There is one working-class in contemporary US techno-economic-political social relations of production and power. The working-class is comprised of the vast majority in this country which, having no means of production of their own, are compelled to sell labour power as commodities to capitalists for money in order to purchase means of subsistence. Capitalists possess the basic means of production, distribution and finance. Workers as wage laborers are in an economical power-dependence relationship expressed as political dominance-subordinate condition in social life.
The most powerful, economically dominant class is the most powerful, politically dominant class. Corresponding to this material and political ontology the dominant ideas in American culture are shaped in dominant class interests. The possessing classes and political forces own and control the means of socio-ideological production that dominate the 'mainstream' press and media. Building a labor party requires ruthless criticism of all media propaganda. This is the praxis by means of which the American working class can win the battle for democracy to legislate transferring the social productive forces from the private possession of capitalists to public property of Society. State power for the working class is the goal and means.
The Democratic Party and the Republican Party represent capitalist class interests. Both are financially and socially based in Capital and the capitalist class and govern on its behalf. Profits of capital and wages of labor are inversely proportional . So the class interests of the working-class and the class interests of the capitalist classes are mutually exclusive. Sublation. A dialectic process. The organisation of workers into a class and party. Individual social class consciousness by praxis of class struggle. Class struggle is a political struggle. We need a working class party, a Labor Party, financially based on trade unions and socially in the working class as a whole. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/laborpartypraxis/info
Political class struggle by the working class presupposes an independent political party engaged in class-conscious struggle for state power. Political class struggle requires an active union and energetic American Labor Party that competes in the electoral arena against the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party. America's Communist Party U.S.A (CPUSA) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are not trade union based labor parties. DSA members in fact are members of the Democratic Party. In this connection, the CPUSA, in every election season, come out to indirectly support Democratic Party candidates by demonising Republican Party candidates viz., asserting "Republicans are fascists", thus engendering the notion that the Democratic Party candidates are the positive alternative i.e. 'lesser evil'.
The American Labor Party must be financially based and accountable to the trade unions, and socially based in the class as a whole. This requires nothing short of internal revolutions in the trade unions -- throwing out of office the Democratic and Republican parties' representatives in the trade unions, and replacing these with union representatives and officers that are committed to building the American Labor Party. This is the praxis -- the practical-critical, revolutionizing activity by the self-organization of the working class. The focus of this praxis is a working-class strategy toward winning the battle of democracy to become the majority in the House of Representatives. There the Labor Party will engage in class war against the Democratic/Republican parties that constitute the Senate, Presidency, Judiciary, and their Constitution.
The struggle for democracy is necessarily the struggle for a Labor Party majority in the House of Representatives comprised of workers __ industrial workers, agricultural workers, service workers, salaried medical professionals, sanitation workers, etc. including members of oppressed ethnic and gender communities who overwhelmingly are working class. This working class majority in the House of Representatives will Legislate:
Legislate the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Law;
Restrict the Labor Relations Board to working-class members;
Place the Civil Rights Commissions in the oppressed ethnic and gender communities;
Legislate a Living Wage equal to the Median Income;
Reduce the working-day from eight to six hours a day in order to re-employ the sectors that capital has displaced and tossed out as a surplus population;
Legislating the expropriation of all plants and factories and agribusinesses that refuse to implement these changes or move abroad;
Legislate free health care facilities for everyone in America regardless of national origin;
Legislate the free movement of workers in the NAFTA countries and formation of cross border trade unions;
Legislate free public education with open enrollment from kindergarten through graduate school, open to all who live in America without regard to race, ethnicity or national origin;
Legislate the funding of these programs with a progressive income tax, capital gains tax, and inheritance tax written into the tax code, so that capitalists who try to worm out of these taxes by loopholes will go to prison, and the expropriation of any and all capitalist businesses that refuse to continue to invest in those taxed companies or seek to relocate.
Labor Party Praxis will be in the trade union movement and the Labor Party fighting for these perspectives. We urge all to form or join unions, join the Labor Party, and participate on these e-group discussions. This list is independent of the Labor Party and is unmoderated. Join us!
The working class making demands of our own!
The same process of natural history has produced human beings and human culture through it's creation of productive technology. The proletariat class, wherever it exists, has a natural relationship to the productive forces, as work is a natural human activity. The proletariat, wherever we exist today, are a product of advances in technology, and the capitalist mode of appropriation (method of distribution): the market. In the market economy, the working classes are, having no means of production of their own, reduced to selling their labour-power in order to obtain the wherewithal to live, money to purchase means of subsistence (food,clothing,shelter), constitutes the proletariat. Proletarians of all countries participate in the same historical process. The proletariat is a cosmopolitan class and thus it's class and class interests are present in every country of the world today. The economic interests of the working class are the same in all countries. The working class should be organized as they actually exist, internationally. We demand internationalist trade unions.
The cosmopolitan nature of capitalist industrial production has created technological economic conditions in which human beings must produce socially on a global scale to continue to exist as a species. The productive process is a socially necessary activity. Every living thing interacts with it's natural environment, produces, changing and consuming things provided by nature, soas to survive and multiply. The same for human beings. So long as we have existed, we have produced, socially. Today we produce socially on an international scale. Unlike any other species though, the means of human social reproduction, the production process, are controlled by a tiny sub-group/class. Private control of means of social reproduction is not necessary. Not all working class have access to productive technology. All humans can and should benefit from modern industrial mass-production technology. We therefore demand a full technology transfer to equalise the productivity of human labour to the highest available, in all branches of production, everywhere, globally.
Any worker, anywhere in the world today, given state-of-the-art technology, in any branch of industry or agriculture, mining, etc., can produce great surpluses of value/products over-and-above the daily needs of the producers themselves. Any worker can produce enough value in one week to sustain the worker and family for fifty weeks for example. We thus demand full employment; that the unemployed/under-employed working class be reabsorbed back into the workforce by reducing the workweek of those employed, spread the workweek equally among all, with a living wage for all.
The capitalist class of all capitalist countries enter into trade agreements among themselves so that their particular commodities (raw materials, semi-finished/finished products,etc.) can move without restriction across national borders, in search of markets. We demand that the working class as well should have the same ability to move, unrestricted, across national boundries in search of the highest price (wage) with our unique commodity, labour-power, which has the unique quality of being the only commodity on the market that produces a surplus of value, greater than its market value, upon its consumption.
The problems human society faces today are not caused by 'human nature' or defective psychology. Competitive, entrepreneurial, hierarchical states, war and environmentally destructive behavior characteristic of modern society is not genetically inherited human behavior. Such behavior is neither universal nor is it eternal, but result from the way contemporary society organises social production, appropriation, and distribution. Capitalist commodity production by wage labor and its commoditization of nature is anarchistic. Capital must accumulate and its mode of production and appropriation must expand. Rainforests are cut down so capitalist ranchers can expand production, transforming 'jungle land' into grazing pastures to feed increasing numbers of cattle to slaughter and sell as commodities (beef). Waters are over fished so that seafood companies can sell more commodities (fish). The market is by definition anarchistic. There is no universal standard for planning. Yet these very productive forces are worked by social labor at a global scale. Thus corresponding to global social labor today's working classes have the natural capacity to take hold of these productive forces, end capital and wage labor relations of production, and displace anarchy of commodity production by global planning of both production and distribution by placing Science, technology and natural resources at the disposal of human reason.
A Goodbye to Comrade Joseph 'Lil Joe' Johnson
September 3, 2021
David Moros
What Friedrich Engels wrote about Karl Marx, that he "stood higher, saw further, and took a wider and a quicker view than all the rest of us", I would say, also applied to Comrade Joseph 'Lil Joe' Johnson.
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Multidimensional Class Struggles and the US Civil War A Brief Analysis by Li'l Joe from Compton
January 12, 2020The United States is an association of socio-economic classes and class dominated States. There are several conflicting classes of capitalists based on what's produced or extracted by exploited producing and extraction classes. Different methods of production or extraction are based on what's produced or extracted and what means of production or extraction used determine the kind of labour that is used in relation to the destination of what's produced.
Different classes and property formations are distinguished by conflicting methods of production and forms of appropriation of labour and mode of exploitation of producing classes. The United States is a Federal Republic of States united under one bureaucratic-military central government. The American Civil War was a War between States that resulted from the conflict of Northern industrial capitalist commodity production by wage labour, represented politically by the newly formed Republican Party, against capitalist commodity production by chattel labour in the southern states. It was a war between America's ruling classes with workers and yeomen farmers killing each other.
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On the False Conception of "Over-Population" Especially in Relation to Abrupt Climate Disruption
David Moros - January 8, 2020The wrong headed and reactionary idea about human "over-population" was first conceived by Thomas Malthus and has been perpetuated up until today although it has been shown false as the application of science and technologies to agriculture have resulted in great leaps in the social productivity of agricultural labour and food production. In 1798 (when Malthus published his An Essay on the principle of Population), the human population was approximately 1 billion. Malthus hypothesized that human population grows geometrically while the growth of the food supply is arithmetic; that our increasing numbers would eventually outstrip our ability to feed such numbers. Today, human population is approximately 7.5 billion! If 1 billion was "over-population" in 1800 then the 7.5 billion population today (7 times larger) should have been impossible according to Malthus's hypothesis.
The economic necessity for constant compound capital growth is at the root of the current anthropogenic climate disruptions, ecological decimation and species extinctions.
