ALTERNATIVE ISSUE #96 l SEPTEMBER 2023
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SOCIALIST
WHAT WE STAND FOR
Fight Inflation & Rebuild A Fighting Labor Movement
laws should be organized by the labor movement among workers tasked with enforcing them. • Full legal rights and equality for trans and queer people, including the right to selfidentification! We completely oppose the attempts of the right wing to spread antitrans bigotry and isolate LGBTQ people from society. • The overturn of Roe v. Wade opened the door for vicious attacks on bodily autonomy across the country. We need a mass movement against the reactionary right on the scale of the 60s and 70s when Roe was first won. • Free, safe, legal abortion. All contraception should be provided at no cost as part of a broad program for reproductive health! • Fighting gender oppression means fighting for our rights to bodily autonomy, reproductive justice including universal childcare, and Medicare for All including free reproductive and gender-affirming care.
• As thousands of workers are winning unions for the first time, it is critical that they fight to win strong contracts. We need unions that are armed with clear demands like bold wage increases and contractual cost of living adjustments (COLA), and they have to be prepared to go on strike to win them. • Union leaders across all unions should accept the average wage of a worker in their industry and should be accountable to their membership and the broader working class. • An injury to one is an injury to all! Unions need to fight all manifestations of racism, sexism, queerphobia, and all forms of oppression as part of the struggle to rebuild a fighting labor movement. • Unions should stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars on electing Democratic Party politicians, and spend it instead on efforts to organize the unorganized. • Unions should form consumer protection committees to monitor price increases, Invest In Our Basic Needs which should have the power to review cor• Pass strong rent control. End economic porate finances, especially when money evictions. Tax the rich and big business to is squandered on CEO pay and stock fund permanently affordable, high-quality buybacks. social housing. • No pay cuts! We need a significant raise A New Political Party For in the minimum wage and to tie raises to inflation. Working People • An immediate transition to Medicare for All. • The capitalist Democratic Party offers Take for-profit hospital chains into public no solution to right-wing attacks against ownership and retool them to provide free, workers and marginalized people and has state-of-the-art healthcare to all. repeatedly failed to use their majorities to • Capitalism failed to stop COVID-19, with protect our rights. the “post-pandemic” new normal consist• We need a new, working-class, multiracial ing of total indifference to public health. We left party that organizes and fights for workurgently need permanently free and accesers’ interests and is committed to socialsible testing, paid sick leave, and to take Big ist policies to lead the fight against the Pharma into public ownership – vaccines right and point a way out of the horrors of capitalism.
Mobilize Against Gender Oppression & Attacks On Bodily Autonomy • Fight back against brutal anti-trans legislation and all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ people. Noncompliance with these bigoted
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should be for public health, not profit! • Bring back the COVID-era child tax credit and make it permanent. Fully fund highquality, universal childcare. No cuts to food stamps! • Fully fund public education! End school privatization. Give educators an immediate 25% raise and increase staffing. Cancel all student debt and make public college tuition-free.
A Socialist Program For Environmental Disaster • People across the country are seeing their communities turned into disaster zones from corporations’ ecological warfare and from the devastating impact of climate change. • We need fully-funded emergency systems to protect and evacuate people from everincreasing storms, floods, and fires, and we need to tax the rich to reimburse working people for their destroyed homes and livelihoods. • In the wake of ecological disasters like chemical spills, corporations should immediately be responsible for relocation costs, health costs, and home remediation. When many residents need to relocate, the businesses responsible for the disasters should offer to buy people’s land at a rate well above pre-disaster market value. • We need a union jobs program to rapidly expand green infrastructure including free public transit. • Fossil fuels can’t coexist with a sustainable future – ban new oil and gas drilling and take the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership, while implementing a democratically planned, just transition to 100% green energy!
End Racist Policing And Criminal (in)Justice • There is still a massive fight to be waged against police violence. We need a new movement in the streets and mass organizations of struggle to fight for Black liberation! • Arrest and convict killer cops! Purge police forces of anyone with known ties to white
supremacist groups or any cop who has committed violent or racist attacks. • End the militarization of police: ban the use of “crowd control” weapons and disarm police on patrol. • Put policing under the control of democratically-elected civilian boards with power over hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena. • Beyond fighting to end racist policing, we need a struggle against all forms of racism in our society, including segregationist housing and education policies.
No To Imperialist Wars • Socialist Alternative completely opposes Russian imperialism’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Ordinary Ukrainians who already suffer exploitation, oppression, corruption, and growing poverty conditions now face the horror of war and bloodshed. • We oppose the aggressive imperialist agenda of NATO and the US for whom Ukrainians are a pawn in the wider Cold War conflict with Chinese imperialism. • De-escalating the rapidly deteriorating situation in Ukraine requires the return of Russian troops to the barracks in Russia and the withdrawal of all NATO troops from Eastern Europe. • Build a massive anti-war and anti-imperialist movement linking up workers and youth across borders! Sending increasingly destructive weapons to the conflict only serves to escalate & poses a greater risk of all-out war – only socialist internationalism can end war and destruction and win lasting peace and stability for the working masses around the world.
The Whole System Is Guilty • Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, racism, transphobia, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system. • Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership. • We need a socialist world! This means a democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the planet.
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EDITORIAL
KAILYN NICHOLSON When Trump was finally defeated in the 2020 election, millions of young and working class people in the US breathed a sigh of relief. Many believed, as Biden and the Democrats promised, that the nightmare of bigotry, warmongering, and billionaire cronyism we endured during Trump’s administration would finally be rectified. Yet the past two and a half years of Biden’s presidency have been a demoralizing trainwreck of broken promises and inaction in relation to the worsening cost of living crisis, attacks on bodily autonomy for women and trans people, climate-related natural disasters, and an increasingly deadly and expensive inter-imperialist conflict playing out via the war in Ukraine. We need systemic change, and Cornel West’s campaign offers us an opportunity to fight back.
Young People Abandoned By Biden For young people, Biden’s administration has been a particularly bitter lesson about the inability of the Democratic Party to provide any kind of future beyond the crises of today. After making canceling student debt a central demand of his campaign, what Biden actually did was plan to forgive remaining debt for certain low-income borrowers only after they qualify by making consistent payments for 20-25 years! And it’s not like Biden or even supposedly “progressive” Democrats like AOC are going to help workers fight for higher wages to keep up with these out-of-control costs – they have fully abandoned their promise of even a $15/ hr minimum wage and are actively trying to undermine workers who are getting organized to fight for stronger contracts. They made this crystal clear when they voted to break the railroad workers strike in late 2022. In August of this year, Biden also reportedly worked closely with Teamsters president Sean O’Brien to avoid a strike that could have won higher wages and safer working conditions for 350,000 UPS workers and could have been a historic turning point for the workers movement as a whole. The tidal wave of attacks on abortion rights and gender-affirming care that have passed at the state level under Biden’s watch also disproportionately impact young people, who are more likely to need abortions or to identify as trans or nonbinary. Not having access to these essential forms of healthcare can have life-altering consequences, and even the threat that such care might be unavailable negatively impacts young peoples’ mental health and overall sense of wellbeing. The Democrats as a whole have refused to use the power of the presidency, their majority in Congress, or public opposition to organize any kind of effective resistance to transphobic and sexist attacks. Make no mistake: Trump is a right-wing disaster who must be stopped. But Biden and the Democrats have proven that voting for them to defend against the right wing is a failed strategy. Workers and young people can’t afford to go down this road of false hopes again in attempting to reform the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders’ campaigns and the capitulation of popular figures like AOC have shown this to be a total dead end. Instead, we need SEPTEMBER 2023
to build movements that fight for the things that we need like Medicare for All, living wages, and canceling all student debt. To win, we need to organize an independent political force that actually fights for our interests.
Cornel West’s Independent Campaign For President Luckily, Cornel West is running as an independent left candidate in the 2024 elections, fighting for the needs of working class and oppressed people. West is a longtime progressive activist and scholar who has been an outspoken critic of US imperialism. West was calling to end racist policing and mass incarceration long before Black Lives Matter became a household phrase. A self-described democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders, West calls for Medicare for All, free college and canceling all student debt, quality affordable housing and livingwage jobs for all, and nationalizing the fossil fuel industry for an immediate transition to renewable energy. Most importantly, West is running independent of the Democratic Party. We saw how Bernie’s attempt to use his campaign to pull the Democratic Party to the left utterly
“West calls for Medicare for All, free college and canceling all student debt, quality affordable housing and livingwage jobs for all, and nationalizing the fossil fuel industry for an immediate transition to renewable energy.” failed and instead dragged the left in line behind the Democratic establishment, facilitating first Trump’s disastrous presidency and then Biden’s. Now, after Democrats’ betrayals, we are facing the disastrous false options of either Biden or Trump 2.0, neither of which has anything to offer students or workers. Through West’s campaign, we can build a fighting grassroots movement for young people, workers, and the environment that doesn’t end when election season is over, but goes on to fight for a different kind of society. If we had had such a movement in 2016 or 2020, we could have organized millions to defend against the gutting of abortion rights and attacks on trans youth, take action against deportation, and fight for living wages and to tax Wall Street and the super-rich.
STUDENTS FOR CORNEL WEST Fighting Back Against The Billionaires & The Right Wing
What position would we be in today if that had happened? It’s impossible to know for sure, but one thing is certain – when we fight, we can win. If we don’t fight, we are sure to lose.
Resisting Lesser-Evilism Already, everyone from Bernie Sanders and AOC to the largest union organization in the country, the AFL-CIO, have thrown their weight behind Biden in an attempt to block any left challenge. Arguments that Cornel West will “steal” votes from Biden and cause Trump to get elected are already cropping up all over the place, from corporate media to the left-aligned Jacobin. This idea that we have to support Biden (or any Democrat) as the “lesser evil” compared to Trump (or any Republican) has been the most effective tool the political establishment has had to prevent independent political organizing by the left for decades. The problem with that theory is that the Democrats don’t actually protect us from Trump or the far right; in fact, their constant betrayals and broken promises only add fuel to the fire of right-wing anger and derail the attempts of young people and workers to get organized. The only way to stop the growth of rightpopulism is to show that the left can deliver improvements to the quality of life of working people – higher wages, affordable housing, better healthcare – and the only way to do that is to build an independent, fighting movement that unites all the diverse sections of the working class and can’t be co-opted by any party of big business. The billionaires have two parties; we need one of our own. While cynics love to claim that socialist politics just aren’t viable given the current political climate in the US, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Kshama Sawant’s four consecutive electoral victories in Seattle as an open, unapologetic socialist proved this, as did her successful campaigns to win the first $15/hr minimum wage in the country,
tax Amazon, make Seattle the first abortion sanctuary city in the nation, and ban discrimination on the basis of caste, all despite the constant opposition of the Democratic Party. What this shows is that we need independent candidates and movements to stand up to lesser-evilism and fight for the things we need.
