Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Party candidate for president of the United States, has attracted huge crowds and generated enormous enthusiasm across the country. He calls himself a socialist and urges a “political revolution against the billionaire class.” What does Sanders’ campaign reflect and represent? And how should revolutionary Marxists approach it?
With the heinous murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, USA, the #BlackLivesMatter movement came roaring back to life. These once-routine and largely unrecognized murders are now churning up powerful forces long dormant in the womb of society. John Peterson of Socialist Appeal USA comments on the increasingly radicalised mood in the United States.
The death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, USA is just the latest in a string of police killings of black men to hit national headlines. But it seems that it may mark the end of a national ebb in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. As things heat up in the coming months, an important question must be asked: what is the way forward for the movement against racism and police brutality?
A grassroots upsurge has swept the US over the past few weeks, its sudden eruption marked by huge marches last weekend on the East Coast and by smaller, broadly based protests across the length and breadth of the country. These protests have popped the lid off a widespread, simmering popular discontent in the USA and given it focus.
A recent report from the US Senate about the use of torture by the CIA outlines the most hair-raising villainies that have been committed in the name of “democracy”, removing any remaining doubts that one might have about the degenerate rottenness of US capitalism and imperialism. These are not “commie lies and propaganda,” but come straight from the horse’s mouth.
Francis Fukuyama, who upon the fall of the USSR famously declared “the end of history”, now says that America “suffers from the problem of political decay in a more acute form than other democratic political systems.” In plain English: capitalism and its institutions are in big trouble.
More than a month after the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black youth from Ferguson, USA, the police officer who shot him multiple times remains free and safely in hiding. Michael Brown’s killing was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” opening up a new stage in the changing consciousness of young Americans.
What if they held an election and nobody came? In some ways, the 2014 midterm elections in the USA were very much like this. Just 36.6 percent voted. The main capitalist parties—the Democrats and Republicans—do not deal with real issues related to the lives of the overwhelming majority of the population. This is true bourgeois democracy. That is, democracy for the top 1% or 2%, but not for the rest of us!
The shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown has let loose the pent-up anger and frustration of black youth in the otherwise quiet working class St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. The US National Guard have now been called in to quell the protests. These events above all show that huge pressures are building up in US society, just one scratch below the surface. We publish here an analysis from Socialist Appeal USA.
Given the lack of opportunities for political expression in the US, even off-year elections provide important insights into where things stand politically and in which direction they are moving. Frustration with incumbents and disgust with “politics as usual” has reached record highs. This is an unprecedented situation with profound implications for the future. It is not simply this or that politician or this or that party in the doldrums; the entire system is being questioned. It is in this context that the 2013 elections give us yet another snapshot of the changing mood in America.
For 16 days, the world waited with bated breath as the US government was shut down and teetered on the brink of default. At the eleventh hour, a deal was rammed through both the Senate and the House and signed by Obama, thus averting the immediate crisis. What is the meaning of all this? What are the ramifications for American politics and the capitalist system itself? John Peterson of Socialist Appeal USA reports.
In the final analysis, the US government shutdown over parts of the federal budget and Republican opposition to “Obamacare” is a reflection of the insoluble contradictions of capitalism. In a follow up to yesterday’s article, we publish here an in depth analysis of the economic and political background to the current shutdown and potential default in the USA.