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On The Impeachment
by Li'l Joe
December 19, 2019Mass media is deliberately not addressing this "teachable moment" to explain the economical class basis and political interests that shaped the world outlook (weltansuung) of the economically dominant, politically powerful ruling classes. The class interests of the so-called Founding Fathers in framing the Constitution of the United States was to mandate a federal bureaucratic-military State to protect their property and power concentrated in the Senate and federal courts, including the Supreme Court. The rule of law is tyranny by the few rather than "tyranny by the mob". (See Charles Beard link to "An Economic Interpretation of the United States")
Concerning impeachment as a Constitutional function of the House of Representatives. The Democratic Party's majority voted in favor of impeachment of the President. It is nothing but an allegation. At most it is an indictment similar in function to a civilian Grand Jury. It merely recommends prosecution. It is not a trial. The trial is held in the Senate.
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On the UK Election
An Analysis by Li'l Joe
December 16, 2019Better fewer but better. The results of this election demonstrate the power of media ruling class propaganda flooding homes with nationalist identity ideology and the lack of class consciousness on the part of the majority of British workers. However, it is nonetheless perhaps of greater significance that the unions and working class communities were were so impressed by Corbyn's fight against the Blairites so-called Parliamentary Labour Party ousting brought more than a hundred thousand new members into the Corbyn led trade union working class based Labour Party. 183,658 to be exact. More important than the number of seats in Parliament is that ten million voters did vote Labour Party. This is important because those voters know who Jeremy Corbyn is and what he stands for: a Corbyn led Labour Party based Parliament fighting for socialist transition from capitalism to socialism: by placing the government and Parliament into the hands of workers. In this connection the Labour Party did "win". By winning 10,000,000 voters in support of the Labour Party Manifesto. Ideas matter.
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"What's Going On?" "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"
By Lil Joe Johnson, October 15, 2019"Remember that the rest of the postmodern-enlightened world understands that words associated together comprise PERSPECTIVES and not descriptors of some discovered "objective reality." Another way to look at this is that symptom clusters are like stars comprising a constellation. The constellation (say the "big dipper") only "exists" from our point of view on earth. From another point of view far from our solar system the abstraction "big dipper no longer exists. We have to get beyond our entrenched perspective. 'What seems to be an identifiable objective reality - a problem - is only a product of descriptions, the product of social construction'. (p. 73) http://www.psychosocial.com/IJPR_10/Social_Construction_of_MI_and_Implications_for_Recovery_Walker.html
The role or power of political demagogues and televangelists, to a large extent, is attributable to capitalist class media monopoly partisanship and the use of their print and electronic mass media as an instrument, a tool for communication and manipulation. Script reading actors, performers and preachers are, by means of television, present in citizens homes engendering illusory ideas about "reality".
Tools are invented and used in the production and distribution of means of production and consumption. Scientists use tools, instruments by means of which to investigate the universe and understand Nature.
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David Moros
October 1, 2019"We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth." Greta Thunberg, 23 September 2019 United Nations: Climate Action Summit
Capitalist ruling classes, their political lackeys and media are attacking Greta Thunberg.
Perhaps the capitalist ruling classes of the world sense the global proletariat is awakening to the fact that capitalism and capitalist relations are at the root of our collective problem and that this exploitative and destructive mode and relations of social production that these ruling classes impose, promote, oversee, and control must be challenged đť’‚đť’Źđť’… abolished. Otherwise, based on current climatic and ecological trends, we face an anthropogenic sixth major mass extinction.
Just as one cannot intuit the laws of physics or chemistry of our universe simply by looking at it, one cannot intuit the laws of motion of human society. Greta was right: "talk about ... money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth", using money to make more money as the foundation of a society's economy has become problematic to the point of extinction. The ad hominem attacks on her age are red herrings, and defense of her based on her age, race or gender only indulge in these particular red herrings.
"All entities move and nothing remains still." - Heraclitus
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Politics and Religious Violence
by Joseph Johnson Li'l Joe
March, 2019Comrades, the analysis of the present wave of deliberately targeted slaughter of attendees at Churches, Synagogues and Mosques is the subject of this presentation. Targeted attacks are presented in official press and media outlets as acts by deranged individuals influenced by white supremacist demagoguery. What these targeted shootings have in common however are that they are religious targets of religious fanatics and fascists.
Government declared wars use religious and patriotic ideology to manipulate people to enact violence in secular wars. This violence is culturally sanctioned by religious and political authorities. These mass slaughters of people are deemed "legitimate" and "legal".
Governments alone have authority to declare wars. Wars of all against all is illegal. Individuals do not have the right to kill each other. Religious and patriotic (racial) violence by individuals attacking people of different national origin / immigrants / racial and religious groups, is differentiated from ruling class religio-political violence [e.g. crusades, jidads].
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Revolution and Dialectics:
Hegel, Marx and Martin Luther King Jr.
February 2019, By Lil Joe
Martin Luther King declared:
"I'm not talking about communism. What I'm talking about is far beyond communism. My inspiration didn't come from Karl Marx; my inspiration didn't come from Engels; my inspiration didn't come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn't come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago, and I saw that maybe Marx didn't follow Hegel enough. He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called 'dialectical materialism.' I have to reject that. What I'm saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both." (Martin Luther King) http://ownershipeconomy.net/2015/08/30/martin-luther-king-called-for-a-higher-synthesis/
Marx never used the phrase "dialectical materialism". Dialectics of nature and the reasoning movement of Logos were first written of and articulated by and among the ancient Ionian materialists. In particular Heraclitus' dialectics of nature. In the modern era dialectics of nature was also recognised, independently, by the peasant German mystic Jakob Bohme (See Hegel's History of Philosophy Part Three, Section B). Hegel wrote of Heraclitus and Haraclitean dialectics as follows:
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Revolution and the Battle of Ideas
by Li'l Joe
January 13, 2019I.
Political and ideological struggle by the working classes and toiling masses is a cosmopolitan struggle to overthrow the social dominance of Capital and displace the capitalist class as ruling class. The working class must change the economy, capture state power and use it to crush capitalist resistance. Worker's power is required to carry through the expropriation of the expropriators to its logical and historical conclusion. Marxist materialist analysis recognises the need for a global revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat as the muscle to accomplish the economic emancipation of the working classes by the working class itself. Workers must capture state power and use it to crush capitalist resistance.
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Imperialist USA's Regime Change Attempt in Syria Fails
by Li'l Joe and David Moros 12/21/20182018 December 21 --Today, Friday December 21 -- A little over three years after our initial statement critiquing the US bombing of Syria and the US government beginning the arming and financing of mercenaries to overthrow the Syrian government, the US government is calling it quits. What we think and what we know. War is the continuation of politics by other [i.e. violent] means. The Syrian government remains as it initially existed with Bashar al-Assad continuing as its President. It is obvious therefore that the political objective -- "regime change" -- has not been achieved.
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"Our Revolution", "Justice Democrats", "DSA" and the Democratic Party
by Li'l Joe and David Moros - 11/24/2018
The Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party is at its core an experienced cadre of well-connected operatives of well paid professional operatives and financiers inextricably fused and mutually dependent. The Party cannot exist as a disciplined cadre of operatives that function through elected federal, state and district offices without hundreds of millions (billions) of dollars of finance.
"Our Revolution", "Justice Democrats", "DSA" are Democratic Party candidates who show off on the Internet as opponents of the "establishment" Democrats, also called "corporate" Democrats. During the Party's primaries the existing members of congress were denounced for accepting funding from "corporate" PAC and/or Super PAC campaign contributions. Establishment/Corporate Democrats were accused of selling out constituents to instead serve the "corporate interests" of the campaign donor. As if that were the only monetary connection between capitalist finance and the Party of which they are political representatives. The Democratic Party is itself a political organ of capital through year round financing. The Party, i.e. the bureaucratic apparatus is financed by capitalist's to pay for its day to day operations. Financing is an investment the same as investments in financial institutions, industry, agriculture or in distribution by big merchant enterprise; in other words, capitalist's want returns from those political investments. Finance, industrial, agriculture and distribution capitalist's expect returns in the form of interest and profits.
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"Black Panther" Analysis of blockbuster Marvel Comics/Disney movie by Li'l Joe 4/14/2018
"Black Panther", the blockbuster Marvel Comics/Disney movie culminates an entire series of fantasies where human social and political relations and activities in those relations take place in worlds separate and apart from the actual empirical universe where the laws of physics do not apply __ at any rate they are set aside or transcended by the Superhero the story presents in movie form using advances in technology enabling "special effects" of visual art and political messaging.
The earliest form of communication by drawing or painting originated in cave drawings. These pictorials were forms of artistic communication. Aesthetics has always been a form of communication. Although the cave paintings are claimed to have been religious in nature there is no evidence this was the artist's motivation. Such bare assertion is a non sequitur because its not self-evident. It does not follow that the drawings and paintings had a religious significance. Nomadic hunters-gatherers were constantly moving, following prey from one location to the next or from one generation to the next. The cave drawings contained practical information left by previous hunters/gatherers that had inhabited the cave.
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Bernie Sanders' Democratic Party vis-a-vis the Labour Party's Jeremy Corbyn
June 11, 2017So-called political analysts/commentators, especially in the USA - like David Doel on The Rational National and Jimmy Dore on The Jimmy Dore Show - have compared Jeremy Corbyn (Labour Party in Great Britain) to Bernie Sanders (Democratic Party in the USA). Comparing the two is like comparing the proverbial apple to the proverbial orange. We all know that an apple is not an orange is not a strawberry, and so on and so forth. First, it would normally take longer than what I have in terms of attention-span allowance to communicate what are the differences in an election for a district seat in Parliament as a representative of the Labour Party in Great Britain, and an election to win the Democratic Party nomination for presidential candidate in the USA, respectively. But, bear with me - just as you bear with the David Doel's and the Jimmy Dore's - and allow at least 5 to 7 minutes of reading for me to discuss the differences. It's very important to understand this!!