Students For Cornel West Young people are uniquely aware that capitalism and its political parties are leading us over the edge of a cliff. As we pass more and more of the “tipping points” towards climate catastrophe, it’s increasingly clear that there is no future for young people on the basis of the current system. We need to seize this opportunity to fight back. To be effective, we need Cornel West’s campaign to have a mass grassroots character. Young people have a central role to play in building the initial grassroots momentum that can draw in larger and larger layers of people hungry for change. We need tens of thousands of students across the country to get active in Students for Cornel West groups at their colleges and high schools. These groups can organize rallies and debates on campus, organize to help get West on the ballot in every state, publish articles in the school paper and put out social media content explaining why students should support Cornel West as the best way to defend against Trump and the far right. Many of your peers may not have heard of Cornel West yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be excited to get involved when they hear what he is campaigning on: affordable housing and Medicare for All, free college and canceling all student debt, ending racist policing and mass incarceration, immediately halting all fossil fuel extraction, and building an ongoing movement to defend against attacks by the far right and billionaire class. Aren’t you? Get involved – reach out today if you want to organize an event at your school. Don’t let lack of experience stop you, we can help you link up with other students and offer tools and support. History doesn’t offer us an endless number of opportunities – we need to seize this one. J
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ENVIRONMENT
In 2 0 2 0, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sat down on CNBC to urge the world’s wealthiest to act on climate change. Announcing that the company aimed to be carbon negative by 2030, Nadella said, “The corporation’s purpose is to find profitable solutions to the problems of people and planet.” That’s, after all, the ethos of capitalism – all the needs of society are business opportunities, and with the right colorful packaging and catchy marketing, solutions make profits. To proponents, this is the thing that makes capitalism work, that ordinary people are motivated to solve problems and make big advancements because they can line their own pockets along the way; it’s what 10thgrade AP Econ teachers call a “win-win.” Except the oceans are rising, wildfires are raging, storms are growing – and capitalism just hasn’t figured it out. Even Microsoft, the poster company for public commitment to environmental ideals, has fallen behind. By their own admission, Microsoft’s emissions declined only 0.5% in 2022, as the company grew by 18%. As Nadella himself said in that very 2020 interview, “‘Profitable’ is the key word.” The world’s wealthiest and most influential gather at conferences like COP and Davos to figure out ways to make money fighting climate change, and last year, the best they could do was discuss raising the Paris Climate Accord target to 2.0° C of warming rather than 1.5°. (As if we aren’t already feeling the burn, and we haven’t even hit 1.5° yet.) Some people have started to make some money on ‘green’ alternatives, sure. The electric vehicle (EV) market is projected to reach over $500 billion this year, and demand grew
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who pays out the workers as little as he can get away with, the workers own the whole thing, and decide how to allocate resources. That means that while the capitalist economy has been fighting for a profitable way forward for the oil and gas industry, which is pouring pollutants into the air at a mind-boggling rate, socialism could rapidly transition away from it. With no CEOs to bail out, workers could take the vast resources of currently polluting industries and instead put them toward ramping up production of genuinely renewable energy. Better yet, since the resources of the world’s by GREYSON VAN ARSDALE wealthiest people would be redistributed to serve society, lots of those workers could actually just retire comfortably if they wanted. Almost a fifth of workers in the US oil and gas industry are over 55 years old and still working in one of the world’s most physically demanding arenas. But there will still be plenty to do. One of the first tasks of a socialist society would from be to massively expand social housing and 4 % mass public transit, which will require hunin 2020 to dreds of thousands of workers and a great 14% in 2022. deal of resources. Under capitalism, the only Of course, that’s with way such an expansion could happen would significant help from the federal govbe if these projects promised a “return on ernment – Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act investment” – a way to make money. But in a included a massive expansion of a $7500 socialist world, as long as workers democratiEV tax credit, making getting an EV a lot cally decide on a priority and a way to get it cheaper for many people. This has been a done, it can be done. Yes – it could be literlifeline to EV makers, because manufacturers ally that simple. still haven’t figured out how to make building That’s not to say that a socialist world them significantly cheaper – they still cost would have no problems, or that turning the about 40% more to manufacture than a gasclock back on our warming planet would be powered car. easy. Disaster response and relief will be This problem gets worse when you go dominant concerns, and many coastal combeyond the profitability of individual indusmunities will need to make plans to relocate tries to the system as a whole. Heatwaves millions of residents further inland. Infraand natural disasters have skyrocketed in structure will need to be completely overtheir cost to the economy and in damages hauled to provide consistent access to safe to homes and buildings in the last five years. water – which many communities in the US After the devastating Maui fires last still don’t have. A massive, internationallymonth, FEMA has authorized $5.6 million in coordinated reforestation campaign would relief funds – though the estimation of the need to take place to begin to convert the damages to buildings on the island top $3.2 excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to billion! Direct aid funds will be provided to oxygen. But for the first time, all of this would over 2,000 households, but already over be possible in the hands of workers, instead double that (4,400) have applied for aid. of a pipe dream in the hands of billionaires. Thousands of families need real money to A democratically planned, socialist econget on their feet again – and it will never, ever omy would unlock possibilities for humanbe profitable to simply give people the money ity that we can scarcely dream of now. Just they need to rebuild their lives. Looking at as the profit motive of capitalism creates a the breadth and scale of change that’s necripple effect that cascades into a tsunami of essary to ensure safety for billions of people inequality and oppression, designing society in a warming world – capitalism can’t solve around the needs of people and the planet this one. would have its own ripple – one where the potential of humanity could be fully explored.
What Socialism Can Do That Capitalism Can’t
In a socialist world based around a democratically planned economy, workers would control society, not the bosses. Instead of profits going to the guy who owns the factory,
A Socialist World Is Worth Fighting For
in the United States. But even internationally where the movement has been much more developed, it feels like momentum has stalled since the onset of COVID. In June, famed high school activist Greta Thunberg ended her Fridays for Future weekly school strike as she graduated. On Twitter, she commented, “We are still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalized and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth.” Thunberg is absolutely right – we are still moving in the wrong direction, and for many young people, that is a terrifying prospect. It’s no wonder, then, why some activists have taken to spectacle-based tactics like throwing soup at famous paintings to try to grab attention to fight climate change. To some, it feels like we’ve already lost. But the truth is, for decades, the climate movement has been fighting with both hands tied behind its back. The struggle has been hampered on one count because its demands have been limited to what is possible or reasonable under capitalism – not because young people fear radical change, but because the NGO mis-leadership is in many cases tied to capitalist political parties. This rules out such drastic, but necessary, demands like ending the fossil fuel industry and banning new drilling. It has also been held back on another count because the climate movement has largely failed to draw its power from the working class, who make society run and without whom all industry stops. The time is long overdue to even the odds. A youth climate movement connected to the broader labor movement and conscious of the fundamental need to overturn capitalism to truly end climate change would be fundamentally different from all previous climate struggle. It is the united and organized strength of working-class and young people globally that can strike a blow against climate change, by taking profit out of the driver’s seat. A critical step in building toward this in the US will be the formation of our own mass workingclass party, with a clear socialist program and determined leadership. To win, we also need strong organizations of the working class. This means continuing to build fighting unions in our workplaces that are well organized, truly democratic, and have the active participation of all workers. These unions need to link up with social movements against climate change, sexism and racism as part of the struggle to rebuild a fighting labor movement, and point the way forward on a working class basis. To young people and students who have grown up in a world where massively devastating storms and smoke-filled skies are commonplace, the prospect of turning the tables on climate change may seem wholly idealistic. But in reality, all of the progressive victories of history – from the Civil Rights movement to the throwing off of monarchies to weekends and the eight-hour workday – have been won by working class people, and our job isn’t over yet. A socialist world, one that is capable of fighting climate change and ending exploitation and oppression, is worth fighting for. J
The climate movement has struggled to take on a genuinely mass, ongoing character S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N
WHAT WILL IT REALLY TAKE TO SOLVE THE STUDENT DEBT CRISIS? RACHEL WILDER, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY The federal moratorium on student debt payments ended on September 1, meaning student loan interest payments will resume on October 1. In addition to inflated food prices and soaring rents, young working class people are about to be on the hook for hundreds of dollars more a month. The initial student loan moratorium was passed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of broader government relief to working people such as stimulus checks, which showed how much the federal government could potentially do to support working people. This will have a particularly devastating effect on Black graduates who hold the largest share of student loan debt – around a third of Black adults hold student loan debt, versus around a fifth of white adults and 14% of Hispanic adults. Furthermore, Black graduates’ median student loan debt is higher, around $30,000, whereas the median lies at around $23,000 for white borrowers, and $17,600 for Hispanic borrowers. While
a college education is presented to young people as a way to improve your economic situation, crippling student loans and a lack of generational wealth make “the American dream” less and less feasible for all young adults, but particularly Black adults.
What Have Biden And The Democrats Done? On the campaign trail, Biden promised to cancel $10,000 of student loan debt, which would have been a welcome relief for many borrowers but still was not nearly enough for what most people face in student loan debt. After a recent Supreme Court ruling, Biden’s plan for minimal student debt cancellation is dead in the water, without a sliver of a fight from his administration or the Democrats. The Biden administration’s only response to the Supreme Court ruling has been to say that they are pursuing a different method that they believe is “legally sound” in going through the Higher Education Act; however, without a fighting movement, this process will likely face similar obstacles.
In an unsurprising yet still disgusting decision in July, the right-wing Supreme Court attacked affirmative action, ruling against the practice of colleges considering the impact of race as a factor in admissions. This decision, which came out of two separate cases for Harvard and the University of North Carolina, is the latest in a series of reactionary attacks by the Supreme Court on already marginalized people.
Turning Back The Clock Affirmative action was among many major gains won by the Civil Rights Movement. Legalized segregation denied Black people and other people of color access to most universities in the country. While some Black colleges were opened to give Black students access to higher education, the SEPTEMBER 2023
WE DEMAND CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT! FREE PUBLIC COLLEGE FOR ALL! TAX THE RICH TO FUND PUBLIC EDUCATION!
Build A Movement! When looking for an alternative to Biden and the Democrats, people often look to grassroots activists, such as the Debt Collective or the Student Debt Crisis Center, which have organized around student debt cancellation for years. The Debt Collective has its roots in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and has played a huge role in researching and putting student debt cancellation on the political map.
