaged in a massively destructive war against property, as well as trade, work, and economic progress. It will become imperative to transfer power to the workers rather than endure the losses of the war to increase capitalist profits.

“We call upon all SPD members voting in the coming days on the coalition agreement to oppose it.”

Does this represent a departure from opposition to participation in the internal politics of the reformist SPD? Can more light be shed on this apparent departure?

Besides the mistake about congress and state legislatures, which are dominated by the two parties of big business, there are mistakes here about economic fundamentals. Inflation, like that experienced in Venezuela, cannot be controlled by taxes and some cases even by monetary policy. The only way to provide for the universal needs of society and prevent inflation, stagflation, deflation, or any other of the symptoms of the underlying economic crisis, the result of rampant unchecked parasitism, is to give the workers full control over the economy through elected workplace equality committees. They could oversee the enforcement of full employment, wage and benefit increases, and the full funding of pensions without the wild failures and panics of capital markets. This could only happen through the conscious movement of the workers under the leadership of the SEP. Build the SEP and support the workers! Chapter 78 was a great mistake!

This quote should be shown to all the striking and demonstrating teachers. It is very important to give the SEP a chance to lead the strike, so that it can obtain broad working class support and not allow the teachers to be isolated and defeated.

These articles seriously expose democracy in the U.S. as lacking in talent and severely compromised by a secretive hierarchy. The founding fathers warned against the domination of politics by two opposing parties and against a standing army. Now these two aspects of the state of affairs, both running contrary to democracy, have combined into one: a standing army that openly controls a two-party system. The standing army can conceivably give orders and establish a militaristic hierarchy within the legislative branch of government. Majority leader, majority whip, deputy whip, and so forth are one form of hierarchy based on elections, but appointments and orders could come from unelected officers of the military, often with commissioned or purchased titles.

These bureaucratic structures imposed upon democracy do not improve representation nor more efficiently promote talent. Talent must be suppressed in such a political environment while physical presence will be the feats they speak of. Yet talent, the ability to speak for the voters, is what democracy most needs.

These changes represent decline, and heavy leaning on a military which itself must collapse because of the impossibility of its task. The U.S. military cannot accomplish what it is being used for: to organize the world economy and its political superstructure. Only the international working class, calling forth its greatest talent and defending their rights to organize and participate, will be able to plan and execute a stable world economy. Until then, congress, parliament, and every legislative body will become increasingly hollow and dependent on the armed forces for its procedural existence.

If the organizations in question provided an honest appraisal of the failure of the union struggle and the reformist nationalist perspective, then it would be possible to join them in discussions on strategy. They will not because they depend for their income on the propagation of the illusion that reforms will come from any and all joint actions. Simply gather and your demands will be met. This false notion must lead to a division in the movement between the conscious workers and those who react spontaneously to conflict or worse actively suppress consciousness.

The abandonment of due process and legal norms occurs on both sides. Prison guards are raping female prisoners while the prisoners work in prison, but the victims must stay silent for lack of a support network or encouragement from above to come forward.(http://www.independent.co.u…

But this abandonment of due process, constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment, and legal norms to protect and rehabilitate prisoners does not receive the same care. Due process when it comes to employment is not legally protected, and these were not socialist workers elected by their peers. They are hand-picked by billionaires to serve the ruling class.

It seems as if no one can be elected, but all must be appointed due to personal relationships with the leader.

It is very important for democracy that workers continue to struggle for higher wages even while the government is getting itself involved in an economic war.

It is also very important for our futures that education receives adequate funds. The government would prefer to spend all that money on hand outs to the rich and military overspending. Democracy thrives on intellectual foundations.

1. Marxism was not invented from scratch but drawn from the leading philosophers and economist of the day. Utopian communities do not approximate reality but the class interest of their founders and financial backers. Utopia as an idea for society as a whole also derives its support from backers within the society of their theorist.

2. Reality does not follow any theory, it is theory that follows reality. We’re it otherwise, there would be no need for science, and humanity and all creation would be divine perfection.

3. Humanity has a very strong understanding of the world and an ability to predict the outcome of many interactions in the natural and social world. Chaos and order are opposites, but they are the same as patterns emerge from chaos naturally and patterns break down and return to chaos. With the use of computers and modern equipment, many patterns can be found and predictions confirmed in seemingly chaotic environments.

It does do some good for one person to study, because study informs their writing. That potentially could be read by many. In addition, it builds a culture for reading the accepted leaders of the Russian Revolution before they were wiped out by Stalinist extermination and historical revisionism.

The language is not archaic but both fresh and accessible. Preobrazhensky’s (co-written with Bukharin) ABCs of Communism introduced Marxism to the Russian population as a whole after the October Revolution. This is not the same old, but a must read like the constitution or the federalist papers.

Designing a new system from scratch is as old as the 19th century or older. Marx and Engels called it arrogant. You have to proceed from existing relations, not an imaginary utopia, in order to produce real change and noticeable progress.

It would be a great privilege to organize a new economic and political model for the 21st century. I thought you’d never ask.

A good place to start would be Preobrazhensky’s From NEP to Socialism:https://www.marxists.org/ar…

I would read this chapter by chapter as part of a discussion group or even with one other person to get a discussion going on the reading.

The point is to pick up where the Russian Revolution left off before the counter-revolution beginning in 1923-1924. Anyone could proceed from the ideals in their mind and design a complete system covering politics, economy, and philosophy. That would be a self-centered venture however, and could never produce the same results as the working out of these ideas as part of a living movement for a workers’ state.

Lenin and Trotsky saw the Russian Revolution as part of a world Revolution driven by the needs of the world economy. When the revolution failed to spread, especially after the execution of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibnecht in Germany in 1919, they saw the government of the Soviet Union would be isolated and a counter-revolution would form within the Bureaucracy. Later, the revolution failed in China as well, in 1927. The final straw came in Spain in 1936-1939, when the fascists brought down the government with the help of Stalin.

These international defeats destroyed democracy within the Soviet Union and allowed capitalism to restabilize its rule through the mass destruction of World War II. This was accompanied by the mass execution of the leaders of the Bolsheviks who fought under Lenin for state power. Very few of the leaders in 1917 survived Stalin’s Great terror in the late 30s, and none who agreed with Trotsky.

Stalinism was forced upon the people by the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union when socialist revolution failed in Western Europe. The new socialist federation of states must include large developed economies such as Western Europe, the US, Japan, and China. Smaller states would not survive a counter-revolution and invasion by imperialism. Stalinism is the inevitable outgrowth of such failed revolutions.

That’s why I suggest we all read Preobrazynsky’s From N.E.P. To Socialism all together, lecture by lecture.

Trade and the exchange of goods and services would be governed by criminal law, so I assume you mean overproduction when you say cut-throat competition.

Preobrazynsky spoke about this in the first chapter:
“Overproduction was a danger only to the extent that in certain branches an excessive quantity might be produced of goods which were wanted neither by the peasants nor by the workers, while goods which they both needed were under produced.”

And also:

“External markets were not needed for the expansion of industry because every increase in production made more available for socialist distribution. To capitalist production the slogan ‘the more the merrier’ does not apply, for not everything that is produced can be sold. This slogan is appropriate to socialism, however, indeed it is its basic slogan, because every increase in production makes more available for every worker. True, socialist economy needs proportionality between its various sections, even more than capitalist economy does. However, this proportionality is achieved not through the market but on the basis of calculating the volume of potential demand.”

The point is to form a solid analysis of the nature of the system and approach problems in society in a realistic way. If you offer leftist ideas, but your plan ignores the nature of the system, then your plans will be fake and useless. For example, someone wanting to raise wages should not approach the CEO of for-profit free-enterprise and ask him to set aside the profit motive for the good of society.

The same applies to the Democratic Party, which receives its funding from the super-rich and from corporations and large banks whose sole purpose is to earn profit. Furthermore, one cannot expect a capitalist state to put the interests of the people above the interests of private capital.

These false, disproven ideas find their way back into political discourse precisely because organizations such as Jacobin and the ISO are not being held accountable for the history of their positions on crucial issues. In the end, these “minor errors” are all in the service of the lie that left-wing reform can be accomplished without a revolution to replace the government and the economic system it defends.

The prices and wages at Kroger are decided by the owners to maximize their profits. They should be chosen by the workers to improve their living conditions. This would completely change work relations, allowing democracy over common property rather than the dictatorship of private capital. Managers would be elected by workers rather than treating the workers like slaves without representation.
School, medicine, and other basic rights cannot be guaranteed under capitalism because in order for the provision of such services to be seen as payment, many people must go without, creating a fear in those who have access that they would lose it at the whim of their superior.

These groups could use their experience to inform the organization of a new economy, but this would be useless without “worker cooperatives” that could produce enough to satisfy the demands of the entire world. Such an organization could not develop through small-scale operations and minor amounts of capital. The capital necessary to organize such production would require a national and international board that would oversee the entire project, which would have costs that run into the hundreds of billions or the trillions. Small cooperatives could not manage, nor would they be entrusted, with that kind of capital.

The Leninist party prepares leaders and offers them to the people. They do not have to appear as if monsters rising from the muck.

Your argument appears to be a defence of capitalism and corporations. How would production be reorganized if not from on top, above the corporations and banks, so that the entire economy could be rationally planned? You would keep socialism confined to the bottom, and allow large companies to dominate the economy and the government in the interest of the plutocracy and the ruling class. That is not real socialism.

Yes, it would be a good start, but it’s more important to give them good leaders. Put Naomi Spencer in charge of the strike!

The ICFI perspective is derived from Trotsky, who derived his method from Lenin, and him from Plekhanov, Marx and Engels. Also important to the discussion was Rosa Luxemburg. Their reformulations arose from experience, and we now have a more refined approach than before. This is not only because of the work of the party leadership, because of the struggles, successes and failures, of the working class throughout the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century.

Your criticism that Lenin took the power from the workers and gave it to the party has been disproved many times. The Civil War took the power from the workers, and the party held on to power over the state so it could return it to the workers under more stable conditions. That this return to workers democracy did not occur does not mean that it was never their plan to return power to the workers.

Stalinism was the outgrowth of the inability of the Revolution to spread into any advanced capitalist country successfully. The backwardsness of Russia took hold of the government and paralyzed it, making impossible a continuation of Lenin’ policies or Trotsky’s leadership. The Bureaucracy of the state became an agent of imperialism hanging over the heads of the revolution.

Fascism soon took the power in Italy, the Weimar Republic in Germany, and capitalism found enough of a balance to prepare another slaughter and another counter-revolution.

Nevertheless, the achievements of the October revolution could not be undone. Nationalization of industries and workers’ power were realized and brought into force throughout the world because of the revolution, and it continues to serve as an example for future generations of revolutionaries.