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The Intercept as Clinton Camp Partisan
June 6, 2017
David Moros
Both the "leaked" document and this article from The Intercept present no tangible evidence of anything except perhaps that the NSA has no empirical data linking Russia colluding with Wikileaks and the Trump camp hacking DNC servers and such to sink Hillary's boat.
The Intercept is portrayed or presented by "progressives" for example as a trustworthy information source. But, The Intercept folks who wrote and edited this piece accept, up front, what they should be gettin' to the bottom of. Namely, what does this document reveal about Russia interceding into U.S.'s presidential election campaign or the continuing hysterical campaign by the Clinton camp to whip up war with Russia?
Nothin'.
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A Critique of "Wages of Rebellion The Moral Imperative of Revolt" Chris Hedges Nation Books, 2015.
February 1, 2017
by Lil Joe and David Moros
NOTE: Throughout this article critiques are made concerning statements and assertions made by Chris Hedges from the writings of early 19th century revolutionary communist activists Blanqui and Bakunin. The critical comments on these statements are not attacks on these revolutionaries but in refutation of Hedges who lifted it from the writings of the two respected revolutionaries to use against communist revolution and it's advocacy by Marx, and Marxism. It is made necessary because of the scandalous appeal to authority fallacy by means of which Hedges appropriate and/or "summarize" statements from their writings. Hedges is no revolutionary. To be so in an industrially advanced society, as is contemporary America, is to be a communist. He isn't even a 'rebel', as defined by Albert Camus, whom he also 'quotes' as an 'authority'. Appeal to authority is not the only fallacious 'method' used by Hedges behind which he hides. But, also, as will become obvious to the reader, his usage of straw man fallacies - even out right lies!
Concerning the title. We can leave concerns about morality to religion or philosophy, to the realm of pure thought, but, as for revolutions in human society, here on planet Earth, they are a product of physical conditions, technological innovation and human relationships, matter in motion, the origin of which, had/have nothing whatsoever historically to do with an idea, Idealism or "morals". Revolutionary concepts in human minds are a manifestation of social conditions that were/are becoming unbearable for producing classes. Just as a butterfly might flutter evasively to avoid being consumed by a predator, an exploited group of humans will naturally try to get out from under, to overcome if not completely eliminate exploitative social relations altogether, consciously. Revolts and revolutions are based in material conditions, a product of discernible, explicable social conditions, not in "Moral Imperative". continue...
In Defense of Marxism Against bourgeois Identity Politics of American Exceptionalism
- A Response to Lawrence Ware's Eulogy on Cedric Robinson and Black Marxism
by Lil Joe
July 2016
Reverend Lawrence Ware is a Christian preacher and functioning member of the Democratic Party. It is on this basis that his attacks on Marxism are considered. It has nothing to do with Ware's self-designation of himself as 'a new black man in exile. This is oxymoronic since the first homo sapiens on Earth were black Africans of the Bushman genetic heritage. This makes 'black folk' the oldest people on earth.
On the basis of scientific paleontology, paleoanthropology and genetic research we are all Africans. But, let us be clear: Homo sapiens sapiens is but the sole surviving hominin species. As a Bible believing Baptist preacher Ware and the rest of his racialist elk (both those who call themselves blacks as well as those who call themselves 'white', believe 'man' to have been a 'special creation'. They also believe the mass of humanity, with the exception of Noah and his family, were wiped out by their angry God, Jehovah. Leaving Noah's three sons to be founders of human races - Ham, the Black man, Shem the Asiatic and Japeth the 'white man'. This myth has been refuted by empirical data based sciences. Humanity isn't some specially created species in the image of some mythical god 6,000 years ago. There was no flood and races don't exist. Hominins are species with the common ancestor that seperated from their/our Chimpanzee relative 6-7 million years ago. We are the last species of the genus homo. The Ape family doesn't necessarily originate in Africa. Dryopithecines in either Africa or Eurasia could have given rise to early Hominidae. continue...
On "White skin privilege", ruling class ideology and careerism
January, 2016
By David MorosThe ruling class perpetuates privilege politics to hide class politics, confusing the working class as to where the real power lies in the U.S. today.
The ruling class, their media and propagandists are glad to propagate the "white supremacy", "white privilege" lie because it helps their cause by confusing and dividing the working class along racial lines. If the working class are fighting amongst themselves, so much the better for the ruling class. For the ruling class, racial conflict is absolutely preferable to class conflict. However, biology (genetics), anthropology, empirical science has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that "race", at least in the case of homo sapiens sapiens, does not exist.
"Thus, given current scientific data, biological races do not exist among modern humans today, and they have never existed in the past. Given such clear scientific evidence as this and the research data of so many other biologists, anthropologists, and geneticists that demonstrate the nonexistence of biological races among humans, how can the “myth” of human races still persist?" see: The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea - By Robert Wald Sussman excerrt @ http://www.newsweek.com/there-no-such-thing-race-283123The theory of "white skin privilege" that progressives constantly use as a tool or concept to analyse contemporary United States society gives the impression that the white proletariat has the power to force the capitalist to give them a job, as opposed to black, brown or immigrant workers who can't. Actually though, these social powers reside exclusively with the capitalist.
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United Front
(previously submitted to blackpowerencyclopedia)
by Lil Joe
December, 2015
United Front is a political association of workers and organisations fighting to achieve economic and political objectives. This concept is based upon, and results from the level of techno-economic development of material productive forces that determine corresponding methods of distribution of labour and its products. Physical means of production determine social relations of production and corresponding methods of appropriation. United fronts are alliances of workers and organisations of workers predicated upon the recognition that as wage workers they face a common threat from a common enemy -- the capitalist class and its political parties and states.
There are reactionary forces in the world, Capitalists that bring suffering and misery to the world. Communist revolutionaries are the opposite force. The force that is truly for the good. Organisations of workers unit in common economic and class political interests to achieve common economic and political ends. In this connection material means and political ends are identical: that is to say, theory of objectives determine method. Worker's class consciousness is awareness of universal ends and means by which individual interests are sublated and consciously subsumed: Hic Rhodus! hic salta! Class struggle itself is the determination of worker's class- consciousness for itself of what is to be done? Consciousness of worker's universal position as wage workers having interests suggests strategies that negate the internecine strife of worker against worker. Such strife is engendered by capitalist commodification of labour power and competition for jobs and income. This accounts for racial and sectarian strife between workers. Labour unions union puts an end to the competition of workers all against all! The increasing unity of workers unions into federations and federations into labour congresses produce class parties that bring together the entire working class by common opposition to the capitalist class as a class, and the capitalist mode of production itself. Here is the rose, dance here!
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Statement on the U.S. Military Invasion of Syria
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by Lil Joe and David Moros
November 2, 2015
Concerning US Obama Administration sending 50 "trainers", "advisors" to Syria. These "50" military troops of the US army were not invited into the country by the Syrian government. "Boots on the ground" = US soldiers on the ground. These are not just empty boots lyin' on the ground in Syria but there's a US soldier's feet fillin' those boots. The US military has been overtly bombing Syrian territory for over a year now. Technically the US government has thus invaded Syria. If Hezbollah sent 50 "advisors" or "trainers" into Israel or North Korea sent the same into South Korea this would be defined by the United States government as an invasion of Israel or South Korea. U.S. troops are joining mercenary 'rebels' to fight against the Syrian government and overthrow it. This military invasion to achieve this objective if achieved by definition would constitute conquest. Consider the outrage from, not just the U.S. and Israeli governments but the U.N. 'Security Council' were it the case of Iran bombing targets in Israeli national territory and sending troops into Gaza, West Bank or Goland Heights to join Hamas, PA or Hezbollah forces moving into Israeli territory to fight Israeli government forces with the objective being the overthrow of the Israeli government!
Politics of the State and Religion
by Li'l Joe
August, 2015
Wilhelm Reich: "What has to be explained is not the fact that the man who is hungry steals or the fact that the man who is exploited strikes, but why the majority of those who are hungry don't steal and why the majority of those who are exploited don't strike."
Critias: "There was a time when the life of men was unordered, bestial and the slave of force, when there was no reward for the virtuous and no punishment for the wicked. Then, I think, men devised retributory laws, in order that Justice might be dictator and have arrogance as its slave, and if anyone sinned, he was punished. Then, when the laws forbade them to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear (of the gods) for mortals, that there might be some means of frightening the wicked, even if they do anything or say or think it in secret.
Seneca: Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
Einstein: For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior."
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Medieval peripatetic philosopher and Christian theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas presented the State as an embodiment of a metaphysics in which the use of State coercion by violence to enforce instrumental institutions of class rule is asserted to have been to prohibit "sin". It is in the interests of the property owning classes to forge Commandments attributed to Yahweh declaring 'Thou shalt not kill'. Thus, faking 'divine authority' of Executives, police, judges and soldiers to arrest, beat, decapitate, jail and kill those among the dispossessed who rise up in armed struggle to take from the possessing classes. These rebels are denounced as law violators and criminals. They are also presented in religious language to be 'bad guys', 'evil doers' and 'sinners'.
Iran Nuclear Deal. Race Card v Holocaust Card Red Herring
August, 2015
By Lil Joe
The race card is a politico-ideological invention of ruling class politicians and demagogues used to justify genocidal conquests, as in North America the European invaders killing off indigenous Americans. The same with Brits in Australia regarding Aborigines. This is also what's happening in Palestine __ Zionist occupation of Palestine -- mass murder by bombing campaigns, mass arrests and police intimidation of native Palestinians by European and American settler-colonists. This is universal colonial conquest behavior and not about being 'Jews'. The American slave holding landed aristocrats also used political and ideological demagogues. Race ideology in the U.S. was used to justify chattel slavery.
