If the army recruiters thought before that we would go away and never come back…they were dead wrong.
Tomorrow is set to be one of the largest demonstrations against the army’s pilot program to gain new recruits – particularly young people –to join the military by utilizing a wide variety of first-person shooter video games and real-life scenarios to demonstrate the “enjoyment” that can be had fighting in wars. Unlike video games, however, life does not come with a restart button nor is it structured around a system of re-spawning.
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Lenin outlines in The State and Revolution the Marxist position on the state, its origins, and what its purpose is. He then shows the need for revolution, and the need to replace the state with a workers’ democratic dictatorship – a workers’ state. The leader of the Russian revolution found time during 1917 to write a crucial text on the Marxist position on the state, and the tasks of the proletariat during and after the social revolution. He was driven by the practical needs of the revolution in Russia at the time: to show that the opportunists (i.e., the Social-Democrats, Kautskyian-centrists, etc) had distorted Marxism and to refute the anarchist claims that all states are reactionary.
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Whenever we challenge the multimillionaire corporations that rule the world, against every march, every protest, every picket, boycott, strike, and action… there is an organized force trained, prepared, and waiting to block us, smother and stop us. What is this force? Revolutionaries call it the State.
Who is the State?
It’s the police that threaten us, move us on, caution us, batter us, arrest us, and imprison us. It’s the judges who try and condemn us, even though they know nothing about how we live and never will. The faceless civil servants, bureaucrats, and lawyers who pore over documents and draft complicated laws to isolate, stifle, and stamp on any resistance to the power of big capital. And there’s the last deadly line of defense for the system, the army – a killing machine waiting to spring unthinkingly into action when their paymasters’ dirty work needs to be done. So how did the State come into being? What makes it tick? How can it be abolished?
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All throughout our lives we are lectured by educators, media pundits, and our parents about the failings of socialism. Socialism, according to them, was this nice idea about equality that never really worked. Or, socialism was a terrible one-party dictatorship like the ones that used to exist in Eastern Europe – where you couldn’t speak your mind and had to lineup for ages just to get a few poor-quality products. Whatever socialism is, they say, it’s had its day and is a thing of the past.
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The victory of Barrack Obama in the 2008 presidential elections signaled, for many people, the dawning of a new progressive era in American politics. The slogans, “change” and “hope,” were recognized and welcomed by diverse sections of U.S. society – especially after eight years of Republican dominance in Washington. Now that Obama is in the driver’s seat of the most powerful nation on Earth, the question is, where do we go from here?
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With less than a month to go for the Bush administration, the eyes of the world will necessarily gravitate toward “hope for change” president-elect Barrack Obama to “sort out” everything from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the global economy, all the way up to the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. But how will the incoming Obama administration, which the majority of individuals on the American Left still maintain confidence in, face its first unexpected and undesired major challenge?
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In an attempt to secure Federal monies to aid the rapidly deteriorating American auto industry, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), Ron Gettelfinger, announced to the media that the UAW is willing to make major contractual concessions to management. These included the suspension of the “jobs bank” program, the delay of $7 billion from General Motors paid into the Health Care Trust, the slashing of 30,000 more jobs over the coming years, and the closure of another 9 factories in North America.
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Reprinted from Revolution 92, December 2008
Luke from North London explains the big picture – capitalism is a system which inevitably breaks down, turns millions out of jobs and makes life hell for the rest of us. Why?
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It is readily apparent that the majority of individuals who consider themselves as part of the Left are throwing their support behind the Democratic Party and Barrack Obama. It is certainly understandable why progressive Left forces in the United States support Obama’s run for the presidency. The Bush administration has, undoubtedly, made it relatively easy for the Democratic Party to return to political prominence. The concern, however, is that many on the Left still continue to have faith that an Obama presidency will change the economic and political landscape in the United States.
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