Call for a vote for strike leader to take power from the unions! Elect Naomi Spencer to lead the strike! And: confiscate the wealth of the billionaire governor!

The union is in an especially egregious position in West Virginia as it does not even have the right to local collective bargaining with the school board. It must lobby the state legislature for any reforms. In addition, it has not gone on strike since 1990, almost 30 years ago. The backs of the unions and democrats are broken through decades of propping up a failing economic order.

This makes it obvious that workers must organize seperately from the union and elect new leaders to new organizations, like Workplace Equality Committees, to establish permanent workers’ power even when the strike ends. This should make future strikes easier and workers’ representatives dominant in decision making bodies.

The wealth of the governor creates an imbalance that makes a fair agreement with the state for the workers impossible. It should be confiscated as a precondition for the continuance of negotiations.

What’s strange is how meaningless your words are.

Is it really so important to attack #MeToo and defend the deputy prime minister of Australia? What has Joyce, the leader of a nationalist, pro-capitalist party done for the international working class?

Brendan Fraser, a famous actor, recently came forward aligning himself with #MeToo and “the proletariat.” “I felt like the horse from Animal Farm, whose job it was to work and work and work,” he said. “Orwell wrote a character who was, I think, the proletariat…”

His ‘target’, or the man he accused, Philip Berk, was the then-president of the HFPA, the organization responsible for the annual Golden Globe Awards. He says his career was ended for confronting and accusing his groper. Was this a democratic process or a groping as part of an assassination by powerful interests within the film-industry? It seems, in the final analysis, to be a rejection of the U.S.’s trademark liberalism by the former defenders of Apartheid, during the initiation of the war on Iraq.

It is understandable that Leninists should want to defend hierarchy and protect leaders in general from accusations by their followers, but this could lead to error that should not be allowed to continue. Defend the proletariat and their allies against nationalists and capitalists! Reject the pseudo-science of “hysteria”!

I would not feel guilty about ending these careers. They play a game where they ruin careers of men who do not participate in their rape rituals. Decades of such playing means tens or hundreds of ruined careers by each of them. Taken as a whole, thousands of geniuses capable of enlightening the entire world will be silenced because of their non-participation in their rape and sexual assault culture, or cultural decomposition.

Finally they have reached a limit where they must ruin each other. It’s the parallel within the media monopoly of the breakdown of the imperialist system, due to its total domination of the entire planet, and the outbreak of war. It brings forward the need for revolution and a less predatory more humane social order. Careers of individuals must be seen as secondary to, and judged by their contributions to this overriding necessity.

It is /not/ being seen through the lens of class struggle, and that is precisely the problem. To call the entire phenomenon simply mass hysteria is to replace class analysis with a pseudo-diagnosis.

From (http://www.richardwebster.n…

… The psychiatrist Eliot Slater:

“The diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ is all too often a way of avoiding a confrontation with our own ignorance. This is especially dangerous when there is an underlying organic pathology, not yet recognised. In this penumbra we find patients who know themselves to be ill but, coming up against the blank faces of doctors who refuse to believe in the reality of their illness, proceed by way of emotional lability, overstatement and demands for attention … Here is an area where catastrophic errors can be made. In fact it is often possible to recognise the presence though not the nature of the unrecognisable, to know that a man must be ill or in pain when all the tests are negative. But it is only possible to those who come to their task in a spirit of humility.

In the main the diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ applies to a disorder of the doctor–patient relationship. It is evidence of non-communication, of a mutual misunderstanding … We are, often, unwilling to tell the full truth or to admit to ignorance … Evasions, even untruths, on the doctor’s side are among the most powerful and frequently used methods he has for bringing about an efflorescence of ‘hysteria’.”

And further along:
” It should already be evident that Slater’s position is not new or revolutionary. A small anthology of agnostic reactions to the concept of ‘hysteria’ is contained in Aubrey Lewis’s paper ‘The Survival of Hysteria’ (1975). As early as 1874, W. B. Carpenter objected to the view that hysteria was a specific illness the grounds that ‘there is no … fixed tendency to irregular action as would indicate any positive disease.’ In 1899 J. A. Ormerod suggested that the objections to ‘hysteria’ were obvious: ‘not only that it has become etymologically meaningless but also that to many minds it has the disagreeable connotation of a certain moral feebleness in the patient, and of unreality in the symptoms’. In 1904 the Swiss psychiatrist Dubois wrote that ‘hysteria’ should not be regarded as a disease entity, and in 1908 Steyerthal pronounced the unequivocal rejection of the idea that hysteria was a disease which has already been quoted (see above, Chapter 6). In 1911 Gaupp summarised the reaction which had by then taken place against Charcot: ‘Nowadays the cry is ever louder: away with the name and concept of hysteria: there is no such thing, and what we call hysteria is either an artificial, iatrogenic product, or a melange of symptoms which can occur in all sorts of illnesses and are not pathognomonic of anything.’”

Río De Janeiro’s general economic situation plays a large role in this decision. Prior to 2017, Brazil went through a deep recession, for 3 years shrinking in GDP. Despite population growth, Brazil has not recovered, and may be years away from recovering to 2014 levels. This led to the impeachment of President Rousseff, and single digit approval for her successor, Temer.

A return to growth is often accompanied by an upsurge in labor movement activity. An election also approaches. For this reason, it becomes a necessity, to preserve capitalism, to subdue any threat with open military force. The expected outcome of the election will be a return to the reformist agenda and a temporary break from neoliberal restructuring. However, the world economy cannot afford any reformist policies, and for this reason the government and the people are on a collision Course. A return to leftist reformist would lead to another punishment from finance capital.

The hope is that the soldiers will not allow themselves to be used to repress the legitimate organizations of the workers and their attempts to defend their rights and interests. Such orders will inevitably come from the top, but they should be seen as a weak, isolated, and fearful measure in the interests of international finance and the comprador elite. Bloodshed will not reconcile the people with the greedy banks and corporations but lead instead to a deeper unbridgeable divide.

I agree with the above. These are among the reasons the WSWS cuts through the obstacles to Marxist consciousness, and makes revolutionary change possible.

The large budget of the military is a remnant of the Cold War. It no longer serves to protect the US from invasion, but instead, it eats up capital that should be invested in productive projects to improve people’s lives and pay them decent wages.

However, the imperialist system does not allow for funds to be transferred from the military to other industries, and there are economic laws that explain this. Above all is the need, during economic downturn, to destroy excess capacity. Furthermore, there is the division of the world into nation-states, which inevitably leads to armed conflict, since a unified governing body does not exist to arbitrate in arguments over resources and trade. The drive for such unification is the source of disputes between the great powers.

Whatever temporary agreements are found to delay the conflict end in failure because of the underlying economic crisis. The debt, the currency and trade wars, economic sanctions, and other problems can only be resolved within the capitalist system through the destruction of competition by the monopoly. If the destruction is great enough, say 30% of GDP, then capitalism can buy itself another roughly 10 years at 3% annual growth.

The alternative, proposed by Marxists, is to transfer the monopolies into common, rather than private property. In that way, the excess, the 30% to use the previous example, can be distributed to the poor, improving the standard of living for the majority of the world’s people.

If the union leaders could be removed from power and replaced by revolutionary leaders, the union would be shut down or the company would be shut down. The police and state would not recognize the union and not give them their rights under the law. A more effective solution would be to organize and argue for forming committees which would form the basis for a new economic and political order. The unions would be turned over to the workers only after they form a viable alternative to the current state and current global economy.

Put Naomi Spencer in charge of the strike.

“The hypocrisy of the supposed outrage over alleged Russian doping is
made clear by the revelations of systematic sexual abuse of adolescent
female gymnasts by the USA gymnastics head doctor Larry Nassar. The
American media has been dominated for months by reports of this abuse,
which was systematically covered up by US Olympic Committee officials
who knew of the scandal for over a year before it came to light, yet did
nothing.”

I am glad to see that Larry Nassar’s prosecution is not seen as part of a witch-hunt hysteria. His prosecution may be due to the fact that athletes are acting conscious of social reality, conscious of the conditions of poverty they will face even if they compete in the Olympics or professional sports. Even the ones that remain rich, they remain conscious also of the economically oppressed regions where they grew up. Under such conditions, rape and sexual assault become the means of control, the relations which form, to push and motivate the athletes towards patriotism and victory and away from political activism and defeat.

This may seem like an acceptable bargain when millions of dollars are on the line for the winner, but those promises will only be kept to a few, and not even all medal winners. The point is not to see this as an unavoidable or indispensable part of competitive sports culture, but as a failure on the part of the world’s governments to create a fair, representative competition where the world’s most talented athletes can compete on fair and safe terms.

If the competition remains in the service of capitalism, militarism, and empire, then it will descend into a barbaric culture on par with the gladiators of the Colosseum. It is fearsome at times to watch the athletes flung at such high speeds and through such heights, as with the luge which led to the death of an Olympic athlete in 2010, who crashed into a steel bar at 90 miles an hour.

Perhaps some people should not receive any attention from the media, but the people are “sentenced without trial” to hear their voices and see their images. The same can be said of political parties: the members are sentenced without trial to endure the leadership of men such as Nicolas Hulot while more qualified people must not have the opportunity. If they did, the element of punishment would be removed from the sentence.

Venezuela needs to reorganize production to provide for its people. Only the workers in opposition to the current government can accomplish such a change. However the government replies with military force to repress workers’ efforts. It seems as if they are determined to use the word socialism to label all their policies, so that they can commit terrible crimes in the name of socialism. This hurts all the efforts for revolutionary change by confusing the people about real socialist policies.

All solutions depend on the ability of South America to defend themselves and their economic interests against the use of force by the U.S. and other imperialist powers. The imperialist system needs to destroy capital in order to obtain profits for its own corporations and conglomerates. There is no possibility of a peaceful resolution, because Venezuelan exports of oil are a threat to U.S. interests. At the same time, those exports fund basic social programs that Venezuelan people depend on.

Without these programs, they will turn to other countries for help, countries that themselves confront massive amounts of poverty. A violent confrontation must inevitably result. The only progressive resolution would be for the workers to form their own government and reorganize the economy through out the entire continent. The Stalinist solution of socialism in one country leads to isolation, mass destruction of the people and economic ruin leading to the restoration of capitalism. The social democratic solution leads to false promises of reform, followed by war, and worse poverty and sacrifice in the name of war and defense of one’s own government.

This is a very good reply.

Many of the accused were also Clinton supporters and Obama supporters. So why should we be sacrificed to defend them?

Advancement by permissiveness ends up in a balance with advancement by the blocking of advancement, and permissiveness becomes self-destruction.

Subjective thought should not be taken so lightly; it should rather be refined and applied properly to the situation. Otherwise it would never rise above base reaction and selfish narrow motives.