However, these organizations largely now largely focus on building petitions and callin campaigns, or overly legalistic approaches to canceling student debt such as most recently “seeking litigation” to challenge the Supreme Court ruling. While strategies like petitions and call-in campaigns can be effective, they need to be done in tandem with a broader movement on the streets and in our workplaces to pressure the government to take action. We can look at how it was a mass movement that pressured the supreme court to pass Roe v. Wade in 1973, despite a Republican majority Supreme Court. Under the pressure of a mass movement, the technocratic arguments around obstacles to providing relief to working people crumble. Independent democratic socialist candidate for president, Cornel West, has received criticism for not having a concrete plan beyond his campaign promise of canceling student debt. However, even with a supposed “concrete plan” of Biden’s campaign, working people still have no end in sight to crippling student loan payments. More important than the specific legalistic strategy is the movement built on the streets behind it – one that sees student loan debt as a broader problem with a society that puts people over profits. Without pressure from below, the Supreme Court won’t hand delivery working people a single victory. Cornel West’s campaign for president provides working people with the opportunity to organize around these issues and fight for the relief working people need! J
THE LATEST SCOTUS CASUALTY:
A rally in front of the US Supreme Court to defend affirmative action, Oct 31 2022
DAKOTA CASTRO-JARRETT, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
The progressives’ response to Biden’s failure has been lackluster at best. AOC said that Biden’s plan “doesn’t go far enough,” but she only calls for payments to be further paused while the legalistic process continues. AOC and other progressives should be building a movement to fight for demands like student debt forgiveness, and broadening out the fight for free public college and taxing the rich!
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
movement fought for and ultimately won formal desegregation, and in doing so put pressure on historically white institutions to begin to accept students of color through the creation of affirmative action policies. Affirmative action allowed universities to consider the obvious: that if admissions policies only looked at grades and achievement, they would only admit the students that had the resources, time, and money to get those results – which would always exclude students of color. And because higher education is a doorway to higherpaying and more influential jobs, these exclusionary practices would be recursive, creating a feedback loop for generations of students of color. While affirmative action might not be “fair” to every single student, it is a policy for an unfair world. As socialists, we support equity-driven affirmative action programs that give opportunities to people who have continually been denied them, and we
fight for a truly equal world free of racism where the playing field for all will be genuinely leveled. We fight not only for progressive admissions policies, but for a whole set of reforms to the education system which would make it far more accessible to Black students. A cancellation of student debt would disproportionately benefit Black graduates whohold more debt than their white peers. Black students are more likely to go to for-profit colleges who notoriously leech money from vulnerable young people looking to advance their education. Free public college would dramatically reduce the space for these parasitic corporations to take advantage of Black students. Opponents of affirmative action have cynically argued that the program values race over merit and therefore will increasingly hurt Asian Americans, who studies suggest are performing better in school than other races including white students, from attending good colleges. In reality Asian Americans have historically been denied access to college along with their Black and Latino peers in favor of white students. In the 1980s a predominantly Asian American-led group called the Student
Coalition for Fair Admissions organized in college campuses in California, namely UC Berkeley, to fight against the colleges’ failures to accept not just Asian Americans but all people of color into their university. Unity like this is the exact reason why attacks on affirmative action are so useful to the ruling class, because these efforts to organize across racial divides are a threat to their power. This latest decision from the Supreme Court is nakedly stoking divisions between sections of marginalized workingclass people, for the benefit of the most well-off in society – as evidenced by the fact that they struck down affirmative action, but left ‘legacy admissions’ intact. Legacy admissions favor students whose parents attended the same university, overwhelmingly benefitting the wealthiest and most well-connected students. We need to reject these attempts at division and take the lessons from struggles like the Civil Rights movement and the Student Coalition for Fair Admissions. We need to build a movement of students and university workers to defend affirmative action, win free public college for all, and cancel student debt. J
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L ABOR MOVEMENT
YOUR FAVORITE ACTOR IS STRIKING RIGHT NOW
Florence Pugh walks the picket line in LA.
by DAVID RHOADES, LA
On July 13, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), a union of 160,000 film and TV performers, joined the Writers Guild of America (WGA) on strike for the first time in 63 years. For the writers, who had endured 72 days on the pickets in brutal summer heat, it was a much-needed boost, as studio bosses plan to starve the writers out. They’ve received periodic and important support from union workers of all kinds since May, but SAG joining the strike meant having a decisive new advantage in shutting down studio production. As actors joined protests, the atmosphere was jubilant – picket lines at Netflix, Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, and elsewhere were larger than they’d ever been. Well-known actors made public statements to criticize corporate greed and declare that workers deserve healthcare and fair wages. Actors promoting big studio films left movie premieres the moment the strike began. With future projects no longer in development and current projects shut down, the writers’ strike has officially become the film and TV strike. The newly established unity between SAG and WGA has created a corresponding crack in the studio alliance. While broadcast media companies like Warner Bros and Paramount temporarily united with their tech streaming rivals
like Netflix and Amazon Prime to crush the workers, the strike is partially a result of the growing competition between studios. As the strike exerts greater pressure on each company’s bottom line, it’s possible some members of Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) will break ranks and seek to form side agreements with the writers and actors – SAG and WGA members should fight this and force the entirety of AMPTP to sign a strong contract. It’s also possible the AMPTP will regain its footing and go on the offensive. What’s clear is that AMPTP’s plan to starve out the WGA is less viable with SAG on the pickets. AMPTP was bent on preventing SAG from joining WGA on strike because films and TV shows take years of labor before turning a profit. Studios have to maintain a near-constant pipeline of new commodities planned years ahead of time to ensure growth. Because the unions have shut down both ends of the production pipeline, studios are looking at months of stalled projects and stagnant investments until they go back to work. For capitalism, which measures success in quarterly earnings, that’s unacceptable. But the position of strength occupied by the WGA and SAG is only possible if the two unions act as one. Practically, that means refusing any offer from the studios until the memberships of both unions approve of their respective terms.
Coming This Summer: Workers Striking Back In reality, there’s nothing uniquely greedy or evil about studio executives that you wouldn’t find in any boardroom or executive office. Capitalism coerces all workers into selling their labor, from delivery drivers and hotel workers to background actors and staff writers. Our shared coercion under capitalism is why all workers share a common interest, regardless of what we do or how much we’re paid. No matter how much fame or recognition an actor or writer has, if employers can deny them the means to have food or shelter at will, they’re at the employers’ mercy. But that coercion comes from a fundamental weakness: employers need workers in order to keep making a profit. While actors and writers may not appear to have much in common with auto workers or pilots, they all face the same coercive forces wielded by bosses who are fighting to protect and increase their billions in profits. Workers should find their common demands like Medicare for All, national rent control, or a $30 minimum wage to build combined pickets, rallies, and national protests to show that workers can fight back as a class and no longer be separated by industry or workplace. J
SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE CALLS FOR: • No deal without a collective deal. SAG members and WGA members must vote “no” on any tentative agreement until all unions get the deal they need. This is the best way to ensure the strongest terms for all workers in the industry. • Fully shut down production. The full power of both unions will only be brought to bear if the membership is mobilized and withholding their labor collectively. • No more mini-rooms. Studios need to employ a full staff of writers for every production, as determined by the writers themselves. • Living wages year-round. No more depending on seasonal work! Contracts should include off-season stipends to ensure workers can afford to live all year.
LABOR TURBULENCE AT MAJOR AIRLINES Commercial aviation drives 5% of US GDP – the equivalent of the size of the economy of Spain. While huge airlines get taxpayer bailouts, and are offering stock buybacks, airline workers face falling wages and burnout working conditions. Workers are fighting back, and leveraging the strike as their most powerful tool. American, United, and Southwest Airlines account for almost half of all air travel, and workers at all of them have held strike votes over the last year. United pilots won a huge
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victory in July winning 40% raises over the next four years, following similar victories from Delta and American Airlines pilots earlier this year. After four years at the bargaining table, this breakthrough with United only happened after pilots made preparations to organize a strike vote. Now, Southwest pilots are making preparations to go out on strike. After three years of gridlock, they have been released from mandated mediation. While pay is important, issues like better scheduling and paid
parental leave are the sticking points. If they vote to go on strike, it would be the first pilots’ strike since Spirit Airlines in 2010. There have already been pickets at airports in Chicago and Dallas. A strike would ground 4,000 flights per day. Flight attendants at American Airlines are conducting a strike vote right now, and will announce results at the end of August. Flight attendants are seeking a 35%, one-time wage increase, a 6% annual raise and increased benefits. There are 26,000 flight attendants
at American, and if they go on strike, it would shut down the largest airline in the country. Labor law is stricter for air crews, who fall under the Railway Labor Act. However, even a small workplace action at one hub can do a lot of damage, and flight crews should look for all ways to leverage their power. If the unions move forward with strikes, especially over holiday season, President Biden will likely intervene to save his fragile economic “recovery,” like he did with the rail workers. J
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L ABOR MOVEMENT
UPS TEAMSTERS
UAW & THE BIG THREE
COULD HAVE WON MORE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE EDITORIAL BOARD 350,000 Teamsters were prepared for a historic showdown with UPS. A successful strike could have brought UPS to its knees, and shown workers everywhere that when we fight, we can win. UPS itself reported record profits of an astonishing $13 billion on sales of $100 billion last year, and workers there move 6% of the US GDP everyday. Practice pickets across the country drew thousands of workers and community supporters; this showed UPS that workers were ready to fight. Democratic Party politicians like Joe Biden put lots of pressure on the Teamsters to avoid a strike that could threaten the fragile economic recovery in an election year. In the end, Biden didn’t have to intervene as a strikebreaker, like he did with railroad workers, because Sean O’Brien signed a weak deal to avoid a strike. The contract offer, which Teamsters voted to approve on August 22, contains some potentially enormous concessions, such as freezing pension payments outside of the two geographical areas where the pensions were underfunded. This contract is historic in another way, in the wrong direction: it gives up the union’s right to bargain over any future introduction of Sunday deliveries. The contract also contains new language that fosters divisions between fulltime and part-time workers. The TA does not create 10,000 new full-time jobs – a strategic victory for UPS executives. It’s true that the TA eliminated the hated 22.4 job classification, but it opens the door to creating a new low-paid tier of part-time workers forced to use their own vehicles to get more hours. The wage gains within the contract will get eaten by inflation. There is also no clear language to force UPS to actually install air conditioning in vans that regularly reach 120 degrees, except in new vehicles that won’t be purchased until 2024. For all these reasons, Socialist Alternative and Workers Strike Back have called for a “No” vote on the new contract, as did newly formed rank-and-file groups like Teamsters Mobilize. Unfortunately, the former opposition caucus Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) energetically campaigned for a “Yes” vote, parroting the talking points of union leadership. This left workers who were ready to strike for more with no national organization to coordinate their efforts, though there are lots of examples of isolated efforts to expose the realities of the new contract. A union contract is like a temporary ceasefire in the ongoing struggle between workers and bosses. It should reflect the actual strength of workers in relation to SEPTEMBER 2023
the boss. At UPS, there was a mood among workers to fight, they were well-organized to win, and the newly elected reform leadership of the Teamsters had a mandate to go into battle. Instead the union leadership resorted to PR stunts, softball interviews from mainstream media, and misleading statements to get the deal through. Teamster leaders also borrowed from the bosses’ playbook, fear-mongering about how a strike would ruin workers, and how UPS may follow mismanaged companies like Yellow Freight into bankruptcy. Teamsters leadership handed out misleading flyers only pointing out the wins in the contract. Workers had to read all the fine print, often on social media pages, to find the concessions that would impact their lives. When UPS workers started speaking up, pointing out concessions in the deal, Teamster President Sean O’Brien called them “liars.” If it was really as good a deal as they say it is, these tactics from the leadership would not have been necessary. Every worker understands that we can’t win all of our demands at once. Tactical retreats are sometimes needed to prepare for the next fight. This contract does not do that. On the contrary, as UPS moves forward with plans to increase the use of gig workers and to impose Sunday deliveries, and as rising temperatures make working conditions harder, workers’ faith in the union’s power can be weakened. UPS will not play nice, empowered as they are now with a five year contract that contains a no-strike clause. Workers will need to confront the daily injustices of the boss on the shop floor and the politicians of both parties controlled by big business and in many cases they will have to overcome local union officials who in many cases seem more concerned with helping the company stay profitable than with defending members who are being worn down by a brutal pace of work under increasingly difficult conditions. We need to rebuild a fighting opposition movement in the Teamsters, both through debates in TDU and discussions on forming a new grouping within the union that struggles consistently against management, even when union leaders refuse to. J
AUTOWORKERS AT A CROSSROADS
by ADAM BURCH, ATU 1005* *personal capacity
The Big Three Detroit automakers (GM, Ford, Stellantis) and the United Auto Workers union (UAW) are negotiating a new labor contract. Their existing contract expires on September 14 and the UAW is recommending that its members vote “Yes” on a strike authorization. UAW’s new reformer president, Shawn Fain, is promising to take a more fighting, rank-and-file approach and strategy to the Big Three contract campaigns. He recently said that the latest contract proposals from Stellantis “are a slap in the face,” and after tossing it in a waste basket said, “That’s where it belongs – in the trash – because that’s what it is.”
