A Proper Response to Trump’s Shock and Awe

By Cliff Willmeng.

 

Trump’s shock and awe executive order that denies all federal employees the right to belong to a union is wreaking havoc at the Veteran’s Administration. The National Nurses Union (NNU) represents nurses at the VA and one nurse in Chicago commented that coupled with Musk’s cuts, care for our veterans is being gutted. As always, the love of military personnel and the flag waving is strongest when they are being sent to wars that aren’t in our interests.  When they come back---if they come back---mentally or physically damaged, suddenly federal money is hard to come by.

 

This nurse told me that another major crisis is the VA collects the dues for the unions involved. But if the union doesn’t exist per Trump’s order, why would the VA continue to take money out of people’s pay check? “Dues checkoff”, the process where the boss or company collects employee’s union dues through payroll, is vital to the union functioning, paying bills and so on. Now NNU is scrambling to find a way to keep the dues money coming in. 

Dues checkoff has been great for the union leadership who don’t have to work and don’t have to deal with members on a day to day basis while collecting their dues.  The less interaction with the members the less risky it is for these leaders at a time when anger is white hot in the ranks of the trade union movement. Union leadership simply ducks the pressure.

 

But wait, there’s more. The employer, the VA, also holds some of the union members’ contact information, e mails and such, so now NNU is also scrambling to get the members to sign up to alternative ways to pay their dues before union funding could disappear into thin air.

 

The NNU had a three-day conference this last weekend in Chicago relating to the VA specifically. I don’t know for sure if they are even aware of how they want to respond.

 

Naturally the unions have filed lawsuits in response to Trump’s orders. But Trump has some 50 lawsuits against him, have they not learned that he does not care about lawsuits? I would not oppose fling lawsuits but our unions were not built by filing lawsuits and they won’t be saved by them either. And with Trump openly defying the courts and with the Supreme Court nearly his proxy, to tell our nurses that this will somehow fix the issue is dishonest at best. It gives false hope and would take a considerable amount of energy and resources that could stall critical action needed right now. 

 

We are in a new period; an historical shift has taken place, and it has been a while coming. We are only three months in to this Administration and it is totally uncharted territory unless we go back to the 1920’s and 30’s when the 1929 depression and severity of the crisis stunned the leadership of the AFL at the time.

 

Sara Nelson, the leader of the American Flights Attendance Association has spoken more than once on the need for a national general strike to counter the most vicious attacks the US working class and organized labor has faced since World War Two. This is a positive step and hopefully sister Nelson will wage a campaign within the AFL-CIO executive board for action. 

 

We are not powerless. The AFL-CIO leadership should call for a national meeting to discuss and build for a 24-hour national general strike against the present administration’s anti-union policies. This leadership employs an army of staffers whose primary role has been to ensure the organizations’ concessionary policies get carried out. This resource should be transitioned to reach out to union bodies, Labor Councils, and locals and build for a national one-day work stoppage.

 

 If the AFL-CIO fails to do that which is most likely, then Sister Sara Nelson should take the lead. Hundreds of thousands of shop stewards and local activists would help. Just the announcement of such a development would send shock waves through Congress and wall Street. Imagine what a belligerent like Trump would say in response to even a mere announcement? He would thrash at the nation’s unions and essential workers so stupidly that he may end up driving a national conversation and become our best organizer. 

 

There could be endless incremental steps and actions along the way. Community meetings, preparations, local actions against politicians of both parties, marches, acts of civil disobedience, and occupations could happen. Benefit concerts could bring tens of thousands of people together. This counter offensive of essential workers could do all of this and go far beyond the defensive measures needed to protect our unions at this moment. In the process we could write our own demands that neither political party can accomplish. National health care, the end of student and medical debt, the establishment of social housing, a new infrastructure plan for high speed trains new hospitals, and a reduction in the work week would all be on the table. 

 

All of this I possible. As an emergency room nurse, one of tens of millions of essential workers who risked our lives and pulled this country through the Covid pandemic, I have no question about the central role all of us play. The entire system couldn’t stop reminding us of the fact that without us its functions disappear into thin air.