You haven’t proven anything in your case against Rose McGowan, and in fact overlook the fact that Weinstein was victimizing Jill Messick by publishing her email against her will. It did not reflect her viewpoint, but was rather demanded by him shortly before accusations against him went public. She was also his well-compensated employee for 7 years after the incident, the vice-president in fact. There was also a discrepancy over what exactly was consensual and what wasn’t.

This again takes the form of cross-examination in reply to the prosecutor. Why is this being tried in the media? Furthermore, documentaries by actors should be welcomed, allowing them to address real-word issues directly. Efforts at writing should be encouraged as well, so fans emerse themselves further in a text-based culture.

Objectively, this represents not success but failure for the corporate film industry and capitalist culture in general. Whatever one’s feelings are about the filmmakers, actors, and politicians embroiled in the scandal, they are nevertheless part of a corporate-controlled, billionaire-controled, military-controlled plutochratic system. That much is objective fact. Their loss in cold analysis is a gain for the international unity of the working class. Their system has failed to bring forward talent that feels confident in its own ability and legitimacy.

They’re like soldiers in an illegal war. Their falling may be a tragedy, but their falling creates the possibility of a revolutionary war achieving victory over the government. In that sense, in the utilitarian balance, the sacrifice is worth it.

This is a very scary statistic: “The percent of adults termed obese in 1980 was 15 percent, and by 2010 it had risen to 35.7 percent. The percent of obese children in 1980 stood at 5.5 percent, and by 2010 it had tripled to 16.9 percent, in large measure because of the soft drink industry.” With obesity at 35.7%, it is no longer an individual’s decisions which lead to obesity but a failure of society to respond in a unified manner. The class conflict turns both the workers’ and capitalists into victims of obesity. Only a socialist revolution can unite society above class interests, and the “health revolution” and all similar “revolutions” based solely on awakening consciousness must be deemed failures.

Why didn’t you say anything about Chris Hedges being an ordained Presbyterian Minister?

Let the SEP lead the strike!

trolling

With the revelations about Dr. Larry Nasser, the trial, the evidence and testimony, the jury came through with a guilty verdict and a 40-175 years sentence. The 156 victims were Olympic Gymnasts, not random people, and this a definite case of mass rape, sexual assault, and harassment of culturally important women in the same vein as Cosby and Weinstein. Does this explain the wage difference between Gymnasts and athletes of the big three sports?

This seems like the heart of the #MeToo movement to me. What would you say about a story like this?

https://www.revealnews.org/…

Say no to the deal with Hollywood! No to Hollywood Opportunism!

This was a good interview in front of RT’s network which broadcasts to an audience of hundreds of millions. Although RT was forced to register as a foreign agent, it still reaches many people and is only likely to grow. A large audience protects the SEP from certain problems, like isolation and pairing with inferior groups, but exposes it to other dangers such as government attacks on free speech such as sedition laws, or extreme right and anarchist terror, such as the violent Nazi campaigns in 1930s Germany or the 1918 anarchist attack that wounded Lenin. With the inevitable outbreak of war, there will also arise an inevitable war on peace-makers.

Anthropomorphism does not equal false thought, it creates the basis for further investigation into animal behavior and natural phenomena. Without some starting point, there would be no direction for further study. Whether it is incomplete thought or not is a different story, but many scientific theories can be proven incomplete. This does not mean they have no purpose.

Despite the traps set by identity politics, it’s still important to remind workers that they don’t benefit from oppression of minorities. The tactics of dividing the population according to race, gender, or creed have to be answered with calls for unity and a higher level of understanding of the specific struggles of historically oppressed groups.

This process should not be left to the mass-media and universities to control, but instead it should be lead by the revolutionary party. The non-revolutionary liberal left has as its first priority the maintenance of the capitalist system through various maneuvers to balance forces. This undermines the struggle for equality, which can only be achieved through the construction of an all-inclusive worldwide socialist economy.

There’s a tension between how far one is willing to go and how far one can or should go in delivering lines of songs through their voice. She seems all to willing to express everything, and yet she would have done better to hold back as many singers do. That is not to say that she should censor herself, but rather, spend more time understanding the ideas she wants to convey and less on imparting artificial layers of emotional outpouring on material that cannot uphold or sustain such emotions.

In songs where she shows more detachment, like Linger, she succeeds more. Had she Lingered a while longer, she could have been blessed with new sources of inspiration, formed a real connection with those ideas, and returned to the heights of her earlier work.

Unfortunately, it seems she was put on to a path of steady decline, and her death was but the final stop on that road. Something Else was dishonest in that, in reworking the material, she had not really reworked in her mind her approach to that material in order to provide something truly fresh and worth presenting.

If only we could publish all the secret files of the entertainment industry, the world would be entirely different. We would know who really deserves credit, who really created the works and images that they present to the public as their own. Culture could be rebuilt on honest foundations.

I posted this in response to another article, but it belongs here:

This is a heightened form of elitist gangster double-talk. They’re
not standing up to a witch-hunt, but to chickens coming home to roost.
The idea that there’s confusion between rape and flirting goes both
ways. Is flirting being presented as rape? Well, much more often rape
is being presented as flirting! Especially by women who have an
expensive reputation to protect- they could not publicly admit that
certain men have the power to rape them or force them into sexual
relations for money.

Admitting to such a thing would drive the stock prices of their companies and the tickets to their productions down to near-zero prices, where they belong. They want to present an image that their competition gets raped and they do not, and that is what they’re trying to hide. Their men are simply charming and that alone explains their success, while the men of the lower class are threatening, demeaning, and disrespectful of their holy sentiments. Such manipulation of public perception is not the goal of the socialist movement.

Furthermore, she seems to fit the description of a behemoth of cultural backwardness, glorifying AIDS-infected drug-addicted fornication criminals, falling in love with them even in prison. This self-destructive society hating runs counter to socialist ideas of uplifting human beings, especially those who do legitimate work.

But you don’t reject Chris Hedges, an ordained Presbyterian Minister since 2014. Presbyterians accept the concepts of original sin and immaculate conception.

It seems many of the WSWS writers’ and editors’ wives would never steep so slow as to get a job as a janitor. They’re more interested in the Hollywood writers’ job, earning 6 figures. Maybe they imagine that women shouldn’t have taken the job of janitor because that job should be reserved for men, and rape is an effective way of pushing women out of “their” positions. Of course the rape, or the threat to their jobs over sexual relations, should be spun as flirting by a supervisor and harmless. In that way, they conflate the opposite ends of the spectrum and classify all as white light.

There is a lot of legitimate anger about the goings-on in various workplaces and the behemoths of cultural backwardness in general. Staying on the sidelines and allowing the New York Times to provide the leadership on the issue dooms all those feeling such anger to isolation and betrayal by liberal capitalism.

As for the right, there is economic sense to nationalism and protectionism (as opposed to the insanity of the bubble economy, quantitative easing, and the national debt), legitimate fear in xenophobia, and honest caring for humanity in religious fundamentalism. The point to be made is that these ideas must fought through argument, and through proof in the real world that a socialist movement can make economic sense, protect people from cultural clashes across open borders, and truly care for suffering humanity.

The above arguments represent Marxist theory applied to modern politics. Deviations from Marxism in the name of standing out or opposing cultural imperialism or for whatever other goal, do not clarify the issues but muddy them further. A return to the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky and their application to forming positions on current events is the most urgent priority. Without their theories, humanity and all its political currents will be trapped in the darkness and the false dichotomy of the left-right divide for ages.

This is a heightened form of elitist gangster double-talk. They’re not standing up to a witch-hunt, but to chickens coming home to roost. The idea that there’s confusion between rape and flirting goes both ways. Is flirting being presented as rape? Well, much more often rape is being presented as flirting! Especially by women who have an expensive reputation to protect- they could not publicly admit that certain men have the power to rape them or force them into sexual relations for money.

Admitting to such a thing would drive the stock prices of their companies and the tickets to their productions down to near-zero prices, where they belong. They want to present an image that their competition gets raped and they do not, and that is what they’re trying to hide. Their men are simply charming and that alone explains their success, while the men of the lower class are threatening, demeaning, and disrespectful of their holy sentiments. Such manipulation of public perception is not the goal of the socialist movement.

I wrote earlier about this quote from Lenin:

Lenin defended the rights of nations to organize independently in his
1914 work “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination”. He wrote of the
1905 referendum on national independence of Norway (which, like
Catalonia, also had its own separate parliament) from the more powerful
Sweden: “The close alliance between the Norwegian and Swedish workers,
their complete fraternal class solidarity, /gained/ from the Swedish
workers’ recognition of the right of the Norwegians to secede. This
convinced the Norwegian workers that the Swedish workers were not
infected with Swedish nationalism, and that they placed fraternity with
the Norwegian proletarians above the privileges of the Swedish
bourgeoisie and aristocracy.”

The same concept applies to the struggle of women for equality and security in their workplace. Men supporting movements such as #metoo convince the women that the men are not infected by male chauvinism and that they place class unity and independence above the privileges of the bourgeoisie and “the patriarchy” or “white male privilege.” As things stand, men say one thing to the bosses and women say another, and so the bosses retain the center position and the power.

For this reason I think it’s important to build Workplace Equality Committees, as I outlined in a review and update of Lenin’s April Theses:
https://randomposter33.word…

At 46:25, “War is not an expression of the strength of the system. It is an expression of profound and deep crisis.” This was the right response by David North at this point, because Chris Hedges seemed despondent as he spoke about the deep state and the arms industry pushing the country to war. The impression he creates is of a greedy group of people who found an endless source of profit, while all are forced to watch while they butcher their way to limitless prosperity.

However, Trotsky’s Transitional Program, which David North referenced next, should not be used to unify all various trends within the opposition to the government. It cannot replace the more thorough discussion of theory on why such wars are inevitable that the Bolsheviks participated in to form the revolutionary party. Trotsky’s Transitional Program should be seen as a pamphlet to distribute to masses of workers within a revolutionary struggle, not as a full theoretical response to middle-class protesters and reformers.

Hedges replies by saying the ruling elites have been “quite successful” in channeling energy back into the “dead system”. But in fact, the congress, both parties, and the president have never been more unpopular, in more legal trouble, and more stuck in a strategical dead-end. The ruling elites have failed in many ways, politically and economically, but they continue to receive praise because of their increasing fortunes.

Those fortunes, however, are built on unchecked exploitation, borrowing, and speculation, not on their own work or their original ideas, and the oligarchs are increasingly forced into politics to openly and directly defend their class-based oppressive system. As David North said, this is a sign of their crisis, not of their strength.

He doesn’t have a TV set, but he has a TV show!

I also found very little information about his first marriage on the internet. Is that a form of censorship?