Electric Vehicles And UAW’s Bold Contract Demands In Detroit, the contract talks are playing out amid an industry-defining transition to electric vehicles (EVs). The Big Three have invested billions of dollars in new technologies and battery plants. Despite not yet making any profits from EVs, the companies are more profitable now than at any time since the Great Recession of 2008. Over the last 10 years, GM and Ford have typically made a profit of $7 billion to $11 billion per year in North America. Stellantis, the smallest of the three, has usually earned somewhat less, but has already profited $12 billion in the first half of this year, a 37% increase over last year. EVs have far fewer parts than conventional gas powered combustion engines so require fewer workers to produce them. The union is demanding guarantees that workers hired at the automakers’ new EV battery plants will be covered by the UAW national contracts, or at least given union contracts with comparable wage and safety terms. Other UAW demands include a 46% wage increase over four years, regular costof-living (COLA) wage increases, converting all temporary workers into permanent positions, more paid time off, pension plans for a greater number of workers, and a job security plan for workers when plants are shuttered. A very exciting demand from UAW is reducing the hours worked without any loss in pay. The Big Three are outright opposed to this.
UAW Shouldn’t Endorse Biden – Lead A Movement For A New Workers’ Party! Joe Biden and the Democrats claim his White House is the most pro-labor since FDR, but Biden has played a rotten role in UAW negotiations and is preparing to further betray any promises to organized labor and workers. Biden apologists, liberal economists, and pundits are touting something that’s now being called “Supply-Side Liberalism” when describing Biden’s industrial policy. The auto industry is very much a part of this new industrial policy. Despite the AFL-CIO endorsing Biden almost immediately after he announced without any democratic discussion from their rank-and-file members, the UAW has so far refused to go along with the US labor federation. UAW should not only refuse to endorse Biden, but the UAW should break from the Democrats and endorse Cornel West whose independent campaign offers an important step toward developing a genuine, fighting, working class political party.
UAW Reform Caucus, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) When Shawn Fain won the UAW presidency he ran as part of a reformer slate called UAW Members United, and all seven of the slate’s candidates won their leadership elections. They were backed by Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a reform caucus of which Fain is a member. The UAWD reform caucus and new reformer leadership has yet to be tested, but this contract fight with the Big Three will be a big challenge. So if Fain and UAWD are going to consolidate their election victories and point UAW in a new direction they need to put forward a clear fighting strategy to win real material gains for auto workers that go beyond just democratizing the union structures. The new leadership needs to show members that they are unafraid to go toe-to-toe with the Big Three, building a fighting movement towards a militant strike if that’s what it takes to win their contract demands. J
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marxism and the fight for freedom T from oppression by KEELY MULLEN
he most dire consequences of oppression are hard to compute. Mass death through ethnic and religious violence, climate devastation due to the lasting effects of colonialism, the widespread weaponization of sexual violence as a tool of war. And if this weren’t enough, there’s the day-to-day violence wrought by capitalist oppression which is impossible to ignore like harassment in the workplace and violence in the home. Racist police murders. Vigilante violence against queer people. Many young people today increasingly understand that oppression is systemic. Yes, our classmates, coworkers, and family members can buy into the undeniable social sickness of racism, sexism, queerphobia, and xenophobia, but fundamentally these divisions are upheld by something much more profound than individual backwardness. This can be a heavy conclusion to come to; the enemy all of a sudden becomes much bigger. But it can also represent a unifying rallying call to all exploited and oppressed people: Fight the system. For Marxists, fighting the system is our speciality. But an essential starting point is identifying precisely what system we’re fighting. One glance at the manosphere or white-supremacist gangs or the transphobic “gender-critical” cult and you quickly see how these prejudices develop their own inner logic and culture, becoming a driving force for themselves. But fundamentally, Marxists see capitalism as the system that sits at the core of exploitation in society. Capitalism is defined by the private ownership of all the materials and tools needed to keep society running. Decisions are made to expand the profits of the few rather than meet the needs of the many. Capitalism has required white supremacy, it has demanded rigid gender roles, and it has expanded its rule through colonialism. Oppression does not exist independently from economic relations in society, it is not randomly occurring, and it’s certainly not “human nature.” Oppression aids capitalism’s core function of extracting value from the working class, and therefore the fight to end oppression has to be tied by a thousand threads to the fight against the capitalist system overall.
Can We End Oppression Without Ending Capitalism? The past ten years has shown how rapidly
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people’s attitudes can change. From the Women’s Marches to the Green Tide uprising in Latin America, we got a glimpse into what a global feminist movement can achieve in terms of shaping people’s attitudes and winning genuine reforms. Many more women in the US feel confident to come out of the shadows and name their abusers because of the bravery that marked the MeToo online revolt. Black Lives Matter demonstrated, in a matter of days, how profoundly an idea can take hold. In the first two weeks of June 2020, American voters’ support for BLM increased almost as much as it had in the two years prior. At one point, the burning of the Minneapolis police precinct, where George Floyd’s killer worked, was more popular than either presidential candidate – Trump or Biden. These movements, and the ones to come, represent the baseline desire millions of people have for genuine equality and a world free of division. When victories are won, no matter how limited, they can have a transformative effect on people’s sense that change is possible. But all victories are vulnerable under capitalism, and Marxists have an obligation to explain this hard truth. Our victories are vulnerable not because the world is doomed or because people are inherently rotten, but because it is a structural necessity for the survival of the capitalist system that various forms of oppression are maintained. Women’s oppression is a central way the nuclear family structure is upheld. The nuclear family emerged in the earliest class societies as a way for the ruling class of the time to hold onto wealth. Familial lineage became a bank of sorts, concentrating wealth in the home rather than the community. The social role of women as caretakers remains enormously beneficial for the ruling class. Worldwide, women perform unpaid care work that, valued at a minimum wage, would amount to at least $10.8 trillion annually – three times the size of the world’s tech industry. Anti-Black racism, which emerged as justification for the brutal colonization of Africa and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, allows the ruling class to especially exploit certain sections of the working class. Black and brown communities in the US are systematically denied the resources to survive, from underfunded schools to overly polluted air, from voter suppression to mass incarceration. Maintaining an especially oppressed section of the working class is a goldmine for capitalists who can deny Black communities meaningful public investment and concentrate Black workers in low-wage, high-risk industries. Oppression also serves an important ideological function for the capitalist class. They are well aware that there are more of us than there are of them. The working class outnumbers the ruling class by literally billions. If we were to unite against our common enemy, they would be done for. The capitalists have to find ways to keep us divided among ourselves, fighting for scraps. Racism, sexism, nationalism, transphobia,
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homophobia have all served this purpose incredibly well. Winning the truly transformative change that millions of young people are hungry for will require a revolutionary struggle against the system.
“You Can’t Have Capitalism Without Racism” Of particular importance to Marxists in the US is the fight against anti-Black racism which has been one of the sharpest and most valued ideological tools of American capitalists for centuries. Every single brick that’s been laid in the foundation of this country has been accompanied by appalling brutality toward non-white people, and especially Black people and Native Americans. From genocidal violence and unimaginable theft of indigenous land, to 250 years of chattel slavery and almost 100 years of Jim Crow laws, racism has been enforced in the US through a regime of terror from the state. Truly ending racism short of ending capitalism is an impossibility, though leaps forward can indeed be made. The heroic struggle of the Black masses during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s brought about a tremendous revolution in social attitudes toward racism. Marches of hundreds of thousands drew together people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds to demand an end to legal discrimination. Landmark court cases were won that formally desegregated schools and public spaces. The US today looks fundamentally different than it did during the days of chattel slavery, and this is the product of the enduring fight for equality of the Black masses. But it remains an indisputable truth that our entire society reeks of racist division. There is rampant voter suppression, with widespread attempts to limit the rights of people of color broadly to vote. Housing and education remain fundamentally segregated with 80% of major US cities actually being more segregated today than they were 30 years ago. The school system in the US is separate and unequal. The average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less per student than a white school district. Add to this the brutality of the school-to-prison pipeline and you begin to see quite quickly just how profoundly the odds are stacked against Black children in the US. Black women face endemic health problems created by our for-profit healthcare system. Even adjusted for income, Black women face increased mortality, decreased reproductive health, and increased medical debt when compared to white women. The mass incarceration system has been called the “New Jim Crow” with Black
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Americans incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of white Americans. The structural foundation of racism in the US creates the conditions for these ideas to permeate our culture, and people’s attitudes. We see anti-Black racism in the beauty industry, in entertainment, in our political system. And because of how profoundly it fills every element of life in the United States, we see it show up in the attitudes of working class people for whom these ideas serve absolutely no constructive value. A working class white person has more in common with a working class Black person, despite all their differences, than either of them have in common with a billionaire. In 2021, a white worker made, on average, $1.41 more per hour than a Black worker. That same year, Elon Musk made – on average – just shy of $28 million per hour. Racism, like all other forms of division, keeps us fighting over crumbs. Revolutionaries have an obligation to fight every trace of division in our society, being the first to jump into action to defend oppressed and marginalized groups from violence and harassment, whether it be by other working people, the state, the bosses, or – as is increasingly a concern in some parts of the world – far-right militia and fascist groups. And as we’re fighting arm in arm, we need to contest every vile manifestation of racism, sexism, queerphobia, and xenophobia. We have to remain crystal clear that working people have everything to gain by overcoming division. This system actively perpetuates oppression, bigotry, and division, and our ultimate goal has to be the building of a revolutionary struggle to overthrow it for good.