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On the the first Republican Party "debate" of 2015
August, 2015This wasn't a debate. A political debate, in the classic sense, is the presentation of evidenced based argument. Evidenced based argument we call empirical ratiocination. A political argument is the presentation of one's political program for a Party platform vis-a-vis the political program and Party platform presented by and argued for by others. Such presentations and challenges by others arguing contrary positions are the content of political debate.
What we saw on last Thursdays FOX news platform was at best mutual recrimination and argumentum ad hominem wherein the individual was presenting himself as the issue for discourse, to which his 'ideas' were but amplifications showing how wonderful he is vis-a-vis how loathsome were his opponents.
A real political debate, even in U.S. political history e.g. see the Lincoln v Douglas Debates, is one in which individual candidates represent Party positions on issues. Debaters challenge each other on the issues to respond to arguments with arguments rather than folksy and self-praising autobiographical bragging, anecdotes and ad hominems.
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Ecological devastation and wealth concentration
by David Moros
Jan. 20, 2015Global climate change is not about the weather in one's immediate vicinity as the evening news in the U.S. seems to imply by running a segment on weather happening somewhere in the U.S. most every night.
Methane is seeping from arctic tundra and at the ocean floor off the coast of North America as well as from millions of abandoned gas and oil wells dotted across the United States.
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A brief critical response to the text of PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S IMMIGRATION ADDRESS NOVEMBER 20, 2014
by David Moros
23, November 2014
Any worker, anywhere in the world today, given state-of-the-art technology, in any branch of industry or agriculture, mining, etc., can produce great surpluses of value/products over-and-above the daily needs of the producers themselves. Any worker can produce enough value in one week to sustain the worker and family for fifty weeks for example. We thus demand full employment; that the unemployed/under-employed working class be reabsorbed back into the workforce by reducing the workweek of those employed, spread the workweek equally among all, with a living wage for all.
The capitalist class of all capitalist countries enter into trade agreements among themselves so that their particular commodities (raw materials, semi-finished/finished products, etc.) can move without restriction across national borders, in search of markets. We demand that the working class as well should have the same ability to move, unrestricted, across national boundaries in search of the highest price (wage) with our unique commodity, labour-power. http://laborpartypraxis.org/
President Obama's speech said nothing about the civil wars that the US ruling class waged in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the militarization of the area including Honduras causing the mass migrations of its victims to the U.S. There moreover is no mention of the capitalist "free" trade agreements that proletarianized the countryside, like NAFTA and Mexico. Instead, we are subjected to the rhetoric/lie that folk are drawn to America because its the land of opportunity and of plenty, 'freedom' etc.
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A critique of "Sustainability, astrobiology combine to illuminate future of Earth's technological civilization" based on "Sustainabilty and the astrobiological perspective: framing human futures in a planetary context" (see below)
David Moros
November 15, 2014
"We have no idea how long a technological civilization like our own can last, says University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank. "Is it 200 years, 500 years or 50,000 years? Answering this question is at the root of all our concerns about the sustainability of human society."
This analysis is highly speculative with nothing new to contribute neither to explaining the social roots of humanity's present plight nor to articulating a lasting solution to this plight. This piece is a red herring at best and vulgar science at worst.
The authors of this piece are ignorant of or are deliberately evading the question of who is responsible for how society is currently organised. Who decides what gets produced, how the social production process is organised and how the social product is distributed.
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Thursday, September 4, 2014
President Obama: A Labor Day Farce
By Lil JoeNote: Farce): AFL_CIO bureaucracy's invitation to the political commander and military chief of the armed forces of the State, the political and military representatives of the class enemy, Obama, to present a demagogic keynote address at festival [sic!/sick!] is a scandalous betrayal of the American -- indeed of the global -- working classes and toiling masses. States are the armed defenders of the appropriating and possessing classes. It's coercive powers include soldiers, police, prisons used to jail by courts or kill on the streets or in execution chambers working class rebels and revolutionaries -- e.g. Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, H. Rap Brown and many others; see "Social Movement Prisoners".
The State is the armed faction of the political ruling class. U.S. history of class struggle is full of armed strike breaking and anti-labour legislation that show the prime function of the State is to keep producing classes economically subordinate and the poor and oppressed peoples socially obedient. This, in the script, is referred to as to ensure domestic Tranquility. Tumultuous rebellions as in cases of Daniel Shays and Nat Turner tend to upset the ruling classes so suppression is written into the Constitution.
No man can serve two masters. He will serve the one and suppress the other. Obama cannot serve the interests of both labour and capital. The Democrats and Republicans represent different factions of the same class. They are the political power of capital. Since Obama is a Democrat and its representative as commander and chief of the armed State it is there that he serves the interests of capital. This is in opposition to the interests of the working class and the poor.
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August, 2014
Protesters Say Ferguson Feels Like Gaza
Frederick Peterson presents himself as the official or spokesperson for Congressional Defense Fellow (whoever or whatever that's supposed to be), inadvertently proving African American working class and poor have more in common with the working class and poor of Palestine than they do with U.S. imperialism and Zionism. The same ideological language he uses to endorse Zionist slaughter of the innocent in Palestine is used to endorse vicious repression of working class and inner city poor African Americans -- in this country's ghetto slums.
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July 14, 2014
Comment on Zionist aggression and Palestinian Resistance
by Lil Joe
Comment: I am in complete solidarity with and supporter of Palestinian ARMED RESISTENCE. But, I do so as a Marxist revolutionary in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. Every communist has long grasp the truth -- political power grows out the barrel of guns, tanks and bombs. Politics is warfare without bloodshed and warfare is politics with bloodshed. That is to say, in other words, 'warfare is the continuation of politics by other means, i.e. violence.
Where Marx acknowledged the weapon of criticism become criticism by weapons, it is in the sense of class warfare targeting the ruling classes and their armed representatives, the State. The ruling classes are overthrown and the State destroyed. Marxists, however, including Leninists and Trotskyists, the Russian Red Guard and Red Army, the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army, the Viet Minh and National Liberation Front, the Cuban guerrilla army, African liberation movements of Guinea-Bissau (PAICG), Mozambique (FRELIMO), and Angola (MPLA), South Africa's ANC Umkhonto We Sizwe, the Philippine New People's Army, Nicaragua's Sandinistas and El Salvador's FMLN, one must include here African American's Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, as a matter of principle and revolutionary theory and ethic do not attack civilians. Rather, by rigorous empirical analysis of economic and political data the enemy is identified -- the fight is against the capitalist classes and States. The bureaucratic-military State are the armed forces we are fighting. The police and army are the armed representatives of the landed aristocracy and capitalist ruling classes.
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July, 2014
The Scientific Method vs. William Lane Craig's Baseless Assertions
by Lil Joe
William Lane Craig: Now at one level it seems to me indisputable that there’s evidence for God. To say that there’s evidence for some hypothesis is just to say that that hypothesis is more probable given certain facts than it would have been without them. That is to say, there is evidence for some hypothesis H if the probability of H is greater on the evidence and background information than on the background information alone. That is to say
Pr (H | E & B) > Pr (H | B).
H = hypothesis
E = evidence
B = background information
L'il Joe's comment: Where's the beef? Where is the empirical data? Where is the evidence!? Pr (H | E & B) > Pr (H | B) isn't a presentation of empirical data. H is just asserted. It lacks physical data upon which to predicate an evidenced based hypothesis. An hypothesis is evolved from empirical procedures and must be empirically demonstrated. To say that there’s evidence for some hypothesis presupposes empirical evidence for any hypothesis has been presented already.
Isaac Newton distinguished a scientific method for arriving at the truth of an empirical theory by rejecting speculative guess work. Concerning gravity he wrote: "I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction." -- Isaac Newton continue...
June 29, 2014
Lawrance Krauss and William Lane Craig Debate the Origin and Evolution of the Universe
Critical overview by Lil Joe
At the Town Hall in Sydney Australia on Tuesday, August 13, 2013 Lawrance Krauss and William Lane Craig debated the origin and evolution of the universe. Krauss is a scientist. Craig is a theologian.
I am interested in this debate because of the importance of the scientific work currently undertaken by Lawrence Krauss in astrophysics and cosmology; but, not only that. I am also a socialist obligated to understand and oppose bourgeois ideology. In this case bourgeois ideology articulated by William Craig. I am presenting a materialist defense of empirical ratiocination represented by Lawrence Krauss against metaphysical idealism and Biblical mythology represented by William Lane Craig. At conclusion of my polemic is video of the Craig v Krauss debate.
William Lane Craig - Opening Speech
Good evening! I'm delighted and honored to have the opportunity this evening to discuss with you the question, "Is There Evidence for God?" And I'm privileged to be doing this with such an eminent scientist as Dr. Krauss. I hope that the debate tonight will be both enlightening as well as entertaining.L'il Joe's comment: Setting the stage. Enlightening?
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May 18, 2014
UN Ukraine report shows double standards in attempt to whitewash Kiev's actions - Russia
by Lil Joe JohnsonWhat the fuck did the Russian government expect? The UN presents itself as an 'international community' of 'free and equal' nations; but, as Orwell noted, "some are more equal than others". This is true in each nation: its respective country is owned by the classes in possession of the nation's productive forces, thus even in bourgeois democracy the economically dominate class dominate its politics. Still, the finance capitalists and industrial millionaires the same as propertyless workers are each permitted but one vote.