You left out from the introduction that he is an ordained Presbyterian Minister. Does this religious side of his work conflict with your theories? Will these theoretical differences be addressed?

Also, skipping to 1925, remember Trotsky’s last few jobs as a leader in the Soviet Union included the technical side: head of the electro-technical board, and chairman of the scientific-technical board of industry.

His expertise on those matters might be useful in this situation, alongside the more general political commentary.

Perhaps the invention of a new browser is in order, something that could reverse censorship by highlighting progressive sites in searches and redistribute neutrality by hiding one’s ip address and to which sites users connect from the ISP.

If all this were possible, I’m sure many people would download it, at least the basic freeware version.

Are we going to hand-write copies of wsws articles? What about VPNs? Are those networks coming down, too? Is there a threat of a total black out?

It seems to me, as the blocks stand, people will revert to placing wsws.org in the address box more directly and enter into discussions through the commentary with more urgency. As it stands, all hope is lost for google and facebook, because people will not stand for being diverted away from where the real traffic is headed.

Are we looking primarily for technical or political solutions? What historical parallels are there for opposition to censorship?

Also, do not allow them to overestimate the power and longevity of imperialism. Imperialism is dying. Though it is capable of great atrocities to this day, the response of the people will still be more powerful and will continue to dominate until the world is theirs.

In my mind, the Pulitzer Prize is associated with Walter Duranty, the Stalinist apologist who covered up crimes against humanity for Stalin, facilitating Hitler’s rise to power, and William Laurence who denied the effects of radiation poisoning arising from the use of nuclear weapons, who received money from the War Department, now the Department of Defense. It is also associated with the elitist institution Columbia University, which serves the rich through liberal anti-marxist academic apologies for the capitalist system. Their first priority is not to provide quality journalism but to protect vital capitalist interests from exposure in the media. Please keep this in mind when dealing with the left, because no amount of bravery is equal in importance to theoretical scrutiny of the most thorough variety. That is what distinguishes Marxist revolutionaries from the lesser brands of leftism or “honest” journalism.

Congratulations on a successful year!

An unproven public accusation is not slander. The accused would have to prove it was slander and not just an unproven accusation. The accuser is also innocent until proven guilty. But the accusation can be made public and people can respond by distancing themselves from the accused, especially in cases with multiple witnesses.

This is the same as the argument for human rights imperialism. The cases are not cut and dry in poor countries, where people are starving, suffering through war and military dictatorship. Therefore, the UN, Nato, the US, and/or Europe should send in troops and conquer the country and its resources. The case is not cut and dry, lives could be saved by the invading armies, order restored. By defending capitalist courts and their rights to defend the capitalist media and their interests and power over broadcasting and other forms of media distribution, you’re also defending, with your logic, imperialist militaries entering any country on whatever pretext. You can’t send in the courts to argue about due process every time someone changes the channel!

You can’t ban public accusations either! People have a right to make accusations in public, and the networks have a right to respond to those accusations without waiting for any approval from the courts. You can’t silence public accusations!

Your attitude towards authority is too trusting to be calling yourself a revolutionary.

Marx, when commenting upon a conflict between to factions of the ruling class, wrote that “Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought, and views of life.”

What you are defending is the “superstructure” of capitalism, based on automation and mass-production.

What you are condemning is a push by the workers to create a new superstructure, based on full employment and democratic control over production. Participation in production is no longer enough for the workers, they want democratic control over the production process.

In defending the “superstructure” and a faction of the ruling class against another, you delay or even prevent a transfer of power to the workers.

You can’t superimpose your idea of a perfect movement onto the will of the masses. You have to respond to the really existing movement of the workers which is dependent on the acknowledged real-world failures of capitalism, which forces the masses into action.

Amazon is considered by many a real-world success story because of its ability to expand in a declining economy. Although Amazon workers are unionizing in Europe, and there will naturally be discontent among the workers.

Your argument is answered succinctly by Marx himself: “Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation.”

Original sin is “dirty-judaical” in your mind, as it’s based on the creation described in Genesis. Hence understanding the origin of problems or situations is beneath you when attempting to respond. It’s “dirty-judaical” in your “purely scholastic” “contemplative materialism” or “old materialism.” In simply deeming an origin of things an “unreality”, you have chosen a scholastic rather than a Marxist or subjective approach.

You want my name and likeness so you could attack me like you did to Matt Damon? You’re the provocateur. You’re attacking Matt Damon and acting like the whole world is crazy and really you’re his only defender. You’re the provocateur. You can’t use my name and likeness and you can’t act like you’re my only defender.

My comments are being removed without explanation.

Vaccination is based on the idea that anyone can become infected, and the infection can then be passed on to other people. With a vaccination, that process can be halted and the infection prevented from spreading. This is only possible, however, if everyone is vaccinated /before/ they get sick, not after. This may seem undemocratic, however it really protects democracy and the people from public health emergencies, which are the greater threat to democracy.

The question is about relative importance, not rejection or acceptance. Accepting democratic principles does not mean rejecting all knowledge acquired prior to the enactment of those principles into law. Both what came before and after can be accepted. Understanding the teachings of the church does not equate to recognize their religion as the official beliefs of the government.

As for the US constitution, Marxists view it as defending bourgeois democracy, not true democracy. The US defending the presumption of innocence does not make the US a just or democratic society. The US defending the separation of church and state does not make the US an open minded, accepting society, free for all ideas to be expressed without fear. Far from it.

Your defense of American Democracy borders on betrayal of revolutionary values. Revolutionaries have been both harrassed and assassinated for ages by the US government not only within the borders of the United States but around the world. How long can you stand by American Democracy as true democracy? It represents the greatest threat to democratic people’s movements in the world. Its allies often base themselves on theocracy, not democracy.

The best approach to understanding U.S. democracy is to see it as a failed democracy, which failed because of the inequality produced by capitalism. The capitalist class has all the power, and they are only a small minority within the population. Only a revolution by the working class that puts its representatives in power will create real democracy and socialism.

Furthermore, in rejecting “original sin” for contemplation, your materialism becomes “contemplative” rather than “subjective”. (I, II, and IX of Theses on Feuerbach)

“The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.” (II of Theses)

This is the scholastic approach you have chosen in response to original sin. Is it a reality or a non-reality? We have rejected it as a non-reality. Purely scholastic.

You leave out the active side of conceiving the object, original sin, and so adopt the argument of “old materialism” which Marx rejected. “The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society.” (X of Theses)

This is slander. You’re not aware of any of the arguments of Marxists of the 20th century, so it’s impossible to have this conversation with you.

A more thorough response against the above “revolutionary defensism” of due process. https://randomposter33.word…

If Lenin and Trotsky had taken this attitude in response to the February Revolution, which was led by the bourgeoisie, they would not have returned to Russia. Lenin would not have written the April Theses and replaced Stalin at the leadership of the Bolsheviks. Trotsky would not have led the workers in St. Petersburg, have been arrested by Kerensky, or led the soldiers against Kornilov and Kerensky. Why? Because the February Revolution was led by the bourgeoisie and put the bourgeois coalition in power.

Lenin and Trotsky saw things differently. They responded to the fall of the tsar by preparing the party for a direct move for power, in order to oppose the imperialist war and create socialist policies within Russia and throughout Europe. The fall of the tsar, was accomplished only through the mass participation of the workers, though they remained under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. Bourgeois political demands, lower and insufficient by modern standards, themselves could not be met under the failing capitalist system, and that forced them to accept worker power and a workers’ government to create acceptable conditions in Russia and throughout Europe.

Refusing leadership positions within movements and governments is the same as turning those positions over to the anti-marxist middle class, who would then turn power back over to the big bourgeoisie. Only a revolutionary party can fill leadership positions in such a way as to bring lasting progressive change. That is why it should be your responsibility to argue directly with the current leaders of the “revolution” or with the masses to convince them to open positions within their organizations for you.

You are presuming that PBS is guilty of a crime, when all they have done is not buy from a certain seller. It is not the right of his private company to sell whatever they want to a publicly owned network financed by tax-dollars. It is the right of PBS to refuse to buy from him. You’re angry because this multi-millionaire can’t muscle his way to the top of PBS.

While you are worrying about Travis Smiley’s career- Travis Smiley who does not work for PBS but sells programs made by his own company, the Travis Smiley Group, to that station- other on-air or film personalities long ruined by his and similar policies are returning to the light. PBS does not take away his due-process rights by refusing to buy his product.

He’s a self-employed millionaire that can continue to produce his media content at his own discretion. In fact, it is he that regularly overrides his employee’s due-process rights by forcing them to sign non-disclosure agreements which bar them from discussing anything that happens at his company that would prove their innocence.

Meanwhile, another on-air personality, Ann Curry, whose career you seem to care nothing for, says, “…the battle lines are now clear. We need to move this revolution forward and make our workplaces safe,” [according to the Miami Herald] she told People, pointing out that “corporate America is failing at this.”

Cheap pills are not the solution. If the companies were not protected from prosecution, the prices would go up. Then, safer medications would be prescribed, combined with real therapy which many people need.

The time has come to pronounce “innocent until proven guilty” backwards. Hitler was considered innocent until proven guilty by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who negotiated with Hitler a “Peace in our time”. However his presumed innocence was used to push through his rise through the ranks of the Weimar Republic and his conquering of most of Europe.

You cannot honestly believe that defending the due process of billionaires, their associates, and ex-Mossad agents is the true path to democracy in the United States or throughout the world. You are making a compromise with liberalism and reformism that resembles that of the Second International and its compromise with imperialism.

In rejecting the concept of original sin, you’re rejecting the history of human thought.

“All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.” -Marx from Theses on Feuerbach

In this situation, Marx would say that the concept or “mystery” of original sin should not be discarded but instead find its “rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice,” and Marx would be correct in this situation.

It’s almost the same process as before. Women refused advances by these men, and as a result they lost their jobs, their careers, their famlies, their security and so on. Now those men are losing their jobs, etc. Whether that’s fair or not is something that they should have considered long ago. Instead they waited until now when they started to feel the consequences themselves. Their individual careers should not be protected until there’s a hard and fast rule to protect all careers at every juncture.

“…his sacrifice of his privilege lends political weight to his argument…”

In what world is he sacrificing his privilege? He might be against “the reaction”, but he doesn’t defend democracy. He may prefer democracy to dictatorship and say it, but when the threat is of a police-state that forces the population to accept a nuclear World War III, it is an illusion that he can stand up to such forces and reverse them wtihin the existing political setup.

Only a revolutionary movement can defuse the reaction. In that sense, the revolutionary aspirations of the masses should be encouraged not squashed. The tragedy of thoughtless mass action, which is the fear of priviledged bourgeois liberals, does not outweigh the tragedy of inaction, the rise of fascist gangs and fascist police tactics.

