A recent New York Times article, “Curious Grade For Teachers: Nearly All Pass,” finds incredulous the idea that, “In Florida, 97 percent of teachers were deemed effective or highly effective in the most recent evaluations.” The author goes on to cite similar percentages in other states and concludes: “The teachers might be rated all above [...]
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AFL-CIO’s Own Oil Disaster
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
With less than transparency, the AFL-CIO just issued a statement endorsing “expanding the nation’s pipeline system.” Although it did not explicitly endorse the Keystone XL pipeline, the labor federation nevertheless managed to extend its blessing to the project while hiding behind vague generalities. However, the logic of its position is unambiguous: the federation is in [...]
How To Defend the Public Sector
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
The attacks on the public domain, particularly public education, social services, and the public sector unions that are linked to these services, are coming in rapid-fire succession, sometimes in an overwhelming barrage where the victims have little time to comprehend what is happening and respond effectively. This should come as little surprise. The attacks are [...]
Corporate Tax Breaks and Jobs
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
It has become an entrenched trend: corporations approach government officials and demand tax breaks, threatening to abandon the city, state or country if the politicians are not forthcoming. In 2011, for example, in San Francisco, Twitter demanded a tax break as a condition for locating in the city and won a $22 million break over [...]
Paul Krugman Discovers Marx (and Misses the Point)
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
In his recent New York Times op-ed piece, Princeton professor and regular columnist for The New York Times, Paul Krugman observed: The American economy is still, by most measures, deeply depressed. But corporate profits are at record high. It’s simple: profits have surged as a share of national income, while wages and other labor compensation [...]
The Chicago Teachers and Their Students’ Test Scores
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Many crucial issues are at stake in the Chicago Teachers Union strike. But the school district’s insistence that student test scores constitute a major basis of teacher evaluations seems to have become a particularly contentious point, leading to the vilification of teachers by the mainstream media, particularly The New York Times.
How Unions Could Do Much Better
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
The International Association of Machinists just succeeded in negotiating a humiliating defeat with Caterpillar after a 15-week strike. Workers lost considerable money by striking, and then lost even more with the new contract, accepting almost every concession the company demanded despite the fact that the company was sitting on a record $4.9 billion in profits. [...]
Inequalities, Taxes, and More Inequalities
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer Thanks to Occupy, most working people are well aware of the growing inequalities in wealth. But for those who lack the specifics, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich provides a useful overview: “…the rich have been getting a larger and larger portion of total income. From 9 [...]
Taxing the Rich and Its “Left” Critics
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer In a recent article published on the website of Socialist Viewpoint, Chris Kinder criticized those on the left who call for raising taxes on the rich. Identifying himself as a Trotskyist, Mr. Kinder displayed particular displeasure with Trotskyists who embrace this demand. Yet, as we will argue, [...]
Taxing the Rich and the Jobs Crisis
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer In a recent article, “Pensions Under Attack in America?,” Mr. Leo Kolivakis took issue with a proposal by Mark Vorpahl, a union steward, to defend pensions by taxing the rich in order to create jobs (see Pensions Under Attack). Both authors agree that solving the jobs crisis is indispensable to [...]
Money, Power, and Politics
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
When it is a question of the efficacy of money in politics and workers fail to put up a fight, money prevails. The moral is: money counts — but only if we let it.
How Not To Be a Union
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer Unions were originally built on the principle of solidarity. Workers soon realized that as individuals they were powerless when trying to defend their interests in relation to their profit-maximizing employers. But when they were organized and stood together, their combination gave them the upper hand. Under the banner of “an [...]
AFL-CIO Declares Victory in Wisconsin in the Face of Defeat
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer In the wake of the Wisconsin elections and the failure to unseat Governor Walker, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has issued a victory statement of sorts, resorting to the most tortured and convoluted logic.
How the Democrats Exploit Occupy
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
There has been much talk about attempts by various organizations such as the Democratic Party and some top officials in organized labor to co-opt Occupy in order to steer this movement in directions beneficial to themselves. Such attempts can hardly be surprising, given the use that many in the Republican Party made of the Tea [...]
Gov. Jerry Brown’s Terrorizing Tactic
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer Current political developments in California highlight the gaping chasm that divides the established political process — which is routinely mislabeled as “democratic” — with the positions embraced by the vast majority of Californians. Unfortunately, California is to the United States as Greece is to Europe: both are fiscal basket cases. California has [...]
Bankers and Forgiveness
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer When homeowners have fallen behind in their mortgage payments, whether because of a job loss or because the interest rates just shot up, the bankers have responded coldly. Led by their economic interests, they set their robo-signers working overtime on foreclosures, forcing millions of people out of their homes. Back during the [...]
Capitalists and Other Psychopaths
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
The following op-ed article that appeared in The New York Times, May 12, 2012, cites hard evidence for beliefs that revolutionary socialists have held for years: the rich are morally degenerate. According to the article, a recent study concluded that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths. Another study noted that the rich [...]
The Strategic Role of the United Front Approach
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Unfortunately, there are some who regard themselves as Marxists who insist on squandering these opportunities. They argue that all such struggles must be linked to the goal of socialism on the grounds that any working class gains within the framework of capitalism are simply illusory reforms — they will eventually be eroded by the capitalist system in its unrelenting push to maximize profits. A few even refuse to work within the trade unions, because of their limited economic goals, while others refuse to work with the reformist trade union officials.
The Unions, the Millionaires Tax, and the Road to Success
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer This winter the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) sent tremors of hope through its ranks by announcing it was going to spearhead an attempt to place an initiative on the California ballot — appropriately called the “Millionaires Tax” — that would raise taxes only on millionaires (3 percent on those [...]