Socialists In The Fight Against Oppression The lethality of racist police violence, the horrific cruelty of right-wing attacks on trans people, and the rollback of longheld rights like abortion mean that mass movements against oppression are desperately needed. This is not a pie-in-the-sky wish, we’ve seen mass feminist and anti-racist struggles break out around the world in the past ten years. A truly broad, mass movement will include anyone who is outraged by the injustice of oppression, including even sections of society whose economic interests and politics are at odds with one another. While the movement can temporarily overcome these contradictions in the height of the
struggle, it always comes to a head. There will always be a confrontation between the more radical sections of the movement who want sweeping change, and the liberal misleadership who are comfortable with change only to the degree that it does not disrupt the system. Young Black activists in Ferguson brought this contradiction out into the open in the wake of Mike Brown’s murder in 2014. The community had been hit with a monumental injustice, Mike Brown’s body had been left to bake in the Missouri sun for hours after his death at the hands of the police. Days after his death, officers drove over a makeshift memorial his mom had laid out. Anger erupted onto the streets, kicking off what we now know as the Black Lives Matter movement. Members of the Black misleadership class began arriving in Ferguson in droves, expecting a warm welcome from the young people desperate for change. To their surprise, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were booed off stage at one of the nightly protests for insisting that the community get out and vote for Democrats. Rika Tyler, a young Black activist in Ferguson said at the time: “When Jesse Jackson and them came down we didn’t want their support. Because, I mean, they can’t relate to us. You can get back on your airplane… but we’re still down here fighting this war.” More recently, we have seen these contradictions come to the fore in the protests following the leaked Dobbs decision which would overturn Roe v. Wade. Young women and queer people expressed their deep distrust of the liberal feminists who insisted that all we could do to protect abortion rights was vote for the Democrats. So what is this contradiction really about? Fundamentally, these are class antagonisms showing their head within the movement. The interests of even the most “progressive” section of the ruling class is to moderate the movement as much as possible, channeling it into safe and predictable arenas. The interests of the masses of working and oppressed people are to bring the movement toward a direct confrontation with capitalism. Our goal as Marxists is to do everything we can to ensure the workers, the poor, and the oppressed win that war. We do that by putting forward first and foremost a set of fighting, militant demands that can bring the widest section of working people together toward a common aim. In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder this meant calling for the arrest and conviction of all officers involved; an elected
community-led restructuring of the Minneapolis Police Department with power to hire, fire, and subpoena officers; a major tax on the rich and corporations to fund social programs, schools, and social housing; for the labor movement to throw itself into the movement and take up its key demands; and more. We do everything we can to popularize this program within the movement, pointing toward how these demands could be won. In 2020, we turned one of these demands into a fighting struggle by organizing young and working-class people in Seattle into a campaign to Tax Amazon to fund affordable housing. We won that campaign by refusing to back down to intimidation from the establishment, and by rooting ourselves in the tactics of the class struggle: mass action, work stoppages, and civil disobedience. Revolutionary socialists should throw themselves into every struggle where people are taking aim at the brutality of the system. But we don’t do it with an aim to broker peace between the movements’ different wings, quite the opposite. As Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, said of the women’s movement in 1892: “Where the bourgeois women demand rights that are of help to us too, we will fight together with them. We too will not reject any benefit, gained by the bourgeois women in their own interests, which they provide us willingly or unwillingly. We accept these benefits as weapons, weapons that enable us to fight better on the side of our working-class brothers. We are not women arrayed in struggle against men but workers who are in struggle against the exploiters.” If we are to win, the struggles of the working class in our workplaces will have to be intimately tied up with the fight against every trace of division within our class. Just as we aim to bring mass movements to the doorstep of the class struggle, we fight for the workers’ movement to take up as a rallying cry every demand against racism, sexism, queerphobia, and xenophobia. It’s only on this basis that the system can be truly brought to its knees. J
WE WON’T LET THEM DIVIDE US 9
I N T E R N AT I O N A L Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, both then Vice Presidents of China and the US respectively, spoke at a “trust-building summit” between the two countries in 2011 (left). At the time, Biden said that there was “no more important relationship” for the US than that with China. Since then, interimperialist rivalry between the two powers has become the dominant feature of the world situation.
NEW COLD WAR HEATS UP TOM CREAN, NYC The last few years have seen a sharp rise in geopolitical tension centered on the US and China. This is being widely described as a New Cold War. What is at the root of this conflict? While Joe Biden and the capitalist media in the US like to present this as a moral struggle between “democracy” and “dictatorship,” this is actually a clash between the two key imperialist powers in the world who are vying for control of global markets and resources. Imperialism in our time is not primarily expressed in direct rule over other countries as it was in the era of colonialism, though it is certainly about controlling access to the resources of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and large parts of Asia. Imperialist powers export capital and use their control of global finance to enforce dependence on “underdeveloped” parts of the world. The US has the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, while the Chinese have the Belt and Road initiative and their own global finance structure. Poor countries saddled with endless debt to the bloodsucking imperialist banks and institutions are often forced to cut spending on education and healthcare to keep the funds flowing and prevent economic collapse. Disastrous debt crises have impacted Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Zambia, and Argentina, among others, in the past couple years. The term “New” Cold War is also a reference to the original Cold War after World War II, between the US and its allies on one side and the Soviet bloc countries on the other. This comparison has real limits. The original Cold War was a conflict between two social systems: capitalism and the planned economies ruled by Stalinist dictatorships. This conflict had many very “hot” phases like the Vietnam War but it also operated within certain limits. The conflict we are seeing today is
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more comparable to the period before World War I when British imperialism, the dominant world power of the time, was challenged by rising German imperialism.
The Origins Of The New Cold War Even before the restoration of capitalism in China in the late 1980s, the US began to develop a close partnership with the Chinese regime, initially directed against the Stalinist regime in Russia. In the 1990s, China and the US became partners in the drive for a more globalized world economy. But this development was still in the context of the US being the dominant, if weak-
The Age Of Disorder The New Cold War is a central feature of the new era of disorder which has replaced the era of neoliberal globalization that existed for 40 years. The New Cold War is a driver of the process of deglobalization which is leading to the partial decoupling of the US and Chinese economies. The Biden administration has committed itself to “reshoring”, “nearshoring,” or “friendshoring” industries that are vital to “national security” like semiconductor chip production. The CHIPS Act provides tens of billions of dollars for this purpose. But the US has gone further by placing
“Imperialist conflict is the product of a capitalist social system in deep decline which cannot address the burning issues facing humanity.” ened, global power. As the emerging new capitalist class in China began to assert itself and saw the possibility of expanding into a key and possibly dominant world power in its own right, the relationship frayed. By the 2010s, competition was increasingly the order of the day and the relationship turned much more adversarial with the rise of Xi Jinping in 2012 as head of the misnamed Chinese Communist Party and particularly under Trump. This process has only accelerated under Biden. Today, the rise of Chinese imperialism has stalled as the country faces major economic, social and demographic crises. This does not mean, however, that the global conflict will fizzle out. In reality we have two weakened, crisis-ridden imperialist powers fighting for dominance; this is a very dangerous dynamic with many consequences for working class people around the world.
restrictions on the sharing or sale of key technology with China and on investment by US capitalists in China. These are forms of economic warfare. China has retaliated with its own restrictions including cutting key US technology companies like Micron from major projects. The New Cold War has also become “hot” in Ukraine. The Russian invasion last February has triggered the biggest war in Europe since World War II which has been subsumed into the wider global conflict. China quietly backs its ally Russia while the US and other NATO countries have poured tens of billions into arming the Ukrainian armed forces. The result has been to create a bloody World War I style stalemate where the US estimates 500,000 soldiers on both sides have been killed or wounded. The interests of the Ukrainian masses and
their right to self-determination have nothing to do with US imperialism’s campaign. They have used the war to strengthen NATO not only against Russia but also China. The result is a rising wave of militarism, from Germany to Japan. This includes massive increases in military spending which mean less for housing, healthcare, education, or addressing the climate catastrophe. In fact the war in Ukraine and the rise of militarism means a greater reliance on fossil fuel production. Militarism also means the whipping up of reactionary nationalism which is poison to the workers movement. We have seen this in the US with the wave of attacks on Asian Americans under Trump and Biden.
The Direction Of Travel The key outcome of the past two years of escalation is a strengthening of the core of the US and China led blocs. There are various developments which many observers thought unthinkable including Germany – which has very close economic ties with China – drawing up plans for partial decoupling. Another example is the new military alliance between the US, Japan, and South Korea which had to partially override deep enmity based on Japan’s brutal colonial occupation of Korea before and during World War II. No part of the world is safe from the New Cold War as countries are pushed to take sides. As the accompanying article explains, the coup in Niger and the threat of war in central Africa cannot be separated from a new scramble for Africa by the US and China and their respective allies. But the most dangerous flashpoint is the conflict over Taiwan and the South China Sea. The outcome of this will determine who dominates the Western Pacific in the world’s key economic region. The military buildup may not lead to war now or for some time but on the basis of the logic of imperialism, that is the direction.
