Workers' Liberty

The inconclusive outcome of the Democratic Party primaries to date suggests an increasing certainty that the nomination process may only resolve itself during the August convention. The so-called “super delegates,” the skeletal deposits of the party — its elected officials and functionaries — may have the decisive say.

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”.

By Barry Finger

In his reply to my article on the US elections (Solidarity 3/124), Eric Lee displays complete indifference to the principle of working-class political independence.

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.

To write, as Sacha Ismail does, that U.S. "Republicans and Democrats are ... almost identical in policy terms" betrays either a startling ignorance of American politics or a form of ultra-leftism.

Arguments about Barack Obama, John Edwards, Ron Paul, etc. from Shiraz Socialist.

The 2006 election demonstrated a tentative move to the left by the American electorate. The discontent is not likely to abate any time soon. But a left that fails to force a break with the Democrats will find that this new aspiration for change will eventually dissolve into anti-political skepticism and despair.

In 1996, an independent Labor Party with over two million affiliated trade unionists was established, but it failed to break completely with the Democrats and eventually withered. Reviving such initiatives is the key task for socialists, and all those who want to see something more like real democracy in the US.

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?