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National Conference for Media Reform: May 13-15, 2005 in St. Louis, MO
» » The Future of Organized Labor in the
U.S.: Reinventing Trade Unionism for the 21st Century William H. Hinton
(1919–2004) Can the Working Class Change the
World? A Turn for the Worse in the United
States: Criminalizing Dissent Dr. Baburam Bhattarai on the Failure of the Peace Talks in Nepal Remembering W.E.B. Du Bois Fidel Castro: May Day Rally
Speech
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March 2005, Volume 56 — Number 10 c o n t
e n t s In the face of continuing right-wing attacks on Social Security since the Reagan era in the 1980s, MR has responded repeatedly by pointing to the phony nature of the Social Security crisis. Two articles of note are Jacob Morris, "Social Security: The Phony Crisis" in the February 1983 issue of MR and "Social Security, the Stock Market, and the Elections" in the October 2000 issue. Those wanting a thorough historical understanding of this struggle are encouraged to look back at these articles. Given the nature of the right-wing onslaught, which all along has pretended that the Social Security trust fund was threatened with "bankruptcy," MR's chief thrust has been to dispel such misconceptions. Our primary purpose has been to counter what has been one of the major propaganda campaigns of our time. If Social Security is in peril of "collapse" it is only because of current plans to privatize it. However, there is a great danger in this controversy of getting drawn into endless debates on the financing of the Social Security system in the United States, while losing sight of the more fundamental issues. | more |. REVIEW
OF THE MONTH The twentieth century’s dominant myth was that of a “rational capitalism.” The two economists who did the most to promote this idea were John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. Both were responding to the great historical crisis of capitalism manifested in the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. In the wake of the greatest set of horrors the world had ever seen, accompanied also by the rise of an alternative, contending system in the Soviet Union, it was necessary for capitalism following the Second World War to reestablish itself ideologically as well as materially. In terms of the ideological requirement, the two economists who accomplished this most effectively were Keynes and Schumpeter—not simply because they epitomized the best in bourgeois economic ideology, but also because they were the leading representatives of bourgeois economic science. What they set out in their analyses were the requirements of a rational capitalism and at least the hope that these requirements would be achieved. Homo
Floresiensis and Human Equality: Enduring Lessons from Stephen Jay
Gould The discovery by a team of Indonesian and Australian researchers of the remains of a previously unknown species of hominid, Homo floresiensis, on the Indonesian island of Flores was characterized by some scholars as the greatest discovery in anthropology in a half-century and was selected by Science magazine as the leading runner-up for the 2004 "breakthrough of the year" (first place went to the discoveries of the Mars Exploration Rovers that indicate Mars was once wetter than it is today and potentially capable of supporting life). The discoverers of the new species note that it was a particularly small hominid, with an adult stature of approximately one meter and an endocranial volume of about 380 cm3, less than one-third that of the typical modern human and even small relative to its body size. They argue that it is most likely a descendant of Homo erectus that evolved in long-term isolation, with subsequent endemic dwarfing. Another interesting aspect of the find is that Homo floresiensis apparently lived until at least 18,000 years ago and was, therefore, a contemporary of anatomically modern humans. Many scholars where shocked by both the small stature of and late date attributed to the new hominid, with some moved to question whether the remains were not merely those of a deformed modern human, a suggestion that its discoverers reject as unsupported by the evidence. The Ghosts of Karl
Marx and Edward Abbey My wife Karen and I were on the road, traveling around the United States, for 150 days. We left Portland, Oregon on April 30, 2004, and over the next five months, we drove about 9,000 miles, through sixteen states. We visited thirteen national parks, seven national monuments, and towns large and small. We walked on streets and hiked on trails; we talked to people; we read local newspapers and watched local television stations; we shopped in local markets; and we observed as much as we could the economics, politics, and ecology in the places we stayed. What follows are some of my impressions. William Hinton on
the Cultural Revolution Ever since the major reversals of socialism in the twentieth century, first in the Soviet Union and then in China, leftists internationally have been faced with a serious question: After the initial victory of the people's revolutionary forces, what can be done to keep on the "socialist road"? What measures can be taken to restrict the class differences inherited from the old society, fend off imperialist hostility and intervention, and prevent a new capitalist class from developing within socialist society itself? Political Economy Political economy is the basis of all good government. The wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the— [Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see me down at the door. I went and confronted him, and asked to know his business, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething political economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get tangled in their harness. And privately I wished the stranger was in the bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. I was all in a fever, but he was cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning rods. I said, "Yes, yes-go on-what about it?" He said there was nothing about it, in particular-nothing except he would like to put them up for me …] BOOK
REVIEWS A review of Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie by Ed Cray. Committed
Chronicler: Eleanor Marx’s Biographer A review of Time Will Tell: Memoirs by Yvonne Kapp. The Myth of Imperialism Lite A review of Killing Hope: U.S. Military & CIA Interventions since World War II by William Blum. |
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