Discussion on World Socialist Web Site 1 comments

Alabama teachers speak out as four more teachers die of COVID-19 this week

arandomposter33 44 minutes ago Removed

The government has made a conscious decision: two day quarantines and the end of paid leave, combined with overcrowded classrooms that make social distancing impossible. These represent a clear attempt to use large-scale violence to silence any workers’ movement. The workers must confront this threat armed with the conviction that the super-rich are prepared to kill to hold on to the power. The committee must continue to shed a light on these deaths and expose the motives underlying them: the political confrontation over the right to form a revolutionary government.

Discussion on World Socialist Web Site 42 comments

Biden’s inaugural address: Banality and empty abstraction to cover over reality

arandomposter33 3 days ago Detected as spam Thanks, we’ll work on getting this corrected.

1. To place the blame for January 6th entirely on Trump or even the Republican Party does not do justice to democracy or historical truth. In 2014, Obama and Biden orchestrated a coup in the Ukraine, one of the most socially equal countries in the world. The new government tore down statues of Lenin and replaced them with monuments to Orthodox Christian angels. The new leaders give public support to Neo-Nazis. As Ukraine neighbors Russia, this would be like Russia orchestrating a coup in Canada or Mexico.

The Democrats later attempted a coup in the United States, calling into question the legitimacy of the 2016 elections and attempting to remove Trump by force. They could not bring the Republicans on board and for that reason lost the vote to remove Trump in the Senate. The Republicans likely opposed the coup for fear that the necessary preparations for a war with Russia had not been accomplished, making mass opposition to the government likely in the event of a coup designed to prepare an invasion of Russia. Russia did not choose Trump, the people elected him. Biden’s reference to the “violence” entering the capitol may mean he acknowledges the economic necessity of the drive to war, whether a Democrat or a Republican holds office.

In order to oppose the “rigged” elections, one would have to counterpose a fair election. Both the Democrats and Republicans stand in the way of a scientifically designed election system meant to accurately reflect the will and informed policy decisions of the majority of the people. The majority of people support universal higher education, $2000 monthly payments, and other socialist measures, yet this receives no representation under the rigged corporate welfare system. Only unyielding opposition to both political parties financed and controlled by the oligarchy will produce a result in favor of Democratic Power for the working class.

2. “The rejection of any restraints on the spread of disease” has a counterpart in the rejection of any scientific inquiry into the origins of the virus. Public records show that the US government has conducted tests on prisoners to spread diseases. Public records show that laboratories have the technological equipment to construct viruses on a genetic level so as to determine their effect on the human body. Suppression of such discussion gives immeasurable support to the coup-plotters and the counter-revolution in general. To say that this disease is completely “natural” in origin goes against the very basics of Marxism, which argues that the ruling class consciously controls and exploits nature.

3. The “unity” of the North insured its victory over the South. Lincoln accomplished this through extreme measures that many saw as tyrannical. Lincoln’s efforts represented, however, not a “unity” against slavery but a contradictory struggle of U.S. capitalism to spread into the West while hampered by the political power vested in the slave states who sought to maintain the balance of power in the federal government through an expansion of slavery into new Western states. The elimination of the slave power allowed the U.S. to spread quickly, at the expense of “Indians and Half-breeds”, into the West as part of its competition with Europe, which spread quickly into Africa during the same period.

4. The search for spiritual unity without any connection to the body may be wrong-headed, but so too would the search for purely biological and geographic unity. This would leave out the actual scientific history, which shows that other forces preceded biological forces and continue to function side by side with biology. That unity would also leave out social questions and questions of psychology and theory.

True unity would break down the division between abstraction and reality, not through a jumbling together of unconnected parts but through an inescapable consciousness of joint responsibilities and possibilities.

5. Lenin’s view of “faith” differed greatly from the view proposed here. He saw faith as the conclusions that flowed from theory. Our faith, he believed, is borne out by our experience. Lenin wrote:

“How often we would find people in the Social-Democratic, movement, particularly in its intellectualist wing, who belittled the aims of the movement, faint-hearts who have lost faith in the revolutionary energy of the working class. Even now some think that because the democratic revolution is bourgeois by its social and economic nature, the proletariat should not aspire to enact the leading role in the revolution, to take the most energetic part in it, or to put forward such advanced slogans as the overthrow of the tsarist regime and the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government. Events are teaching even these politically backward people. Events are bearing out the militant conclusions that follow from the revolutionary theory of Marxism.”

