“Hunger Games”: The Dark Fantasies Of A Doomed Strata

By Caleb T. Maupin

In the modern world, two great hostile camps exist.

In the first camp lies the richest of the rich. They are the owners of the overwhelming majority of all the  banks, factories, giant stores, military production, oil wells, natural gas, and all other economic power in the world. They own as their private property not just all these things, but the governments of most of the world which move at their every command. The western capitalists, or the “1%”, make up this first camp of power in the modern world.

In the second camp, lies the rest of us. Those of us who sell our labor power in order to survive: the working class. The people of colonized world, no matter what their occupation are also in this second camp. The peoples of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America struggling against imperialism and foreign domination, along with the global working class make up the second camp, the 99%; the contradiction to Wall Street power. This second camp is the overwhelming majority of all humanity.

The first camp has entrenched itself as the ruling class over the last 500 years, vanquishing feudalism and replacing it with high tech exploitation on a global scale. It has itself protected with propagandistic media, military power and brute force, and all other means of establishing itself as a force to be reckoned with.

The second camp is now in the process of entrenching and cementing itself, as it rises in battle with the first camp, and take its place at the helm of the world. The rising Bolivarian movements in Latin America, the unified struggle against Zionism and U.S. imperialism in the middle east, the alliance of China with the people of Africa; on a global scale this represents the solidification of the global 99% in their opposition, to the 1%.

Within the borders of the U.S., the 99% is also solidifying itself and asserting its power. The 2006 uprising of immigrant workers, the huge outpourings against police brutality and racism, the struggle to defend public sector unions, and the eruption of Occupy Wall Street signify the second camp, the rising power of the workers and oppressed of the world.

The Dying Middle Strata

However as this struggle boils on a global scale between the global 1% and 99%, there is one sector that is doomed. No matter what force is triumphant, whether the global capitalists, or the workers and colonized peoples, this small strata is doomed.

This is the “middle class”, the “petty bourgeoisie.” It is the indy artist or musician. It is the small shopkeeper. It is the owners of the small “family owned farms.” It is the well known intellectuals and academics. It is doctors and lawyers with their own practice, and no regular employer.

It is those within the western capitalist countries who are not workers, but do not find themselves within the global 1% of wealth power. They “have their own” in a sense, with no regular employer renting them out each day, but they will never be among the ranks of Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. They “have their own” but it is just a small corner. It is a little bit of security, a little bit of freedom, and some economic priviledge.

But this is slipping away. The global 1% is destroying them. Wal-Mart is destroying every family owned hardware store. Major record labels, internet self-publishing firms, all of them are rendering “independent artists” out of existence. Agribusiness is turning the family farmer into a mere hired laborer.

Doctors, the once hailed “professionals” are now mere hired employees of big healthcare firms. Academic jobs are highly competitive, and highly stifling. Professors are no longer free independent thinkers who “profess” knowledge to the younger generation, but cogs in an academic machine that brings in billions to the student loan sharks of Wall Street.

However, if the global 99% are victorious, this will not save the middle class. In a socialist society, just as in modern capitalism, these professionals and “independents” will not be able to “do their own thing.” Decisions in the field of economics will be decided democratically and equitably, but they will not be “laissez-faire.” Doctors will be sent where society needs them. Art, media, and education will be subject to popular criticism, input, and regulation. Big box stores will remain, but under popular democratic control, with prices, hours, and all else regulated by the workers and the community.

The future holds collectivism. It will be either the collective obedience to wishes of a small, and shrinking capitalist class in its drive for profits, or collective socialist decision-making and democracy among the overwhelming majority of humanity.

No matter which side is victorious, the petty bourgeoisie will perish. So, as they look to the future, they see misery. As artists often find themselves among the ranks of petty bourgeoisie, this hopelessness and fatalism is reflected in art.

“Hunger Games,” Another Dystopia

George Orwell, expressed the fatalism of his class in his novel 1984. He described the future as “a boot stomping on a human face.” He spoke of a world where “independent thinkers” will not be able to proclaim “2+2=4.”

Though Orwell was a social-democrat, who also associated himself with Anarchism and other left-leaning petty bourgeois movements, his dark vision of the future was no different than Ayn Rand.

Rand’s Anthem and Orwell’s 1984, have the same bleak view of the future. They are not opposites by any means, but mirror images of each other. They fear nothing but the future and the inevitable collectivism of it.

Petty bourgeois fatalism preaches against all collectivism with the same repulsion. They view KKK lynch mobs and anti-racist rallies with the same level of repugnance. Both show conformity, coordination of efforts, and subordination of the individual to the needs of a group. The fact that two such mobilizations serve a totally different social purpose is meaningless in such a mindset.

 “Hunger Games” is another dystopian fantasy of the petty bourgeois variety.

The very premise of it is in some ways sickening. It is set in a future United States, 70+ years after a failed revolt of starving people.

Why not make a film depicting such a revolt? Better yet, depicting a revolt of the starving against the 1% that leads to victory. This is a “Hunger Game” that would be very relevant in the age of capitalist decay. Such a film would reflect on the Occupy Wall Street events, the Black Liberation struggle, and all the rising movements across the world.

However, Hunger Games starts with the premise, before the first lines of dialogue are uttered, that such a revolt is doomed to failure.

The country created in the aftermath of the revolt is one with a very small population, in which there is mass poverty. In order to remind the public of the mistake of the failed revolt, some 70+ years ago, a high tech gladiatorial show of sorts is carried out each year, where youths fight each other to the death.

Yes, “the mob”, descendants of those who took part in the revolt, now joyfully watch in public spectacles of death and violence of their own peers.  One character even bemoans this fact saying “If we just stopped watching it would be over.”

The message is that the people in their millions, the true makers of history, are a worthless mob of easily led sheep. They are oppressed, but they are responsible for their oppression as much as the oppressors themselves. “Conformity” is the films villain, not oppressive institutions and systems.

And the Heroes?

So, with the masses of people in their millions as the villians, who is the hero?

How many times before have we seen this in modern, popular art? Harry Potter was “the boy who lived.” Slumdog Millionaire won out on a TV game show. Superman is the orphaned child of space aliens.

The heroes are never ordinary people who accomplish great achievements, or engage in heroic actions.

No, the heroes are always “different”, they are always “special”, they are somehow “chosen.”

Hunger Games is not different. The heroin is “chosen” to do battle in an arena. She is “special”, and “isolated.” Of course, the ordinary working class people she grew up around don’t understand her, and victimize her, hating her for her greatness.

While the feminist implications of female battle hero are by all means progressive in our misogynist society, the character is still highly problematic. The early scenes of the film border on grotesque in the level of tragedy. The level of suffering the protagonist is forced to endure is repulsive and over the top.

Other aspects of the film are equally confusing and senseless as they reflect the alienation of the petty bourgeois from all humanity.

Though only one of the combatants in the “Hunger Games” can be victorious, and all others must die, somehow certain combatants band together, and begin traveling as a group, working together, hunting down the protagonist.

Despite it being irrational somehow “the mob” of Randian and Orwellian nightmares finds its way into the climatic moments of the film, as a conspiracy is formed to destroy the protagonist. This is odd as those conspiring with each other against the protagonist, are expected to kill each other.

Why do they conspire against the protagonist? What rational sense does this make? They are all equally doomed.

They do it because she is “the chosen one”, she is the “great individual”, and the world, the mob, is lined up against her. This petty bourgeois paranoid fantasy has no rational way of fitting into the constructed narrative, yet it still manifests itself.

The Revolution Is Not A Game

The heroin of Hunger Games by successfully “giving hope” to her district is seen as a potential liberator of the suffering people of this future world. A “special person”, a “chosen one” is seen as potentially achieving what a revolt of millions did not?

The hope for the suffering people of this world is not that someone will randomly chosen to become famous, and expose oppression with their fame. If this were true, the likes of Paul Robeson, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover and Jane Fonda would have rescued it long ago.

The masses in their millions are the makers of history. There will be no “condescending saviors” who win freedom for the people.

Only a movement of millions of people, coordinating their efforts, empowering eachother, and eventually removing the small elite that rules can point the way forward. Yes, individuals will play a role in such a movement, and prove their exceptional qualities in the process, but they will do it by their ability to put millions into motion, shaping the course of the true makers of history.

A vanguard is just a small part of a larger army, and in isolation, it is weak and worthless.

Socialism and the Individual

While the rugged individualism of the petty bourgeoisie and its self-isolating hero fantasies will perish in the flames of worldwide socialist revolution, individuals will not perish.

The Soviet Union was filled with artists, writers, musicians, and theater. Cuba today brings music into the education of every child’s life, in a manner far beyond what any capitalist country has done.

