What it is about this moment of this capitalist society that brought a creature like Trump to the top? The crumbling of society goes beyond economic measures. The symptoms are everywhere of a system that increasingly does not believe in its own future.
Why did the massive resistance eight years ago not prevent Trump’s return? And what is the “Left” today? More important than the unity of the Left is the unity of the movement from theory and the movement from practice.
President Donald Trump is encouraging deadly hate toward women, Blacks, people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and immigrants. It is grassroots responses and mutual aid that can block Trump’s power grab. More forms of revolt will erupt in the face of the downward spiral of this capitalist world in crisis.
Farsi translation of the lead article “The U.S. election as manifestation of counterrevolution.”
Counterrevolution is the guiding principle of the Trump campaign and the dominant characteristic of politics worldwide. Although revolution does not appear to be on the horizon in the U.S. or in most other countries, capitalism is stumbling through a global crisis, both economic and ecological, psychological and communal.
The fundamentalist, sexist, anti-gay convictions of J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley and Harrison Butker reveal that their movement not only wants to end abortion but control what women think, what we feel, in fact who we are.
After Roe v Wade was overturned after nearly fifty years, what will it mean to be a woman in America and what kind of country is it becoming? This is what the book ‘The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America’ explores, reviewed by Adele.
Part II of the 2024-2025 Draft Perspectives. Takes up: the global retrogression that a second Trump period would mean.
Trump and his allies are aiming at a second term. The means: taking power at all costs, even with a minority of votes. The ends: complete evisceration of human rights, democracy, and human solidarity.
While immigrants suffer as winter settles in North America, the new year arrived without a Congressional bargain on immigration. Republicans not only demand harshly restrictive immigration measures but want to make Biden look bad by blocking accomplishments.
Readers’ Views on: Israel/Palestine; Revolt in Iran; in Canada for 2SLGBTQIA+; Trump, Biden too old to run; Racism in Tennessee; Prisoners miss ‘N&L’; Memorial for Paul Geist and Dan Bremer; Texas targets pregnant women & refugees; Ohio targets women and democracy; Revolutionary history; and Raining on those with disabilities.
So much is happening regarding abortion—since the reactionary U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, trashing women’s right to abortion, a human right we’ve had for 50 years—that it is almost impossible to keep track of. For help, you can turn to the splendid blog of Jessica Valenti, “Abortion Every Day.”
Congress has done its best to become the nation’s strikebreaker by forcing a five-year contract on railroad workers who had been set to go on strike on Dec. 12. Union members in four of the 12 unions had voted to reject a tentative agreement that negotiators had reached with six major rail carriers in September.
Workers on strike at the Ingredion plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, rallied on Sept. 1, marking one month since the strike began. Ingredion demanded the right to charge as much as $500 more for health insurance, freeze the two tiers of workers in place, and eliminate jobs.
Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has overturned women’s right to abortion, the profound ramifications of that unprecedented decision are becoming known. Women are fighting back, from the Women’s March, to Black women, to Teens for Reproductive Rights, women will reclaim the right to control our own bodies.
With the gutting of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has taken away a human right and stripped bodily autonomy from half the population. It is a giant step towards fascism. What is the answer to such an outrage? It is not the Democratic Party, who couldn’t even rid us of the Hyde Amendment.
With the gutting of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has taken away a human right and stripped bodily autonomy from half the population. It is a giant step towards fascism. What is the answer to such an outrage? It is not the Democratic Party, who couldn’t even rid us of the Hyde Amendment.
Trump’s national health emergency, continued by Biden, had asylum seekers wait in Mexico for processing. This breaks U.S. law and though other pandemic emergency measures have lifted, virtually all Republicans and a growing number of Democrats are urging the Biden Administration to keep breaking this law past May 23, despite the suffering it causes.
Trump’s national health emergency, continued by Biden, had temporarily superseded certain statutes so that asylum seekers had to wait in Mexico for an appointment. While other pandemic emergency measures have lifted, virtually all Republicans and a growing number of Democrats are urging the Biden Administration to keep breaking the law past May 23.
The Republican attack against women won’t stop with trashing our right to control our bodies. Hate has worked so well for them that they will also come down harder on LGBTQ+ people, especially Trans people who trample every notion the Right has of “how things are supposed to be.”
The raging attack on abortion rights is an attack on freedom by fascist leaders and their followers who want to undermine democracy and save a decrepit, unworkable, exploitative, racist-patriarchal capitalism.
The raging attack on abortion rights is an attack on freedom by fascist leaders and their followers who want to undermine democracy and save a decrepit, unworkable, exploitative, racist-patriarchal capitalism.