Just the same national governments are political lackeys of the most powerful, politically dominate class. The nation's ruling classes work together to determine politics in every nation-state - 'democratic' or otherwise. Political State's representatives of each nation's ruling classes select from its ranks an individual to promote its 'national' interests at the UN. This is the same with Russia, as well as the United States, Britain and France.
The UN has from the very beginning been an instrument of U.S and European imperialisms geopolitical domination. It is not an accident that a political representative from U.S. militarily occupied 'South' Korea [rather than from politically independent 'North' Korea] has been selected [to serve the interests of U.S. imperialism] as the General Secretary of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
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October 6, 2013
Dysfunctional Government and Revolution
by Lil Joe Johnson and David MorosCommodities are products of capital dominated labour processes. The present global crisis of capitalist commodity production on the basis of wage labour is manifesting a political crisis, which deepens the more this mode of production's relations of production, the buying and selling of labour power as commodities and the value objectified in the commodity form of products cannot be realised because commodities cannot be sold. The laws of motion of capitalist commodity production by wage labour breakdown.
Societies based on economic relations of production in which the mode of production and corresponding system of appropriation of labour power and of its products has in each case been a system dominated by the classes in possession of the productive forces, thus appropriating classes, has been so many forms of exploitation of the producing classes by these parasitic appropriating classes. The myths of vampires in which landed aristocracy represented e.g. by Count Dracula descending from his castle-fortress to suck the blood of peasants and artisans and shop-keepers correspond in myth to real economic relations of classes constituting the feudal era. The vampire myth has its basis in the parasitic economic system of feudal economic relations characteristic of parasitic relations of production that constituent fiefdoms, manorial, and corvee forms of appropriation and exploitation of the producing classes.
The world-market systems that engendered the rise to economic and subsequently to political dominance of capital enabled bourgeois displacements of landed aristocrats and kings. Bourgeois-democracy, whether guised under the cloak of monarchy in England's Parliament revolutions or the republican Constituent Assembly in the French Revolution the capitalist classes are the dominate appropriating classes.
The same as the bourgeois citizens used parliaments to politically displaced the lords, aristocrats and kings - the English House of Commons Parliament to overthrow the House of Lords and Kingships, the American colonials used the Continental Congress to win Independence from the British Empire and the French Third Estate to establish Constituent Assembly to overthrow and displace the First and Second Estates, so too can the American working class use the House of Representatives to overthrow and displace the capitalist partisan Senate, Presidency and Judiciary.
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July, 2013
THERE IS NO SUCH A THING AS 'JUSTICE'
Responding to the Democrats response to the 'not guilty verdict' in the State of Florida vs George Zimmerman murder trial.
from Lil JoeSince the not guilty verdict ending the Zimmerman murder trial there has been a show of righteous indignation and profound sadness statements from professional Negroes on television. Their job is to be Black men or women, they have PhD's in being Black, but they are all of them propagandists for capitalism and the State. The chief Negro spokesperson for MSNBC is the Democratic Party's attack dog - Reverend Al Sharpton. The Republican Party also has its attack dog, the FOX News racist Bill O'Reilly. Conflicts between MSNBC and FOX, and between 'the left' and 'the right' on the programs on these Cable Networks, is between the propagandists of the Democratic Party v the propagandists of the Republican Party.
Working classes and poor living in squalor in innerity poverty - Black and Chicano youth - have no representatives in the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Pigmentation and gender is not a political basis for representation. It is in essence a class war although it appears in the form of a racial conflict. The State and News media represent class interests. Capitalist media is for show - the unessential masquerading as essential. "Black" MSNBC 'progressive' Democrats get paid and represent those who pay them to pretend to speak on behalf of working class and innercity Black and Chicano youth.
Following the not guilty verdict by an all white jury, several members of which were CEOs and exploiters of labour power, this verdict is defended by the MSNBC Democrats, especially by Melissa Harris-Peery. Their language uphold the myth of legal justice in class society. In reality all these MSNBC Negro professional Negroes are millionaires. Thus they engage in legal mumbo jumbo details of what the law says and doesn't say thus that the jury had no choice but to vote not guilty. They argue that 'the system work' and the verdict is 'because' the prosecution didn't put up a good case 'beyond reasonable doubt' for the State.
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October 21, 2012
American exceptionalism ideology and culture of the 'American dream' must be fought!
by Lil Joe
Just as in Nature, one species lives on another; so, in Society, classes do the same. - Dennis Diderot
European history has for thousands of years been a history of class struggles.
The existence of class formations correspond to relations of production and forms of appropriation and distribution of labour power and its products. Class dominante forms of appropriation of surplus labour of the producing classes has occurred through history in corresponding relations of production and to these relations corresponding systems of domination and political repression with corresponding ideological expressions and justifications.
For instance the appropriation of the surplus produce resulting from surplus slave labour e.g. based on relations of production in which the slaves are chattel -owned by landed aristocracies or the State- is justified by the slave-owners and their ideological representatives - priests or philosophers as being the will of god [the Christian Bible and priests, preachers and political powers], caste [the ancient Egypt and the Hindu caste system], or 'by nature' [Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson]. It is thereby presented as justified that the slave owners own the producing classes and thus directly the products of slave labour.
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April 2012
Capitalism in crisis and tasks of a Labor Party government
by Lil Joe
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The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. The present global crisis of capitalist commodity production on the basis of wage labour is manifesting a political crisis, which deepens the more this mode of production's relations of production, the buying and selling of labour power as commodities and the commodity form of products of the valorising labour processes is no longer viable. It ceases to be viable once the contradictions between the labour process and the appropriation of valorised products as commodities cannot be sold, market glutting corresponding to customers thrown out the appropriation market because there isn't sufficient money to purchase enough commodities that enable capitalists to realise profits and reproduce in the labour processes. The metamorphosis of capital ceases to morph into incremental capital when circulation fails, thus the crisis. It is the breakdown of the system itself.
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Classes are predicated upon relations of production that correspond to a given mode of appropriation that characterise the mode of production.In the economic history of the United States, in agricultural capitalist commodity production on the basis of chattel slavery in the Southern region, for instance, this labouring class was appropriated by capitalists, by purchase.
The slave-owners buys slaves, that is purchase of human beings as things the same as he purchase other beasts of burden, e.g. mules. As such as a living productive force it is constant capital. But, constant capital, while it is containing of value, in itself, it doesn’t create any new value. Valorisation is the work of human beings whose economic value correspond to the cost-price of means of subsistence, which in this case is bought and supplied by the slave’s owner. As human labour power, though it is not a commodity sold by free agents, yet in possession of capitalists put to work in commodity production it is variable capital as well: the labour process is valorisation process of exploitation.Similarly, capitalist commodity production by wage labour. But, as the modes of appropriation are different so are the corresponding relations of production characteristic of capitalist commodity production by wage labour contrast to capitalist commodity production by slave labour.There were no unemployment among slaves and no unemployment insurance, worthless slaves were either put to pasture for breeding or eliminated as used up useless as trash.
There is no such thing as "overpopulation". Competitive capitalist commodity production on the basis of wage labour result in an historical absurdity of surplus population resulting from excess commodities.
A reply to Chris Hedges' 'The Cancer in Occupy'
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February 14, 2012
By David
"I don't have a problem with escalating tactics to some sort of militant resistance if it is appropriate morally, strategically and tactically," Jensen continued. "This is true if one is going to pick up a sign, a rock or a gun. But you need to have thought it through."
This quote, if I am to agree with it, is with regard to clearly stating the morality of our movements objectives, and the strategies and tactics required to achieve the goal.
Before any consideration of whether the Movement is to use signs, rocks, guns, tanks, bombs, etc, there must be an Internet discussion of all concerned, debate in the Assembly and polemics in the press and media supportive of the 99% Movement.
We must collectively state, debate and polemic by democratic procedures to achieve a majority consensus regarding specifically what is the objective of our Movement: the occupy Movement. This process will bring out every person's opinion and consider his or her agenda by being subjected to debate and criticism.
If what is meant by the ethical basis for our movement, the winning of the objective we are fighting to achieve, it is determined by those objectives, our strategy determines the tactics used for the implementing of this strategy and its moral directives and limits. The Revolutionaries are not terrorists.
A Polemical Analysis of Sabrina Tavernise's 'Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension'
By Lil Joe, February 3, 2012
The more accurate survey question to be put to American workers is whether their perceptions of class in "American society" correspond to actual empirical content of relations of production in the capitalist mode of production and appropriation. That is whether they understand the opposition as between the capitalist class as appropriator and exploiter of wage labor, thus the owners and management of the labor process, and thus, corresponding to this mode of appropriation the relation of workers as economically dominated class - an exploited working class.
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The fact is that American capitalists think and act as capitalists, not 'Americans'. It has been for centuries in the United State self-evident that capitalists have always understood their economic and political interests as class interests - capitalist class interests. Their economic interests are represented by political parties and by print and electronic media.
Democrat and Republican politicians and propagandists refer to capitalists as products of 'American exceptionalism' being 'successful businessmen', 'entrepreneurs' and euphemistically call them, implicitly altruistic, 'job creators'. Yes, capitalists are job creators, insomuch as it requires living labor power to exploit in order to make profits. This consequence of jobs is ignored by Democrats and Republicans and omitted by opinion poll questions.
January 6, 2012
Discussion of Herder/ Hegel, Marx and nationalism, romanticism of mysticism.
by, Lil Joe
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The reason that I am responding in detail to Gary's article is because of his claim that his regurgitation of nationalist lies are attacks on what he calls Marxist methodologies being outdated and displaced by bourgeois nationalism as new, "disinterested reason" of the Enlightenment, and as in contrast to a failed ideal of international working class solidarity of cosmopolitan class interests as human interests.