The proletariat should not aspire to participate energetically because its participation depends on its faith! Such intellectualist attacks on revolutionary activity will only hinder the revolutionary movement that the WSWS seeks to guide to victory.

6. We reject Biden’s call for unity because we do not see it as genuine. A review of his policies during the Obama administration would show that socialism and internationalism came under attack, millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes and savings, and racism of one variety only met racism of another variety without actually attacking its social roots, the attempt to divide the working class in order to suppress their revolutionary unity. The revolution must remember these lessons and suppress the attempts at unity made between the Republicans and Democrats as well as with foreign allies. The suppression of capitalist unity will strengthen and empower proletarian unity. Only the proletariat benefits from a universal political system that empowers all the world’s people.

The upper class can unite only by calling off their attacks on the working class and resigning to the total redistribution of their excess wealth. They must accept the imprisonment of their political leaders from both parties and the breaking up of their state and their class privilege.

Discussion on World Socialist Web Site 37 comments

Remove coup plotter Trump immediately!

arandomposter33ironcloudz 11 days ago Removed

These organizations are for the workers to build. What about the organization of the revolutionary party, built by and for the revolutionary movement? That has to be the responsibility of trained, professional leaders. Leaders can function in order to encourage and defend participation by the membership. This type of leadership would better unite the revolutionary movement as social forces divide the government to the point where the armed insurrection becomes the rule rather than the exception. If the revolution survives these divisive political forces, the committees will realize that their fate depends on a successful armed insurrection rather than the idling of the masses. How will the party respond appropriately if it cannot recognize its own responsibilities since it has passed them on to the committees?

arandomposter33Marla 11 days ago Removed

Trump did not create the plot, even if he participated. You seem to need the word plot defined:
“a secret plan for accomplishing a usually evil or unlawful end.” (m-w.com)

This mistake concerning Trump comes from an ignorance of Marxism. The big bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie have different outlooks. While appealing to and encouraging certain petty-bourgeois extremists, Trump has not abandoned his billionaire status or his orientation towards them and the imperialist order in general. Their main political concern is to control any outbreak of a mass political movement, left or right, and bring them under the control of the Democratic or Republican parties. Trump, as Biden has signalled, will likely not face any time for these extraordinary events as he carefully worded his statement at the Ellipse prior to the assault in order to evade culpability.

The leadership of these extremist groups, such as the Proud Boys and the Neo-Nazis cannot expect Trump to enter the Capitol with them and declare a dictatorship. He can only flirt with this idea, but as a member of the big bourgeoisie and the ruling class, could never actually carry it out, far less lead the charge. Tying everything to him will leave out Republican Congressmen and right-wing Democrats that created the conditions for this insurrection by politicizing election procedures and undermining faith in the elections while ignoring the economic precipice that the U.S. hangs on. The swamp that Trump promised to drain will actually remain until the workers come to the conclusion that they cannot sustain themselves on the crumbs offered by the bourgeoisie.

Discussion on World Socialist Web Site 86 comments

Mobilize the working class against Trump’s conspiracy! Prepare for a political general strike!

arandomposter33Sam Westbrooks 11 days ago Removed

The defense against the social media monopoly does not benefit from illusions in the democratic process. Only the transfer of the social media companies from private to public ownership and their democratic control by social media workers and regulators will return democratic rights to the working class.

The adage on a free press, “it’s only a free press for those who own one”, seems to have lost its meaning as the people meander through the open cyberspace to potentially any website. The reality, however, is that every click costs a dollar, so the average return on a click must be greater than a dollar. This brings the power back to the owners of capital.

A socialist restructuring of social media would include a greater presence of elected and salaried regulators as well as a marketing budget as the natural right of every webmaster, blogger, and social media socialite.

arandomposter33Carolyn Zaremba 11 days ago Removed

The WSWS has not always existed and neither has Marxism. Marx himself argued, “If this is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist.” He would say the same thing today, just as Trotsky would point to the zig-zags of the party leadership as evidence of a bureaucracy whose interests directly oppose that of the socialist revolution.

Both Lenin and Trotsky died serving the revolution. Their service earned them their isolation at times, the hate of the government and the capitalist media, and through all of this they remained dedicated to building the revolutionary movement. For this reason, they stood out as different from the majority who from direct fear or through repressed feelings turned against their own former beliefs or their secret leanings and disavowed the struggle.