Liberals will preach the importance of cooperation with the authorities while the fascists take the power and drive the country to war. This can happen, but Matt Damon’s perspective will remain to keep calm and trust in the media to report on such problems and have faith that the authorities will respond. His faith in the system is driven by his position in society and his large salary.

Calling people an idiot or a provacateur is beyond insulting. You should be careful about crossing such lines.

Berlusconi was convicted of sexual crimes and sentanced to years in prison, but never spent a day behind bars. Dennis Hastert was convicted and went to prison for paying hush money to hide his sexual crime. Bill Cosby went free because of a hung jury, where the inhumane conditions during jury deliberations were heavily criticized. Bill O’Reilly and Fox News paid tens of millions of dollars to settle various lawsuits, while more are still emerging. Roger Ailes died in his home while facing various lawsuits, having been fired by the Murdoch family. Jeffrey Epstein- known for his Lolita Express Jet, which he shared with Clinton on many occasions- spent over a year in prison.

The point you are making is that everyone should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. However, if we should have to judge them all as either guilty or innocent, the general consensus is that they are all guilty.

After the revelations about Healy came to light, the entire British section had to resign as a whole and then be readmitted one by one. A similar process should take place in Hollywood, the entire entertainment industry, and in many other workplace as well.

Your view may be beneficial in many cases to prevent real witch-hunts and to protect the innocent from false accusations, but the much older and traditional view is that all of humanity is guilty. We are all guilty of original sin. That’s what seperates us from the heavenly and divine who know not lust nor greed, and that brings us back to the real world of painful births, suffering, and endless toil.

“In short, there is a qualitative, critical difference between men. But Christianity extinguishes this qualitative distinction; it sets the same stamp on all men alike, and regards them as one and the same individual, because it knows no distinction between the species and the individual: it has one and the same means of salvation for all men, it sees one and the same original sin in all.” -Ludwig Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, Part 1, Chapter 16

The presumption of innocence does not abolish the concept of original sin. The unity of the individual and the species can be resolved in favor of the species, or humanity as a whole, and the presumption of guilt combined with mercy and forgiveness.

The real-world application would be vaccination. Your argument would be, “Why should anyone have to be vaccinated if you haven’t proven they have the disease?” The answer is, “It’s in the greater interest of the majority that every individual submit to vaccination.” As such, “all men alike” must be “stamped” with “no distinction”.

What’s necessary is a vaccination or a sexual-harrassment training course in every workplace for every employee, as well as further outreach such as through doctors to patients, and through pensions. This, combined with a reporting structure and an acceptance that at times some must be punished, would work towards alleviating the problem. However, these basic precautions come at a time when medical care, pensions, and work conditions do not receive regular upgrades but rather go underfunded, receiving only cuts.

The same thing happens to the victims. Due process in social life? That is not what you were saying. Then there are lines that have to be drawn. As I just said, “These people don’t have a right to due process and a court hearing every time anybody changes the channel or walks out on their show.”

In the event of an investigation over these matters, that would be investigated too. Maybe the wsws is getting offers or money from super-class actors and protecting them on that basis. Maybe it’s their history with the WRP and the entertainment industry in Great Britain.

The dynamic that’s created is a “save a bourgeois” campaign within the revolution. If every revolutionary saves a bourgeois, who will be left to lead the revolution? The point is to save the working class and the soldiers, they’re in far more danger with a financial crash and WWIII on the horizon.

This lie about due process has gone on long enough. Due process is a legal term referring to people’s right to a fair trial if they are imprisoned. These people don’t have a right to due process and a court hearing every time anybody changes the channel or walks out on their show.

Furthermore, these are people known to commit crimes and then take it further by committing crimes against the judicial process. If anybody deserves to lose the right to due-process it’s them. First put them in prison, then put them on trial. That should be their due process.

I imagine when the monkeys left the forest and entered the savannah, the previous generation of exiles were waiting there for them.

The unequal pay structure in the movie-industry is rape in itself. If you pay one man $20 million and another $20 thousand, you are basically raping women who love the latter and telling them they’re only safe with the former. That makes the former only a beneficiary of the crime and not necessarily an accomplice.

That is why, for the victims, it is important to prove them “tone-deaf”, unable to distinguish between atrocity and innocence. Are they worthy beneficiaries? Or should the gang reshuffle positions and expose them to legal consequences or other dangers.

By acting like lines need to be drawn, Damon is saying that he is not aware of the existence of any lines. He is also acting funny, which you forgive in him, yet when Alyssa Milano does it, you say she is responding confusedly. Their tactic is to stay aloof and act like the matter is below them and therefor a cause for laughter and not worry.

The fact is, such lines are known to exist. Everyone knows there is a difference between annoying behavior, harrassment, assault, attempted rape, and rape. But such lines are crossed, with the criminal normally hoping to blur the lines before the court. Who crosses the line does not ride on any individual’s personality or arguments, but instead on larger factors outside of any individual’s personal control. They get caught up in the hurricaine of cultural “rage”, lose contact with the ground, and find themselves floating into illegal behavioral territory.

The UVA case is an exception that proves the rule. The journalist and the entire magazine were forced to pay nearly $5 million in 2 lawsuits, with a third still making its way through the courts. As a result Wenner, the owner of Rolling Stone was forced to sell 49% of the magazine to a Singaporean company. Mistakes made in the opposite direction will be just as costly. Falsely accusing women of slander is just cause for a law suit. The failure at Rolling Stone does not change the fact that 1 in 5 college women experience sexual assault as a result of widespread rape culture.

As for the Duke Lacross case, what was proven was prosecutorial misconduct, and the DA was jailed and disbarred. This made prosecution impossible, although evidence of foul play was found.

Marina Zenovich, the director of Fantastic Lies, the documentary about the incident wrote (quoted from Slate.com):

“I…want to emphasize that this film focuses on a case where men where falsely accused and where a DA engaged in serious professional misconduct. This should not in any way detract from the fact that the vast majority of reports of sexual assault are true. To use this case as representative of a wider issue would be a profound injustice to the real victims who have the courage to come forward.”

Even she admits the vast majority of accusations are true and that the victims need courage to come forward with information that could be used against the assailants.

These backfires seem calculated to undermine the legitimacy of rape accusations, but in the end such crimes against the state and against journalism do not go unpunished. Once these efforts had been exposed and punished, that made the #metoo movement possible.

Why should I rush to the defense of Julian Assange? Leaks are a means by which one section of the military-intelligence apparatus undermines its opponents in other factions. It is not the same as the revolutionary demand to print all secret treaties and open the accounting books of defense contractors and other CIA, NSA, or other govenment-agency-backed companies.

Not all accusations are revolutionary, that is true. However, when Hollywood Executives, Secretaries of Defense, the President of the United States, Generals, and top corporate executives are accused, these would normally be seen as revolutionary in form, though they be lacking in content. They occur as more than just “women’s experience”, but as a response to abuses of workers in their workplaces or social situations involving their employers and managers. When they occur in the mass-media, they are meant to be generalized and repeated throughout the culture and economy in all workplaces.

Accusations do not lead to the suspension of democratic rights.

Evidence that accusations are part of the revolution:

Engels from Condition of the Working Class in England, Ch. 7: “But it [the Bourgeoisie] cannot complain if, after the official and non-official testimony here cited which must be known to it, I broadly accuse it of social murder. Let the ruling class see to it that these frightful conditions are ameliorated, or let it surrender the administration of the common interests to the labouring-class.”

Trotsky on the Anglo-Russian Committee: “In a devious way you have placed the entire machinery of Bolshevism at the disposal of Purcell. That is what we accuse you of. This is a very grave accusation – far graver than bidding Smilga [4] farewell at the Yaroslav station. What have you done to Bolshevism?…”

[counter-accusing]:”…You accuse us of giving support to Chamberlain. No! It is you yourselves who are linked up with Chamberlain through your Right wing. It is you who stand in a common front with Purcell who supports Thomas and, together with the latter, Chamberlain. That is the verdict of a political analysis and not a charge based on calumny.”

Trotsky in Reply to Stalin: “The attempt to represent this activity of mine as “counter-revolutionary” emanates from those whom I accuse before the international proletariat of trampling under foot the basic teachings of Marx and Lenin, of injuring the historical interests of the world revolution, of breaking with the traditions and the heritage of the October, of the unconscious – and therefore the more dangerous – preparation for the Thermidor.”

Lenin in The Nature and Significance of Our Polemics Against the Liberals: “We accuse the liberals, the Cadets, of being counter revolutionary. Show us a single one of our accusations of this kind that does not reflect with even greater force upon the Rights.

We accuse the liberals of “nationalism” and “imperialism”. Show us a single one of our accusations of this kind that is not directed with even greater force against the Rights.

We have accused the liberals of being afraid of the movement of the masses. Now can you find in our newspapers a formulation of this accusation such as is not directed against the Rights as well?

We have accused the liberals of defending “certain” medieval institutions that are capable of “operating” against the workers. To accuse the liberals of that means accusing thereby all the Rights of the same thing, and of even more.

These examples can be multiplied indefinitely. You will find that always and everywhere, without any exception, the working-class democrats accuse the liberals exclusively for being close to the Rights, for the irresolute and fictitious nature of their fight against the Rights, for their half-heartedness, thereby accusing the Rights, not merely of “half a sin”, but of a “whole sin”.”

Emile Zola from I Accuse: “In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29/7/1881 regarding the press, which make libel a punishable offence. I expose myself to that risk voluntarily.

As for the people I am accusing, I do not know them, I have never seen them, and I bear them neither ill will nor hatred. To me they are mere entities, agents of harm to society. The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice.

I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight! I am waiting.”

Finally, Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

I have not seen any proof to back your claim that the accusers are calling for a suspension of the bill of rights.

What about Rose McGowan, whose Twitter account, along with #Rosearmy was shut down and who was arrested shortly after accusing Harvey Weinstein of rape? But you turn around and accuse her of mob-justice? She worked for years as a television actress.

What about the singer Kesha, who was kept off stage for years by her rapist Dr. Luke?

What about the torture-like conditions faced by the jury in the Cosby trial?

You are supporting a witch-hunt against these accusers. Accusers are generally on the side of the revolution. Revolutionaries are supposed to encourage them, as well as make them consider why so many criminals have risen to such high positions.

The answer is that the system is in need of a revolution, not that it is natural for men to prey on women. Your argument will only encourage them in a desperate “mob-justice” direction and then bring a witch-hunt on them rather than employ them in the arts and lead them politically towards the revolution.

There’s no sense in serious political participation with you because it results in damaging accusations, and a witch hunt against “mob-justice” “pseudo-left outfits”. Isn’t it a witch hunt from your side to accuse everyone of being a mob-justice outfit and some kind of secret operative?