Gary has mixed together several items from distinct categories of logic, history, philosophy and actual anthropology, either naively and inadvertently or deliberately confusing and deceptive, is asserting pure patriarchal-monogamy ideology in that what is implicit in this presentation of the concept of the family isn"t anthropological systems of consanguinity but he is speaking specifically of ideological political patriarchal monarchy but mixing it up with philosophical advocacies as an ideal, then mixing this with natural sexual pairing a natural location of love, then connecting Desmond Morris' concept of family unit and male protector confusing it with the philosophical concept of the State as protection, which he wrongly associates as a natural extension from family to nation.
I am not criticizing people who choose to get married. What I am responding to is the American political conservative ideology of family and nationalism and oppose it being forced on others. I am not opposed to marriage, nor suggesting or opposing any system of consanguinity, patrilineal nor matrilineal, polyandry, polygamy, monogamy, adultery, faithfulness, promiscuity, abstinence, celibacy, homogamy, heterogamy or whatever is up to the consenting individuals involved. I am not opposed to anyone having, believing in or proselytizing their religious beliefs regarding marriage. I'm opposed to anyone presenting myths and especially lies as assertions of facts: here reactionary rhetoric declaring the lie that "the family is the cornerstone of the nation" - by which is of course meant patriarchal monogamous family as "natural", and denouncing those who choose otherwise as contrary to "nature".
December 24, 2011
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Discussing working class struggle, reform and revolution
By Lil Joe
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Lil Joe Reply: The theoretical issues you raise regarding the practical struggles of the working class and of revolution are critical questions.
The various answers to the issues of strategy and tactics for workers, depends upon what one understands to be 'the capitalist system' and what is its present condition, as these are the basis from which the proletarian praxis will compel the political movement, of workers as working class by the dynamic of class struggle toward proletarian revolution.
Every class struggle is a political struggle, a struggle to maintain or ascertain political -i.e. State - power by means of which to govern in its class' interests. In this connection, and in direct response to your challenging question of how do the American workers become a class for itself; an independent, self conscious movement of the working class in a struggle for political power.
I wrote 'workers as working class' in this connection because of the deliberate lack of class-consciousness on the part of wage workers in America is internalised bourgeois patriotic consciousness, owing to socialisation and mis-education in the American bourgeois ideologically saturated culture.
Workers in the US do not regard themselves as a working class, with class interests that are directly opposed to and irreconcilable with capitalist class interests.
Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011
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Analysis of Occupy L.A. work
By Dave Moros
Occupy Wall Street [OWS] that morphed into the national [indeed: international Occupy Movement!] has succeeded at capturing the interest and imagination of the American working class as a class on the move for the first time since the Congress of Industrial Organization [CIO] strike waves in response to the collapse of the market economy [the so-called Great Depression] engendered labor defensive and offensive activities in the formation and fight for recognition of industrial mass unions and the Unemployed Labor League which fought foreclosures and evictions of workers from their homes. Similar conditions exist today - the so-called "Great Recession" and labor unions have been responding as in Wisconsin's mass protests and demonstrations against government attacks on unions, and similarly in Ohio where unions took to the Initiative process to repeal such attacks while the 0ccupy Movement is encouraging and actively putting people back into their foreclosed upon homes.
Working class youth, whether 'college students' or not, unemployed or not, have been inspired by the Wisconsin mass movement, occupations, if you will. But, that is not all. The Wisconsin union uprising itself occured and its methods inspired by the occupation of Tahrir Square demonstrations and labor union general strikes in Egypt, and these part and parcel of general strike waves in Italy, Greece and Spain.
The Occupy Movement in the U.S. has been based on working class interests, notwithstanding the ambigous formulation of working class interests in American cultural lingo as the interests of the 'Ninety-nine percent'. Their statement of grievences included critiques of the capitalist class government of the Democrats and Republicans and especially noted that (OWS that is):
"They [capitalists and their political lackeys] have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions."
"They [capitalists and their political lackeys] determine economic policy..."
November 23, 2011
Commentary on the Black Riders Liberation Party
By Lil Joe
The Bloods and Crips being politicised by the global economic crisis of capitalist commodity production, expressed in the collapsing of this capitalist mode of appropriation -commerce - is resulting in mass unemployment in South Central and Watts, workers in these communities having lost jobs and income and welfare reform of the 90s throwing single moms off public assistance, working people residing in these neighborhoods having their cars repossessed and home foreclosures tossing them to sleep in the cold in the streets. These experiences are shared by working class populations and communities all over the world, including all over the United States.
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Critique by means of Commentary:
"The Black Riders Liberation Party was formed in 1996 by Bloods and Crips in the California Youth Authority college class. As their political understanding grew, especially being inside the belly of the beast, they were able to see up close how oppressive and dehumanizing the system of capitalism is. They recognized the need for a political party that was going to represent the needs and desires of Black people inside Amerikkka's neocolonies, the ghettoes."
Comment:
The Black Riders Liberation Party [BRLP] philosophically and ideologically bases its activities on and has advanced its ideologico-political perspective as 'African intercommunalism'.
October 31 - November 1, 2011
Revised from: "Unions Assume A Support Role For Occupy Movement" and Response
By Lil Joe
"Labor unions have become a growing force in the Occupy movement. That shouldn't be surprising since the movement is succeeding at advancing a message unions have been trying to convey for a long time: that the ultra-wealthy are taking more than their fair share. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka delivered a speech on Wall Street shortly after he took office in 2009. "Our economy falters and people suffer," he said then. "But the richest 1 percent - they're living high on the hog."
Subjective anger and denouncing of 'Wall Street fat cats', 'banksters', 'the top 1%', 'the rich', and slogans such as 'feed the needy, not the 'greedy', and 'people before profits', show the success of demogogues appeal to emotions rather than reason and the gullibility of those who don't understand the objective laws of motion of capitalist commodity production by wage labor, proposing proclivities -virtues and vices - of individuals, as opposed to objective analysis of capitalist modes of production and appropriation determining class interests in conflict. Here is Rhodes, leap here!
The issue is not one of who is an 'ultra-wealthy' or 'richest 1 percent' that's 'living high on the hog' [see http://www.cnbc.com/id/44960983/Protests_Target_One_Percent_But_Who_Exactly_Are_They] - the question is not who they are but, in the language of economic category, what they are.
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October 1, 2011
Bernie Sanders: A Minority of One
By Lil Joe
Bernie Sanders is a sterling example of a socialist who campaigns as such, winning elections by financial means from organized labor and direct working class participation.
What's more important in this connection is the contrast to capitalist financed Democrats and Republican patriotic red herrings, the campaign victories, against both Democrats and Republicans has been as an Independent. Sanders has campaigned on working class interests, openly as a socialist.
Sanders campaigns are for the most part financed by and based on labor union. Union financing of an open socialist has won elections for the first time since the `Red Scare' - anti-communist clauses and McCarthyism.
U.S. politicians being endorsed and financed by labor union officials isn't new nor unique, because other members of Congress and candidates have been and are financially aided by labor unions. What is new is their open association with socialists.
After all, the Teamsters endorsed and aided the Republicans e.g. Nixon and Reagan, and PATCO officials endorsed and aided the campaign of Republicans, e.g. Ronald Reagan - thus the oxymoron "Reagan Democrats". The AFL-CIO has and continues to endorse, aid and campaign for Democrats - Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, Carter, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama. The reward for this endorsement and aid from labor has more often than not resulted in labor being kicked in their guts and asses for their brown nosing support for the parties of their class enemies.
The significance is that Sanders' campaigns are for the most part financed by and based on labor unions. Union financing of an open socialist for the first time since the "Red Scare" - anti-communist clauses and McCarthyism.
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September 18, 2011
Citizen Cain's fallacious analogy of taxes and tithes, 9-9-9
By Lil Joe
CAIN: Let's cut to the chase, this is what business people do and politicians don't do. Here's how I would fix this economy, first, eliminate the current tax code. It is a drain on entrepreneurs, it is the biggest barrier that's holding this economy back, and what I would do is to propose a bold plan, which I have already released. I call it my 9-9-9 economic growth plan. Throw out the current tax code, a 9 percent tax on corporate income, our 9 percent tax on personal income and a 9 percent national sales tax. If 10 percent is good enough for God, 9 percent ought to be good enough for the federal government. This will replace all federal income taxes. It'll replace all federal income taxes. It will also replace the payroll tax, so everybody gets some skin in the game. And it replaces the capital gains tax. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/us/politics/08republican-debate-text.html?_r=2&pagewanted=3
First of all, the demagogue that he is, Herman Cain's premise is based upon nothing but demagogic rhetoric. He has neither presented any evidence for his bare assertion that taxes are what is 'holding this economy back'; nor has he defined 'economy'. But, his assertion that the 'tax code is a drain on entrepreneurs', indicates what he means by 'the economy': economic interests are identified as capitalist's interests, since capitalists own the national wealth, the means of production and distribution, the nation's productive forces are capitalist's private possession.
Second, Cain's assertion that existing capitalist taxes paid in the framework of the existing progressive tax code 'is the biggest barrier that's holding this economy back' is a lie. The real barrier to the self-expansion of capital is the inherent contradictions in capitalist commodity production by wage labor, the appropriation and exploitation of wage labor, valorisation in the labor process itself, require capitalists to sell those commodities in order to realize profits to reinvest. The current collapse in the markets, the bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of appropriation, by reaction bankrupts the capitalist industries, both industrial capitalist commodity production and agricultural produced commodity production, and that's what's 'holding this economy back'!