 

So why are these union leaders talking about nothing more than lawsuits and giving more money to the Democratic Party? If they are not up to the historic task we face, they have to be replaced with new leaders who can build a response worthy of these times. 

About the author
Cliff Willmeng is a registered nurse in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has been a member of several unions and is currently in the Minnesota Nurses Association. He has participated in numerous national and local campaigns ranging from labor struggles in Chicago to environmental efforts in Colorado. He participated in the “Battle of Seattle” protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999 and was co-founder of Labor For Standing Rock during the Native fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. He can be contacted at: Willmeng70@gmail.com

Michael Roberts: Liberation day

by Michael Roberts

It’s not April Fools day (1 April).  But it might as well be as later today US President Donald Trump announces another barrage of tariffs on imports into the US in what Trump calls ‘Liberation Day’ and what America’s voice of big business and finance, the Wall Street journal, has called “the dumbest trade war in history.”

In this round, Trump is raising tariffs on imports from countries that have higher tariff rates on US exports, ie so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’. These are supposed to counter what he views as unfair taxes, subsidies and regulations by other countries on US exports. In parallel, the White House is looking at a whole host of levies on certain sectors and the tariffs of 25 per cent on all imports from Canada and Mexico which were earlier postponed are being now reapplied.

US officials have repeatedly singled out the EU’s value added tax as an example of an unfair trade practice. Digital services taxes are also under attack from Trump officials who say they discriminate against US companies.  By the way, VAT is not an unfair tariff as it does not apply to international trade and is solely a domestic tax – the US is one of the few countries that does not operate a federal VAT; relying instead on varying federal and state sales taxes.

Trump claims that his latest measures are going ‘liberate’ American industry by raising the cost of importing foreign goods for American companies and households and so reduce demand and the huge trade deficit that the US currently runs with the rest of the world. He wants to reduce that deficit and force foreign companies to invest and operate within the US rather than export to it.

Will this work?  No, for several reasons.  First, there will be retaliation by other trading nations. The EU has said it would counter US steel and aluminium tariffs with its own duties affecting up to $28bn of assorted American goods. China has also put tariffs on $22bn of US agricultural exports, targeting Trump’s rural base with new duties of 10 per cent on soyabeans, pork, beef and seafood. Canada has already applied tariffs to about $21bn of US goods ranging from alcohol to peanut butter and around $21bn on US steel and aluminium products among other items.

Second, US imports and exports are no longer the decisive force in world trade. US trade as a share of world trade is not small, currently at 10.35%.  But that is down from over 14% in 1990.  In contrast, the EU share of world trade is 29% (down from 34% in 1990) while the so-called BRICS now have a 17.5% share, led by China at nearly 12%, up from just 1.8% in 1990. 

That means non-US trade by other nations could compensate for any reduction in exports to the US.  In the 21st century, US trade no longer makes the biggest contribution to trade growth – China has taken a decisive lead.

Simon Evenett, professor at the IMD Business School, calculates that, even if the US cut off all goods imports, 70 of its trading partners would fully make up their lost sales to the US within one year, and 115 would do so within five years, assuming they maintained their current export growth rates to other markets.  According to the NYU Stern School of Business, full implementation of these tariffs and retaliation by other countries against the US could cut global goods trade volumes by up to 10 per cent versus baseline growth in the long run. But even that downside scenario still implies about 5 per cent more global goods trade in 2029 than in 2024.

One factor that is driving some continued growth in world trade is the rise of trade in services.  Global trade hit a record $33 trillion in 2024, expanding 3.7% ($1.2 trillion), according to the latest Global Trade Update by UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Services drove growth, rising 9% for the year and adding $700 billion – nearly 60% of the total growth. Trade in goods grew 2%, contributing $500 billion.  None of Trump’s measures apply to services. Indeed, the US recorded the largest trade surplus for trade in services among the trading – some €257.5 billion in 2023 — while the UK had the 2nd largest surplus (€176.0 billion), followed by the EU (€163.9 billion) and India (€147.2 billion). 