The defense of Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Keith Raniere, R. Kelly, CEO Les Moonves, and Bill Cosby represented a fear described by Trotskyists as the fear of losing their position in the party and a future state due to an influx of talent into the party. Trotsky spoke about the same opposition to the growing world revolution within the Stalinist Bureaucracy of the Comintern. The sudden fall of these towering figures gave certain functionaries the sense that their privileged positions could come under dispute under similar circumstances.

The defense of the privileged, however, does not fall under the purview of Marxism. That represents a different outlook. Marxism argues for recognition of true talent and the full development of the individual to his true potential. The stance taken here against Trump does not call for a trial and the assumption of innocence everytime a message appears out of place in Social Media. Unfortunately, they did take this position with regard to the perpetrators of similar anti-democratic attacks against media institutions, academic institutions, and public figures. They argued, irrationally, that the Democratic Principle of Due Process must apply to every managerial decision or override the free speech right of the media when it comes to lawless traitors and secret civil warriors. In this situation, Trump’s supposed Democratic Rights to media power and career privilege did not substitute for a Marxist analysis. Anyone familiar with the American media should know that Trump is of their ilk. This change of position should appear as progress in the fight against Nano-bureaucracy and Economism.

arandomposter33Carlos Delgado 11 days ago Removed

You obviously ignored all the commentary that was written in response to the WSWS, much of it negative. The WSWS here criticizes Jacobin for defending Trump. That’s exactly what the WSWS did when it defended Trump’s and Clinton’s close friend Jeffrey Epstein. This followed in the line of what Lenin would describe as Economism. For the Economists, struggle against spontaneous consciousness had no meaning. The economy changed people’s minds on its own without the intervention of the revolutionary party. Essentially, the Economists argued that there was nothing at all for the revolutionary to do.

As part of the flip side of the same coin, the Economists later turned to terrorism, refusing to accept Lenin’s position that the terrorism often had Tsarist agents provoking the attacks while the acts themselves served more to break up any revolutionary organization that would provide the working class with the arguments they needed in the class struggle. This theoretical weakness, which led the WSWS to side with Epstein, Clinton, and Trump, as well as the Raniere cult and its very rich backers. Anything but take up the task of confronting the workers with arguments about sexual harassment and workplace security that formed the economic impulse for the MeToo movement’s widespread popularity. Anything but take up the task of confronting the workers about the dangers involved in political participation while police brutality receives the support of top politicians.

The presence of bourgeois ideology does not end the internal contradictions of capitalist production as the material basis for society. These will lead to movements such as MeToo and BLM, which will then fall under the influence of the bourgeoisie without a proper perspective to align the activity of the revolutionary party with the class interests and spontaneous activity of the working class. The working class seeks to create progress through its protests against workplace sexual harassment, assault, and rape. The working class seeks to create progress through its protests against police brutality and the state murder of unarmed men, women, and children. The WSWS must not fall into the Economist trap and reject revolutionary activity among these movements in order to bring the revolutionary party to the widest possible audience and potential membership.

Discussion on World Socialist Web Site 2 comments

Once Upon a River: A Native American girl wanders the waterways

arandomposter33 18 days ago Removed [Passed Censorship on second attempt of identical post.]

The narrative of the poor Native American heading down the river could not stand alone as a pure narrative. It must have a symbolic side to show the political situation through its exclusion. The various characters represent something: the uncle, a revolutionary leader or general that demands too much of his conscripts, her father the law that dies leaving behind a criminal war to eradicate a people, her mother, the shattered emotional and spiritual unity that might exist under primitive communism. In order to truly follow in the spirit of Marxism, the writer must not follow in the steps of the chauvinist writers who characterize natives as naked and animal-like, even in their philosophy of themselves. They must see the tragedy and abandonment that characterizes their situation since the end of the U.S. Civil War, when they lost protection against forced displacement and the right to form their own independent government. Surprisingly, the writer does not mention Lenin’s experiences in nature and in hunting.

Compare these to the second photo in the article above:

https://www.alamy.com/stock…

https://photo.unian.info/ph…

To argue that they merely rattle rather than express the profoundness of the tragedy ignores history and slanders humanity, forced to float along without any right to self-determination, without any rights to revolutionary leadership based on the Leninist and Trotskyist defense of small nation’s right to independence. The statement towards the end says it all: “an appalling neglect, or worse, by government agencies of [their] social needs”, as if Native Americans must rely on the US government for their needs, as if no evidence exists of the deliberate policy of extermination of Native Americans that counted among its planners and executors Abraham Lincoln’s generals, Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses Grant. The defense of these generals and their monuments must come at the expense of the symbolic little girl and the castaway nation depicted in Once Upon a River.