Workers' Liberty

It is fortunate for the Iranian regime that it has a loyal network of supporters outside its borders, prepared to defend it against the “terrorists” as the Iranian opposition are now known. Some of the most outspoken defenders are not, as one might expect, brother clerics but… people on the “liberal” and “socialist” left.

Martin Donohue recommends The Troublemaker’s Handbook by Labor Notes

Founded in the USA in 1979, Labor Notes is rank and file union organising project and best known for its monthly newsletter. It also organises conferences attracting over 1000 rank and file union stewards, and published pamphlets and books.

America is a centre-right nation. Or so the pundit class in America tirelessly insists.

The crisis in the US car industry is leading quickly to savage attacks on working class pay, conditions, jobs and pensions. When Chrysler went bankrupt recently its assests were sold to a new entity headed by Fiat. As part of the deal Chrysler workers were offered “control” over the company. But, as the following comments from US journal Labor Notes, show these auto workers are being taken for a ride.

Throughout the twentieth century there were periods of class struggle that saw workers occupy factories and workplaces: in the 1920s in Italy; in the 1930s in France, the USA and elsewhere; in France in May 1968. And in Britain in 1973-75 there were over 100 occupations over job cuts.

The inauguration of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States of America, is a source of intense hope for a great many American workers. More people than ever before, including more people from Afro-American and Latino backgrounds, turned out to vote for Obama in the November 2008 elections.

GUADELOUPE: The French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe has been rocked by a general strike — a total shut-down of shops, supermarkets, schools and public services.

In May 2006, readers of Voice: AIGA Journal of Design were offered an unusual glimpse into current liberal-trade union thinking.

In May of 2006, readers of Voice: AIGA Journal of Design were offered an unusual glimpse into current lib-lab thinking. The online publication for "the professional association for design" finds an audience largely among American commercial artists, art-directors, and "brand consultants," an ambitious crowd unlikely to humble itself anywhere near a picket-line (except perhaps when crossing one). It is therefore revealing that contributing writer David Barringer's "New U? Unions have an Image Problem"—the title itself a giveaway—should figure so inconspicuously as just another case study in its parent sheet. Here we learn that US labor's pains stem principally not from any internal malignancy or crippling neoliberal policy, but from an inability to reinvent and market itself as the Latest Thing.

Every now and again, American workers issue a blunt reminder to the bosses, and to themselves, that the steady and moderate tone transmitted by their nation's great public-relations dream-machine can never fully lull them to sleep.

In an article on the US website TomDispatch, writer Mike Davis sees three reasons for thinking that Obama is unlikely to do anything like Roosevelt's "New Deal". Click here.

Workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago (who are organised by as small “rank and file oriented” union, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of) have now approved an agreement with

The crisis in the auto industry is about many things: the possible collapse of General Motors, Detroit gas guzzlers, auto emission standards, the environment, and the need for mass transportation, among others. At the centre of it all, however, is the struggle between management and the workers, that is, between capital and labour....

The choice of expression “New Deal” is of course not accidental. It is quite explicit in the report. The authors state: “Drawing our inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s courageous programme launched in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929, we believe that a positive course of action can pull the world back from economic and environmental meltdown.” They also draw on “a succession of left leaning politicians” as well as Roosevelt, Leon Blum and Clement Attlee.

In recent months the idea of a “Green New Deal” has become an ubiquitous answer to the current economic and environmental crises. Barack Obama has alluded to it. The TUC has backed the idea.

Having spent his career documenting American post-Second World war history it was perhaps inevitable that Oliver Stone would want to make a film about George (Dubya) Bush. But the film feels more like a duty than a pleasure — work undertaken to “make the record”, to get printed on celluloid a representation of this at once ridiculous and very dangerously powerful man.

The history, politics and struggles of the rank-and-file Minnesota Teamsters in the 1930s provides countless examples of how effective socialist leadership can transform the working class movement.

This fascinating programme told the full story about the “black power” protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at a medal ceremony during the 1968 Mexico Olympics. Although the story is well known (and the image even more famous), especially in America, it was worth telling again, in this film, by the athletes themselves.

It is an irony of history that Jack London should be remembered today mainly for dog stories - the children’s fictional stories Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1905) remain his best-known wo

Welcome from George Bush's America — the culmination of 35 years of ongoing capitalist assault against working people.

25,000 dockers at all 29 ports across the West Coast of the USA staged an 8-hour strike on 1 May calling for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union conference in San Francisco has passed a motion “calling on unions and working people in the US and internationally to mobilize for a “No Peace No Work Holiday” on May 1, 2008 for 8 hours to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East”.

Review of Bryan D. Palmer, 2007, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928, University of Illinois Press

Archbishop Rowan Williams has proposed that British courts should use Islamic sharia law for family matters among Muslim citizens.

The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what it is – the source. — BB King

Europeans involved in the slave trade stripped as much culture from their human cargo as possible but music was so deep rooted in the African men and women that it was impossible to tear it away from those who survived the horrific journey.

On Monday November 5, the Writers’ Guild of America went on strike for the first time in nearly twenty years. Last minute negotiations with the employers’ organisation, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to reach a deal. The WGA (which for perverse historical reasons is actually two unions, the WGA west and the WGA east) “downed pencils”.

James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928, by Bryan D. Palmer (2007) reviewed.

James P. Cannon (1890-1974) was a titanic figure in the history of Marxism, yet in spite of a long life devoted to socialism, he has until now eluded a decent biography. This book by Canadian Marxist Bryan Palmer has been long in gestation but has been worth the wait: at last Cannon’s life — or at least the first 38 years of it — has been told.

On Monday November 5, the Writers Guild of America went on strike for the first time in nearly twenty years. Last minute negotiations with the employers’ organisation, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to reach a deal. The WGA (which for perverse historical reasons is actually two unions, the WGA west and the WGA east) ‘downed pencils’. This followed, for example, a mass meeting of the WGA west in which 3,000 writers voted 90% in favour of strike action.

Parts of the left back any opposition to US imperialism around the world dogmatically, without qualification, and with little attempt to examine what the effects and actions of the imperialist power are. Or what the political character of the local alternatives to imperialism are. These leftists might be suprised by the story of the US imperialist intervention in Japan, contradicting as it does, some preconceived notions of how an imperialist power behaves.

Review of US labor in trouble and transition, Kim Moody, London: Verso

Why is US labor in decline and how can the situation be turned around? Kim Moody, a prominent Marxist participant and commentator in the US labour movement over the past three decades, has produced a coherent answer to these questions, with implications for the revival of trade unionism everywhere.