However, the caveat is that services trade still constitutes only 20% of total world trade. Moreover, world trade growth has fallen away since the end of the Great Recession, well before Trump’s tariff measures introduced in his first term in 2016, furthered under Biden from 2020, and now Trump again with Liberation Day.  Globalisation is over and with it the possibility of overcoming domestic economic crises through exports and capital flows abroad.

And here is the crux of the reason for the likely failure of Trump’s tariff measures in restoring the US economy and ‘making America great again’: it does nothing to solve the underlying stagnation of the US domestic economy – on the contrary, it makes that worse.

Trump’s case for tariffs is that cheap foreign imports have caused US deindustrialization. For this reason, some Keynesian economists like Michael Pettis have supported Trump’s measures. Pettis writes that America’s “long-term massive deficits tell the story of a country that has failed to protect its own interests.”  Foreign lending to the US “force[s] adjustments in the U.S. economy that result in lower US savings, mainly through some combination of higher unemployment, higher household debt, investment bubbles and a higher fiscal deficit,” while hollowing out the manufacturing sector.

But Pettis has this back to front. The reason that the US has been running huge trade deficits is because US industry cannot compete against other major traders, particularly China.  US manufacturing hasn’t seen any significant productivity growth in 17 years.  That has made it increasingly impossible for the US to compete in key areas.  China’s manufacturing sector is now the dominant force in world production and trade.  Its production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined.  The US imports Chinese goods because they are cheaper and increasingly good quality.

Maurice Obstfeld (Peterson Institute for International Economics) has refuted Pettis’ view that the US has been ‘forced’ to import more because mercantilist foreign practices. That’s the first myth propagated by Trump and Pettis.  “The second is that the dollar’s status as the premier international reserve currency obliges the United States to run trade deficits to supply foreign official holders with dollars. The third is that US deficits are caused entirely by foreign financial inflows, which reflect a more general demand for US assets that America has no choice but to accommodate by consuming more than it produces.” 

Obstfeld instead argues that it is the domestic situation of the US economy that has led to trade deficits. American consumers, companies and government have bought more than they have sold abroad and paid for it by taking in foreign capital (loans, sales of bonds and inward FDI). This happened not because of ‘excessive saving’ by the likes of China and Germany, but because of the ‘lack of investment’ in productive assets in the US (and other deficit countries like the UK).  Obstfeld: “we are mostly seeing an investment collapse. The answer must depend on the rise in US consumption and real estate investment, to a large degree driven by the housing bubble.”  Given these underlying reasons for the US trade deficit, “import tariffs will not improve the trade balance nor, consequently, will they necessarily create manufacturing jobs.” Instead, “they will raise prices to consumers and penalize export firms, which are especially dynamic and productive.”

As I have explained before, the US runs a huge trade deficit in goods with China because it imports so many competitively priced Chinese goods. That was not a problem for US capitalism up to the 2000s, because US capital got a net transfer of surplus value (UE) from China even though US ran a trade deficit. However, as China’s ‘technology deficit’ with the US began to narrow in the 21st century, these gains began to disappear.  Here lies the geo-economic reason for the launching of the trade and technology war against China.

Trump’s tariffs will not be a liberation but instead only add to the likelihood of a new rise in domestic inflation and a descent into recession. Even before the announcement of the new tariffs, there were significant signs that the US economy was slowing at some pace. Already, financial investors are taking stock of Trump’s ‘dumbest trade war in history’ by selling shares.  America’s former ‘Magnificent Seven’ stocks are already in in a bear market, ie falling in value by over 20% since Xmas.

The economic forecasters are lowering their estimates for US economic growth this year.  Goldman Sachs has raised the probability of a recession this year to 35% from 20% and now expects US real GDP growth to reach only 1% this year.  The Atlanta Fed GDP Now economic forecast for the first quarter of this year (just ended) is for a contraction of 1.4% annualised (ie -0.35% qoq).  And Trump’s tariffs are still to come.