Socialism produced the many well known scientists who conquered the heavens with Sputnik. Socialism brought us the films of Sergei Eisenstein. Socialism brought us epic breakthroughs in Ballet and Orchestral music.

China’s cultural revolution brought films, theater troops, and art to millions of people.

Socialism as it existed in the former USSR, and currently in Cuba and People’s Korea has brought us many great individuals, who have flourished due to collectivism. Collectivism empowers and unleashes the individual to do far more than is possible in a state of isolation and competition.

However, these great individuals were great because they showed selflessness, devotion, and courage in their service of the collective. They were not self-serving sociopaths like John Galt, or angsty egotists like Winston Smith.

The heroes of the Socialist future are the like of John Q, Tom Joad, and Jimmy Higgins. They are the selfless female liberation fighters portrayed in “The White Haired Girl”, and in “Red Detachment of Women.” They are unlikely tragic characters like the whistle-blowing Marine in Brian De Palma’s classic Redacted. They are the unknown masked freedom fighter in “V for Vendetta.”

These are the individuals hailed in Socialist art, art that fights for freedom for the 99%, against the 1%.

Our movie does not end with an explosion, or the vanquishing of a hated foe. No, the taking of power and the defeating of the 1% is the beginning of the epic masterpiece of human history, when we rise as one and continue to the line of march to stateless, classless Communism.

Hunger will be abolished, along with the sick egotistical profiteering games that hold it intact.

Autistics Struggle Under Capitalism

Published Apr 16, 2012 10:21 PM

By Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, who prefers to write under a pseudonym, is an Autistic young adult, a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and a candidate member of Workers World Party. Thomas, like the majority of the Autistic community, rejects person-first language and prefers to be called “Autistic” rather than “a person with autism.” Autistic is capitalized because being Autistic encompasses more than a diagnosis of autism; there is an Autistic culture and an Autistic community that goes beyond the mere diagnostic criteria for the neurological disability called autism.

Much hype has been generated in the media about a group of diagnoses whose incidence has been greatly increasing over the last 10 years. These diagnoses, widely believed to be genetic in nature, are known collectively as the Autism Spectrum.

Autistics embody a variety of diverse characteristics that constitute the various diagnoses, but most Autistics share the following characteristics in various degrees: intense interests and rituals, repetitive movements, difficulty in social situations, difficulty communicating, and difficulty processing sensory information. While many of these difficulties seem challenging, many of the challenges that Autistics face are precipitated by a society that is unwilling to accommodate a diverse set of needs that humans face.

The increase in diagnosis over the past 10 years is because clinicians are now beginning to accurately diagnose people previously not believed to have a disability. The increase in diagnoses has prompted more accommodations for Autistics, both in the education world and in the workforce. Research indicates that Autism Spectrum Disorders are still greatly underdiagnosed and may affect as many as 1 in 38 people. Invisible disabilities are especially underdiagnosed in women, people of color, and those in dire financial straits who cannot afford the expensive, specialized health care required to receive a diagnosis.

Sometimes anti-Autistic propaganda is set forth by groups that purport to assist people. For example, the charity Autism Speaks promotes the Tragedy Model of Autism, which is the idea that a diagnosis of autism means certain, unbearable, financial and emotional hardship for the family of the Autistic. A promotional video called “Autism Every Day” includes former executive vice president of Autism Speaks, Alison Tepper Singer, voicing her fantasy to drive her daughter and herself off of the George Washington Bridge.

The organization stated that non-Autistic parents of Autistics should embrace these types of feelings rather than flee from them or seek help for them. This propaganda creates an attitude of dehumanization; the message is that we are so devastating to abled peoples’ lives that we should be eradicated via whatever means necessary (whether by cure or another method), and that our lives are so miserable they must not be worth living. Sometimes, tragically, this occurs, like the 2006 case of Katie McCarron, a three-year-old Autistic girl in Illinois whose mother was convicted of first-degree murder for suffocating her. People who kill Autistic and other people with disabilities are more likely to be acquitted by sympathetic juries or more lightly sentenced by judges than those who murder non-disabled people. (thiswayoflife.org)

Socialism, disabilities and the 99%

The dehumanization of Autistics and people with other disabilities stems from a fundamental element of the capitalist system. Under capitalism, all things that exist are valued according to their ability to generate profit for the 1%. Even the 99%, who have nothing to sell but their labor, are given value according to their ability to produce profit for the 1%, who make money purely via their ownership of the means of production.

Because of this, those in the 99% are valued according to their ability to work within the profit-producing machine that the 1% engineered. Therefore, the 1% want to give us as little as possible; they attack us with institutionalization, poor education and austerity measures. Because of this devaluation, people with disabilities have been neglected, abused and killed since the dawn of class society.

Despite the many transgressions which capitalist society has carried out against Autistics and other people with disabilities, there is still hope for the future. In Cuba, a country where the 99% rose up and drove out the 1%, people with disabilities are viewed, first and foremost, as people who have something to contribute to society, rather than a burden.

Rather than cut away at education, health care and benefits, as is happening in the U.S. and other capitalist countries, Cuban society provides excellent education free through the university level, free health care, and jobs or income for all.

Cuban schools use a diverse set of educational approaches geared toward helping Autistic children become educated and happy citizens capable of making a contribution to socialist society, rather than being trained to become cogs in the profit machine as in the U.S. People with disabilities who are unable to do the work that most Cubans do are given jobs reading to other workers so that the workers are better able to enjoy the time spent at work. These jobs provide people with disabilities both the income to support themselves and the satisfaction that comes with knowing that one is valuable to society.

Capitalism offers only dehumanization, destitution and even death to people with disabilities. Only by smashing the 1% can people with disabilities have the full freedom to live the most fulfilling lives possible, unhindered by the misdeeds of a system that seeks to destroy us.

The Chongqing vs. Guangdong models

By Fred Goldstein
Published Apr 12, 2012 10:27 PM


The ouster of Bo Xilai as Communist Party Secretary of Chongqing comes at a juncture of intensifying contradictions, pressures and antagonisms in China. They reflect three decades of a steadily advancing encroachment of the capitalist mode of production and a dangerous erosion of the socialist framework established by the great Chinese Revolution of 1949.

The Chinese Communist Party leadership is rent with conflict. On the one hand are pressures from China’s growing internal capitalist and middle classes, as well as from the imperialist banks, represented by the World Bank. On the other hand is the growing discontent of millions of workers and peasants.

Furthermore, as the state-owned sector of the economy grows, the capitalist side is also expanding. Capital expands automatically through the accumulation of profits. The state sector, however, expands as a matter of conscious policy and the absolute growth of the economy. Its growth reflects the magnitude of tasks the state-owned banks and enterprises are called upon to perform.

The struggle to control the planned development of society while retaining sovereignty over the Chinese economy inevitably collides with the growth of the internal contradictions of capitalist development and the infectious influence of global finance capital.

The CCP leaders are trying to plan high-speed railroads, advanced communications, hospitals, health centers and aid for rural development to close the gap between the highly developed east and the underdeveloped west. They are introducing more ecologically sound technology and other strategic industries while improving the social security system for 1.3 billion people. At the same time, they have to worry about the development of inflation, real estate bubbles, the global capitalist economic crisis, mounting inequality of wealth, and a clamor by the bourgeois elements for so-called democratic reforms — which would be a channel for open political organizing of the capitalist class and its middle-class supporters.

As these contradictions and antagonisms mature, the question of which way forward for China becomes more and more pressing.

Chongqing versus Guangdong

In the recent period, differences in the leadership have surfaced in the controversy over the so-called Chongqing model versus the Guangdong model. Bo Xilai has been identified with the Chongqing model, which has come under heavy fire since his ouster.

Chongqing is the largest municipality in China and perhaps the world. It has a population of 33 million and is located inland in western China. It is one of China’s four centrally ruled municipalities, the others being Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. It has a rural area of 23 million farmers and an urban population of 10 million. Millions of farmers are employed as migrant workers in the city.

Guangdong is the largest province in China, with 104 million people. One-third of the population, 36 million, are migrant workers. It is on the east coast and is the site of the Pearl River delta, where the turn toward market reforms and “opening up” first allowed the establishment of special economic zones. Overseas capitalists from the imperialist countries as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan and south Korea are heavily invested there, and have created a large, low-wage manufacturing industry geared toward exports.

Bo Xilai became the party secretary of Chongqing in 2007. He initiated a policy of emphasizing the dominant role of the state in the economy alongside the capitalist market. Under his regime half of the budget of Chongqing was spent on health care, housing, pensions, education and other public services. (“One or Two Chinese Models?” European Council on Foreign Relations, Asia Centre, November 2011) Some 87 percent of its recent growth was in the state sector.

