October 2000
Volume 52, Number 5
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October 2000 |
Volume 52, Number 5 |
Poster image: Courtesy
MONTHLY REVIEW’S September
2000
July-August 2000 June
2000
May
2000
Back Issues
AN INTERVIEW WITH: |
c o n t e n t s » REVIEW
OF THE MONTH Social Security was the crowning achievement of Roosevelt's New Deal. It has been the most successful and still remains the most popular of all U.S. government programs. More than a pension program, Social Security provides for workers and their families in the case of early death and disability, in addition to retirement. In 1997, it provided about twelve trillion dollars worth of life insurance alone, more than that of the entire private life-insurance industry. Furthermore, it does all of this in the form of social insurance, in which the distribution and the amount of benefits provided are determined by family relationships and basic economic rights—factors that private insurance and pension plans ignore. Nearly one-fifth of the elderly in the United States rely on Social Security as virtually their sole source of income, while two-thirds of all recipients depend on it for at least half of their income. Almost half of all white seniors would be classified as poor without their Social Security benefits; nearly half of all black and Latino elderly depend on it for 90 percent or more of their income (Business Week, June 26, 2000, p. 34). For many years it was drummed into the heads of the working population that their Social Security benefits were sacrosanct; they had paid for them and they were owed them. Beware the politician who attempted to take them away. SNCC: What We Did "Strong people don't need strong leaders," Ella Baker told us. We were strong people; we did strong things. These are some of the things we did.
The Taiping Peasant Revolt Contrary to Marx's mistaken conclusion, the Taiping revolt was a great popular revolt, a revolt of the poor and oppressed, that took the form of a messianic Christian crusade to overthrow the old order and establish a communist society. Its early egalitarian aspirations were betrayed by its leaders but, despite this, it still inspired hundreds of thousands of men and women to carry on the fight against the Qing and, for this reason as well as for the telling actions of the British, is worth recalling.
CORRESPONDENCE Speaking only for myself, not other grousers, I'd like to point out that my modest contribution to critical thought about the direction of the labor movement is rooted in a considerable amount of "practice"—more than twenty-five years of active duty as a union organizer and representative. Hassan has either not read or has misread the many articles and reviews that I've done over the past five years for Labor Notes, the Nation, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times, WorkingUSA, New Labor Forum, and other publications. All of these pieces addressed questions related to union revitalization in a manner considerably more nuanced than mere grousing.
BOOK
REVIEWS Setting the Record Straight The Neglected C.L.R.
James |
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