Tariffs have never been an effective economic policy tool that can boost a domestic economy. In the 1930s, the attempt of the US to ‘protect’ its industrial base with the Smoot-Hawley tariffs only led to a further contraction in output as part of the Great Depression that enveloped North America, Europe and Japan. The Great Depression of the 1930s was not caused by the protectionist trade war that the US provoked in 1930, but the tariffs then did add force to that global contraction, as it became ‘every country for itself’. Between the years 1929 and 1934, global trade fell by approximately 66% as countries worldwide implemented retaliatory trade measures.More and more studies argue that a tit-for-tat tariff war will only lead to a reduction in global growth, while pushing up inflation. The latest reckons that with a ‘selective decoupling’ between a (US-centric) West bloc and a (China-centric) East bloc limited to more strategic products, global GDP losses relative to trend growth could hover around 6%. In a more severe scenario affecting all products traded across blocs, losses could climb to 9%. Depending on the scenario, GDP losses could range from 2% to 6% for the US and 2.4% to 9.5% for the EU, while China would face much higher losses.  

So no liberation there 

Bernie Sanders is Right. Trum'p's Campaign Literature is Anti-Semitic.

Richard Mellor

The video gives a clear example of what anti-Semitism is and what it is not.  Criticising Israel, a nation state, is not anti-Semitism. Opposing Zionism is not anti-Semitism either. Zionism, a racist ideology or Jewish extremism, is at the heart of the crisis in the Middle East and Israel's genocide in Gaza and the occupied territories.

 

The image used by the Trump Administration that Bernie Sanders refers to in the video, is clearly anti-Semitic propaganda. It is undeniable when one looks at the image the Nazis used to whip up hatred and violence against Jews in Germany and throughout Europe. 

 

Then there is another example on the left; the poster used by the White Army forces, the counterrevolutionaries in Russia that fought the Bolsheviks and the Russian workers' that overthrew feudalism and capitalism. The US, Britain and France had forces in that game. 

 

The poster is an image of Leon Trotsky a key leader of the Russian Revolution in that same role as the devilish Jew. Many of the Bolshevik leaders were Jews as were many revolutionaries fighting to overthrow Tzarism, the brutal feudal regime that had discriminated against them for  centuries, forcing them to live in selected areas and waging regular pogroms (mob riots) against their communities.The capitalists of Western Europe supported the White Army. Up until this period Russia's economy was in the grasp of western banks and western capitalists were afraid their assets would be appropriated if the Russian Revolution was successful.

 

It's inconceivable that Trump and his advisors aren't aware of the Anti-Semitic nature of their campaign material. Trump can just deny it as he did when asked what he thought about the Signal fiasco (see video to the right) as there's no real consequences for doing so; there is no opposition party in the US and the trade union hierarchy is silent in the main.  It's my view that the Jew hating image is directed at his extreme right wing White Nationalist, Evangelical Christian, Neo-fascist base, a right bunch of anti-Semites, all of them.

 

Trump, unlike Hitler does not have an organised right wing militia he can call out at any moment smash strikes, protests and opposition in the streets.  But there are numerous groups, some of whom answered his call on jan 6th to storm the US Capitol, that can and will fill the role of Hitlers Brownshirts at some point in time-----the image is fodder for them.

 

I think Trump is in a stronger position this time around if he is forced to quit after this term in some way or another, and will just as likely call his thugs out again. Workers, organised and unnorganized need to take this seriously and be prepare to defend ourselves and our communities with our own self defence organisations if events turn really bad really fast. 

Cesar Chavez Day

by Jason O'Neal

I wanted to provide a first-hand report from a community event that I attended last weekend in Southern Arizona. On Saturday, March 22nd, I participated in the Cesar Chavez/Dolores Huerta March and Rally. I first heard about this event during a general membership meeting of my local union and eventually I received an invite text message that was sent out to members about two weeks before. Since this was the 25th Annual March I thought it might have a decent turnout.