Building An Anti-Imperialist Movement Again the clearest historical comparison to the current situation is the period before World War I. Many then thought that war between Germany and Britain was unthinkable. Nor will the presence of nuclear arsenals be enough to stop war today as we see in Ukraine where war on a massive scale has been unleashed without nuclear weapons being used – so far. Imperialist conflict is the product of a capitalist social system in deep decline which cannot address the burning issues facing humanity including mass poverty and climate disaster. This is why we need to urgently build an international movement of workers and young people against militarism and the drive to war, a movement which consistently opposes all imperialism, especially “one’s own.” J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
NIGER COUP ESCALATES NEW COLD WAR IN WEST AFRICA
GEORGE BROWN, MADISON
On July 26, Niger’s military detained the country’s president Mohamed Bazoum. Two days later, General Abdourahamane Tchiani named himself as the country’s new leader. This is yet another coup plaguing the Sahel, the region where the southern boundary of the Sahara gives way to sub-Saharan Africa. Niger was previously a bastion of support for US and French imperialism in West Africa. The coup represents an escalation in the New Cold War. It provoked condemnation from the US, while France and the EU cut off financial support and security cooperation with Niger. Leading figures from Niger’s westernaligned neighbors in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have activated a standby military force to prepare for intervention in Niger. In response, the military leaderships of Russian-aligned Mali and Burkina Faso have warned that military intervention in Niger would constitute a declaration of
war against them. Such a conflict will not establish functioning democracies in the coup-led states and will only further erode democracy in the region.
New Cold War In West Africa The coup in Niger was accompanied by pro-coup demonstrations outside the French embassy. Demonstrators waved Nigerien and Russian flags and chanted “Long live Russia,” “Long live Putin,” and “Down with France.” The New Cold War has been reflected in different regional conflicts breaking out around the world. In West Africa, it’s expressed as a dispute between the US’s ally, France, re-asserting its influence in its former colonies, facing off against growing influence of China’s ally, Russia. In the aftermath of US imperialism’s failed “War on Terror,” jihadist groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram were able to build a base in the western Sahel. Under the guise of humani-
RIGHT-WING JAVIER MILEI WINS ARGENTINA PRIMARY
ELIN MILLER, NYC
As all signs point toward a 2024 TrumpBiden rematch here in the US, the Argentinian primaries have just seen the victory of a Trumpinspired figure of their own. Javier Milei joins a growing international wave of right-wing figures emerging to attack the gains of mass feminist and abortion rights movements, like the Green Tide which swept Argentina, as well as against the broader reawakening of the working class. He represents a virulent anti-worker, anti-feminist agenda, taking positions against sex education and social welfare, dismissing climate change as a lie, and aiming to make it easier for Argentinians to own handguns – alongside a massive austerity agenda. This is in the context of a deep economic crisis which has been overseen by the ruling government, the centrist Frente de Todos coalition. 2023 annual inflation is projected at an astronomical 110% and has hit pensioners particularly hard, piling into the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. The poverty rate has soared to 40% despite low unemployment, alongside a massive increase in inequality where the ruling class has partnered up with the IMF to push the strains of imperialist debt repayment, COVID, and the Ukraine War onto working people, while big business has continued to profit. The political establishment also made enormous concessions to the right wing and the Catholic Church in the final abortion rights legislation passed in 2021, paving the road for the very same rightwing backlash that figures like Milei represent. SEPTEMBER 2023
It’s on this basis that working people in Argentina are rapidly losing faith in the two main center and center-right establishment parties, leaving a polarized political vacuum. If all this sounds familiar, it’s because the trend of economic crisis and political polarization is a global one. The difference between right populism and a genuine program for working people to fight for better lives is that the right ultimately aims to uphold the system that exploits the working class for the bosses’ profits, redirecting anger toward “culture war” issues and oppressed minorities, while a genuine left program would aim its fire squarely at the capitalists while building maximum unity among workers and the oppressed. While analysts predict a rightward shift in this election, it won’t be on the basis of Argentinians broadly preferring right-wing ideas. Polarization is always a two-way process; the abortion rights win of only a few years ago attests to the appetite for radical progressive change and a rejection of Milei’s rhetoric and support of the Catholic Church. What this is really about is an enormous desperation for an alternative to business-as-usual politics. In a bid to save themselves this election cycle, the Frente de Todos will likely form an alliance with other center and center-right parties and lean heavily on the logic that they are the lesser of two evils – aiming to stamp out left challengers without having to provide any real answers for working people. But this process will only further expose their bankruptcy, open space for right populism, and ultimately make Milei and those like him stronger.
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
tarian intervention, both same approach to Africa. the US and France sent Prior to the coup, Secretary of State troops to the region as Antony Blinken, visited Niger with the part of a counter-insur- ostensible aim of promoting democracy gency campaign. in the region. In reality, it was to promote The one-sided relationship US interests in the New Cold War. Blinken between French imperialism and its specifically warned about the growing influformer colonies has led to a growth ence of Russia and the Wagner Group in of anti-French sentiment the region, saying, “Where In West Africa, in the region, especially as Wagner’s been present, bad French and US forces have [the New Cold War] is things inevitably follow.” failed to hold back the terror expressed as a dispute Blinken’s comments attacks. Russian imperi- between the US’s ally, aren’t wrong, but they’re alism, backed by figures France, re-asserting incomplete. The Wagner in the West African ruling its influence in its Group has countless masclass, have leaned on these former colonies. sacres under its belt. Howanti-French sentiments to ever, they’re only able to give their own reactionary politics an anti- make inroads in regions where “bad things” imperialist sheen. have already been happening. Niger’s own Coup leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso democratic credentials prior to the coup have since kicked out French and UN troops. were dubious. The government has routinely Mali has brought in the Wagner Group and harassed and jailed journalists and opposiboth countries have leaned more on Russian tion activists. Tchiani himself was trained by imperialism. Tchiani’s coup in Niger follows the US military. a similar pattern. Russian and Chinese imperialism won’t The failure of French and US imperialism improve things. But Biden, Macron, and in the region, and the corresponding growth Bazoum can’t be relied on to genuinely of Russian imperialism, poses the possibility defend democracy. Nor will military interof a regional war breaking out. vention by ECOWAS. The working class in Niger, West Africa, and internationally, has the power to defend Biden’s Democracy Hypocrisy democracy, fight imperialism (regardless of The Biden administration has branded which bloc) and build a socialist society that its foreign policy as building a “coalition of can meet people’s needs and deprive jihadist democracies.” This sought to reframe the groups of their base of support. J New Cold War as a conflict between democracy and authoritarianism. The Biden across administration has taken the
Right-wing Presidential candidate Javier Milei arrives to vote in the Argentinian primary in Buenos Aires on August 13.
So what will it really take to stop the rightwing backlash and build a left capable of winning transformative change? As we’ve called for in Brazil, the US, and other places where right populists have emerged among broad polarization, the front line of the fight against Milei will not be in the halls of power. It must be in the streets in the form of a mass movement, independent from the political establishment, that has democratic structures and puts forward its own demands. The FIT-U (Left and Workers Front), Argentina’s anti-capitalist electoral coalition, has put forward a strong slate of demands around fighting austerity, including increasing wages and pensions, the creation of one million new jobs through the reduction of the workday to six hours, a public works plan focused on the creation of affordable homes, and the nationalization of key strategic sectors under worker control, all of which are demands a mass movement should take up. These have the ability to cut
Milei’s base of support among those alienated by the political establishment, and simultaneously lay the basis to confront neoliberal policies. In order to win people away from Milei, they will need to fight for an anti-austerity movement that links up directly with the feminist and environmental movements, and insist that a unified struggle and cohesive platform of social and economic demands are unequivocally necessary to fight the right. Any movement against Milei must, for example, fight for the passage of new, strengthened abortion rights legislation that makes no concessions to the Catholic Church, and explicitly link it to the demand for high-quality, free healthcare for all, funded by taxing the rich and corporations. This means that the FIT-U’s task is to become more than just an electoral engine. The left must root itself directly in the feminist and environmental movements as well as in the trade unions, where they will need to take up the fight against representatives of the establishment and wage a struggle for militant, worker-led struggle based on a unified political program. What this will entail is the building of a new mass party based in the working class and mass movements of the oppressed, which can present a challenge in the streets and the government to both the populist right and the establishment center. This is the type of struggle that can challenge the right not only in this election cycle in Argentina, but all over the globe as capitalism’s decay produces more and more reactionary figures whose aim is to block what we really need: a fight against the entire capitalist system and for an international socialist alternative! J
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C U LT U R E
FILTERED REALITY RIANNA KUENZI, MADISON
Meeting ideal beauty standards has gone from an unattainable goal to an accessible digital “reality” for anyone with $4 in the App Store. How did we get here?
e i b r a B
A SOCIALIST FILM REVIEW
ANDI CUNY, BOSTON Growing up in the 2000s meant you were inundated with headlines telling you how to look slimmer, hide your body and natural features, and change yourself to be more “desirable.” In the early social media days, Snapchat filters were fun, designed by users, and you could easily tell when they were being used. However, by the time FaceTune was released in 2013, the goal of filters and editing apps being pushed by malevolent companies was no longer to use technology for fun, but to alter reality. The expectation to meet ideal beauty standards went from an unachievable goal to an accessible (digital) “reality” for anyone with $4 in the AppStore.
An Altered Reality With new photo editing apps that could smooth skin, whiten teeth, and cinch waists at the click of a button, individuals–and companies–could easily create a different, digital “reality”, without viewers knowing. Increasingly, companies began using this technology to change people’s bodies–without their consent. Dozens of celebrities have come forward over the last decade to accuse photographers, magazines, brands, and other companies of publishing significantly altered photos, even when they explicitly asked for the photos to be unedited. This isn’t just the case for celebrities, though. In 2015, a viral Reddit post detailed how a yearbook photo company had significantly edited senior photos for an all-girls high school, with some even claiming that their face structure had been altered in the photos. As technology has advanced, the problem has only gotten worse. TikTok has received widespread backlash for a variety of filters that look so real you can’t even tell when they are being used, a problem that is exacerbated by the fact that they started adding “beauty” filters to videos automatically without telling users in 2021.
Destroying Young People’s SelfImage This has had devastating consequences for young people’s body image and mental health. The Dove Self-Esteem project found in 2020 that 85% of girls in the UK downloaded a filter or used an app to change how they look in photos by age 13. According to the Harvard Business Review, “virtually modifying appearance can provoke anxiety,
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body dysmorphia, and sometimes even motivate people to seek cosmetic surgery.” They found significant risks associated with the use of Augmented Reality (AR) tools, which lead to a phenomenon they call the “augmented self” – a self-image that has been influenced by AR. The further ones’ initial sense of self is from this augmented self, the worse the consequences are for users’ self-esteem, with those with higher levels of confidence experiencing the most devastating effects. AR tools have devastating consequences for users, so how did we get here?