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September 11, 2011
On the "Middle Class" and Modes of Income
by Lil Joe and David
Republican debate of September 7, 2011
The language referencing of a "middle class" that the Republican Mitt Romney Presidential campaign refers to in his Monday Manifesto and against the Obama government at the Republican Presidential Debate, on Wednesday, is to appropriate the rhetoric of the Democrats. Romney"s Presidential campaign aims at the jugglers of the "defend the middle class from the Republican crazies attacks" demagoguery of the Democrats, to displace the Democratic Party itself with that of a Republican man with a plan to defend of the "middle class".
By presenting itself as the "true" defenders of the middle class" and the Obama economic policy as "hurting the middle class" -against which this "middle class" needs to be "saved" and enabled to "prosper" by a Romney Presidency. Nonetheless, this is a falsehood in either case because there is in reality no such thing as a "middle class" that is "under attack".
The working class is under attack, not consumption lifestyles.
The capitalists actually need workers to purchase the products associated with a 'middle class' consumer pattern, having money to increase demand schedule to meet their supply.
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September 3, 2011
Class Domination Politics and the Democratic Party"s Congressional Black Caucus
Lil Joe from Compton, MarxistThe syllogism: The U.S. government is the political -lackey of capitalist class interests. The Democratic Party is a political party in this government. The Democratic Party is therefore a party of capitalist"s political lackeys.
On this logical basis I recognize Democrats who are Black to be no different than any other Democrat; they are also capitalist"s political lackeys. They prove it by the legislation they put forward and/or vote for or against. Politics are not determined by the content of one"s genetic heritage, the color of one"s skin, but by material social class position and the interests of that class.
As a political partisan of the working class, recognizing the capitalist relations of production to be based on the dominance of the capitalist classes, is the understanding that the economic political interests of capitalists and wage workers is dominate to subordinate in economic relations of production and therefore in politics the trade unions in the Democratic Party are in a power-dependence relationship. The trade unionists in the Democratic Party are toadies.
I have always fought for a Labor Party that is financially based on the trade unions outside and independent of the Democratic Party. The material interests of capital and labor are mutually exclusive. Capitalists appropriate and exploit wage labor, and the quantum of profits and wages are inversely related, therefore the only interests that can be represented politically is either the one or the other, not both. The Democratic Party inasmuch as it is the political lackey of capitalists is the party of the class enemy and therefore is itself the political enemy of the working class.
In that the interests of wage labor and capital are mutually exclusive and the Democratic Party is the political lackey of the capitalist class, the class enemy of the proletariat, the working class and the surplus population of the unemployed, the self-described Black Congressional Caucus, the same as the Hispanic Caucus and the so-called Progressive Caucus are just as much the enemy of the working class as are the Blue Dog Democrats, Conservative and the so-called Moderate Democrats. These are just so many labels of factions of capitalist political lackeys, and are enemies of the working class.
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July 31 , 2011
Tea Party Representative Debates Union Representative
By Lil Joe and David
The Ed Show for Wednesday, July 13, 2011
[with guests including: Judson Phillips - creator of Tea Party Nation Corporation, Leo Gerard - president of the United Steelworkers (USW)]
***
SCHULTZ: Well, he"s willing to cut $4 trillion. And your Tea Partiers are standing in the way of it, because you won"t give up any more revenue from the wealthiest Americans. I mean, Mr. Phillips, that"s where we are tonight.
PHILLIPS: It"s not the wealthiest Americans. It"s entrepreneurs. It"s small businesses. It"s the people who create the jobs in this country.
The gentleman said there"s a job crisis. Yes, there is a job crisis. You want to create jobs, let"s make it easier for people to create jobs.
Let"s cut the taxes. Let"s cut the regulations.
GERARD: Ed, let me calm down and make this one point. We just extended the Bush tax cuts last year. Coming on the heels of 10 years of those massive tax cuts that have helped create this huge deficit and they haven"t created any jobs. Trickle down doesn"t trickle down.
All it does is line the pockets of the already rich and powerful. And what we need now, is we need jobs, we need a jobs bill. If people were going back to work, the deficit would come down.
SCHULTZ: All right. Gentlemen-
PHILLIPS: I"m just curious who you think creates jobs? Who creates jobs?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIPS: Or do you create jobs? I think the rich people of this country do create jobs
Let"s sample people. Create jobs. You don"t create jobs. You create a lot of hot air, but that"s about it.
GERARD: Not the billionaires that are sitting on a trillion dollars on their bank accounts and not spending it.
PHILLIPS: What did these people do, win the lottery out of the blue? No, they got out there, they became successful and they created jobs.
***
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43755972/ns/msnbc_tv-the_ed_show/
Lets first of all present the issues in scientific terms and dismiss the demogoguery of the capitalist partisans flowery rhetoric of referring to capitalists as 'entrepreneurs' and 'job creators'! Phillips, shameless partisan of big capital that he is, knows full well that 'small business' - i.e. the petty bourgeoisie - is dependent upon the big bourgeoisie, i.e. agricultural, industrial and finance capital to provide the wherewithal to supply their business operations.
Moreover, it isn't the quantity of money taxes appropriated from the petty-bourgeois by the State, that are driving the petty bourgeois 'small business' out of 'business', but is the domination of markets by big monopoly capitalists that is doing this, eliminating the petty bourgeoisie as a class.
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July 15, 2011
Re: [laborpartypraxis] Minimum wage and class struggle in Nigeria
Comrades,
Quite happy about Lill Joe sharing perspectives on the on-going class struggle in Nigeria.Just to add by circulating the leaflet being circulated by the SWL & which is receiving enthusiastic acceptance in the protest marches & demonstrations presently ongoing here.
Vinceremos! We shall win!
Baba Aye
The Chair, SWL
Struggle for new minimum wage; struggle against capitalism!
Once again Nigerian workers march to the barricades to fight against the country"s ruling elites and their state, for a better life. The struggle for the implementation of the N18,000 minimum wage is a struggle for economic reforms that are meant to improve the living standards of workers even if just minimally. Every mass action of workers for the improvement of our lives, particularly general strikes, is a struggle against capitalism.
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July 16, 2011
Regarding: Pessimism deepens as economic concerns rise: Reuters/Ipsos poll
by Lil Joe
***
Pessimism and optimism are irrelevant terms, as they are subjective and without empirical proof neither the one or the other. For instance, the analogy usually used to 'define' pessimism v optimism is whether one subjectively regards a glass of water "half empty": pessissimism or "half full": optimism.
This 'optimism' versus 'pessimism' ideological mumbo jumbo derives from Ronald Reagan's rheoric, when referring to the wreckage of the economy in the 1980s and the objective falure of voodoo economics 'supply-side'/ aka 'trickle down' economics of the pseudo science of the 'Laffer Curve', Reagan 'the optimist' side, where others see dark, ominous clouds, he sees a silver lining, or where 'pessimists' see the glass half empty, 'optimists' sees it 'half full'.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=reagan+optimism&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g9&aql=f&oq=reagan
http://www.google.com/search?q=reagan+optimism+half+empty+half+full&btnG=Search&hl=en&source=hp&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=This analogy is swept aside by empirical analysis of the facts in progress: if one begins with a full glass of water and, is in the process of drinking it, looking to see how much has been drank from it thus far at the half way mark, it is half empty. On the contrary, if one is in the process of pouring water into the glass, at the half way mark, it is half full.
If you are stranded in the desert and your canteen is half empty, whether you regard yourself 'optimistic' and regard it as half full, the fact remains that when you take the next few gulps of life giving water from it, it is now less than half full, it is now three/quarters empty! You may still be 'optimistic', or rather delusional, and now prefer to tell yourself it is not three'quarters empty but one/quarter full. But, after the final few gulps of water has been drunk, it is fully empty! That is an empirical fact.
Economic facts are external to the subjective wishes and delusional views of individuals. What has to be analysed are the empirical data of economic trends, not some nebulous pseudo-scientific lingo regarding 'consumer optimism' v 'consumer pessimism'.
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July 9, 2011
PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS
by Lil Joe
Given the objective character of human physical existence and behavior, notwithstanding delusions and illusions, objective affirmations and deceptions, deliberate or the result of ignorance and gullibility of self-consciousness, individuals are part and parcel of group consciousness. Analysis of human behavior must be objective - i.e. scientific, empirical analysis of empirical behavior of individuals and of groups of individuals who are in similar or conflicted situations, empirical analysis does not classify the individual or group - social individuals - by what she or he, or her and his personal opinion of themselves or the self-consciousness of the group. Rather, what an individual human being and group do for a living, the material conditions of life that compel those individuals to do and think of themselves determine his and her socioeconomic category in which he, she and they exist. You are what you do.
The State is the State, the empirical fact thereof is that it is an instrument of class domination by repressive violence, police, courts, prisons ... Governments are in the management of material violence that function as its 'legitimate' power, together with its propagandists that use ideology of divine right or legislative authority to declare or legislate laws that make State violence legitimate. (See Max Weber's Politics as Vocation @ http://www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/lecture/politics_vocation.html
I am in this article dealing with the State of the United States, in which the political lackeys of the capitalist classes - the Democrats, as well as the Republicans - dominate the bureaucratic -military State machine of management of it, the military, court and prison structures with a constant staff and officer corp, the empirical apparatus of domination and repression. Whereas, on the other hand, the faces in high places of the visible Government, the members of Congress, the office of the President, and so on are, are variable, i.e. change, as results of elections.
Yet, what must be clearly recognised is that the classes that dominate the U.S. economy, which possess the material productive forces, and thereby the means of life, are members of capitalist classes, landlords and government, and that this class ownership does not change.