Before I begin, I want to make a few points perfectly clear to readers of this article. First, I am pro worker and support any attempts to develop militant fighting labor unions that are democratically run by members from within. Second, I do not support the “team concept” that has allowed the labor union leadership of the past several decades to abandon its responsibility to represent and protect the interests of dues paying members over their financial interests with the bosses and the alliances with one (sometimes both) of the two major political parties of capital and big business. Lastly, this is not a hit piece designed to shut down activism. However, I think it is important to identify where workers might be able to seek common interests and have a collective opportunity to fight back against the current and future mobilization of government resources against the working class and poor in our society. 

I am a public sector employee in an at-will state where multiple state and regional governments have divided their workforce of full-time positions. Some workers have union protections, others are at-will employees, and another group are contractors from one of the many staffing agencies and nonprofits in the area. My particular job is with an organization that has more than 4,000 non-management positions, although 700 of them are at-will employees who can be fired at any time. Of this group only a little more than 100 employees are dues paying members of our division of the local union. I don’t have the exact figures of active members for all divisions in the local, but judging by the turnout at this event, it can’t be too many. 

On the morning of the event I drove to the southside of town to a community park which was to be the rally point at the end of the march. We were told that shuttles would be available to transport marchers to the starting point, a local high school some 2.2 miles away, and upon my arrival I was able to locate our tent and the few members setting up. I had a handful of co-workers tell me they couldn’t make it, but I was hopeful that a few others would come through and take part in this activity. Unfortunately, I was holding out in vain because I was the only person from my division who showed up. Again, our local has multiple divisions, but two had nobody show up to represent them, two others had only one person each (myself included), and another had about half a dozen members present. If you include the four full-time staffers we would be lucky if a dozen folks were there from our union.

To complicate matters further, the shuttle vans weren’t running as efficiently as promised and people had to carpool to drop off marchers at the starting point. As members piled out of trucks and SUVs, right away we could see tables with tee shirts and the local media was present. With small drones buzzing overhead, a few police officers and vehicles were there mainly to provide traffic blocks.

The event was kicked off by members of the local Native American tribe performing an indigenous ritual. We heard from the event organizers, a county supervisor and her family who were there as well as the mayor. A U.S. Congressional Representative had recently passed away, so this event was also billed as a memorial for his family and supporters. Less than a half dozen unions were present, but participants from various movements brought their signs and banners. Groups representing Veterans for Peace and Free Palestine had a cadre of activists and the usual suspects of self-described socialist revolutionaries were out with about ten members. An estimation of the total marchers for this portion of the event was about 150 people.

The crowd exited the high school parking lot and made its way through a small neighborhood that had the occasional resident coming outside and waving. Once on the main road, the route turned south and went past the Veterans Administration Health Center. Aside from the extended wait times at traffic lights, and the sporadic horn honks and waves, it was a typical Saturday morning for a community that had folks eating at local restaurants, shopping at discount stores, and working in the countless vehicle repair shops and garages.

For most of the march people were repeating the cliched chants in unison with shouts of “this is what democracy looks like”, “Trump must go”, and “Si se puede.” But about a mile short of the finish line, the chants were less enthusiastic and the honorary group that was leading the march peeled off with a few hugs and kisses before jumping into vehicles waiting along the route. I found out almost immediately that they would be speaking at a “fighting oligarchy” Bernie Sanders/AOC event at a local high school and they would not be addressing the crowd gathered at the park.

The final mile eventually had the crowd enter into the park where more tents had been set up and a car club had filled one side of the parking lot with low-riders. There were speeches by representatives from community groups and more dances and music by performers. The only other event of notice was when I met an organizer from the Starbucks union and had a brief conversation about his activities. I quickly realized that this event was a dud and I decided to go home.

I had noticed an increase in traffic around the military base on my way to the park that morning and as I was driving away I could see jets flying overhead. Later that afternoon I saw news flashes from the Bernie-AOC rally. The radio stated 30,000 and other outlets reported only 20,000. Let’s just say they had 10,000 and that was exponentially greater than our tiny march on the southside. Both events paled in comparison to the total number of attendees at the air show. It’s been going on for more than 30 years and has been reported to routinely draw more than 100,000 spectators in previous events. We love our spectacle!

