Workers' Liberty

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”.

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.

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

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.

US labor in trouble and transition, Kim Moody, London: Verso 2007

Last month, for the first time in 37 years the US United Auto Workers (UAW) union launched a two-day nationwide strike against General Motors. The strike involved 73,000 production workers.

John Bolton, who was US ambassador to the United Nations until a few months ago, told a fringe meeting at Tory Party conference on 30 September: “I think we have to consider the use of military force [against Iran]. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities.”

Steve Cohen continues a series about important socialist novels, looking at Ring Lardner Jr and the background to his novel the Ecstasy of Edwin Muir

Darren Bedford comments on the recent NAACP demonstration in Detroit, USA

A recent NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) demonstration has breathed new life into a perpetual debate surrounding offensive language in hip-hop music. It’s a debate that, for socialists, touches on issues of state censorship, racism, homophobia, misogyny, the link between politics and art and of course the power of language itself.

by Colin Foster

Is a new nationalist political alliance emerging in Iraq, non-sectarian or at least cross-sectarian? Some reporters in the USA claim it is. The balance of evidence, I think, indicates not.

By Max Shachtman

It is an axiom by now that the defeats and setbacks suffered by the working class throughout the world [in the Twentieth Century] have been due not to the vigour and stability of the exisiting social order, but to the absence or immaturity of the conscious revolutionary vanguard.

By Stan Crooke

Russia’s President Putin has threatened to target Russian nuclear missiles at European countries in response to American plans to deploy interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic.

File this under 'Deaths That Will Cause Me No Tears'. Jerry Falwell, religious fruitcake and rampant reactionary, has departed this mortal coil, aged 73.

Here are some of his lowlights:

By Martin Thomas

On Sunday 29 April, US troops in Baghdad fought a sizeable battle with Moqtada al-Sdar’s Shia-Islamist Mahdi Army. It was another indication that, as we reported in Solidarity 3/110, the US may be edging towards a “war on two fronts” in Iraq, against both the Sunni sectarian militias and the Mahdi Army.

By Sofie Buckland

In 2003, the Republican-controlled Congress voted to outlaw “partial-birth abortion”, an entirely made-up anti-choice term for the dilation and extraction (D&X) abortion procedure.

BY Sofie Buckland

ON Monday 16 April a 23-year old South Korean student opened fire at Virginia Tech university, killing 33 and injuring at least 29. The latest in a string of shooting sprees going back as far as 1966, the massacre at Virginia Tech begs the question; why does this keep happening, and why particularly in the USA?

Political repression in Russia
Whose "other Russia"?
Protests against Pakistan's dictatorship
Activist left makes impact on French poll
Irish nurses' action
Why does the USA breed violence?