Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2023-2024: Polycrisis and the need to transform reality. Part IV

June 15, 2023

The oil companies and allied capitalists and politicians admit the need for a transformation of economies in the face of the climate emergency, but have managed to frame it as an energy transition. That is a political and ideological victory narrowing the transformation down to a technological-centered change. Thus the transition, as it is being designed, is a nontransformational transformation that will solve nothing—and climate militancy continues.

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Capitalism profits off immigrants’ woes

June 8, 2023

U.S. President Joe Biden simultaneously put in place a proposal different from Donald Trump’s Title 42 that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their asylum hearing appointment. Biden used another of Trump’s laws: to require refugees to prove that they sought asylum in the first country they encountered. In both proposals human rights are trampled.

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Is COVID over when thousands still die?

March 21, 2023

Efforts to declare an end to the COVID pandemic are part of a drive to return to a pretended normal, to keep anything fundamental from changing–even if it means leaving the door wide open for the next pandemic

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Climate law: Capital’s strategic retreat

September 13, 2022

A critical view on the first big U.S. climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, showing its deep limitations and the truly transformational alternative reached for by climate justice movements, including Indigenous struggles and youth climate strikes and occupations.

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War is excuse to ravage the climate

July 19, 2022

Country after country reacted to the war by increasing oil and gas trade and production. Only movements from below can keep the fossil fuel capitalists from turning the opportunity for a greener, freer future into opposite.

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Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine puts the future of humanity in doubt

March 16, 2022

Putin’s invasion confronted fierce resistance in Ukraine and opposition on Russian streets. The war reveals a changed world of competing centers of capital–which is in a state of stalled accumulation globally, devolving into militarism, other-hating fascism and fomenting new forms of genocide–signaling the future this system holds if left unchecked.

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Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine puts the future of humanity in doubt

March 8, 2022

Putin’s invasion confronted fierce resistance in Ukraine and opposition on Russian streets. The war reveals a changed world of competing centers of capital–which is in a state of stalled accumulation globally, devolving into militarism, other-hating fascism and fomenting new forms of genocide–signaling the future this system holds if left unchecked.

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COP26: Rulers strive to stifle youth response to climate emergency

January 24, 2022

In the face of climate justice movements from below, the rulers are determined to keep control in their hands. With creative new actions and thinking raising the possibility of alternative, anti-capitalist paths of development, the powers that be are working hard to reduce that to a mere “energy transition.”

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Readers’ Views: November-December 2021, Part One

November 19, 2021

Readers’ Views on Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2021-2022; Labor shortage?; Workers as reason; Support El Milagro workers!; Detroit women’s march; Chapelle’s sexism; Afghans dead and buried; Betrayal of Haitians; and Which side are you on?

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Thoughts from the Outside: After Juneteenth

September 22, 2021

Today’s descendants of slaves are asked to accept an interpretation of history that centers on acts of the government, not on those of slaves asserting themselves in their lives. Biden’s recognition of the day slaves “received” their freedom from the government, might help secure the African-American vote for the Democratic Party. But even this limited freedom is under attack.

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Editorial: Republicans savage democracy and history

July 1, 2021

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.

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Queer Notes: May-June 2021

Pro-LGBTQ+ Solidarity Workouts in Poland; Transgender girl Kai Shappley testifies to the Texas Senate; Queer-Art hosts “Response to Anti-Asian Shootings in Atlanta” exhibit; International Transgender Day of Visibility.

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Racism still core to immigration policy

March 11, 2021

Despite immigration reforms by President Biden that made a significant impact on people’s lives, they fall short in some ways and racism and exploitation continue–not only in abuses by ICE officers but in the overall concept and design of the system.

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Trumpist coup reveals fascist threat and Left’s philosophic void

January 11, 2021

The Jan. 6 Trumpist coup reveals the depth of the far-right threat, compliticy of major institutions, and the philosophic void of the Left. A liberatory banner of a new society on truly human foundations is needed if we are not to be thrown right back into more oscillations between fascist horrors and the crumbling “normal” of capitalist liberal democracy.

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Readers’ views, November-December 2020: part one

November 28, 2020

Election battles, reaching for the future, and the pull of the past; Sabotage of the post office; Food recycling workers strike; Anti-labor statue downed; Oil and biden; COVID-19: where’s the vision?; Racism and fascism; Polish women’s revolutionary moment; News & Letters is back in print!

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Black-led revolt ensures defeat of Trump’s racist campaign

November 27, 2020

Racism and the resistance to it permeated the election, from the Trump campaign’s appeal to white supremacy to the outpouring of Black organizing and votes, energized by the new stage of revolt sparked by the police murder of George Floyd. However, grave questions remain about where the U.S. and the world are heading. Movements from below will be challenged to resist the calls for “unity” under the capitalist umbrella and to continue to deepen their revolt against a “return to normal.”

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