Back to Sanders and the progressives inside the Democratic Party. From what I gathered, Bernie wasn’t offering anything new from the position he has held since he ran for president in 2016. When he had a chance to contest the primary election with a floor vote, his first act was to tell his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton. He wasn’t alone. Dolores Huerta was also telling voters to do the same. In spite of a push by countless voters to form an alternative, all of the Democratic Party front groups, donors, and political action committees shepherded voters to the polls in the name of a “brand new congress” that would be “indivisible.” Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was elected in those midterms and she quickly became a media darling as one of a small group of progressive women of color referred to as “the Squad.” Not much happened, however, when the squad was in position to leverage their votes for Speaker of the House into supporting Medicare for All. Pelosi was able to hold them in check and she was quick to remind everyone that the Democrats were capitalists.

Biden and Harris came to office in 2020 and workers seem to have completely forgotten that “worker Joe” from blue-collar Scranton came out against the railway strikes during his presidency. What was the call to voters in 2024? Huerta, Sanders, and AOC told everyone to vote for Harris. That was a catastrophe that resulted in Trump regaining the White House.

In the first two months of the second Trump presidency, the ruling class is making drastic changes to the federal government, foreign policy, and U.S. labor law. His blatant disregard for the accepted norms of Washington are in full-effect. He half-ass followed these protocols during his first time in office partly because he was surrounded by insiders during the beginning of his term. He is now surrounded by sycophants and ineptitude en masse, but he has pulled the mask off of the charade in American politics. 

His closing of many institutions and downsizing the regulatory agencies of the government has called the bluff of the Democratic Party and their allies in the media and what is left of the labor union leadership. When the Senate could have voted down a continuing resolution to keep the government funded and forced a slowdown to the madness, Trump knew that too many Democrats like Schumer and Co. wouldn’t risk biting the corporate hand that feeds them and keeps their campaign funds rolling in. So, what options do working class families and the poor actually have when it comes to voting for change?

My excitement about building a labor union to fight back has been diminished when even organized labor isn’t offering a way out. Voting blue no matter who didn’t work in 2018 and it will not work now. It appears labor leadership is going to crank up the same old song and dance about voting for a Democrat to fight Trump’s “fascism.”

This is an approach that many “woking class” voters are rushing into. I met with a coworker and fellow union member a few days before this march. He told me that he was too busy helping out a state assembly person, a Democrat from a real estate family in the area. He was recently elected in 2024 and, like AOC, he was a Democratic Party insider interning for congresspersons and working in all of the campaigns. One of his first moves in office was to propose a bill to adopt the term “howdy” as the official state greeting. Is this the resistance? I didn’t have neither the energy, nor the time to argue with my coworker. He will find out eventually.

What I have realized over the course of the events of the past week, including the funeral of the U.S. House Rep, is that there is no real response to Trump from those who claim to be leading the resistance. He has a party that is almost in lockstep behind him, a significant portion of American business owners, tech billionaires including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerburg, and the Alphabet bunch are all behind him. The question remains where will many of his working class supporters go? Especially, when they begin to lose the benefits and programs they are relying on to survive because Musk and Trump’s other corporate handlers are slashing and burning the regulatory structure of the federal government.

Perhaps the consistency of Bernie Sanders' message will finally resonate with working class voters, but the solution has to be something other than voting for the other team. With active union membership at historic lows and labor unions under new attacks at the federal level (not discounting decades of anti-worker laws and court decisions) could the new worker movement against capital come from outside of the traditional means seen in the past? Will it look like the #RedforEd movements in 2018?

When sixty percent of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck and the wealthiest people getting even more tax breaks, it is clear that the system has been tilted in favor of the ruling class. I am of the opinion that this is just the latest in a long line of attacks that goes back to right after World War II when a bi-partisan Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act to limit labor power in the U.S. Follow that up with the Red Scare, a resurgence of conservative values, the end of the Cold War, and a downward economic slide for most workers and we have our current predicament.