I was not saying defend the movement, but defend the individual witnesses who reported the crime. Let them meet, if only online, but better yet in person, to discuss their experiences, and create a legal strategy. Let them confront the courts and demand justice. If this is not 1871 or 1905, why should we stand in the way of such outcomes developing? The main question here is, how are these criminals staying out of prison? You want to big the movement down with legalism and arguments about due process.

The SEP, under a different name, belonged to Healy’s movement. Those who rebelled against him to reconstitute the Fourth International still had the experience of serving under his leadership. The underlying political differences exposed by the sex scandals still have relevance today. The political differences were not resolved through discussion, but through a personal breakdown of a leading individual and a cover-up by his cohort, necessitating the total expulsion and the case by case readmission of the entire British branch.

The lesson to be learned is that such sex scandals represent a failure to bridge differences or accept differing opinions as loyal factions and allow for the influx of large movements into the party. Such an influx is prevented by the determination of the leadership to defend the Kennedys.

You are trying to create a pure revolution which involves no suffering for the upper class. Revolutionaries have to side with action of the masses in their struggle to break from the confines of the capitalist state. You misunderstand “let them suffer, for once”, for this reason.
We are not beset on all sides by traps, that is only an excuse not to participate. At times, the upper class suffers rather than the lower, when their system reaches an irresolvable contradiction, and that is the best time to convince them to step down. Instead you offer them healing words. If effective, they will return to their oppressive positions and start a new offensive against the revolutionary class.

#Metoo, in fact, includes many people who have reached a break through moment in their struggle to shame an oppressive master. They need to know that the revolution will not abandon them until that master is in prison. You want them to be abandoned to be dealt with by their cronies, to be silenced.

To put the capitalists and their most faithful servants in prison may appear right-wing, but in fact, is the only way to bring the revolution to fruition.

It’s one thing to say that women’s experiences have to be seen within the social context of a class society, but it is another thing to argue that women’s experiences should not and cannot lead to the downfall of the upper class. Women are half the working class, and if the working class chooses to bring down the upper class by focusing on their mistreatment of women, that is a legitimate and effective strategy.

It could lead to revolutionary change before the outbreak of World War III. The EEOC is failing in its mission in the US and throughout the world, and People’s Tribunals must be established in every country to ensure the end of sexual assault, harrassment, and verbal abuse in the workplace. This includes following them home and threatening their families. That and every other type of managerial abuse must be abolished until all workers, regardless of race, gender, or /creed/ have equal power to their employers.

“Finally, there is competition between the buyers and the sellers: these wish to purchase as cheaply as possible, those to sell as dearly as possible. The result of this competition between buyers and sellers will depend upon the relations between the two above-mentioned camps of competitors – i.e., upon whether the competition in the army of sellers is stronger. Industry leads two great armies into the field against each other, and each of these again is engaged in a battle among its own troops in its own ranks. The army among whose troops there is less fighting, carries off the victory over the opposing host.”
-Marx from Wage, Labor, and Capital

The same could be said about the relations between sexes.

It is the job of the prosecutor, not the accuser to prove the crime occured.

I’m sure this is a witch-hunt against “mob justice”. Where is your proof that these women are lying? You risk bringing a defamation law-suit on yourself and your co-thinkers. It is defamation to accuse these women of lying, and you can be taken to court. Internet publications are subject to the same laws as all journalism. President Trump is being sued for your argument exactly, though as president he may be protected by the court.

From your argument arises the impossible position of defending President Trump, Fox News Host Bill O’Reilly (it has been proven that he settled various sexual harrassment claims for a total of $45 million), former British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, the former CEO of Uber, and other top capitalists and their shills for a campaign against “mob-justice” witches who you seem to be accusing of some kind of magical powers to convince these heads of media, industry, and state to resign.

Two quotes from the Time article prove that it is not just a middle-class, rich people’s response to events, but a widespread one, including the working class throughout the world:

“In the week after #MeToo first surfaced, versions of it swept through 85 countries, from India, where the struggle against harassment and assault had already become a national debate in recent years, to the Middle East, Asia and parts in between.”

“In a TIME/SurveyMonkey online poll of American adults conducted Nov. 28–30, 82% of respondents said women are more likely to speak out about harassment since the Weinstein allegations. Meanwhile, 85% say they believe the women making allegations of sexual harassment.”

One might be reminded of the large numbers of people that responded to the media propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq war by supporting the invasion. However, what this proves is that this is not just the beginning of a short-lived fad, but the beginning of a war which necessitates mass support from the people. We should remember that Lenin said we should not have a pacificist response to war, but turn the imperialist war into a revolutionary war.

Whether or not you think their testimony amounts to damning evidence, you cannot simply argue that they are lying witches, operatives, or any other slander. You have to admit that they have the right to talk about their experiences and take legal actions to find remedies. Legal discussions about experiences of coworkers are often enough to lead to firings or delayed hirings, without the need for a court case to settle the matter.

The article also covers the history of the legal concept of sexual harrassment. It began in 1975, with the case of a Cornell University employee. It developed further in 1980 with the founding of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. These developments took place under the conditions of the Cold War and the uprising in the 1970s against the Vietnam War and capitalist policies in general.

At that time, the US government still responded to the pressure to compete for the allegiance of their workers against the Soviet Union, the bureaucratically degenerated workers’ state. Since then, the Stalinist states collapsed, meaning the pressure on capitalists to give in to workers’ demands was greatly reduced. For this reason, this issue of workplace security, comfort, and rights did not find any leaders for many years.

The Time article says the following, “…this moment is born of a very real and potent sense of unrest. Yet it doesn’t have a leader, or a single, unifying tenet.” What you should answer is, it does have leaders, and those are the leaders of the socialist movement. The unifying tenet is equality.

The Time magazine wants the movement to remain leaderless or fall under the leadership of a psuedo-left or a Stalinist. Time magazine may serve capitalist interests, but they do have to respond to mass movements within the people. Time magazine had Trotsky on its cover twice, but wrote of him in a derogatory way. They named Stalin Person of the Year. This proves that they do not ignore the history, or presence, of revolutionary movements, but do play favorites for Stalinism.

For that reason too, and not only for the reason of cooperation with the CIA, the WSWS should reply that their endorsement has harmed the movement and poses a threat to the truly committed leaders of the revolution.

The war between sexes is real, as is the war described by Marx between suppliers and demanders. At times, armies can allign with one side or the other, taking prisoners and transferring fortunes.

It is not for Marxists to deny these laws exist, but to observe them, and observe as well the higher laws to which we should strive to fulfil as a society. In other words, in siding with suppliers, or a sex, in conflict with the demanders, or the other sex, a higher revolutionary principle may be served. The struggle may develop in such a way as to undermine the existing relations of production, or pose the question of political power for the revolutionary class.

You leave out from your discussion on the differentials in wages the process of negotiation which determines those wage differences. Assuming there were 1000 women earning $500 a week and 5 women each earning $500,000 a week, how could those 1000 be prevented from organizing to confront those 5 and redistribute their wages so they can double or triple their own? The answer lies in the power of the 5 to disrupt the efforts of the 1000. This might include sexual violence. The sexual violence could be traced to this process of maintaining the dominance of the few over the many.

When it becomes clear that socialists are the only consistent defenders of the elementary rights of women, it becomes necessary for women to support socialism, making the socialists’ rise to power inevitable.

I am now looking at the #MeToo hashtag on Twitter. What I see looks very much progressive, as they are advertising a political rally in New York outside of Trump Tower. There are other links meant to elevate popular consciousness.

The arguments against access to privileges and wealth seem anti-materialist. How can you tell an entire class not to seek privileges and wealth? Isn’t that a major reason for the working class to participate in the revolution? For its share of the privileges and wealth?

Finally, why do you give leadership of this movement to the Post and the Times? By Twitters’ count, there were over 500 posts in the past hour. That does not come from 1 or 2 publications but a mass movement.

1. Fake News. You are guilty of crying “Fake News”. Even if some of the allegations prove inaccurate, they are still news and the
victims really are stepping forward.

2. Julian Assange. His unmarried status, his association with Pamela Anderson, and other factors lend credibility to the accusations against him. If the incident resulted from a political assassination campaign, and the same is true for all these multi-millonaire celebrities, then we must return to Healy’s argument about the assassination of President Kennedy. Socialists should defend other socialists, and not risk themselves defending imperialists from other imperialists.

Actually, your argument is more in line with post-modernism. Reason and enlightment have reached their limit and a darkness in service of capitalism must reign over the minds of everybody forever.

This stands in direct contrast to Healy’s argument, which I quoted, which is in the perfect context for this conversation. After Kennedy’s assasination, Healy responded to the Pabloite SWP’s coverage, calling it a “more than usual round of hysteria, tear-jerking and praise-mongering”.

Marxism does not exist to serve Liberalism as much as it does not exist to serve Conservatism. Marxism, Marxists should believe, exists to replace these ideologies in the minds of the people and within the dominant publications of powerful institutions.

This is too much leader worship. Instead of fighting the essence of Stalinism, you are only fighting the outer forms of Stalinist organizations. You have to argue about the dangers of Stalinism within the party, and the danger of appeasement of Stalinist ideas.

You cannot defend these ultra-rich millionaires who base their culture on the defense of all the myths about American society propagated by the Democratic Party without compromising the principles of previous generations of socialist revolutionaries. The CPUSA joined the Democrats and Hollywood and hid themselves among the powerful liberal elite and the CIA. They in turn, boarded the Lolita Express to join with the oligarchy in a secret war on the population. The struggle against Stalinism is not over, and erasing their traces and forgiving them in exchange for revolutionary phrases does not eliminate the threat but in fact worsens it.

Don’t you see any irony in your argument that sexual assaults dating back to 1985 have no relevance in politics today? This is dangerous wilful ignorance.

The world is not reducible to class struggle, but the key to understanding what makes the revolutionary struggle winnable is the class struggle. Racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry must be battled in the struggle to unite workers of various backgrounds in their common interests. Racism in Israel, sexism among media workers, and age-ism among autoworkers, and so on. Battling these ideas as they arise increases unity among the workers to the point where they can cooperate across borders and across all artificial divisions meant to make the lower and middle class more manageable for the upper class. The advanced workers should be trained to side with the Palestinians in their struggle for human rights and their right to democratic elections. They should side with the women who are systematically harassed, raped, and trained to respond in silence through reprisals for reporting such incidents. Advanced workers, furthermore, should side with the younger workers who are pushed into lower tiers in manufacturing contracts. These positions have to be defended by socialists in order to make an international movement possible.

These backward ideas continue to recur, even though they have been debunked by science, because they are necessary for the capitalist struggle against working class unity. As long as capitalists, rather than a workers’ state, control the media, these ideas will continue to return in various forms.