The government has undertaken to build 800,000 units of low-income housing with rents at 40 percent below market rates and a low-income limit for eligibility. (Bloomberg Businessweek, March 22) The apartments can be owned after five years, but cannot be thrown on the market. The units are built in the center of the city, near higher-income housing to prevent ghettoizing.

The government in Chongqing is also spending 300 billion yuan ($47.6 billion) for rural education, health care and housing. In addition, it has developed a policy to allow and encourage the rural population to migrate to the city, but at the same time balances that with a policy to develop new agricultural areas. In China’s so-called “hukou” system of residency permits, everyone has either a rural hukou or an urban hukou. Urban residents are entitled to social benefits like health care and education at government-subsidized prices.

Chongqing was the first city in China to develop this rural-to-urban program. Its goal is to allow 10 million farmers to get urban permits. (“Bo Xilai and the Chongqing Model,” East Asian Institute, Vol. 1, No. 3)

‘Red culture’ versus more ‘opening up’

Politically, Bo initiated what he termed “red culture.” This included encouraging and organizing the singing of songs from the Mao era and performances of operas from the period of the Cultural Revolution. He stopped commercials on the local television station, replacing them with Maoist and other readings and performances. He had Mao sayings tweeted to cell phone users in the city. And he took a 1,000-member singing troupe to Beijing to sing Maoist songs.

Bo recommended that students and government workers spend time in rural areas to get experience with the life of the masses.

Bo initiated a crackdown on gangsters and corrupt party and government officials. And he initiated this by calling on the masses to submit “letters of denunciation.”

The Guangdong model, on the other hand, emphasizes the capitalist market as the dominant force in development. Shenzhen is the city that Deng Xiaoping visited in 1992 when he declared “opening up” China to foreign investment. It was the first special economic zone. Since then the province has been known as the area where the capitalist market prevails over state enterprises and planning.

The present party secretary in Guangdong, Wang Yang, was appointed in 2007. He had been in Chongqing, but Bo Xilai took his place. Wang has openly advocated the superiority of the capitalist market in allocating resources. He has called for “small government.” (Wall Street Journal, March 14) Wang’s policy is for further “opening up” and “reforms.”

Guangdong has been the site of numerous workers’ strikes and rebellions. Some 200-plus strikes took place in the Pearl River delta last year, beginning in May with Honda workers near Guangzhou. (The Economist, Nov. 26, 2011)

Wang preaches democracy, but the class orientation of his democracy was illustrated by an experimental local election he authorized in the city of Dudan last September. As The Economist reported, fewer than 7,000 local inhabitants were allowed to vote, while 60,000 sweatshop workers who had come from other provinces were disenfranchised.

‘Red GDP’

Before Bo was ousted, he and Wang were both candidates for the nine-member Standing Committee of the CCP’s Politburo. There was open struggle between them. Bo called for a “red GDP,” meaning economic development had to be subordinate to the well-being of the masses. Their differences emerged publicly in a famous controversy shrouded in an analogy called “cutting the cake.” The “cake” was a metaphor for the GDP — the country’s total production of goods and services.

On July 10 of last year, Bo said that a “better division of the cake” takes priority over “making the cake bigger.” The next day Wang answered with “to make the cake bigger, we must still concentrate on economic development.” In other words, overcoming inequality takes a backseat to production and profits. (“Bo Xilai and Wang Yang: China’s Future Leaders?” Jeffrey Hays, factsanddetails.com, updated March 2012)

The political left in China has rallied to the cause of Bo, and had great hopes for his ascendancy to the Standing Committee. In the wake of his ouster, many web sites of the left have been shut down for a month. The struggle is shrouded in secrecy, and it is very hard for the masses or revolutionaries and progressives inside China, as well as outside, to get any kind of accurate picture.

But it is clear that the Bo forces favoring the Chongqing model are oriented to blocking further inroads of capitalism in China and reversing it, if possible. The forces that side with Wang and the Guangdong model are for widening the capitalist road.

Center-right bloc against Bo

The immediate task in the present struggle is to push back against the right and the counterrevolution. However, by lining up against Bo, the party center is in a bloc with the right. The center is fearful of the Maoist revival and the leftist mood. The fear is that this could merge with the mass discontent down below and take the form of not just an economic struggle against inequality, but a political struggle against the capitalist road. (Last year China reported 180,000 “incidents” — protests, strikes and rebellions.) But the right wing is counterrevolutionary and wants to go all the way in bringing the capitalist class to power.

In truth, the Chongqing model, while certainly preferable to free-market capitalism and the political reaction of the Guangdong model, is only a stop-gap measure at best. It still retains the capitalist market as a significant force. And capital grows through the accumulation of profits. Furthermore, 93 of Fortune 500 global corporations are operating in Chongqing.

Reviving Maoist culture is a step in the right direction. Fighting inequality is also a step in the right direction. But what is more to the point is to revive the spirit of workers’ struggle that was advocated and led by Mao.

Cultural Revolution model

Before Bo was ousted, Premier Wen Jiabao attacked Bo and warned of the “horrors of the Cultural Revolution.” What precisely were these “horrors”? The essence of the Cultural Revolution was to mobilize and empower the workers to run socialist society, in the spirit of the Paris Commune. The goal was to oust privileged officials from their comfortable positions of authority and establish a revolutionary dictatorship under the direct authority of the proletariat. Of course, excesses were committed during that period. But the excesses were not the essence of what took place. The essence was the attempt to “storm the heavens,” as Marx referred to the goal of the Paris communards. The essence was for the Chinese workers to rule directly and take their destiny into their own hands. No amount of vilification of the Cultural Revolution can erase that.

No one could suppose for a moment that such a development is in the offing. But everyone in China who stands for the working class and Marxism must be asking themselves, which way back? How do the Chinese workers and peasants get back to the socialist model they once had?

Deng Xiaoping and his political descendants in China justified their program of so-called “market socialism” on the ground that China needed the capitalist market and capitalist technology to develop. Leaving aside the validity of that assertion, the fact is that China has developed enormously. It is now the second-largest economy in the world. The working class has gone from 30 million to more than 450 million. China is competing with imperialism in cutting-edge technology.

All justification for needing capitalism to further develop has been undermined by China’s economic advances. The interests of the workers have been mercilessly sacrificed, counterpoising them to the need for development. The task now is to find the way back. When casting about for models to take China back on the socialist road, the road of the Cultural Revolution is a glorious one. It’s not necessary to retain the same name or make it a carbon copy of the original. What is important is to revive its revolutionary essence.

An Occupier's Open Letter To Chris Hedges

Published Mar 30, 2012 9:39 PM

Chris Hedges, a writer for The Nation and former New York Times reporter, spoke at the Left Forum’s closing plenary on March 18 in New York City.

As someone who was among the thousands of youth on Sept. 17 when the occupation of Zuccotti Park began; as someone who attended some of the early General Assemblies prior to that historic day; as someone who was arrested as part of the OWS Martin Luther King Day actions; as someone who is currently involved in the continuing occupation of Union Square in preparation for the May 1st General Strike, I must say loudly and clearly that you, Chris Hedges, do not speak for me.

The speech you gave at the Left Forum this year, in which you presented yourself as someone with authority and wisdom needed by OWS, said things that are the opposite of how I and many other OWSers feel.

First of all, the police brutality rained down on OWS by police departments around the country, coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security, is not the fault of the Black Bloc anarchists or any other elements inside OWS. Before a single window was broken or trash can turned over, the NYPD was brutalizing OWS activists. The blood of OWS activists has been spilled by the NYPD without pause or remorse since the beginning of these demonstrations.

By engaging in particular tactics of resistance, correct or incorrect, the Black Bloc is not responsible for the NYPD’s behavior. The NYPD has killed Ramarley Graham, Sean Bell and countless other African Americans without any provocation. They need no excuse for their viciousness. Don’t blame the victims.

In Oakland, Calif., and all across the U.S., many OWS activists are facing serious criminal charges. Why would you divide the movement by trying to label one section as “violent” and “dangerous”? Why would you aid the state in isolating some sections? Aren’t the Wall Street bankers the real criminals?

Secondly, the remarks you made about the events of 1989-1991 in Eastern Europe were way off.

When the USSR collapsed and the socialist governments of Eastern Europe were overthrown, this was a huge victory for the 1% against the 99%.

Things like the right to health care, education and employment were abolished. Life expectancy in the Eastern European countries went down by big numbers. Right now, the women of Eastern Europe, who once had paid maternity leave, guaranteed employment, and birth control and abortion on demand, are sex trafficked at higher rates than ever.

