[18]. Revolution tears an evil up by its roots; reform merely shifts …

I’ve never heard anyone refer to it as “socialist,” but I have heard it described as “post-capitalist”. Granted, with the system being a direct democracy, we would definitely have to dedicate a certain amount of time periodically to legislation, but, for the most part, we’d have a lot more free time to do things we enjoy, like spend time with our families or on our hobbies. The great example of the Vietnamese people and that of the Chinese people during the Great proletarian cultural revolution, have greatly inspired them and the light of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought that has swept the entire North American continent was taken up by them. Fact-Checking the Liars: the Record of U.S. Imperial War and Plunder, How the Clinton-Era Roadless Rules Aid and Abet Logging, Zionist War on Palestinian Festival in Rome is Ominous Sign of Things to Come, American Jewish Progressives Declared Irrelevant, Dropped Prosecutions: The Afghan Files, Public Interest Journalism and Dan Oakes, Karuk Tribe Leads Effort to Fight Racism and Climate Change with Fire, Structural Racism in Liberal Armor: Newsome’s Veto Domestic Workers’ Rights Bill, And who will join this standing up: A Poetic Response to Empire, Burning.

Today in the seventies still various social fascist groups and organisation are around to propagate reformism and revisionism – to enslave the American people to the interests of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class. There was recently a great piece by Slavoj Zizek regarding the US-North Korea standoff. Greed and selfishness are a byproduct of perceived scarcity; eliminate scarcity and those behaviors will disappear. There is no stitch up. What is then the role of electoral politics and having elected officials? Many people may come across this and be too bull-headed to consider reading it at all – let alone with an open mind – so I genuinely appreciate you even giving this a chance. Oh, and if anyone cares, almost 70% of American adults are on at least one prescription drug today, more than half take two regularly, and 20% of the population is on five or more medications. Searching the internet to find other people or groups who recognized this clear difference eventually led me to the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s website (spgb.net). To say that the hundred international brothers must “serve as intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and the popular instincts,” is to create and unbridgeable gulf between the Alliance’s revolutionary idea and the proletarian masses; it means proclaiming that these hundred guardsmen cannot be recruited anywhere but from among the privileged classes.” Page 112 of attached PDF. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09. Progress can’t simply be measured in GDP or low unemployment rates: quality of life and ecosystem health must be taken into consideration. Another reformist measure that seems to be generating some confusion is the concept of a Universal Basic Income, or UBI. No one goes completely hungry. The Constitution invests Dáil Eireann with supreme legislating power, as long as it is not repugnant to the constitution — something easily circumvented, but that’s a matter for another time, and something I’ve covered in the past in this article on the separation of powers. [38] “As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are re- moved, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary.” Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Part III. We all share the threat of nuclear war in common, as well as the environmental threats posed by global warming, mass extinctions, ocean acidification, GMO outbreaks, pandemics, etc. Another common argument I hear is that we don’t have enough resources on the planet to sustain everyone or that the planet’s overpopulated. From the other side, inspired by the Albanian Party of labor and the Chinese Communist Party, they have launched a relentless struggle against the revisionist parties and modern revisionism which is today the major enemy within the ranks of the oppressed people and whose aim is to replace revolutionary class struggle with class collaboration and so reform capitalism instead of destroying it and replace the revolutionary aspiration of the working class for socialism and communism with revisionism and social-democracy. He is author of the ebook Planetary Vision: Essays on Freedom and Empire. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. Profits are priority #1 within a capitalist economy, because without them the system can’t run properly. Many forms of Municipal Ownership may and do cheapen the cost of living, but as they also reduce wages, they can be of no benefit to the working class. They are broken because those running are clever enough to know that they will have to break them. The acquisition of valuable and extensive proper- ty, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Greece is another recent example: the EU oligarchs punked Syriza, making Tsipras blink and accept austerity measures just after a July 2015 national referendum voted 61% against accepting the EU diktat. And this is not because students are apathetic, as is stated in various Michigan Daily editorials, but because they have seen the bankruptcy of these elections that in essence serve only the University Administration.

That may explain why the two species evolved such different behaviors and life styles. The reserve armies of unemployed and the working poor could not be helped: their ill-health and ignorance were inexorable, terminal conditions. We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence. The frontier cultural roots in the US are shallow, and the dog-eat-dog ethos of laissez-faire capitalism has not allowed for the fertile soil of social/collective well-being that we find in parts of Europe.

They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.” Karl Marx, Value, Price, and Profit, Chapter XIV. No outlandish debt for ambulance rides, insulin, sleeping pills, you name it.

This is why I’m in huge favor of what my friend and mentor Richard Oxman calls the TOSCA approach (Transforming Our State through Citizen Action).

From the very beginning, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made it very clear that a socialist country couldn’t supply all their resources themselves or resist pressure if every other country is capitalist, so socialism could only exist worldwide – meaning its implementation by all the most developed countries in the world, at a very minimum. The very public mention of the use of nuclear weapons should be treated as a criminal offense.”. The only functional benefit for a canvasser is that you get a bit more tuned in with the atmosphere on the ground in a certain community. Left TDs occupy a variety of roles as soon as they are elected.