Baltimore, Bernie Sanders, and the Brewing Revolution
Editorial for Socialist Appeal No. 88
With the heinous murder of Freddie Gray, the #BlackLivesMatter movement came roaring back to life. Tens of thousands of people again flooded streets across the country to protest against racism and police brutality. These once-routine and largely unrecognized murders are now churning up powerful forces long dormant in the womb of society. The movement expresses the deep-seated discontent of several generations of Americans who have been sold out and betrayed by a system they were led to believe should work for everyone, but which in reality only works for a tiny minority. As increasing numbers of Americans draw the conclusion that it’s not just a few rotten apples in this or that police department, but a system diseased and rotten to its core, the tragic death of yet another young black man at the hands of the state was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In a world bleak with news of ISIS, Boko Haram, and the never-ending murders of unarmed black men by the police, Europe offers more than a glimmer of excitement and genuine hope. The election of Syriza in Greece has electrified the world. Podemos in Spain is shaking up politics-as-usual in the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy. By taking the global struggle against austerity to the next level, Greek and Spanish workers are showing the way forward. However, these political parties didn’t arise in a vacuum. They are the result of a protracted process of crisis and class struggle, of wave after wave of strikes and social movements, the testing of traditional leaders and organizations, of trial and error, small victories and big defeats. In short, they are the result of life experience itself.
Editorial for Socialist Appeal 83 – Today’s youth, the so-called millennials, face a bleak future under capitalism. They carry the highest student debt in history and have entered “adulthood” at a time when housing prices have skyrocketed and the labor market has imploded. More than half of recent graduates are unemployed or underemployed, often in low-wage jobs having nothing to do with their degrees. Nonetheless, they must make monthly payments on an average of $20,000 in student loans.
In the decades after World War II, US imperialism ruled the roost over much of the planet. After the collapse of Stalinism and the USSR, we were told that we had entered a new era—the “Pax Americana”—in which freedom, peace, and plenty would prevail for the whole of humanity. The reality has been very different. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc was merely a prelude to the greatest impasse in the history of capitalism: an epoch of crisis, wars, revolutions, counterrevolutions, austerity, and instability. Faced with this organic crisis of their system, the only way for the ruling class to reestablish economic equilibrium is by disrupting the social and political equilibrium. They have no idea how to proceed except through cuts, austerity, and repression—all while reaping profits on a previously unimaginable scale.
Editorial for Socialist Appeal 81 – Americans’ dysfunctional relationship with food is regularly lamented or mocked in the media and in academia. What is never explained is the root cause of this dysfunction. Marxism explains that conditions determine consciousness. Your physical and social environment heavily influences the choices you make by limiting the very choices that are available to you. For most Americans, decisions about food are based on budget, time, availability, marketing, and the societal norms of their peers and community. These social and cultural norms are as conditioned by material conditions and possibilities as individual choices are. If cheap, convenient food—scientifically engineered to appeal to our biological cravings for fat, salt, and carbs—are all that most people have access to, know about, and can afford, guess what they’re going to “choose”? But the dysfunction goes far beyond that.