The events you described in your speech as being so glorious were simply the 1% taking control of Eastern Europe for themselves. Things for the working class have gotten worse since Wall Street recolonized a big chunk of the globe, with your confessed assistance.

I don’t want to model our movement on the events that led to economic catastrophe and mass suffering in Eastern Europe. Rather, the political movements I look to as inspiration for the OWS are the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and other socialist revolutions where the 99% took power away from the 1%.

In addition, I think much can be learned from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, where young people like us fought to prevent capitalist restoration.

Likewise, the anti-war movement, the Black Liberation movement, the Unemployed Councils and sit-down strike waves of the 1930s have real lessons for OWS on how to fight and win against the 1% here in the U.S.

Many within these movements, just like many of us in OWS, thought of capitalism and U.S. imperialism as the true enemy of humanity. They saw their movements, as we see OWS, as a place to fight to overthrow the system and create a society where the 99% rule.

A new chant has been catching on at OWS rallies in New York. It was on our lips in Union Square on March 21 when they tried to evict us. We also chanted it when we took back Zuccotti with crowds of Left Forum activists.

We chanted, “Just like Ho Chi Minh! Occupy is gonna win!”

When the Vietnamese people kicked the Wall Street bankers out of their country, it was a great victory for all humanity. It took a great deal of militancy and relentless years of heroic sacrifice on the part of the Vietnamese people.

I have no doubt that it will take a similarly long and relentless struggle to bring down the 1% in the U.S. But I’m confident that just as the Soviet people drove the Nazis out of Eastern Europe, the Chinese Red Army drove Japanese imperialism out of their country, and the people of Cuba still stand strong, that just like Ho Chi Minh, we too will win and defeat the 1%!

— Caleb T. Maupin
OWS activist and Workers World Party youth organizer

PressTV: "Crack Down on 99%ers"

Watch Video Here

A political activist says the US one-percent ruling class “is really threatened by the rising movement of oppressed people,” responding with a rise in police crackdowns.


On the six-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement on Saturday, anti-corporatism demonstrators gathered together to launch a new series of protests in New York, Los Angeles and the Midwest.

US Occupy protesters have called for solidarity rallies in a show of support to express discontent with the US police brutality and the detention of dozens of demonstrators during the movement.

The protesters have been using the slogan, "We are the 99 percent" to distinguish themselves from the one-percent of Americans that are in possession of the greatest portion of the nation's wealth.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Caleb Maupin from the International Action Center to further discuss the issue. The following is a transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Do you think it's quite significant that these solidarity marches now have more than one message overlapping each other? -It's the anti-Wall Street demos doubled up with a wave of dissatisfaction against US police brutality.

Maupin: Yes. I was actually in the park last night, last evening, when the attacks happened. It was ridiculous. There were people demonstrating in the park, minding their own business in the park which they have the right to do, which there have been numerous court rulings now that said they have the right to be in the park as long as they don’t setup tents, and the result was the police declaring the park to be closed arbitrarily and going in and acting extremely violently.

At one point there was a woman having a seizure on the ground, and the police kept her in handcuffs. There were trained medics who ran up to try and help the woman who were blocked by the police.

And this really shows that the ruling class in this country is really threatened by the rising movement of oppressed people. They chose to respond this way.

They’re so threatened by the idea that people in the US just like to get together and gather in a park and denounce capitalism. They’re threatened by that because they know their system is very weak. At one point in the demonstration people were chanting, “just like Ho Chi Minh, Occupy is going to win,” making clear they were in solidarity with the oppressed people around the world that are fighting against the US bankers and the corporations. That’s a beautiful thing.

Occupy Wall Street is a symptom of a global movement, and the fact that such brutality has been cracked down has been showing what this government has been all about.

Press TV: Overall how would you asses the resolve and motivation of the 99-percenters, given the police tactics used, the wave of arrests and let's not forget the recent signing of the Federal Restricted Buildings act by President Obama?

Maupin: Well, if we know anything from the last six months, it’s been every time they viciously attack Occupy Wall Street, what happens it gets bigger.

And you know, New York City can get very cold in the winter, but the winter’s over. It’s heating up, it’s getting warm here and I think this is just the beginning of a broad Occupy Spring.

All over the country people are getting ready. There’s even a push for a general strike on May 1st - ‘A day without the 99-percent’.

People are saying they will not sell their labor to the Wall Street capitalist class as protest on May 1st - the International Workers’ Day which started here on May 1st which started here in the United States and has not been practiced here in the United States for a long time until it was revived in 2006 by the immigrant workers.

But now it’s been taken up by the entire 99-percent here in the US. Things are rapidly changing here and Occupy Wall Street is a symbol of that. People are ready to fight and it’s very inspiring.

GMA/JR

PressTV: "OWS Aligns With People's Struggle Against Capitalism"

Watch Video Here

Although the United States continually accuses other countries of violating human rights, Washington itself is widely considered as one of the biggest violators of human rights in the world.


Press TV has talked with Caleb Maupin from the International Action Center in New York to discuss the matter further.

The program also offers the opinions of two other guests: human rights and international lawyer Paul Wolf from Washington and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies Saul Landau from Berkeley.

The following is a rough transcript of the interview.

Press TV: For the first time ever the US came under question at the Human rights council at Geneva last year. Discrimination against Muslims and police brutality were cited as two of the top main concerns. Why this decline, overall; and then especially in these two areas do you think?

Maupin: Well, there is a number of factors involved with this situation. One of which is that the United States is ruled by a small elite, who have the money and the wealth and the power in the US, less than one percent most likely, but they are commonly called the one percent among the Occupy Wall Street Movement and they seeing their power threatened, as the people are pouring into the streets and demanding justice and so as a result they have been forced to reveal themselves in a way and reveal the brutality that they wage.

The second reason is the hypocrisy involved. The US goes around the world, invading people’s countries, burning people’s holy books, shooting people, murdering people, overthrowing governments; all in the name of defending human rights.

But if you want to see the human rights the US is talking about, you can look in Libya, where NATO bombs have destroyed the country and people are now in misery, you can look at Afghanistan where the people are suffering under horrific occupation and oppression. You can also look at the New York City, where the police murder people and get away with it, where demonstrators are clubbed and pepper sprayed when they tried to exercise their free speech and you can look in the US which has one of the highest prison populations on the planet.

This whole notion that one percent controlled government in the US, which is a tool of the bankers and the corporations, is an entity that has the right to speak about human rights and defend it internationally is false.

The US is one of the greatest violators of human rights in the world and it should be regarded as such and I think that it is a great thing that many people are realizing this and the people are standing up to this one percent controlled government and not letting it say it represents human rights, when in reality it represents the repression and the further enslavement of the human beings.

Press TV: It was interesting the way that the US democracy was described by former Vice President Al Gore that it had been “hacked”, what do you think he means by that?

Maupin: Well, I do not know what Al Gore means by democracy because when Al Gore was in office, he was just another continuer of the policies we are seeing now. He carried out imperialistic intervention in Serbia and elsewhere.

But I will say this, you know, one of the most striking things about this massacre that went on in Afghanistan is [that] this is the future that the US has to offer [to] the next generation. It does not have jobs for the next generation of youth, it does not have education, education is being cut, but the military recruitment is there and they do have the opportunity for young people to be sent to other countries abroad to be put in the situations and to be trained to be murderers and to be killers like this has happened.

I mean this is a continual policy of repressing people and the only option left for young people is not be educated, not to have a future but instead to join the ranks of an army being sent around the world to make sure other people do not rise up against the same conditions that are being faced by working people across the US.

It is very frustrating and very shocking and the fact that young people, you know, it is so crazy that all our lives in the US we were taught that the US is a great country because there is democracy and there is freedom and people are allowed to express themselves. But a generation right now tried to actually use that freedom and they poured into the streets and they are seeing what this freedom actually means if you ever try to use it.

The one percent government that runs the US has never been a democracy. It has always been a dictatorship by the super rich, who controls the banks, the factories, the media, the school system and they have utilized all of the wealth of this world in order to make more and more money for themselves.

And now people are revolting and what Occupy Wall Street, you know what we are starting to understand is, the people in Afghanistan [who are] fighting against the United States and fighting to liberate their country, the people in Libya [who are] fighting against the NATO occupiers, they are our allies, they are allies in a global class war against these bankers and these corporations and we need the working class in the US not just the radical youth but all of the working class in the US, the people who were being laid off, the people who were having their homes foreclosed, we all need to join in a global struggle against these bankers and these corporations.

These ultimately the bankers and the one percent that the Occupy Wall Street is fighting against, are not just the enemies of the people here in the US; they are the enemies of the people all over the world.