When this new movement takes hold and begins to push back against the austerity measures of the capitalists who control the levers of government, it will more than likely be composed of workers from all backgrounds and voting blocs. Let’s not forget that Trump and Harris both received more than 75 million votes in the 2024 election. However, 90 million eligible voters didn’t even cast a ballot. Who might they be waiting on? Will they become part of this new worker’s movement and become politically active in the future?

If Bernie and Co. really want to challenge Trump and the oligarchy in the U.S. they should be running campaigns centered on the day-to-day issues confronting most Americans. Instead, they are promising more of the same tired rhetoric to re-elect their team who, after getting into office, then does nothing to deliver on those promises. The truth of the matter is that the two parties of capital will not solve the problems created by our current political economy. At the end of the day, a progressive democrat is still a democrat… even if they claim to be a democratic socialist.

This realization also holds true to our history and the history of Chavez and Huerta. They accomplished much for farm workers during the 1960s, only to become staunch supporters of the Democratic Party. They were reformers at best, and political party machine operators in the end. True revolutionaries like Epifanio Camacho were erased from working class struggles because he knew that you had to confront the power of the wealthy with the power of the masses. Camacho was also a militant socialist. 

I am hopeful new leaders will rise up from within the working class and take the lead on demanding more. The current system is rigged and broken and workers should not vote for either party until candidates come forward from a bottom-up labor movement. They should challenge the ineffective union leadership which has been collaborating with the ruling classes for nearly a century.

 

Until you see someone fighting for Medicare-for-All, raising the minimum wage, more affordable housing, quality education for everyone, and healthy nutritious food as a right, keep your enthusiasm tampered and do your best to help your friends and neighbors. I am reminded of a movie from many years ago titled, “All the King’s Men.” The main character is a politician running for governor in Louisiana and he makes campaign stops at county fairs and rural community events. Anyway, he often ends his speeches with the following:

“You’re a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself.” 

Workers in the U.S. are going to have to stop waiting for a savior to lead them to the promised land because they will never show up. Workers are going to have to take the reins of society themselves if we are going to see any positive changes aimed to help them in the near future.

Why Marx is So Demonised. It's Not Complicated.

Richard Mellor

The statement above expresses the reason Marx is so demonized. A simple slogan, an appeal like "workers of all countries unite" terrifies the ruling class. It's equivalent to "unite the slaves" during the rule of the slaveocracy in the US or in Ancient Greece. "Land to the peasants" is another example for the feudal economic system.

It is a recognition that human society consists of classes and that these classes are based on their role in the social production of human needs and therefore human life.

The government of Guatemala led by Arbenz offered to buy its own land from the United Fruit company that was joined at the hip to the US government in 1953.  Arbenz offered to pay market prices but the US government demanded ten times the price knowing Guatemala could not afford to pay it. Arbenz wanted to give the land to rural Guatemalans, mostly indigenous people so they could produce food for themselves. The US government overthrew Arbenz, blamed communism and placed a flunky in power. 

Same with Iran in 1953-54. Iran wanted to control its own oil industry so the US along with the British that owned it, overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and installed the Shah. The threat of communism was excuse once again.

Millions of working class people, rural and urban, die because they resist class oppression. We know we are exploited, all workers understand what the "boss" is and does.

And there's a reason Marx's views are seen as the solution to the violence and destruction of capitalism and the so called free market by millions of people throughout the world---because they are a solution. 

That various groups or undemocratic or autocratic regimes claim the legacy of Marxism is not due to the failure of this philosophy or what is really a way of understanding the world and world history and a method for freeing humanity from class oppression and controlling our own destiny. It's the interpretation and false application of it.

That a philosophical understanding of how the world actually works can be so violently opposed by the ruling classes, is so viciously assaulted, is truth enough to its validity.

 

As Marx stated, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world-----the point is to change it.” 

A Trump Doctrine Emerges

KEN KLIPPENSTEIN

MAR 27, 2025

Intelligence Directors Testify At Senate Hearing On Worldwide Threats

Reprinted from Ken Klippenstein.com

The Trump administration turned longstanding U.S. policy on its head this week by stating that foreign governments like Russia, China and Iran don’t really want to pick a fight with the United States. 