The Working Class Begins to Fight Back
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Bill Leumer and Ann Robertson After decades of losing ground and feeling helpless, working people are beginning to fight back. This development has emerged in part because the Occupy Wall Street movement has thrown a national spotlight on the growing inequalities in wealth and the mainstream politicians who have enabled this trend to continue for [...]
Ten Lessons for Today’s Unions from Labor’s Militant History
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Although they bill themselves as “friends of labor” and many in the labor community accept this fraudulent packaging, Democrats are at best entirely unreliable allies of workers and at worst determined opponents. Truman, who claimed he opposed Taft-Hartley and initially vetoed the legislation – only to be overruled by Congress – nevertheless made recourse to it not less than 61 times during his administration
How We Can Effectively Defend Our Unions!
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
This is the text of a leaflet which Workers Action distributed at the April 4, 2011 demonstration in San Francisco in solidarity with the workers of Wisconsin. Working people are confronting a historic crisis. Those of us who are lucky enough to have a job are facing unrelenting attacks on our wages, our benefits, and our pensions, [...]
Why Reject Concessions in Wisconsin
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ordinary people get it immediately when presented with the facts about the growing inequalities in wealth, the ever-decreasing taxes on the rich and the corporations, and the increasingly difficult struggle of working people to maintain a dignified standard of living. Instead of capitulating to the polls, unions must launch their own offensive, stand up for what is right, educate the public by purchasing one-page ads in Wisconsin newspapers across the state, lay out all the facts clearly, and then let the people of Wisconsin make an informed decision. Union officials must not abandon public opinion to the corporate-owned media.
Why Reject Concessions In Wisconsin?
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
At the outset of the struggle, many Wisconsin union officials signaled that they were prepared to accept concessions, which are being demanded in many states by Democrats and Republicans alike. But when Wisconsin public workers themselves were interviewed, one after another rejected the concessions. They know better than anyone that the concessions are not affordable, especially when they come on the heels of earlier concessions they felt compelled to accept.
Why Inequality Matters
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
What can be done? The tension resulting from these growing inequalities is rapidly approaching an explosive climax. But organized labor officials, who are in a position to mobilize massive numbers of working people to put up a fight, are giving the impression that they are suffering from a state of complete paralysis. Of course, every two years they come to life and furiously expend huge amounts of money and energy to elect Democrats to office, only to see the Democrats fail to throw anything their way except a few crumbs. And in another two years, all the broken promises are pushed under the rug, and this self-defeating ritual repeats itself.
The Strategic Role of the United Front
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
The united front, then, is the necessary approach that workers use to unite themselves, as members of the same class, in order to put up a fight. It lies at the heart of class struggle. Here, workers put their political differences aside and come together because of their common grievances over a single or a few immediate issues, based on their common class membership and the economic oppression it entails. Their political perspectives are too divergent to unite them at this early stage. The necessity of the united front flows from the fact that the economy is the most fundamental determining factor in people’s lives; political perspectives ultimately are based on this economic foundation, but not as a simple, mechanical reflection.
Jerry Brown Widens The Chasm Between Labor and the Democratic Party
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer With the November elections rapidly approaching, most Americans are unimpressed and uninvolved, having concluded that elections have changed little in their struggling lives, despite all the promises of politicians. But a minority of the population is intensely immersed in partisan politics, doing whatever they can to promote the politicians of [...]
The True Nature of a Revolutionary Marxist Party and Its Common Distortions
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
The following passages, written by Leon Trotsky, appear in “A Letter to the Convention of the French Communist Party” (October 1922) and is included in The First 5 Years of the Communist International, Volume 2. Virtually all parties in the U.S. today that call themselves Marxist are guilty of the error that Trotsky is describing [...]
Arne Duncan and Corruption at the Top
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
A recent New York Times article (March 23, 2010) — discreetly tucked in the back pages of the newspaper — reported that Arne Duncan, Obama’s Secretary of Education, kept a confidential log of names of the rich and powerful who were trying to take advantage of their political connections to get their children admitted into Chicago’s best [...]
Dueling Strategies in the Defense of Public Education Part II
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
In Part I of this essay we looked at strategies in defense of public education that are referred to as “ultra-left,” meaning that they veer so far left that they sever ties with the working class and consequently lose all traction when it comes to influencing the movement. Here we will examine strategies that veer to the [...]
Dueling Strategies in the Defense of Public Education Part I
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
The massive turnout across the state of California on March 4 in defense of public education provides indisputable evidence that this movement is just at the beginning stage. And much credit is due to the countless number of students, staff, and teachers who committed many, many hours of their time, tirelessly organizing for March 4; [...]
The Way Forward for the Movement in Defense of Public Education
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
On March 4, students, staff, teachers, faculty and their unions on all levels of public education created history by uniting and pouring out onto the streets to engage in what were overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations to defend public education. The movement swept through small towns and large cities with demonstrators, including young elementary school students, carrying [...]
Why Join a Revolutionary Socialist Party
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
There are basically two benefits to being a member of a revolutionary party. The first, an educational benefit, plays out on several different levels. (1) Having a strong command of Marxist theory can be extremely valuable on many different fronts. (a) For example, Marx’s Capital provides a sharp analysis of capitalist society so that one [...]
Articles of Interest
Richard Trumka: The 'grand bargain' is a dead end
On the Impotence of the Progressive Movement
Inside the Latest Jobs Report: Delusions of Economic Recovery by Paul Craig Roberts
Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy
Bradley Manning is off limits at SF Gay Pride parade, but corporate sleaze is embraced
Cutting Social Security–More than a Bad Idea
The Forgotten Radical History of the March on Washington- Hong Kong Dockworkers Strike Attracts Huge Solidarity
Understanding the Venezuelan Presidential Election Outcome
Is Venezuela on the brink of civil war?