It is the US and the corporations that are causing poverty throughout the world and it is the US and the bankers and the corporations that are threatening wars that created and backed the state of Israel and which is repressing and brutalizing the Palestinian people.

And ultimately if we want to see change, there needs to be a global alliance between workers and oppressed people in every corner of the globe, standing up to this one percent, engaging in heroic actions like Occupy Wall Street is engaged in where take over buildings, we refused to let system continue as usual, we confront the police, we confront the state and we ultimately call out and say, we are the 99 percent; not just the 99 percent in the US but the 99 percent of humanity against the small ruling elite, who does nothing but owns while the rest of us produce all of the wealth of this world.

Press TV: Caleb Maupin, our guest there, Saul Landau, talked about the Patriot Act, of course you are familiar with the NDAA bill, he also talked about the authorizing the arrest without just cause, and then you have this Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act, which restricts gathering and protests at special public places, what are we looking at here? These are examples of violations of the first amendment. What happened to the first amendment? What is happening with the Constitution?

Maupin: Well, it is interesting that all of the things you described are being used to allegedly protect people from terror. But let’s think about who the US has considered to be terrorists in the past. Nelson Mandela [former South African president], when he waged a struggle against the apartheid government in South Africa, was called a terrorist by the US government. The provisional Irish Republican Army, as they fought to free their country from British Empire, was also called terrorists. The Maoist rebels in the Nepal, as they fought to bring down an absolute monarchy, were also called terrorists by the US government, and still are.

So, if you look at it overall, the US government is not anyone who should be protecting us from terrorism. In fact the US is engaging in terrorism all over the world right now, whether it is Israel, whether it is in Africa, whether it is in anywhere. The US is engaging in terrorism. So, the idea that they would protect us from terrorism is very scary.

They are not trying to protect the people from terror; they are trying to protect their system from the wrath of the people as they boil in anger at its results which are largely economic at this point. People are suffering in mass economically, and I do not think [that] there is any popular support for these policies. I think the popular support is only amongst the halls of power, where they are they bracing.

This idea that you can’t protest in any “official building.” What is that? What is an official building? The law is so vaguely defined. I mean it would just make a federal offense out of things that are exercising free speech. The National Defense Authorization Act [NDAA] says they can detain anybody. Anyone on suspicion of being a terrorist, they do not even have to prove it.

All kinds of legislation is being used to make sure that the government has the ability to do anything it can, to keep itself in power, amidst the rage of the people. And if all the polls that are coming out right now show people are extremely dissatisfied with this system and extremely dissatisfied with the fact that there is a one percent with all the wealth in its hands and all the power and all the resources, while the people have nothing.

And ultimately, you know; the polls are also showing that the people are coming to an understanding that the word Socialism, which has been presented as the opposite of Capitalism and has been demonized in the US for a long time, is not such a bad word and that the idea that we could hold in common, all these resources which we have produced, yet the one percent owns; you know that is not such a bad thing and many people are turning away from the Capitalism and turning against the Capitalist system in the US and [are] looking for a more compassionate and more human-based and a more truly democratic alternative.

I am sure, that really scares the ruling elite and especially, it especially scares the ruling elite that this Occupy Wall Street Movement is not aligning with them and not saying, we want to make their system better and we just want to help them do better in their pursuit of oppressing and repressing the people of the world, but it is aligning with the people of the world in their struggle for justice. This is a beautiful thing.

The product of some recent facebook banter...

It is a tragic mistake when the people's movement falls into the illusion that one section of the 1% (read: capitalist class) is "progressive" or "democratic."

The only hope for the working class is political independence.

OWS, the Wisconsin Uprising, are all examples of the working class writing is own agenda, and telling the entire 1%, both liberals and conservatives to shove it.

CLASS AGAINST CLASS! CLASS AGAINST CLASS!

These words, that William Z. Foster thundered when the Communist Party was a powerful political force in this country are not a revision of Marxism, but its VERY ESSENCE.

-Caleb Maupin

Why People's Korea Should Be Defended

By Stephen Millies
Published Jan 21, 2012 3:45 PM

Is there another country more demonized by the U.S. government and corporate media than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as north Korea?

The 1% need to lie about oppressed countries and peoples to justify wars and massacres.

The lies told about John Africa and the MOVE organization paved the way for the May 13, 1985, holocaust in Philadelphia. Five children and six adults were killed after Philadelphia police — helped by the Pentagon and FBI — dropped a bomb on the MOVE house.

The only adult survivor, Ramona Africa, was then sent to prison for seven years.

From 1950 to 1953, all of Korea was turned into a MOVE house by the Pentagon. At least 3 million Koreans were killed. Hundreds of thousands were burned alive by napalm. The 400,000 people in north Korea’s capital of Pyongyang had 420,000 bombs dropped on them.

South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that south Korean puppet Syngman Rhee executed 100,000 to 200,000 political prisoners.

Despite these massacres, the U.S. war machine wasn’t able to conquer the DPRK. Chinese volunteers fought beside their Korean sisters and brothers. Among the Chinese soldiers who gave their lives for Korea was Mao Anying, a son of Mao Zedong.

Wall Street continues to occupy south Korea and targets north Korea with nuclear weapons.

The U.S. Army’s Yongsan Garrison occupies 620 acres in the middle of Seoul, south Korea. It’s as if a foreign army occupied Central Park in New York City. What sort of independence is that?

146 years of U.S. aggression against Korea

The capitalist media won’t tell you that the heavily armed U.S. merchant ship “General Sherman” tried attacking Pyongyang in 1866. The invaders were thrown back.

Ulysses S. Grant, whose troops won the U.S. Civil War, capitulated to the defeated Southern slavocracy after he became president, refusing to give land to formerly enslaved people who had tilled it for generations. Yet he sent warships to Korea in 1871, trying to open it up to U.S. markets. More than 200 Korean soldiers were killed defending their country.

This U.S. invasion helped open the door for Japanese aggression against Korea in 1876. In 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt practically gave Korea to Japan in the peace treaty he brokered between the Russian czar and Japanese emperor.

At least a quarter of the human beings incinerated by the U.S. in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were Korean slave laborers. The same U.S. military-industrial complex that dropped these atom bombs refused to drop any bombs on the German railroads that the Nazis used to transport millions to their deaths in Auschwitz.

Socialists should defend the oppressed

The history of the Korean people fighting back should be known and spread widely by socialists. But very little of that appears in a long article called “Socialism in one dynasty,” by David Whitehouse, recently published by the International Socialist Organization in their newspaper, the Socialist Worker.

Instead, Whitehouse attacks People’s Korea, using gossip and phrases lifted from the capitalist media. He also complains that in the DPRK, “the state has to provide health care, education and housing, because there are no institutions outside the state. …” (socialistworker.org, Jan. 12)

This sounds like Ron Paul or the Tea Party attacking Medicare and Social Security. Millions of poor people and unemployed workers would love it if they were provided by the government with jobs, health care, education and housing instead of being fired and evicted by the capitalists.

One of the article’s sources is Atlantic magazine, which was a big cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Michael Kelly, the Atlantic’s editor, was killed while participating in the assault.

The Whitehouse article attacks WWP, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Party for Socialism and Liberation for defending the DPRK. He calls it “satire” that WWP sent condolences to the Workers’ Party of Korea upon the recent death of its leader, Kim Jong Il.

As communists in the belly of the imperialist beast, Workers World Party respects all leaders of people fighting the U.S. empire.

Mocking oppressed people and their leaders is nothing new. John Africa, Marcus Garvey and Kim Jong Il were all ridiculed by the capitalist media. It should be ABC that socialists shouldn’t repeat the slanders of the 1%.

Korea and Cuba, two revolutionary beacons

Korea has a rich revolutionary history. Two million Koreans joined the March 1, 1919, movement for independence from Japanese rule. More than 7,000 were killed.

The Korean people launched an armed struggle for freedom. The most famous guerrilla commander was communist leader Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of north Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong Un. After Che Guevara toured the world in 1960, he said that the most remarkable person he met was Kim Il Sung.

But you won’t find any pictures of Che Guevara in the Socialist Worker newspaper. Cuba, like People’s Korea, isn’t considered to be socialist by this grouping. In fact, there isn’t any country that had a socialist revolution that’s considered socialist by the ISO.

The group supported the Libyan “rebels” who lynched Black people while serving as front men for the U.S./NATO invasion of the African country.

Leningrad, the cradle of the Russian Revolution, endured a 900-day siege during World War II. At least 1 million people died there of starvation and disease. But Leningrad never surrendered to the German imperialists.

The DPRK has been besieged for decades. Great hardships have been endured since the Soviet Union was overthrown in 1991. The U.S. was able to cut off much of the north’s foreign trade, including oil supplies. But Koreans, like the people of Leningrad, will never surrender.

