In this year of COVID19, the organized ‘working class’ movement completes a hundred years of its history. It was on October 31 1920, that the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), the first central trade union organization, came into being. This might be a good occasion to take stock – to look back into … Continue reading Crisis of Working Class Politics – Challenges for Rebuilding the Left →
As a retired sheet metal worker, on Memorial Day, I watched the Memorial Day video put out by the general president of my union. This was my response to him.
I appreciate your stress on staying safe during this pandemic, as well as the listing of our 14 members who have died from COVID-19. I also appreciate your speaking of how our union has helped veterans transition from the military to our trade.
Face of Class War in Contemporary India It is time again to state one thing absolutely clearly. ‘Class struggle’ or ‘class warfare’ were not invented by Karl Marx, for he and his predecessors merely identified and named the beast. It is something that the rich and the powerful always did and continue to do … Continue reading The Ferocious Face of Class War – Rekindling the Revolutionary Imagination →
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
May Day, or International Workers Day, is celebrated with marches and rallies every May 1 to lift up the working people and their demands for freedom, equality, and justice. That is the Red tradition of May Day. But there is also an older Green tradition in which cultures the world over celebrate as Spring arrives in temperate and arctic climates or the wet season arrives in tropical climates. This Green tradition of May Day celebrates all that is free and life-giving on the green Earth that is our commonwealth and heritage. These Red and Green May Day traditions are complementary.
Guest post by MAYA JOHN This essay is the second part of a two-part series on Society in the Time of Covid 19. The first part appeared in Kafila on 5 April and can be read here. The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas…Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1845) … Continue reading Agony of COVID-19 and the Lockdown – Who is Afraid of ‘Class’? Maya John →
John Lennon, prolific as a writer as much as a performer, wrote this:
Working Class Hero
As soon as you’re born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
The victories of Bernie Sanders in the early primaries had people talking about socialist revolutions, while Biden’s wins on Super Tuesday (in largely conservatives states) have tempered that enthusiasm. This is an important reminder of something we all need to remember: The Capitalists already won. There may still be a few scattered enclaves of subsistence farmers and indigenous peoples who haven’t been forced to pay to exist, but in the West they won a long time ago. That victory has been so complete that we don’t even notice anymore. It’s completely normal to us to rent our lives aw
The growing popularity of an American social democratic presidential candidate who calls himself a democratic socialist has revived every anti-humanity distortion of the past, emanating from the tiny minority ruling our country through its servant class of professionals in media and politics.
