Solidarity 559, 12 August 2020

Iran: the workers fight back

The workers at the Haft Tappeh sugar cane complex in south-west Iran, who have struck repeatedly in recent years, are now in the 8th week of a new strike. Their action has been joined by a rash of strikes over unpaid wages in Iran’s oil and gas industry. Iran is in deep economic trouble, with high inflation and unemployment. The oil price is low, and US sanctions are hurting. Despite the new power which Iran’s rulers have gained over the last decade or so in Syria and in Iraq, domestically they are more and more seen as a corrupt robber regime. On top of that comes the rulers’ incapacity to...

Protest vote or independent political action?

Above: Howie Hawkins , longstanding socialist activist, is running on the Green Party ticket alongside Angela Walker Re-posted, with thanks, from the New Politics magazine website . A bumper sticker displayed with increasing resonance these days reads: “2020, any responsible adult.” This is undoubtedly the mood of Democratic Party voters as was made abundantly clear by the abrupt collapse of the Sanders momentum. The US is in free fall under a regime that represents an exceptional threat not only to democratic life but to human life itself. The need for an American socialist answer has rarely...

The politics of some statues

Statues all across America have been pulled down and graffitied recently, as anti-racist protestors have sought to grapple with American history. Many of these statues depict straight-forwardly racist individuals, and were erected by racists for the purposes of defending racism. Confederate monuments were largely built in the early 1900s and then in the 1960s, by white supremacists fighting against upsurges in black struggle ( 1 ). However, there are two particular monuments which have come under attack that are particularly interesting, as they were intended to glorify black emancipation: the...

Debate: "Workers' action to impose lockdown"

Stuart Jordan: "Social measures require government action. A lockdown by contrast can be imposed by workers’ direct action" Martin Thomas: "When workers rise up to take control of government policy, it will not be to overrule the bourgeois experts… and disperse ourselves to our homes" Stuart Jordan: "Social measures require government action. A lockdown by contrast can be imposed by workers’ direct action" Martin Thomas argues that although we know that a range of actions over the past few months have brought down the rate of infection, it is not clear what specific measures were effective...

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