In a besieged fortress, unity is essential. The Workers’ Party of Korea won’t allow imperialists to split their country. That is why the DPRK should be congratulated for its swift action in naming Kim Jong Un to succeed Kim Jong Il as the leader.

Dongping Han: A Chinese Worker Recalls the Mao Era

Guns and Butter - The Unknown Cultural Revolution - January 13, 2010 at 1:00pm

Click to listen (or download)

Jobs, Capitalism, and the Tasks Ahead

By Fred Goldstein
Published Jan 11, 2012 10:29 PM

The pitiful December jobs and employment numbers are a bitter reminder, four years after the present crisis officially began in December 2007, that capitalism is at a dead end.

There have now been four years of mass unemployment; the foreclosure and eviction nightmare continues for millions; poverty and hunger are growing at record levels. For those with jobs, low wages are spreading like a plague. A whole generation of youth is either locked out of the job market or consigned to dead-end jobs. Recent studies show that the U.S., instead of being the “land of opportunity,” is the land of downward mobility for the vast majority.

That is why it is so outrageous that the big-business media have tried to make a mountain out of a molehill, expressing enthusiasm over the December jobs report. If you are one of the 25 million to 30 million workers unemployed or underemployed, the 200,000 jobs allegedly created in December and the drop in the official unemployment rate from 8.6 percent to 8.5 percent amount to a very tiny molehill.

The jobs report barely mentioned that, according to the government’s own figures, 13.1 million are still unemployed, another 8.1 million are working part-time but need full-time work, and 2.3 million more have “dropped out” of the work force altogether. This last number is drastically understated because it excludes millions who either haven’t looked for a job in the last year or have never entered the work force because there are no jobs.

The mouthpieces of U.S. capitalism are engaged in a cynical exercise known as “talking up the economy.” Yet they all know that even this tiny increase in jobs is really overstated by at least 42,000, because of the addition of short-term courier and messenger jobs for the holiday season — leaving the net number of jobs created at 160,000.

When you consider that during the month of December anywhere from 125,000 to 150,000 additional jobs were needed just to absorb the young people who became eligible to enter the work force, then even according to the official numbers the net increase in jobs was only between 10,000 and 35,000. If the capitalist economy were to continue to add jobs at that rate, it would take many decades to put the 25 million to 30 million unemployed and underemployed back to work at full-time jobs.

So the molehill gets even tinier, if it exists at all.

Occupy Wall Street: “Enough is enough!”

Month after month, year after year, workers have been waiting for an upturn that would put the millions back to work, with decent pay, benefits and job security. It hasn’t happened. Things have only changed for the worse.

It is to the credit of the Occupy Wall Streeters that they decided not to wait any longer. Since Sept. 17, they have taken action all across the country to expose the rich and powerful.

In the face of police repression, they have found ways to continue. Their message of fightback is getting through to broad layers of the population, including the labor movement, the communities, students and working people in general.

To keep the OWS message of resistance from getting any further, the capitalist media, after an initial burst of coverage, have decided on near-total censorship of the hundreds of activities going on around the country. OWS has at least the passive support and sympathy of millions. The ruling class wants to shrink that support and prevent it from spreading.

Ruling class fears spread of revolutionary Marxism

The ruling class has another great fear about OWS — the fear that sections of the movement will turn toward revolutionary Marxist ideology.

Right now the OWS movement is directing its fire against the most powerful capitalist institutions: the banks and the politicians who bail them out.

It has also targeted the mortgage companies and put people back in their homes after foreclosure. It has demonstrated against industrial corporations as exploiters, polluters and merchants of death — part of the military-industrial complex. It has taken on the prison-industrial complex and the police for racist stop-and-frisk policies. It has expressed solidarity with immigrant workers. Sections of this movement have rejected the two capitalist parties — the Democrats as well as the Republicans.

Marxism has a comprehensive view of all the institutions and evils that OWS is fighting against. It has a scientific view that ties all these institutions to the system of private property. Marxism has shown that the capitalist class has created a global system of production and distribution based upon a complex, socialized labor process involving hundreds of millions of workers on every continent.

Marxism illuminates how a tiny group of billionaires is able to treat the vast, globalized productive forces as their own private domain. The obscene inequality, the extraordinary wealth of the 1% — short-hand for the capitalist ruling class — is generated over and over again by the process of capitalist exploitation.

Under capitalism, workers are completely cut off from owning or controlling the means of production, distribution or services. Hospital workers cannot afford health care, yet they work in medical institutions owned by bosses or the capitalist state. Agricultural workers cannot afford to give their families healthy diets, yet they produce the food. Workers making $14 an hour under the new two-tier, low-wage contracts in the auto industry will not be able to afford the cars they produce.

The hospital services, the food, the autos will all be sold by the owners for profit. Meanwhile, the workers have to sell their labor to some boss and receive just enough to live on — more or less, depending upon conditions and the level of class struggle.

What the boss takes is unpaid labor in the form of what Marx called surplus value or capitalist profits. That is how the capitalist system runs. That is what generates inequality and all the instruments and institutions of repression necessary to enforce such an unjust system — not just in the U.S., but throughout the world capitalist profit system.

Marx showed that banks are the financial nerve center of capitalism. Money is the start of everything under capitalism — production and exploitation begin with money capital. Banks control the financial arteries of capitalism. Updating Marxism in the age of imperialism, Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin showed how the banks merged with the industrialists and the giant retailers to control the lives of businesses large and small.

Corporations are understood by Marxists to be the engines of exploiting the workers. They steal the labor of the workers, turn it into profits, and use the wealth to expand their capital — as well as enable the corporate owners to live in obscene extravagance. In the long run, the banks thrive off the profits extracted by the capitalists from the workers — profits that are deposited in corporate bank accounts or wind up in federal, state and local government treasuries, from which they return to the banks in the form of interest.

Marxism has a view of the state as an instrument for the oppression of one class by another to secure its form of class rule — today, that means the capitalist exploitation of the workers. The police in the U.S., together with Homeland Security and other government agencies like the FBI, the courts and the prisons are the hard core of the capitalist state. They enforce capitalist law against the workers and the oppressed and anyone who wants to defend the interests of the masses. They protect capitalist private property.

The cops break strikes, protect strikebreakers, put down rebellions, protect the drug trade and enforce racist police-state rule against the African-American, Latino/a and Asian communities. There is also the Bureau of Indian Affairs — federal cops used to oppress Native people.

The Pentagon is the enforcer of global imperialist domination on behalf of transnational capital, including the banks, the oil companies, and big industrial and service corporations that super-exploit workers in low-wage, underdeveloped, formerly colonial countries and plunder their resources.

Socialist revolution is the solution

Many in the Occupy movement already consider themselves revolutionaries and anti-capitalists. It is a natural transition from struggling against all the essential institutions of capitalism to developing an analysis of the fundamental nature of the system and a revolutionary perspective for ending it.

Marxism has shown that the fundamental contradiction in modern capitalist society is the contradiction between the socially organized system of production and the private ownership of the productive forces of society.

The capitalists treat this global system as their own. When it brings them profit, they keep it going. In pursuit of greater and greater profits, each capitalist grouping tries to make its workers more and more productive through the application of technology. What results is more and more commodities produced while wages remain in a narrow boundary. In recent decades wages have generally gone down due to technology and the deskilling of jobs.

The result is greater and greater crises of capitalist overproduction — a mass of goods that cannot be sold for a profit. That is when layoffs begin. Enterprises are shut down. Workers’ hours are cut. Wages and benefits are cut. A handful of billionaires in boardrooms decide the fate of tens and hundreds of millions.

The present “recession” is the longest downturn by far since World War II. Capitalism, still going through a jobless “recovery,” is facing a new downturn. The system has become so productive it cannot revive itself. It has reached a dead end.

Marxism has shown that the only historical alternative to private ownership of the socialized productive system is to overthrow private property and socialize ownership. This means that the working class and the oppressed have to organize to seize political power and take the means of production and distribution away from the billionaires — the 1% who are the capitalist exploiters — in order to make the economy the social property of the people, to be used for human need, not profit and human greed.

This transformation of property relations will take a thoroughgoing and profound proletarian revolution made by the workers and all the oppressed, ultimately involving the mobilization of millions. This will lead to the liberation of the entire human race.

Goldstein is the author of “Low-Wage Capitalism.”

PressTV: "The 1% is Bracing For Class War"

The ongoing human rights violations in the US, as detailed in a report recently released by the Russian foreign ministry, have led to great friction between the different classes in America.

Click Here For Video


Press TV has conducted an interview with Caleb Maupin, an activist from International Action Center, to further discuss US human rights violations.