The administration’s Annual Threat Assessment released on Tuesday is as close to an articulation of a Trump doctrine as anything we’ve seen so far. But in a week dominated by Signal-gate coverage, the assessment has been roundly ignored by the news media. 

Annual Threat Assessment 2025

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Drawing on information from across the entire intelligence community (IC), the annual assessment normally feels like a predictable laundry list of “threats” that sound more like a fundraising pitch for the national security state than serious analysis. 

Not this time.

The intelligence agencies conclude that Russia overall has been weakened by the Ukraine war, even though Vladimir Putin’s grip on power is stronger than ever. But absent is the usual rhetoric about Moscow’s broader (and certain) threat to Western Europe. 

The Ukraine war is also characterized as being seen by Russia as a “proxy conflict with the West” and thus an element of a new Cold War. In the past year, the assessment says, Russia has “seized the upper hand” in what it calls “a grinding war of attrition” playing into to Russia’s military advantages.

U.S. intelligence’s concern here isn’t that Russia poses a threat to the West — remarkably, the assessment never once mentions NATO! — but more that Moscow might secure more concessions in the negotiations to end the war. (The assessment points to the “increased risk of nuclear war” as creating “urgency” for the U.S. to end to the war.)

“Concerns over escalation control and directly confronting the United States”have held Putin back from moving further on Europe, the assessment says. Such concerns have even “tempered the pace and scope” of Russia’s relationships with other adversary nations. And the future outside of Russia’s immediate military gains doesn't look bright, with mounting demographic and economic challenges.

China, which both the Obama and Biden administrations cast as the chief national security threat to U.S. (and the source of inevitable conflict), gets similarly unusual treatment. “China’s leaders will seek opportunities to reduce tension with Washington,” the assessment says.

While warning that China “seeks to compete with the United States as the leading economic power in the world” and will “continue to expand its coercive and subversive malign influence activities to weaken the United States internally and globally,” the assessment downplays the military threat. It instead focuses on the possibility of “miscalculations potentially leading to conflict.” 

There is little talk of China as a threat to its neighbors, and the tone seems to focus on avoiding conflict. China is “more cautious than Russia, Iran, and North Korea about risking its economic and diplomatic image in the world by being too aggressive and disruptive,” the assessment concludes.

On Iran there’s another significant departure from the rhetoric of the Biden administration, and even Trump’s own rhetoric. Noting the many blows that Iran has sustained in the past year and a half — to its proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, in the loss of Syria, and to Iran’s own air defenses and military forces — the assessment says that leaders in Tehran are beginning “to raise fundamental questions regarding Iran’s approach.”

The section concludes with remarks that make Iran sound less like the foreboding ‘greatest sponsor of terrorism’ Washington usually describes it as and instead almost meek. “Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei continues to desire to avoid embroiling Iran in an expanded, direct conflict with the United States and its allies,” the assessment says, adding that “Iranian leaders recognize the country is at one of its most fragile points since the Iran-Iraq war” — the bloody conflict that devastated Iran in the 80s. 

Even on the subject of the hermit kingdom, North Korea, the assessment avoids the familiar hyperbole. “Since coming to power, Kim generally has relied on non-lethal coercive activities … to win concessions and counter U.S. and South Korean military, diplomatic, and civilian activities,” the assessment says. Gone is the ominous talk of a 15-minute march to Seoul. 

Two months into the administration, for all its chaos, this is no Reagan-like military buildup threatening to bury its enemies, or Bush-style tirade about the Axis of Evil. Instead, the intelligence agencies have articulated a view of the world that is fairly coolheaded.

The leading "threat" to America, befitting Trump’s personal focus, is identified as transnational criminal organizations (like cartels), which for the first time appears as the first section of the annual assessment. With fentanyl and synthetic opioids racking up 52,000 American deaths in one year alone, as the report notes, it’s hard to argue against this being a bigger threat than, say, North Korea.

The relatively judicious picture is jarring to see coming from the national security state, for whom fear mongering about adversary nations is an Olympic sport, with medals awarded in the next budget. Let’s see if the intelligence is heeded.