A woman without sexual desire is like a man bleeding on a cross. If we can love them, we will have truly blessed leadership. The alternative is corrupt cowardice, and animal-like leaders under the control of military-financial trainers.

But don’t you see how that’s a bigoted view? Everyone’s personal decisions are informed by their own experience, and people naturally fall into various groups. Bigotry attempts to elevate in the mind one group over all the others, sowing discord and animosity, and undercutting unity, most often the unity of the working class and the revolutionary movement.

This would be the worst conclusion to draw from the campaign: “It has made reasoned debate impossible, which, in the final analysis, is probably the intent.” Healy would describe it as “more than usual round of hysteria, tear-jerking and praise-mongering”.

This is a disappointing response. Please look at The Heritage We Defend, starting on page 392, discussing the Kennedy assasination. When John F. Kennedy was assasinated, socialists generally agreed with Malcolm X, who said it was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Now, socialists are stepping on each others’ backs to act like lawyers for these known imperialists. Why don’t you continue in the tradition you once supported?

North observed: “A line from [Chief Justice Earl] Warren’s speech was used as the headline of the [SWP’s] Militants article: “If we really love this country we must abjure hatred.””

He later quotes Healy: “The assassination of President Kennedy has given rise to a more than usual round of hysteria, tear-jerking and
praise-mongering by the literary and political representatives of the middle class.

Reading some of the articles in the so-called socialist and liberal press about his life, one might be forgiven for
thinking that Kennedy stood for the freedom of the Negro people and was, in fact, a socialist in all but name.”

“But 58 percent of victims experienced reprisals or retaliation for reporting sexual assault, the report showed.”

The reprisals against reports are systematic. The #MeToo movement, though with its current leadership is incapable of accomplishing even its own goals, will allow for the reprisals to be subdued so that in the class-war over sexual exploitation and violence, the workers can successfully prosecute and shame those who seek to ruin them. The reprisal itself may be the leading factor in some cases- assault them to silence their consequent reports, to call them crazy.

Sexual violence is not motivated by attraction, but by hate and the motive of ending sexual relations between consenting adults. If that is the cause or the tactic you are supporting, then you should say it clearly and not defend it in a vague generalistic way, although in doing so you risk being branded a terrorist.

I strongly disagree with the perspective advanced in this article. In an argument between Lenin and Plekhanov about Plekhanov’s position during the 1905 revolution, Lenin criticized Plekhanov for comparing himself to Marx in response to the 1871 Paris Commune. Marx had told the workers from the start not to take up arms and called the creation of the Paris Commune an act of “desperate folly”. Plekhanov waited until after the 1905 revolution was suppressed to say the workers should not have taken up arms. In this way, a false parralel was drawn.

Marx, Lenin pointed out, decided that despite the desperate folly and unprepared leadership provided to the Paris workers, their attempt to take the power and form a revolutionary government should be supported. At the very least, it would be a learning experience, and it represented the real possibility of forming revolutionary governments throughout Europe. He complemented the leaders of the Paris Commune, despite having significant differences with their theories.

In the same way, for whatever folly one might see in the attempt by the victims of U.S. capitalism to bring down the perpretators, the overall effort should be supported and the women risking their lives and futures should be defended until the end. Simply contrarian arguments do not sufficiently criticize the leadership of such movements. At times, it is agreeing and working together that better proves to the workers who its real leaders are. In normal situations, these alleged offenders could have 100 witnesses testifying against them and a mountain of hard evidence, and still escape on a technicality. The lives of the 100 witnesses and their families could be shattered, with some lives, conveniently for the suspects, ended. What about their careers and their decades of contributions? The difference now, is that the courts cannot save them with technical legal arguments which prove only that they do not need to serve a sentance.

The abuses of women by former ICFI leader Gerry Healy show that this movement is not immune, but suscepitble to corruption by powerful entertainment industry figures and nationalist movement leaders. To cover up for such corruption does not protect Marxist leadership, it forces it to submit to predators, and a culture of death and mass suffering. A revolutionary movement can arise from the unity produced by the joint confrontation and prosecution of the predators. Let them suffer, for once, instead of finding other people to suffer for them.

You’re right to point out the police-state tactics employed by the Stalinist bureacracy against the working-class in the Soviet Union. They did take a more direct form in those countries, where resources were limited and imperialist countries could influence a counter-revolution through economic strangulation. However, it’s important to understand the class issues. The class in power throughout the 20th century was the capitalist class, and the bureacracy and its tactics were used to suppress the revolution that erupted in 1917 in response to World War I.

Those same tactics will be used to supress workers’ rebellions in the West, in service of the same global economic system. Access to information, which to one side seems necessary, to the other side appears an intolerable threat. No one can know the economic, political, or military strategy of the government, corporations, and banks. These must remain secret or they threaten to create a wave of anger which they cannot control.

The workers, nevertheless, need this information to plan their own future, as well as to participate in the economy. The two sides must enter into a conflict. Greater, freer access to information for all is in the interest of the workers. Only a workers government will protect those rights.

To the extent that the West defended those rights, that must be seen as a consequence of the American Revolution, the Civil War to end slavery, and the fight against fascism, the most anti-worker form of government, to liberate Europe. However, these were causes of the slaves and the oppressed, colonized people. They became the causes of the working class. A government beholden to the super-rich will not defend those rights.

As for the technical side of your argument, you deserve a full answer on all the programming issues involved. But at the same time, remember not to get too bogged down by this struggle. In the end, what’s necessary is to form a strong leadership for the revolution, that stays out of harms way and out of prison. The working class will be forced into a confrontation with the government and will seek out the most qualified leaders. They will then be elected and elevated into high positions within a revolutionary government. If the capitalist order can be led by three individuals, namely Bezos, Gates, and Buffet, then the revolutionary socialist order can build 2 or 3 leaders, along with their publications, into the center of a new national stage.

This new order, although with a few widely known leaders, will serve the many far more effectively. That is because it is based on definite scientific advances in the understanding and organization of classes, society, and government.

Actually, Stalinism removed the top revolutionaries and officials of the new Soviet government. Part went into exile, most were tortured and murdered through show-trials. The defense of top revolutionaries is contrary to Stalinism.

They don’t assign each other various positions in a division of labor. They rather pressure each other to all act alike, and then they find superficial, tactical ways to differentiate.

Underlying their tactics, however, are more important theoretical differences. Their covering over of these theoretical differences is their unifying feature. What’s most important, and which they lack, is a thorough understanding of the scientific breakthroughs in revolutionary theory, in philosophy, economics, history, and sociology.

These are akin to Darwin’s theory of evolution for biology or Newton’s and Einstein’s theories in physics. Without a basic understanding of these theories, one cannot participate in a conversation about biology or physics. So too with Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky and conversations about socialism and revolution.

They differ with these top revolutionary theorists and leaders as creationists do with Darwin. It’s important to understand this basic division, between the honoring of the intellectual tradition of Marxism and their various brands of revisionism, to understand how they bear the responsibility for disunity among socialists and revolutionaries.

It’s a shame, although not an accident, that the “rebellious” choices offered are between a “socialist” militarist or an “independent anti-war” libertarian. The lack of options is modern-day disenfranchisement.

As determined by the structure of society, it is the workers that are the progressive class. All programs that help the unemployed, imprisoned, disabled, homeless or otherwise dislocated, slaves without rights, the victims of war, human trafficking, disaster, hunger, and disease, all such programs and efforts help the economic position of the workers and undermine the economic position of the capitalists.

For that reason, the responsibilty falls to the workers. They must participate in order to ease their suffering and protect whatever advances they’ve acheived through previous struggles. It’s their fate to fight to solve such problems and the villanous role imposed upon capitalists to create and profit from such problems.

The revolution, the overthrow of the ruling class and its government, is accomplished in a bottom-up fashion. The implementation of socialism must be accomplished in a top-down fashion.

The SEP program already addresses many of the economic demands that cannot be met by a government dedicated to satisfying the needs of international finance capital. Without the workers’ participation in revolutionary politics en masse, however, these demands will remain pipe-dreams.

To prevent all those you mention, with good political intentions, of turning into desperate terrorists, it must be stated over and over again that only solutions implemented by the revolutionary class acting together will make lasting change. This can only be accomplished through the natural laws of the break-down of the capitalist system forcing the oppressed workers into struggle against the capitalists for power over the state.

Only then, after a victorious struggle for power over the state by the workers, will the various socialist measures be effected within a stable global economic system. Only then can they be fully defended from cultural, economic, political, and military war and genocide by the imperialists and their world-destructive governments.

It is wrong to compare the SEP to the DSA and other groups in a superficial way because the DSA receives funding from the Democratic Party and their Political Action Committees. The ISO is also more oriented towards reformism, combining their campaigns with those of the Green Party. They can grow using funds for pro-capitalist campaigns, but this in the end and throughout, forces them into political alliances that turn them against socialist revolution and in favor imperialist policies.

As for the polling numbers and the size of the SEP campaign, there is a serious deficit. But this deficit can’t be closed at the expense of decades of struggle for consistent revolutionary politics and the theoritical advancement of Marxism throughout the century. In order for Marxism to survive in its revolutionary form, it must remain attuned to political changes and respond to advances in science and technology. Having achieved this, when the time for revolutionary arrives, the working class will not be deprived of the revolutionary solution.

The right way to reduce the deficit is to charge more, or to charge in to more varied political situations and provide the workers with an independent argument and leadership. Eventually, this will pave the way to access to the mass media. With this key ingredient, a small group can reach millions of viewers and listeners over night. The point is to be prepared and to have something to offer that the mass audience, when we go viral, will remember and demand more of.

The WSWS recently talked about Chris Hedges and Cindy Sheehan as truly left figures, though not Marxists or open, direct Socialists.

The best way to train new leaders, in fact, is to oppose such maneuvers as much as possible. This trains them to argue for a Marxist world view, with emphasis on class issues and the history of revolutionary movements. The training depends on the fight against opportunism, or the temptation to view the socialist movement from a purely organizational view.

The idea behind this is that political solutions are necessary, not optional, as are their development and propogation. This means that as this necessity is increasingly felt due to the destruction and chaos caused by the capitalist system, workers and soldiers will be forced to search for lasting solutions to their problems. They will then form their own organizations and groups and look among the available opinions for ones that consistently and honestly represent them.

The manuevers you refer to as Trotskyist are based on a limited, ahistorical view, not based on the history of the struggle of the Fourth International for survival during the worst oppression in history under Stalinism, Fascism, and the limited, conditional, capitalist democracies of the liberal West. The reawakening of the working class and its return to participation will force many of these repressive forces aside and open the field for real options.