The video offers the opinions of two additional guests: Kevin Danaher co-founder of Global Exchange and Paul Wolf, a human rights and international lawyer.

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: US human rights abuses cover a wide range of issues, and have escalated in its frequency: torture, harsh police tactics, bad prison conditions, and unfair judicial system: Why is the trend increasing in its frequency?

Maupin: I think the trend in repression in the United States is increasing due to the fact that people are standing up and demonstrating.

The fangs have always been there, the vicious ugliness of the rulers and their ruthless efforts to maintain their rule have always been there.

Just in 1982, the US dropped bombs in Philadelphia and destroyed an entire block against the MOVE organization.

But for a long time they haven't had to ratchet up their repression because people haven't been standing up to them.

But this Occupy Wall Street movement has opened up a new area of political space where people are taking to the streets in huge numbers.

And millions of people are learning the truth that activists like me have known for a long time, which is that, in New York City and anywhere else in this country, if you're a Zionist or a Ku Klux Klan, and you have a march then the police will escort you nicely and everything will be fine.

But if you stand up against Wall Street, and you stand up to these bankers and you have a message they don't want to hear, they'll come down on you with pepper spray and mace, and their orange nets, and they'll come and they'll brutalize you.

And that's the truth, this whole idea of the US as a democracy is a sham.

If you stand up to these ruling elites they'll come down just as viciously as they came down on striking workers back in the 1900s when unions were illegal, just like they came down on the Black Panther party in the black liberation struggle.

They rule this country, the Wall Street elite rules, and they will be vicious to defend their rule.

Press TV: Obviously you as a part of International Action center perhaps, and in line with Occupy protesters, when you hear about your freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, in terms of the constitutions, which is your right to exercise, and you have laws passed that where US citizens can be picked up from the streets, without any explanation of alleged terrorism charges, that's people standing up.

So is that the hope of the Occupy protesters, standing up to the system?

Maupin: That is absolutely the hope!

You know the Bill of Rights wasn't even originally in the constitution. It took a popular movement and demonstrations back in the time of the founding of the United States for the Bill of Rights to be even added in the constitution, it wasn't originally part of it. I was one in demands.

And you know, all this rhetoric of the US being the freest country in the world, there are more people in prison by numbers, alone, than there are in any country in the world.

I mean that's shocking, and this is a free country with so many people in prison.

And, in addition to that, I mean the level of police brutality we've seen, you know, right now they're bracing because they realize their system cannot solve the economic problems we're facing right now. And they're bracing because they know Occupy Wall Street is just the beginning.

They see the rumbling and they see that people are coming. And they're trying to brace everything and secure their system and lock down everything and prepare for the global class war that's coming, that's going to tear this system apart.

Press TV: Let me ask you two things; explain the definition of the global class warfare and how they are preparing for it?

Maupin: Well, as far as global class warfare, it's the fact that there is a whole generation of people all throughout who world that this system won't be able to provide employment for, whom all of the life that has been offered under this system is disappearing.

There are generations without jobs. And their only chose is to go out to the streets and to fight. And if they want to have a future they're going to have to fight for it.

So, they're bracing for that, and their bracing includes things like this National Defense Authorization Act, which basically gives the government the right to detain anybody. It also includes these massive expansions in the prison system, massive expansions in the Department of Homeland Security and other means of oppression.

Because they're bracing for the explosion that is coming! Occupy Wall Street is just the beginning!

If you look around the world right now, things are shaking. 2011 was just the beginning! Next year is going to be bigger, and the year after that is going to be bigger, and it's going to continue until this system falls apart.

Press TV: We have about forty-five seconds, and we want you to say whatever you like, regarding the topic we talked about.

Maupin: Well, I just want to say, the reason they're bracing right now, is because people are reviving the forgotten traditions of class struggle and fighting against the bankers.

People are learning the American history about heroes, not like George Washington, but like Huey Newton and William Z. Foster and the true revolutionary leaders in this country who have fought against the one percent.

And that's why they're bracing in fear, so we should be hopeful at this moment, we shouldn't cower!

Deirdre Griswold: The Death of Kim Jong Il and Solidarity with People's Korea

Egyptian Masses Defy Military

By John Catalinotto
Published Nov 22, 2011 9:43 PM

Nov. 21 — The masses have opened a new chapter in the Egyptian revolution. They have stood strong in Tahrir Square for nearly four days against bullets and gas demanding that the military regime, which succeeded President Hosni Mubarak last Feb. 12, step down.

As the day ended in Egypt, the Health ministry reported that 23 people had been killed and more than 1,500 wounded by the Egyptian army and police. But the people keep filling Tahrir Square.

As a result of the mass determination to stay in the streets, as well as the spread of the struggle to other Egyptian cities, the civilian government — that is, the politicians who provide a civilian cover to the U.S.-backed military — offered to resign. It was an important concession to the strength of the mass movement.

The struggle comes at a tense time politically because national elections are scheduled to begin on Nov. 28. People expect the Muslim Brotherhood to do well in the elections, since it is the best organized of the many groups that opposed Mubarak.

For this reason, the Brotherhood, after calling the first protest demonstration in Tahrir Square on Friday, Nov. 18, then called its organized forces off the streets so as not to give the military government a pretext to postpone the elections, according to an AP report today.

However, the reports in the U.S. corporate media are unreliable. Until WW can get reports from independent, working class sources, it is best to review information that is reasonably reliable.

Last January and February, a massive uprising upended the Mubarak regime, surprising the world. The imperialist governments, in this case mainly the U.S., supported the general staff of the Egyptian army, with whom the Pentagon has had close relations since the late 1970s.

The New York Times calls the Egyptian army “longtime American allies and beneficiaries whose power survived Mr. Mubarak’s departure.” (Nov. 21) Washington looked to the officer corps to make cosmetic changes but to keep the old system virtually intact. It may be possible for the mass movement to win over the rank-and-file soldiers, but the upper officers are tied to the ruling class and to imperialism.

Now U.S. officials are worried. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said earlier in November that “If, over time, the most powerful political force in Egypt remains a roomful of unelected officials, they will have planted the seeds for future unrest, and Egyptians will have missed a historic opportunity.” (New York Times, Nov. 21)

Along with the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, as the best organized force and one that did not challenge property relations, is expected to play a role in the new government.

There is also a secular opposition both to Mubarak and to the military regime. This opposition has some elements that are conciliatory to imperialism and others that are decidedly anti-imperialist, and includes a minority of Marxist and other pro-socialist forces.

The imperialists and the Egyptian military have often tried to incite hostility between the Islamic and secular forces, or between Muslims and Coptic Christians. However, the latter have blamed the government, not the Muslims, for attacks that led to deaths within their community, like the dozens killed by security forces Oct. 9.

In this latest demonstration, secular forces joined the demonstration originally called by the Muslim Brotherhood. Coptic Christians stood guard in Tahrir Square against the army while the Muslim demonstrators took time out to pray. (New York Times, Nov. 21)

Both inside and outside these organizations are the tens of millions of workers and other poor people in Egypt, in unions or not, who have been the motor force of the revolution. None of their basic demands, that is, the social demands for higher wages, more social benefits, etc., have been won yet.

These powerful mass forces impact on all the organizations. Their demands cannot be won through any government that conciliates with world imperialism. This next phase of the Egyptian revolution has just begun.

Major Political Forces in Yemen

From: Xinhua News Agency

SANAA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- When North and South Yemen reunified in 1990, Yemen became a democratic republic enjoying political pluralism. At the beginning, about 60 parties were formed and the number decreased to 23 officially recognized parties in 2003. Most of these parties have no representation in the parliament.

Here are the major political forces: the General People's Congress (GPC), the ruling party, and the Joint Meeting Parties ( JMP), the main opposition bloc that includes seven parties.

The GPC was founded in August 1982 by President Ali Abdullah Saleh based on the ideology of the 1962 revolution. It was founded according to the real Yemeni cultural, intellectual and organizational needs and is seen as one of the important parties with Arabism and moderate Islam trends.

The GPC continued to be the only party till 1990. Other parties in north Yemen remained under its umbrella or practiced their activities secretly because the GPC banned political activities.

Most of the JMP parties were within the GPC till 1990 when the north and the south reunified. The GPC has the majority in the Yemeni House of Representatives with 229 members according to the 2003 elections. With the goal of ensuring the participation of the parties in the parliament, the JMP was formed on Feb. 6, 2003.

The JMP included the main opposition parties in the country, including those which remained under the GPC till 1990.

The principal agreement of the JMP called for serving the main goal of the bloc, increasing their representation in the parliament, and banning competition among these parties and coordination with other parties.