Low Self-Esteem Is Lucrative The beauty industry is highly profitable, extending far beyond cosmetics into dieting and supplements, apparel, plastic surgery, and now, social media giants. Each of these industries are profiting massively off of making people feel ugly, and benefit greatly from exacerbating people’s insecurities. The new players in the game, social media and photo editing companies, must not be underestimated. FaceTune raked in over $80 million in just the last year, and TikTok, over the same period, made $25 billion in profits. In the face of this, an NIH study found that a quarter of people experiencing body dysmorphic disorder have attempted suicide. The un-reality promoted by these apps not only recalibrate what is considered desirable, but reinforce sexist and racist Western beauty standards that generate billions in profits for the 1%. These parasitic mega-corporations will never willingly give up their biggest money-maker: body insecurity. In order to prevent any further damage to mental health, social media companies should be run by workers, with genuine input by users. There is a lot that is positive about the technology behind these apps, and they allow young people to express themselves and hone new creative skills. But right now, these technologies are being used to destroy our self esteem for profit. Taking social media companies into democratic public ownership by workers and users would not only pay for itself, as many, such as Facebook’s parent company, Meta, have made the Fortune 500, but would put a halt to the literally unrealistic standards that a profit motive under capitalism incentivizes. J
Barbie is setting box office records, and it’s easy to see why. A pink-imbued fantasy land that runs on girl power and nostalgia is a welcome relief from the grind of daily life. And deeper than that, the movie’s messages of female autonomy and the deep contradictions that the patriarchal system imposes on women are connecting with many, many people. In the movie, actress America Ferrera, playing a human woman who travels to Barbieland, delivers a now-viral monologue that makes key points about the impossible, conflicting pressures women face. “You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean... You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people,” she says. Her speech wakes some of the Barbies up to the unfair and nonsensical nature of the patriarchy, which the Kens are attempting to implement in Barbieland. They spread the message to the other Barbies, magically snapping them out of a trance that’s been imposed on them by the Kens. In Barbie, repeating a few sentences from that same monologue is enough to break the Barbies free from their mental chains. But, many women and young people already know painfully well how destructive and limiting our sexist society is for people of all genders. Knowing sexism exists is not enough; we need a real strategy to fight oppression and the system of capitalism that creates it. It’s certainly entertaining to watch the Barbies throw out snappy lines that rhetorically deflate the Kens’ sexist egos. But the tactic of defeating the patriarchy with clever arguments against annoying men draws out the central problem with Barbie: it points to the wrong enemy. Is the patriarchy when a man forces you to watch The Godfather? Or when he mansplains investing to you? Or, more accurately, are the most pressing manifestations of sexism problems like endemic violence against women and girls? Or women losing the right to their own bodies and being forced to be pregnant through abortion bans? Or the fact that there are women who do want to get pregnant and have children but can’t afford to do so due to wage inequality and sky-high housing costs? Or who have to square a deep desire for children
with the prospect of being the automatic “primary parent” and doing the majority of the child rearing themselves because of societal expectations around which parent does most of the household labor? Barbie ignores the systemic nature of women’s oppression and flattens it down to individual men’s actions. The patriarchy is a system that is deeply entwined with capitalism itself. Yes, individual men perpetuate daily sexism and violence experienced by women and queer people. But who really benefits, and who has the most serious interest in keeping social divisions going? The capitalist ruling class, which uses sexism to keep approximately half the world’s population oppressed along gender lines – while also using other identities to the same means – as a way to divide the working class and keep us from using our collective power to fight for more. Barbie wraps up with a cheerful ending, with the Barbies and Kens having learned an important lesson about gender equality. But in the real Real World, how can we seriously fight for an end to sexist oppression and true liberation for women? Barbie definitely gets one thing right: fighting sexism in our society requires collective action. In the 1970s, a radical wing of the mass movement for women’s liberation called for free abortion on demand, free 24-hour community-controlled childcare and equal pay for equal work. That movement scared the establishment enough to force a centrist Supreme Court to hand down Roe v. Wade. Now, we need a similar movement to fight for true liberation. This movement must spread into the streets with mass protests and – crucially – into our workplaces, with mass labor actions like strikes to fight for change. As members of the working class, withholding our labor is the best weapon in our arsenal. We need mass, democratic organizations of workers and students to provide the structure for this movement. A summer blockbuster can’t fix everything that’s wrong with our sexist, unequitable world. But, it’s certainly a positive step that such a popular movie is grappling with these topics. Barbie opens the door to renewed conversations about gender equality and how sexist norms unfairly restrict everyone, regardless of gender. Yes, the patriarchy sucks. It’s silly on a good day, dangerous on a bad one. And we know that it’s not enough just to say it. We have to band together and fight for a world without it. J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
SCIENCE
Or The Same Old Capitalist Wars?
Shocking New Revelations? CHRIS GRAY, MINNEAPOLIS
It was a surreal Congressional hearing. A highly decorated Air Force intelligence officer and two trained Navy fighter pilots flatly declared, under oath, that they believed the US government was in possession of an alien spacecraft and pilots. However, they couldn’t prove it, which is why they called on Congress to investigate. Congressional intervention was needed, according to the whistleblowers, because these events indicate that either the US military is technologically behind but doesn’t want to admit it, or that the military already possesses secret super-advanced technology that appears alien, but can’t be trusted to use it without oversight. While the highlights of the testimony were extraterrestrial, the overarching emphasis was on themes related to the New Cold War here on Earth. It was taken for granted that the stuff you see in the sky represents a threat. However, most people were more interested in the implications of alien contact for humanity, not the threat of inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China. Voyager 1 is the furthest man-made object from the Earth, it’s been traveling through space since 1977, and it’s only just left the heliosphere that envelops our solar system. In order to have reached Earth, alien society would have to be orders of magnitude more advanced than us and likely had to overcome all sorts of obstacles including possibly war and environmental crisis. Maybe they could help us do the same.
Modern War Shapes UFO Sightings Modern interest in alien life developed, like the science fiction genre as a whole, alongside the rapid technological advances of the Industrial Revolution. Aliens were often imagined within the boundaries of capitalism – for example, having the need to enslave or colonize whole races and planets. Military commanders and politicians were thought of as handling alien contact, not scientists. Likewise, the rapid technological advances, and broad public anxieties, during the wars of the 20th century shaped what people started seeing in the skies. In 1938, an obscure radio show aired a fake news broadcast, created by Orson Welles, narrating an alien invasion. Despite numerous commercial breaks and despite the story being based on a 40-year-old science fiction book War of the Worlds, out of
the 6 million people who tuned There were 12,000 reported in, 1.7 million believed they UFO sightings between 1947 were listening to real news. and 1967 in the US. Many of This reflected the fact that milthese happened close to mililions of people were grappling tary bases, and military comwith a major turning point in manders leaned into UFO history: less than a year after stories to hide the existence the broadcast, Nazi Germany of top-secret aircraft. By now invaded Poland, and World the CIA admits that half of The rapid War II began. all UFO sightings during the technological UFO sightings spiked late 1950s and through the during WWII, mainly among 1960s were documented, advances – and soldiers who fought on airmanned reconnaissance planes at night. Radar was flights of the SR-71 and broad public still primitive, and identiU2 spy planes. fying targets meant endNow, anxiety around anxieties – during lessly scanning for flashes the New Cold War between of light in the darkness. the US and China is findthe wars of the The term “foo fighters” ing expression in today’s 20th century shaped emerged to describe the UFO sightings. Polls plentiful UFOs reported show the highest fears what people started by Allied aircraft pilots of nuclear war and in that period. One offiimminent attack since seeing in the skies. cial report of a night the Cold War. The combat patrol in 1944 American political and describes “eight to 10 media establishment bright orange lights was captivated by the off the left wing… sudden appearance flying through the air of a Chinese spy balNow, the New Cold War at high speed… Later loon over Montana. between the US and China they appeared farther Once they tuned away. The display their radars into is finding expression in continued for several looking for more balminutes and then loons, they seemed today’s UFO sightings. disappeared.” to see them everyThen, during the where (and started Cold War, it wasn’t shooting misjust soldiers anysiles at them). more: UFO sightTaiwan scramings exploded bled its fighter among the general jets to intercept public. This was unknown aircraft a testament to 2,972 times in the effective2020. In this ness of Red context, it’s no Scare warsurprise that mongering UFO sightings propaganda: are up again. in 1951, Just as polls showed spikes in 50% of Amermilitary activicans reported ity lead to worry about spike s a sudden air in UFO attack on sighttheir comings, Witnesses sworn in at munity, the evothe July Congressional hearing on UFOs. including lution 44% of of UFOs people in t h e m rural areas. selve s An unidentified spherical
reflect the weapons of the time. World War 2 “foo fighters” looked like bursts of tracer rounds, and backfiring propeller engines. Metallic flying saucers seen during the Cold War were the size and shape of top secret, unconventionally shaped aircraft like the SR-71. Similarly, the wingless, engineless, “Tic Tac” objects described to Congress at the July hearings resemble the drones being shot down in the Taiwan Strait and deployed hundreds of miles behind enemy lines in the Ukraine War. Some of these new drones are designed to make seemingly impossible maneuvers in tight formations. Others can travel submerged before surfacing and flying away, like what was described by a Navy pilot off the coast of California.
“The Truth Is Out There” It says a lot about the priorities of both corporate parties that a major bipartisan effort has focused on whether or not UFOs piloted by aliens are a national security threat. Polls show 87% of Americans don’t think so. If we are being visited by alien life from distant stars, it means aliens either have already built technology that lies beyond our current conception of physics (particularly the idea that nothing can travel faster than light), or it’s alien technology from many years ago, and the society that sent it has been advancing ever since. The implicit understanding that an advanced society represents a threat to US imperialism is shown in the polls that 57% of Americans believe the US government is withholding information about alien life. It also shows how little confidence people have in capitalist institutions to deal with problems. In 1964, 77% of Americans believed the government did the right thing “most of the time” – today only 20% do. Capitalist rule rests on the assertion that there is no alternative way to organize a civilization, and this would give any politician an incentive to try to cover up first contact. The notion that humans can do better, but we are being held back, is correct. It just doesn’t need aliens or vast conspiracies to be true. Humankind already possesses the knowledge to solve issues like climate change, world hunger, and poverty; the problem is that doing so requires removing the biggest obstacle that stands in our way – a capitalist class whose profits rest on keeping things the way they are. The true potential for humankind can only start to be explored in a socialist society, where our resources and ingenuity are focused democratically for the betterment of all. J
object as shown in a video released by NASA in May.
SEPTEMBER 2023
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e h t join ists l a i c o s 200 students walk out S O C I A L I S T A LT E R N AT I V E I N A C T I O N
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for trans rights Socialist Alternative in Philadelphia helped 200 students organize a high school walkout for trans rights this April. High school student and Socialist Alternative member Nox Tan led this effort at his school alongside several classmates. Over 200 students participated and were joined by several of their teachers! Socialist Alternative worked with students to build for the walkout and supported them afterward in coming up with an escalation plan to carry the momentum forward.