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July 6, 2011
A Reply to Richard Trumka's 'Stuck in a Ditch'
By Lil Joe and Dave Moros
The issue isn't the abstraction of 'peoplepower', because in the industrial capitalist democracies there are not 'peoples' independent of relations of production, but individuals comprising classes.
In the United States, today, just as in every other industrial capitalist society, it is the capitalist ruling classes that have monopolised political power. In opposition to capitalist class power, what is to be expected from the AFL-CIO, as the economic representative of labor power as a class of workers is workers power.
Every class struggle is a political struggle in which the shock of body against body is the warfare of class against class, the capitalistic appropriating classes in class conflict against the rising appropriated laboring classes. This is the historical logical premise predicated upon which our polemic against the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, that is at the same time as members of the Democratic Party are political representatives of the capitalist class in the working class unions.
We do not regard Trumka an isolated individual worker outside the class struggle, but a product of those class battles. Were he just an individual outside capital relations of production his being a Democrat would be irrelevant. But, this is not the case.
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June 12, 2011
Re: AFL-CIO Welcomes Labor Campaign for Single Payer
By David Moros
Calling single-payer "the only way to cure the healthcare problem," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a leading member of the Democratic Party, as such has welcomed political partisans of the Democratic Party delegates to the Labor Campaign for Single Payer National Meeting at the AFL-CIO in Washington, DC on Friday, June 3. "Representatives Conyers, McDermott and Kucinich also addressed the meeting..."
The Democratic Party when the 'majority' in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as the Presidential administration of Barack Obama, has proved by their 'negotiations' with Republican minority in both chambers, on their own accord as a Party, rejected to even so much as to present legislation for a single payer system.
Lest we forget, it is to be recalled that it was as the party majority, Democrats in the House, Senate and 'oval office' of the Presidency, that they themselves proved that their 'constituency' and their loyalty is to the Insurance companies, and 'big pharma' capitalist interests that finance their campaigns, and not to workers and labor union's so-called 'special interests'.
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June 2,2011
In Need of a Socialist Analysis and a Labor Party
by Lil Joe, David
What is glaring, though one may not have noticed, in AFL-CIO's President Richard Trumka's speech at the National Press Club, Washington DC on May 20 2011, is that there is no mention by him of President Barack Obama. (Text and video below). No mention and therefore no criticism of this Administration that the AFL-CIO endorsed, wasted tons of union wages dues and thousands of hours of members time promoting and campaigning for Democrats.
The AFL-CIO's bureaucracy in the Democratic Party has to accept responsibility for having endorsed, helped fund and campaign for it. The absence of Obama's name in Trumka's speech is an indication that the AFL-CIO is leaving its options open - that it may not support the Democratic Party this coming Presidential election in 2012.
Congress, and Republicans in particular were criticized for its 'canvas of cruelty', toward poor and working people. But, by omission AFL-CIO's president neglecting the mention of the Democratic Party is objectively to remove it from the same criticism of the Democratic Party. Yet, the Democratic Party's bipartisanship, in both the House of Representatives and Senate, has resulted in anti-worker policies.
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May 20, 2011
Re: [laborpartypraxis] Request to Laborpartypraxis Members
***
2011 has reached nearly a full decade of the existence of our egroup -
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Laborpartypraxis.yahoogrooups.com. It started off with a general list of
objectives of the time, practical working class agenda items to draw
similar minded critical thinking. If without revolutionary theory,
can be no revolutionary movement, and the working class is the
revolutionary class, insomuch as the existence of revolutionary ideas
presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class, the working class'
politics cannot become revolutionary politics unless and until it
evolves critical thinking.
There are individual and groups members from various political and
ideological tendencies and representatives here that are from
organizations that otherwise wouldn't be on the same list. That is
great, because if no idea or dogma is sacred, then everyone is free to
post from their perspective without fear of being denounced as heretic,
renegade, revisionist ...
Tue May 17, 2011
NATIONAL LABOR-COMMUNITY CONFERENCE TO DEFEAT THE CORPORATE AGENDA AND FIGHT FOR A WORKING PEOPLE'S AGENDA
Working people across the country - from Wisconsin and Ohio to New York, Oregon, and California -- are facing unprecedented attacks by corporations and the rich with the help of the federal, state and local politicians that they fund.
The corporate agenda is clear: It is to bust unions and cut workers' pay and benefits -- both in the private and public sectors. It is to erode and privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is to dismantle the public sector and social services by denying funds for job creation, education, health care, environmental protection, and rebuilding the infrastructure. It is to ensure that taxes on the wealthy are constantly lowered while the bite on workers and the poor is constantly increased. It is to perpetuate U.S. wars and occupations whenever it serves the interests of the multinationals. It is to divide the working class by race, gender, national origin, religion, and sexual orientation. It is also to limit and restrict constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. The list goes on.
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Saturday May 14, 2011
"Shared sacrifice" "shared prosperity" "shared responsibility"?
By David Moros
To meet this challenge, our leaders came together three times during the 1990s to reduce our nation's deficit. They forged historic agreements that required tough decisions made by the first President Bush and President Clinton; by Democratic Congresses and a Republican Congress. All three agreements asked for shared responsibility and shared sacrifice, but they largely protected the middle class, our commitments to seniors, and key investments in our future. *** http://www.politicalruminations.com/2011/04/transcriptpresident-obama-speech-on-\ fiscal-policy.html
With all this talk about "shared sacrifice", "shared prosperity", "shared responsibility" let's make clear where what's being "shared" and "sacrificed" comes from and who's responsible for "prosperity".
The shill cry and phrase mongoring, from Barack Obama to MSNBC's Ed Shults, about "protecting the 'the middle class'", is nothing but demogogic euphemism used by them to divert from the realities of the producing working class.
As political and ideological representatives of the appropriating capitalist classes the mentioned Democratic and Republican Presidents, Senators and Congresspersons represent the classes that derive their profits from the exploitation of the working classes - young and old - "seniors' is not an economic category. "Inventments" are not for "our future" as workers, but the future purchase and exploitation wage labour by and for the the future profits of future capital investors - young and old alike.
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Monday April 18, 2011
On Labor Productivity Profit and Employment
By Dave Moros
...Labour-power is, in our present-day capitalist society, a commodity like every other commodity, but yet a very peculiar commodity. It has, namely, the peculiarity of being a value-creating force, the source of value, and, moreover, when properly treated, the source of more value than it possesses itself. In the present state of production, human labour-power not only produces in a day a greater value than it itself possesses and costs; but with each new scientific discovery, with each new technical invention, there also rises the surplus of its daily production over its daily cost, while as a consequence there diminishes that part of the working-day in which the labourer produces the equivalent of his day's wages, and, on the other hand, lengthens that part of the working-day in which he must present labour gratis to the capitalist.
And this is the economic constitution of our entire modern society: the working class alone produces all values. For value is only another expression for labour, that expression, namely, by which is designated, in our capitalist society of today, the amount of socially necessary labour embodied in a particular commodity. But, these values produced by the workers do not belong to the workers. They belong to the owners of the raw materials, machines, tools, and money, which enable them to buy the labour-power of the working class. Hence, the working class gets back only a part of the entire mass of products produced by it. And, as we have just seen, the other portion, which the capitalist class retains, and which it has to share, at most, only with the landlord class, is increasing with every new discovery and invention, while the share which falls to the working class (per capita) rises but little and very slowly, or not at all, and under certain conditions it may even fall.
But, these discoveries and inventions which supplant one another with ever-increasing speed, this productiveness of human labour which increases from day to day to unheard-of proportions, at last gives rise to a conflict, in which present capitalistic economy must go to ruin. On the one hand, immeasurable wealth and a superfluidity of products with which the buyers cannot cope. On the other hand, the great mass of society proletarianized, transformed into wage-labourers, and thereby disabled from appropriating to themselves that superfluidity of products. The splitting up of society into a small class, immoderately rich, and a large class of wage-labourers devoid of all property, brings it about that this society smothers in its own superfluidity, while the great majority of its members are scarcely, or not at all, protected from extreme want.
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February 13, 2011
Revolution as class warfare: Marx's Civil War in France, the Paris Commune
By Lil Joe
By way of Introduction to American workers concerning the empirical existence of classes and for these worker's to understand the concept of middle class as it is understood in Europe, the 'bourgeoisie', as distinct from both the landed aristocracy and the proletariat - working classes and toiling masses: to understand this language as it is used by Marx's analysis of "Civil War in France" as conscious class warfare, class struggle.
This is needed because, as we shall see in this FYI, the transmitters of "American culture" have deliberately, via the illusion promoted as 'American exceptionalism', cut the US from the rest of the world and from one generation to the next deliberately has confused the concept of class, which in empirical actuality are empirical universals that are varifiable economic categories, to mushy phychologica attitudes and issues of so-called 'status', lifestyle, neighborhood in which a person lives, or pseudo-economic 'categories' such as 'Joe Sex Pack' vs the Wall Street 'Fat Cats'.
More often than not, the Democrats and their media representatives call the working class a 'middle class'. This is also arbitrary and misleading. In the 'middle' of what? Middle income? Well, in the United States, there are capitalist billionaires, and there are top athletes, entertainers and propagandists who get paid millions of dollars annually. The executives of capital get tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars and stock options as payment and bonuses, every year. By this, the upper most 'category' would be a median of hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions at the top, and zero income of homeless vagabonds at the bottom. Thus, these being the parameters of top and bottom and high and low, the American so-called 'middle income' individuals would not be at $250,000 a year, as the Democrats assert, but middle income workers to be placed 'mid-way' between billions at the top and zero at the bottom would have to be making a median income of at least $500,000,000 a year, if not more. This is obviously not the case, but would in fact be an absurd assertion.
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