The JMP included seven parties: the Yemeni Congregation of Reform Party; the Yemeni Socialist Party; the Nasserite Unionist People's Organization; the National Arab Socialist Baath Party; the Haq Party; the September Congregation Party; and the Popular Forces Union Party.

The Yemeni Congregation of Reform Party (Islah Party) was recognized on Sept. 13, 1990. It became an opposition party in May 1997.

In the first parliamentary elections after the unity, this party won 64 seats, in the 1997 elections 53 seats and in the 2003 elections 46 seats out of 301, the total seats of the parliament.

The second important party within the JMP is the Yemeni Socialist Party, which was founded in 1978 in South Yemen. Several deadly events took place in the south that badly weakened its organizational and internal structure as well as its popularity.

In 1990, it was a partner in the reunification of the north and the south. After the civil war in 1994, this party lost its popularity due to some reasons including the separation war and ideology that conflicted with the culture and religious fanaticism of the Yemeni society.

It participated in the 1993 elections and won 56 seats, boycotted the 1997 elections, and resumed its participation in the 2003 elections and got seven seats.

The third main party within the JMP is the Nasserite Unionist People's Organization, founded in 1965.

With an Islamic ideology, the party dates back to 1952 when the Arab revolution against colonialism started in Egypt. The " Nasserite" in its name refers to Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former Egyptian president who founded the Arab Nasserite movement.

This party continued to expand and exist despite that political activities were banned in south and north Yemen before the unity. It was the first party to be officially recognized as an opposition party in 1989.

It struggles to deepen democracy, build a new civil Yemen, achieve social justice and defend the Yemeni unity within the path of achieving an Arab unity. In the 1993 elections it won a single seat, and in the 1997 elections three seats.

Another main party in Yemen is the Arab Socialist Baath Party, which dates back to the 1950s. Its ideology is a combination of socialism and Arabism. In 1972, the party divided into two groups: the Baath Party and the Popular Front.

The Baath Party then held two names: the Arab Socialist Baath Party of Iraq and the National Arab Socialist Party of Syria. The first is now an ally of the GPC and the second is one of the JMP components.

In the 1993 elections it won seven seats, and in the 1997 elections two seats.

Other parties have no major ideological and organizational differences as they struggle to exist and be active in the political landscape in Yemen.

Tijuana Conference To Take Up Hemisphere's Struggles

By Cheryl LaBash
Published Nov 5, 2011 2:41 PM

Where is the electrifying Occupy Wall Street movement headed?

From capitalist media pundits to the Occupy Wall Street encampments struggling to hold public space in countless cities and towns across the U.S., this question is bubbling underneath the daily actions and police repression.

An opportunity to discuss the experience of other such movements will take place just across the U.S. border from San Diego in Tijuana, Mexico, on Dec. 2 to 4 at the 8th U.S./Cuba/Mexico/Latin America Labor Conference. It will follow a three-day Workers’ School with instructors from the Lázaro Peña Cadre School in Havana, Cuba. Online registration and information are available at http://LaborExchange.blogspot.com.

Occupations, general strikes and militant marches are being renewed in the U.S. today. On May 1, 2006, the massive immigrant rights marches were effectively general strikes in many areas. This national movement had a strong impact. Earlier this year, tens of thousands mobilized daily to support an occupation of Wisconsin’s Capitol in Madison to challenge an anti-worker program. Through all this, the working class is learning to take action in its own name.

In Central and South America and the Caribbean, workers, Indigenous people and rural farmers have walked this path before us. They have been on the receiving end of imperialist economic domination, coup d’états, military dictatorships and rigged elections sponsored by the United States. Today the Mexican electrical workers are occupying the central square in Mexico City, which they have held since March. Chilean and Colombian students are fighting for education rights. Moreover, tiny Cuba has held off the imperialist giant to the north poised to destroy them for more than 50 years with a battle of ideas and profound unity.

The Oakland call for a citywide general strike and march to the port on Nov. 2 to “block the flow of capital” states the truth: “The Oakland General Strike will demonstrate the wide reaching implications of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The entire world is fed up with the huge disparity of wealth caused by the present system. Now is the time that the people are doing something about it. The Oakland General Strike is a warning shot to the 1 percent: Their wealth only exists because the 99 percent creates it for them.”

That is true. For those who want to discuss where this truth can take us with active builders of independent social orders, send a representative to the December conference in Tijuana. We have a world to win!

In Zuccoti Park, the Uprising Continues Where It Began

By Caleb T. Maupin
New York
Published Nov 2, 2011 10:08 PM

Occupy Wall Street, the 24/7 encampment of thousands of people in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, most of them youth, has become a center of countless acts of resistance to capitalism and its crimes.

As Workers World Party First Secretary Larry Holmes put it in a recent speech: “It’s like a neon sign has been put up proclaiming to the people everywhere: ‘Rise up!’”

Almost every day there are different marches and demonstrations, all focused on a particular crime or outrage committed by Wall Street bankers and the capitalist class. Unions such as the Communication Workers and the Teamsters hold rallies against cutbacks, bringing out their rank and file to parade through the streets. The Verizon workers, still struggling for a contract, have marched into the park on numerous occasions and been greeted with applause and support.

Organizations demanding a single-payer health insurance program march with the slogan: “Health care for the 99%!”

On Oct. 21, a contingent of youth from Occupy Wall Street joined the October 22nd Coalition in a Harlem rally against the “stop and frisk” practices of the New York Police Department. The rally ended as Dr. Cornel West and countless others engaged in civil disobedience, blocking the doorway of the 28th Precinct on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, where 30 were arrested.

In response to the horrific assault on Occupy Oakland, hundreds of youth held a rally and then took the streets in solidarity with those thousands of miles away who had joined them in rising up and occupying public space.

The militancy of the marches continues to escalate. Police barricades are almost routinely pushed aside and unpermitted conquests of streets by crowds of students, union members and other activists occur frequently, despite the obvious anger of the NYPD over its failed efforts to prevent them.

In some instances the police are even taunted with chants of “Tony Bologna! Tony Bologna!” the officer who brutalized demonstrators and bystanders with pepper spray and demonstrators with pepper spray. He was docked 10 vacation days and reassigned after a public outcry.

A Jobless Working Group now militantly fights on behalf of unemployed workers as an official section of the General Assembly at Zuccotti Park. The demand of “No fare for the unemployed!” was raised by the Jobless Working Group as they marched into subway stations, exposing the role of Wall Street in robbing workers with high public transportation fares.

Marches against the growing energy corporation practice of hydraulic fracking take place quite frequently. Banks that profit from this environmentally harmful practice are targeted.

‘Wall Street is war street’

“Wall Street is war street!” is the rallying cry of countless anti-war marches.

No march is complete without the staple chants of “All day! All week! Occupy Wall Street!” and “We are the 99%!” which have been the rallying cries since the beginning of this mass people’s uprising on Sept. 17, a month and a half ago.

The NYPD banned all tents and structures from the gathering, but the ban was defied. The first tent to go up was in honor of the traditional Jewish harvest festival of Sukkos. It displayed a placard with the First Amendment of the Constitution and its reference to religious freedom. The tent remained standing.

This set the precedent for more tents in the park. Now it is filled with them.

On Oct. 28, the police forcibly removed all power generators, which could be used for space heaters, computers and other electrical equipment. The following day was a mess of rain and snow. Press pundits talked as if this would be the end of the occupation.

However, on the evening of Oct. 30 the square was full of several thousand people once again. They awaited an address by former political prisoner and communist, Dr. Angela Davis, after the snow had cleared.

To any regular at Zuccotti Park, the role of Workers World Party cannot be missed. On a daily basis, a table is set up by party members and supporters, decked out with Marxist-Leninist literature such as Fred Goldstein’s pamphlet, “Capitalism at a Dead End”; the booklet, “Wisconsin: Lighting the Fires of Class Struggle”; and printed copies of Larry Hales’s “Letter to the Occupy Wall Street Movement.” Thousands of copies of Workers World newspaper have been distributed in the park, where many willingly give donations for the latest issue.

Many demonstrators have signed up for more information on Workers World Party and the struggles it engages in. Conversations at the table often delve directly into the burning issues of the day, such as Libya and NATO’s murder of Moammar Gadhafi, the history of the Soviet Union, Cuba and other struggles for socialism, the struggles of the Palestinian people, as well as the bank bailouts and the capitalist roots of the current economic meltdown.

This mass, popular uprising against capitalism and its symptoms remains strong. The crowds each day consist of several thousand, rarely less and often more, especially during a specific march or rally.

The gathering is continuing to resist police repression and hostile weather conditions with more strength than ever, causing the Wall Street class to tremble in fear of this mass, broad movement that it has not been able to squelch.