The Palestinian enclave known as Gaza is approximately 25 miles long by 5 miles wide. It is about the same area as the East Bay from Oakland in the north to Fremont in the south. To the west is open water; to the east are the hills (heavily-reinforced razor wire fence for Gaza).
What would life be like if the East Bay of San Francisco was Gaza?
Leading management consultants, top government officials and prominent financial journalists are proposing, what they dub, “labor reforms” as the solution for double-digit unemployment and underemployment, economic stagnation and the decline of capital investments.
“Labor Reform” as the Concentration of Power and Profits
First of all, the term “labor reform” is just a euphemism for labor regression, the reversal of laws and practices that workers and employees secured through decades of struggle against employers.
Over sixty five million people in the US, perhaps a fifth of our sisters and brothers, are not enjoying the “unalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” promised when the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. They are about twenty percent of our US population. This July 4 can be an opportunity to remember them and rededicate ourselves and our country to making these promises real for all people in the US.
Modern marketing changes language and machinery but not its material foundation, which existed long before the industrial age. An allegedly “new” economy of information technology (IT) is just an update with different jargon and tools but the profit and loss substance remain exactly what they’ve always been: great for some, nice for many, and terrible for the earth and most of its people.
The implications of moving towards a global sharing economy are immense, but there are many reasons to embrace this simple concept – which is far more radical and urgent than it may at first seem. As a primer from STWR makes clear, the necessity of sharing the world’s resources is central to the most critical issues that face humanity in the 21st century.
In Part 1 of the World of Resistance (WoR) Report, I examined today’s global order – or disorder – through the eyes of Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. National Security Adviser and long-time influential figure in foreign policy circles. Brzezinski articulated what he refers to as humanity’s “global political awakening,” spurred by access to education, technology and communications among much of the world’s population.
The organic connection between women’s liberation and socialism has been shoved so deeply down the Memory Hole that most people know nothing about it. Women and Class: Towards a Socialist Feminism by Hal Draper, August Bebel, Eleanor Marx, Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg* and edited by E. Haberkern,brings this rich history to light, revealing important lessons that our rulers prefer we not learn.
A reader reacted to my recent article, “The Left,” which calls for the dissolution of borders (and hence the state) and “the rights of people everywhere to move about freely, peacefully, respectfully, and contribute to communities wherever they might find themselves in the world.” The reader demurred:
Oh, the elite, or the admin class, or the middling white managerial class, how they are confounding it all, and nary a real activist sees that we are cooked until we wipe them away from positions of power.
