By John Bellamy Foster & Robert W. McChesney Originally published in Monthly Review, 2010, Volume 62, Issue 02 (June) A few years ago, in a class one of us taught, a discussion arose about how capitalism works as a system in which the need for the few to maximize profit drives the entire political-economic structure. The students appeared to grasp how the … [Read more...] about Capitalism, the Absurd System: A View from the United States
US politics
Is The New York Times Trying to Foster Working Class Consciousness?
by Gary Olson There is only one thing the ruling circles have always wanted — and that’s everything.— Michael Parenti A recent lead editorial in The New York Times reads “Another Way the 2020s Might Be Like the 1930s.” Written by Jamelle Bouie, an African-American millennial (age 33) on the paper’s editorial staff, the piece contains the following opening and closing … [Read more...] about Is The New York Times Trying to Foster Working Class Consciousness?
Popular Sovereignty
by Stephen Eric Bronner Make America Great Again!” is a slogan based on nostalgia for an “imaginary community;” women were happy in the kitchen, gays were happy in the closet, and people of color were happy doing menial tasks and keeping to themselves. “Everybody” knew that this was how it was supposed to be. Certainty of this sort is gone. Apparently, these subaltern groups … [Read more...] about Popular Sovereignty
Kent State and Divided America: 50 Years Later
by Ted Morgan The past is never dead. It’s not even past.William Faulkner For some of us, the killing of four students at Kent State on Monday, May 4, 1970 is a moment we will never forget. It was certainly one of the iconic moments of 1960s-era protests, immortalized in Neil Young’s “Ohio,” with its refrain, “four dead in Ohio.” Students on campuses across the nation … [Read more...] about Kent State and Divided America: 50 Years Later
The Bonus Army Protest
by Gary Olson July 28 will mark almost the 90th anniversary of one of most controversial protests in U.S. history and yet it remains virtually unknown to most Americans. On that day, in 1932, 500 U.S. army infantrymen with loaded rifles, fixed bayonets and gas grenades containing a vomit inducing ingredient, 200 cavalries, a machine gun squadron, 800 police and 6 M1917 army … [Read more...] about The Bonus Army Protest
On Class Consciousness and the 2020 Presidential Election
by Gary Olson After several weeks of intensive reading and discussion on class, capitalism, and socialism in my undergraduate course, The Politics of Labor, we would do the following exercise: Standing before the blackboard, I encouraged the students to list existing, objective, and determining conditions that might prompt the American working class to seek the abolition of … [Read more...] about On Class Consciousness and the 2020 Presidential Election
Obama and Trump: The Present as Prologue to a History of Inequality
by Eric Cheyfitz In 2011, I began writing The Disinformation Age: The Collapse of Liberal Democracy in the United States, which was published by Routledge in 2017, just after the Trump administration succeeded that of Obama, and now appears in this PaperBoat Press edition. The book is an historical view going back to the 17th century of how we got to Trump, whom we … [Read more...] about Obama and Trump: The Present as Prologue to a History of Inequality
It’s Just a Party
by Alex Fischer Many knew that Obama and the Democratic Party’s failure to bring ‘hope’ and ‘change’ left the Democratic Party vulnerable. Few, however predicted the party would actually implode by 2016. Those who did, realized the ground would be fertile for implosion especially if: The Dems followed Obama’s two terms —polices of prolonging the War on Terror, starting … [Read more...] about It’s Just a Party
Where Does Our Culture of Rage and Disaffection Come From?
by Ted Morgan As the mass media would have it, Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign was buoyed by “populist” anger from working class white folks, particularly in rural America and the South. Public opinion polls have shown that the bulk of Trump’s support has come from middle-to-upper-middle class people, religious fundamentalists, traditional conservatives, … [Read more...] about Where Does Our Culture of Rage and Disaffection Come From?