Seattle becomes first major city in US to ban caste discrimination In Seattle, a movement led by Socialist Alternative city councilmember Kshama Sawant won the first-in-the-nation ban on caste discrimination. The movement included those born into oppressed castes alongside Muslims, Sikhs, socialists, union workers, dominant-caste Hindus, and working people both white and non-white. The strength and unity of the rank-and-file movement was what made it possible for Seattle to become the first city in the nation to ban caste-based discrimination – and the first globally outside South Asia.
Socialist feminists win first abortion sanctuary legislation in a trigger ban state
Organizing for a fair contract at UPS Workers Strike Back, an initiative of Socialist Alternative, has organized local meetings alongside rank-and-file UPS workers to discuss the contract fight and how workers can win more. Our supporters have been out tabling at UPS facilities – where we have gained a warm welcome from workers looking for clarity on what is actually in this confusing and poorly-drafted contract. Workers Strike Back firmly supported the fight for a “NO” vote and for renewed action to win the contract that UPS workers, and all workers, deserve.
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A grassroots movement in Dane County WI won immediate protections for abortion rights. The abortion sanctuary legislation came out of a campaign led by Socialist Alternative. The victory came after months of organizing and provides protections for people in Dane County seeking abortions, preventing County agencies from working with the state of Wisconsin to enforce the ban by threatening to take away funding from any city in Dane County that does.
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
Lessons From the Fight for Rent Control in Seattle VARUN BELUR, SEATTLE As in most American cities, working people in Seattle face an unprecedented housing affordability crisis. The city’s rents nearly doubled between 2010 and 2020, and the situation became even more acute following the COVID pandemic and economic shock. Corporate landlords, massive property management companies, and rapacious Wall Street firms like Blackrock and Vanguard have made hundreds of billions of dollars for the wealthiest at the expense of working-class renters in cities like Seattle. On Tuesday, August 1, over 150 union members, renters, and working people packed Seattle City Hall to demand that Democrats address skyrocketing rents and take action against real estate profits by voting YES on socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s rent control legislation. What happened at that City Council meeting offered both a sobering reminder of the need for working and young people to break from the Democratic Party, and at the same time, a glimpse into the historic potential to build a fightback. Progressive unions that represent thousands of working-class renters mobilized their members to the meeting, and members of many more unions across trades and sectors were present as well. Hundreds of working-class renters, young people, and union members spoke up throughout the months-long struggle in strong support of Sawant’s legislation, which would’ve capped rent increases at the rate of inflation for all Seattle renters. Over 13,000 people signed petitions since 2019 in support of Sawant’s bill. A 2020 statewide poll found that 71% of Washington’s likely voters support rent control. Despite all this, every single Democrat on the Council, with the exception of one, voted against rent control. This includes self-proclaimed “progressives” and “labor Democrats.” Seattle’s most
prominent progressive Democrat Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda didn’t even bother to show up for the vote, even though it would’ve meant just a few minutes over a Zoom call! The Seattle City Council has eight Democrats and one independent socialist.
We Fight In The Open If it was up to the Democratic Party, Sawant’s rent control legislation would have never even been brought to a vote in the first place. It’s much easier for Democrats to kill progressive legislation behind closed doors: that’s why, in the absence of working-class fightback and an elected representative like Sawant, this is the modus operandi of Democrats at all levels of government. Democrats in the Washington state legislature have upheld a statewide ban on rent control for 42 years, despite holding a commanding majority and control of the Governor’s mansion for decades. Socialist Alternative and Councilmember Sawant, Workers Strike Back, progressive union members, and community organizations fought for our rent control bill to be brought to a vote. We know that when we fight, we can win. And even if we couldn’t win rent control, we wanted to expose the so-called progressive Democrats on the City Council for what they are: stooges for Wall Street.
Joe Biden’s “Renters’ Bill Of Rights” And Ours Earlier this year, President Joe Biden unveiled his “blueprint for a renters’ bill of rights” and in July, announced that his administration is “taking action to protect renters.” In reality, Biden’s “action” amounts to a set of toothless recommendations for real estate corporations and minor tweaks to public housing rules that do little to actually benefit working-class renters. Let’s compare the renters’ rights record of the most powerful politician
and Democrat in the country to that of a solitary fighting socialist on the Seattle City Council. In nearly a decade on the City Council, Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative have demonstrated how to effectively win historic working-class victories by building powerful movements of rank-and-file working people to force the hand of Democrats. We have won unparalleled renters’ rights, including anti-slumlord laws that ban rent increases in poorly-maintained buildings, a ban on school-year evictions for students, teachers and their families, a six-month notice for all rent increases, full funding for eviction defense for all renters, and, most recently, a $10 monthly cap on late rent fees. We have made historic progress on a real renters’ bill of rights.
Cornel West 2024 And The Power Of Independent, Working-Class Politics It’s no coincidence that these working-class victories were led by the only independently-elected Marxist in the country. The Democratic party is controlled by the wealthy, and “progressive” Democrats play an insidious role by attempting to confuse working people. They will sometimes espouse progressive positions in rhetoric, but primarily serve the ruling class by gatekeeping against struggles and attempting to co-opt any grassroots efforts. It’s telling that the only politician to endorse Sawant’s rent control legislation was Cornel West, who is running an independent left campaign for president in 2024. In his endorsement for Sawant’s legislation, West wrote: “If the Seattle City Council – with eight out of nine members being Democrats – allows this bill to fail, the Democratic Party will have made it clear once again that they stand with wealthy corporations, not working people and the most marginalized.” J
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SOCIALIST we outnumber the billionaires – so why are they still in charge?
ROB ROOKE, BAY AREA When the five billionaires aboard the OceanGate submersible went missing in June, the internet exploded with memes. These were shared by millions of low-paid and young workers. The arrogance of the rich finally backfired on them. America is highly polarized these days. The rich and poor divide has never been greater. Half of Americans now own less than 1% of America’s entire wealth. Young people are generally locked out of any kind of prosperity. They overwhelmingly work the worst-paid jobs that trap them into insecure housing and healthcare. Their education is either another unaffordable ongoing cost, or a debt they will drag around behind them for decades. So, is it an accident that young people are getting screwed? Or is that the plan? Amazon has a million employees. If you are one of those mostly-young workers, you absolutely know that Jeff Bezos’ $150 billion wealth comes directly from your labor. Uber, fast food companies, Big Pharma – they’re all getting rich at the expense of their workforce. And then there’s the climate criminals of Big Oil who are not just extracting fossil fuels but robbing the world of its sustainability. Capitalism, big business, the billionaire class – whatever you call it – is organized robbery. And its extraction addiction only gets worse. The US is also long in decline. Despite the proliferation of shiny new tech like phone apps and driverless cars, for decades the US offshored its manufacturing and was more inclined toward stripping its own assets than turning around the economy.
How Do They Get Away With It? The outcome of presidential elections is not really what decides the power in society. Like any 1970s political thriller worth its salt, the real decisions are made behind the scenes in the corporate boardrooms and
the vast network of families of the 1%. The important decisions are decided in the exclusive country clubs and dinner parties, where Ivy Leaguers and billionaires, and top judges and paid senators gather. When a crisis threatens their profits they will meet it: within two days of the Silicon Valley Bank run in March, the heads of the big banks, the Federal Reserve, and the White House got together on a Sunday morning to decide how the government should respond. As Marx said, the government under capitalism acts like a managing committee of the ruling class, always holding up and defending the values of the profit-based system.
Education, Media, Politics, And Prison Probably around ten thousand people constitute America’s ruling class. But the working class numbers in the hundreds of millions. This is problematic for capitalism. So their paid-for politicians are continuously engaged in a battle to prevent the working class from becoming an obstacle to exploitation-as-usual. Over centuries they have learned to effectively divide the majority: they use racism, sexism, queerphobia, and antiimmigrant rhetoric to their advantage. And, if they are not trying to divide us, they are trying to disorient or demoralize us. Beyond its two big political parties, each funded by big business, capitalism rules ideologically through many institutions in society. They use the corporate mass media and their university system to protect and promote their ideas. Prestigious universities educate the elite and disseminate the latest, palatable version of capitalist ideology all the way down to the lower rungs of the state education system. And if there are gaps in this huge ideological network, then the ruling class funds NGOs to fill those voids. The media, the education system and the NGOs serve two goals. Firstly, to justify their system, but also to bring idealists under
ALTERNATIVE ISSUE #96 l SEPTEMBER 2023
its wing, so as to drown any notion of real, fundamental change in false hopes for incremental change within the system. As poverty rises, individuals are increasingly forced to break laws that prevent them from a meal or shelter. Then the brutal side of the ruling class’ power comes into play. The policeman, with his pretense of serving everyone, steps in to incarcerate the nonviolent drug offender while the billionaires who promoted Oxycontin get fined a tiny percent of their profits. Freedom, to those at the top, means their right to exploit and use their money as they wish. Democracy, to the extent it exists, is a temporary concession to the majority to legitimize the system. When the working class rises up, you can hear the ruling class arguing for change, but this is only to save their own skins. Like any abuser, they want to appear that they have learnt their lesson.
The Rise Of The Working Class Every right working people have won is a result of mass movements or the threat of mass movements. After the widest series of demonstrations ever in US history, following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the elites made all sorts of promises that this time they would change. Three years later, the police were never defunded, and corporate America is firing their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion board members. Democracy is impossible without equality. Most friend circles are a kind of informal democracy where no individual gets to make all the decisions. Its foundation is that everyone’s equality is respected. However, once you go to enter the workforce that disappears. However much they paint over it with corporate language about “teamwork” and a “big family,” the workplace is a dictatorship of the bosses. US society is like one huge workplace, but with more sophisticated mechanisms to try
to make us feel like it’s not a dictatorship. Every four years big business offers us two candidates to oversee the nightmare.
Can The Ruling Class Be Overthrown? The real power in society, however, shouldn’t be measured by money. The real power is the source of all new value: labor. It is labor that delivers a package or builds a house or flips a burger. Only labor adds value to make products. Inversely, only labor can stop all production. This is our power if we choose to use it. The working class is the only class in society with the means – our role in keeping the system running – and common interests necessary to drive historical progress forward. Unlike the bosses, the working class is organically collective and naturally democratic. We are the 99%. Only on the basis of the working class taking over society can big business’ destructive dictatorship be ended and a genuinely democratic society be established. History has taught us many times that the ruling class can be overthrown, but only by a class as well-organized as they are. While sometimes they make stupid mistakes, like cramming into poorly-designed submarines, as a whole the capitalist class has been able to maintain its system of exploitation and oppression for hundreds of years, with important exceptions. When they are threatened, they mobilize all their institutions, the police, the courts, the media, their ideology, to try to save their system. This is the place of organizations like Socialist Alternative. We fight for the selforganization of the working class and for that class to take power, as peacefully as possible, away from Big Oil, Big Tech, and the billionaires. The ruling elite is incapable of solving society’s problems, and they should have been dumped many years ago. J