The cultivation of Marxist views and leadership within other groups is not entirely discouraged, but it seems wasteful considering that these groups number in the thousands, while the working class and their communities number in the hundreds of millions. It is better to address the larger crowd and those that approach our own group. The only time these tactics are absolutely necessary is when our numbers are very small, such as under 10, or when we have absolutely no presence at all within a region or country. This is nothing to be embarassed about, since most nationalist groups, by their very nature, could never expand to other countries or build an international movement of a strong composition.

Or propose a new left-wing search engine.

In the German Ideology, Ch 3. Part 2., Marx quotes Don Quixote by Cervantes (https://www.marxists.org/ar…. Pancho, Don Quixote’s faithful servant, says he would reprimand the criminal for besmirching himself “by not despising the alien but regarding it as worthy of being robbed…” In going after the “goods of another, he has done what believers do who aspire to what belongs to God.”

If you are assuming that these criminals deserve to be defended, that may be because you do not want to offend their ego, so they can continue to pursue what is holy or artistically valuable, even if they must take it forcefully from others. However they diminish their own ego and lose in the balance, because what they attained in this situation is not holy but rather a waste of time and effort, damaged goods. Harvey Weinstein and the others lost in the balance, not because of excessive fury but through a poor choice of targets.

The SEP should create an “Action Committee” for the Amazon Workers, so that they can plan events similar to that of the IYSSE.

What would a struggle against Stalinism look like prior to 1917, with Stalin and Kamenev as leaders of the Bolsheviks in Russia?

Hola de Sur America

Please comment on this observation:

https://www.quantcast.com/d…

It seems the traffic to disqus.com has declined by about 98%, from 126 million monthly visitors down to 2.3 million. Is this an attack on more than just left-wing websites? Is it also an attack on all interactive online communities? All digital social networks?

Please comment on this theory. What accounts for the drastic decline in traffic to disqus.com??? They are not left-wing or political in any way; they only provide a digital service.

I agree that this article is somewhat problematic. Firstly, about the red scare, which was conducted after WWI and the Russian Revolution, and the large turnout for Eugene V. Debs’ candidacy for president; this red-scare seems rather self-consuming, or lacking for fuel in the form of a mass socialist movement. The popular rebellious feeling was largely controlled under the Democratic Party through the Bernie Sanders movement, as well as the “first-of-their-kind” Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders in no way approximates Eugene V. Debs as a committed socialist and presents no threat to the establishment.

McCarthyism ended largely as a result of McCarthy targeting the military and congress, over-reaching in his pursuit of power and threatening to too many in higher positions. This self-consumption of the counter-revolutionary leaders appears to destroy much of the very same targets the revolutionaries should have in their sights. In that sense, the absence of a mass revolutionary movement in the mold of the Second International’s Social Democratic Parties has created a pre-mature, ironically, or adventurist, infantile counter-revolution.

The economic conditions in the U.S. are far different from the hyper-inflated Germany, after the Versailles Treaty in the interwar years during the Great Depression. The collapse, the maturation of the situation, or the ripeness of the capital for conquest has not yet arrived. Hence the ejection of Steve Bannon from the White House, the de-funding of Breitbart by the billionaire Bob Mercer, and other high-profile failures and capitulations by the far-right. The /weakness/ of the counter-revolution should not be underestimated.

Overestimation of the power of conservative forces could lead the SEP into making opportunist alliances and sacrificing the theoretical advances made by the ICFI in its struggle against Pabloite opportunism. Forgiving Spacey for his close relations to Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Epstein, and their group of super-rich “Lolita Express” elites within the Democratic Party is possibly the beginning of just such an opportunistic alliance.

Furthermore, what seems like weakness of character on Spacey’s part, a drunken mistake, could in fact be a carefully calculated scheme. I consider some of the comments I’ve read offensive trolling because they seek to legitimize this sexually predatory behavior, which borders on organized oppression. Sexual assault and statutory rape of children could have various causes, which if carefully studied could prove to be driven by motives as cold as first degree murder. The assault of children could be part of a gangster initiation, which could be used by the gang to tame judges, the media, or the work force. Furthermore, the gang could use such willing actors to break families, rape women through threats to their children, or as part of an only-for-the-initiated extortion scheme. Perhaps these gangs are a necessary evil for the raising of money from billionaires for artistic purposes, but only if one overlooks the socialist solution: taxes on the rich to fund a democratically controlled film industry that responds to worker, not capitalist, demands.

Whether such gangs should control the means of production, especially the production of movies targeted at mass audiences should be painfully obvious. Other actors may not be willing to participate in such initiation procedures and therefore see their careers ruined for failure to act according to the depraved dictates of the financial and political elite. Countless actors, unwilling to compromise themselves in the way that Spacey did, have seen their careers inexplicably cut short, while they move from movies, to TV, to off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway, and so on… To youtube vlogs with 30 views on a good day.

As for Spacey’s notable appearances in productions of great works, I am not yet convinced. I have seen reviews where works by great playwrights have been edited horribly and presented with some of the best scenes removed. Any actor, however, would benefit from acting in such productions. So why should such roles, which create a positive feedback loop of good experience, go to such a compromised person? How many of them would, given the chance, be more faithful to the spirit of the work they presented? To what extent can such a willing servant of the elite produce subversive work which truly influences the audience to come forward and participate?

While American Beauty had a great impact on me as a child- it stood out as one of those rare works that takes a critical stance- that does not change the underlying message. Spacey’s character was murdered by the supposedly commonplace Nazi neighbor that had a mistaken suspicion that Spacey’s character was gay. Perhaps darkly humorous for some, especially among the criminals in power, the effect is destructive for the psyche. The entire rebellion had been for nothing, suddenly ended, with no hint of some underlying process that guaranteed its return.

None of this is meant to deny Spacey his dignity or dismiss everything he’s done as worthless. The freedom provided by western capitalist democracy, as opposed to Stalinist dictatorship, does allow art more room to develop, creating objective, irreversible advances in understanding and in unity. However, freedom without a progressive vision and social cohesion does not necessarily bring us further into the light but can, rather, lead many into darkness, even self-imposed mass darkness. Such black-outs in the consciousness of the masses can become more common if the electricity grid of artistic creation and consumption is entrusted to the wrong people through the wrong process.

I agree. An appeal could be made to the Silicon Valley workers to take a flight to the L.A. meeting, which would only take an hour and ten minutes. That would be the beginning of an expansion that could lead to future meetings within Silicon Valley itself.

This may be seen as a dress rehearsal for the revolution, though it may be staged by the European imperialist powers. The Catalan parliament has declared itself a new state, in essence creating a revolutionary situation where the old Spanish government in Madrid breaks down, leading to the creation of a new government in Barcelona.

The leader of Catalonia’s separatist “revolution”, the president of the Catalan government, has escaped the country fearing arrest, similar to Lenin’s escape to Finland. The leader of the parliament is now in jail, facing a possible sentence of 30 years in prison, similar to Trotsky’s arrest during the July days under Kerensky.

What’s lacking, of course, is the presence of a revolutionary party that could lead the workers in the creation of a new worker’s state. What’s beneficial though, is to see -because they cannot hide it- the oppressive forces of the Spanish state stamping out the legitimate democratic rights of the Catalan people. Such force must be confronted in the same way the Catalan did on October 1st during the referendum.

The principle of the imperialist powers after WWI, led by Woodrow Wilson, was the 14 points which established the rights of nations to self-rule. Their failure as a class to continue this policy increases the chances of future world wars. This does not mean, however, that socialists must give in where capitalists have failed.

Lenin defended the rights of nations to organize independently in his 1914 work “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination”. He wrote of the 1905 referendum on national independence of Norway (which, like Catalonia, also had its own separate parliament) from the more powerful Sweden: “The close alliance between the Norwegian and Swedish workers, their complete fraternal class solidarity, /gained/ from the Swedish workers’ recognition of the right of the Norwegians to secede. This convinced the Norwegian workers that the Swedish workers were not infected with Swedish nationalism, and that they placed fraternity with the Norwegian proletarians above the privileges of the Swedish bourgeoisie and aristocracy.” This can be applied directly to the situation of Spain. The Spanish workers do not benefit from the national oppression of Catalonia, and, in fact, they benefit from its secession.

Furthermore, the 1905 referendum coincided with the defeat of Russia in the Ruso-Japanese war and the 1905 revolution. The Spanish situation coincides with the failure of the U.S. to control Iraq and the upsurge of opposition, first through the Sanders campaign, then to the government under Trump. The U.S. can no longer maintain its post-war order, as Russia could no longer maintain its control of the world order established after the Napoleonic Wars.

The authors write: “The Catalan National Assembly, whose leader remains in jail on sedition charges, insisted it still “only recognises the Catalan Republic” and rejected Article 155, only to declare in the next breath it would call a meeting “before November 3” to decide on a “joint strategy” for the December 21 elections.”

The Catalan national assembly should not recognize the Spanish regional elections or the invocation of Article 155. They should call for a referendum in Spain for all Spanish workers to vote to approve the already accomplished secession. By approving the secession, they can show once again that the unity of the working class /gains/ from the secession for the reasons expressed by Lenin.

Lenin also wrote: “To accuse those who support freedom of self-determination, i. e., freedom to secede, of encouraging separatism, is as foolish and hypocritical as accusing those who advocate freedom of divorce of encouraging the destruction of family ties.”

A lot of money is promised regularly in the form of roles, partnerships, or other types of contracts, whether signed or delayed in negotiations. This creates the grey areas in which sexual predators do their work.

I’d further like to add: This should be seen as an attempt to compete with “the poor criminal” or “the forgotten man” for the affections of the women. A rich gangster could have an agent pay the women to hide his trail and leave all the acting to the actresses. He is acting himself to show he is endangering himself, and in such a way attracting the women through sympathy. It’s as if they are to say: “Any of these other women could ruin you, and with that all our movie budgets. I should keep them quiet myself.”

The reason the women themselves have not been treated as equal partners or worse, gangsters preying on a sick man, is because of the role HW played in the Democratic Party. There has been a political elevation in the U.S., which separates 2017 from previous decades in which HW played the very same role. A supporter of Hillary Clinton and “mainstream” liberalism can now be seen as a political criminal, a supporter of war criminals, and a defender of a criminal order for mass suppression of opposition to war and poverty.

The DNC’s suppression of the Bernie vote was only a small part of the larger picture, but as it was seen by many, it led to a wider investigation of the political, financial, and cultural (in HW’s case) buttresses and columns of the crumbling Democratic Party establishment. HW’s position as an organizer of movie production made him responsible for enforcement of loyalty to his party within the large number of workers participating in the movie-making operation. This made him the main target of public outrage and prevented him from diverting that outrage towards the equally liable actresses in the fiasco.

It’s the money they were promised. They weren’t getting it, so they started to talk.