The delusions and propaganda that recall the spirit of fascism cannot be defeated by countering them with facts. The new universal must be grounded in the Reason of the masses in motion for freedom, and the philosophy of liberation that roots itself in those movements. What is needed is to begin from the Absolute of the projected new society.
The worldwide protests over George Floyd’s murder and other protests of Republican-led policies led them to erode, stifle, obfuscate, erase from memory and repress democracy, passing laws to subvert elections and teaching. Republicans decided that democracy must be destroyed so that they can rule in perpetuity, representing the 1% in the name of white Christian America.
In addition to pandemic, climate, and economic disasters, we face the specter of pre-emptive counter-revolution. Self-activity of masses in motion is needed not only to defeat Trump but to move beyond society that breeds Trumpism.
A Marxist-Humanist view of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections that highlights the illegitimacy of Trump’s rule, showing how it is the rule of a minority won because of anti-democratic voter suppression, gerrymandering, racism, sexism, extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, hate speech and lies. It highlights the other America that opposes such neo-fascism.
Readers’ Views takes up: attacks on immigrants; Syria and the Left’s failure; Democratic Party’s selling out women; Women’s Liberation; Serena Williams; ending money bail the right way; Trump-Kim “peace”; genocide and war heroes; and a discussion on sex crimes and their fallout.
Marxist-Humanist analysis of the Trump-Kim summit and G7 summit shows Trump is not charting a path to world peace but rather toward a more openly brutal world order. .
Part I of the Draft Perspectives Thesis: Trump’s war show.
The real threat of war reflects Trump’s extremeness as a product of failing capitalism, which is not an aberration but an index of the nature of U.S. capitalist imperialism.
Women have changed the world through an incredible and sustained activism based on a humanism that runs like a revolutionary red thread through an amazing array of actions, demonstrations and statements. This development is based on over 50 years of a movement that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, characterized as “Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason.” .
Readers’ views on: U.S. Racism on trial, the right’s crocodile tears, creeping fascism, climate change, nuclear alarms, teachers as labor, Pat Hunt Presente! and Judy and Dan presente!
Trump-style neo-fascism has been gestating for decades, as seen in Reagan-era photos of Paul Manafort side by side with Lee Atwater, who in 1981 described the rhetoric of “tax cuts” as “abstract racism.” .
The capital relation is spelled out as alienated labor, automation, destruction of jobs, unraveling of the social fabric–fertile ground for reactionary ideology, scapegoating, and fascism. Yet the human Subject’s quest for freedom continues.
Readers’ Views on Hegel’s dialectic and today’s retrogression; Why read N&L?; La Raza unida; Education and freedom; Racism in Burma and U.S.; Voices from behind the bars
Readers’ Views on Election Stirs Battles in Thought and in Life; Deep Racism in the USA; Women Fight Back; Indigenous Struggles; Global (In)Humanity; Why Read N&L?
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
An expansive look at the rise of fascism worldwide beginning in the U.S. with Donald Trump and the U.S. election, and taking in European fascism, and the situations in India, the Philippines, China, Japan and the opposition by rulers worldwide to those fighting for a free existence and new human relations.
Readers’ Views on Hate: Orlando to Brexit; Black Lives Matter; Muhammad Ali and Dr. King; Duterte in the Philippines; News & Letters Readers Unite!; and Deadly Assault on Women From the U.S. to Israel.
From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters
Readers’ Views, Part 1
WOMEN FIGHT RAPE, HARASSMENT AND ABUSE
When I voted, many posters reminded folks that within 100 feet of the polling place you may not “interrupt” a person, nor “harass” nor even speak about your political views. [=>]
New York—Last year, when thousands of fast food workers walked off their jobs defying their corporate bosses and marched and rallied for a $15 minimum wage and the right to organize a union, many people who have spent their lives fighting for justice in the workplace were excited.
ATU orders bus drivers back to work: The strikers kept up the picket lines through a cold New York winter, defying rain, snow, and Bloomberg. The decision to order the drivers and matrons back to work in February came without any input from the strikers.
New York–I have been actively involved in the tenant movement since 1997, when rent laws actually expired, albeit temporarily. Many tenants woke up then and a massive demonstration took place in front of then-Governor Pataki’s office. The stage was set for even bigger demonstrations, but tenant groups (closely allied with the Democrats) decided not to [=>]
by Htun Lin
All eyes are on the massive worker protests in Madison, Wisconsin, against Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to totally bust public sector unions by stripping them of collective bargaining rights. Many pundits say this is a power grab to hurt Democrats, but the demonstrations have brought out something much deeper that speaks to all [=>]
