Pro-unification forces gain ground in Northern Ireland – The Militant

....workers in Northern Ireland have engaged in labor actions with fellow workers across the U.K. to fight declining real wages and worsening working conditions. Workers from Protestant and Catholic communities, as well as immigrants, are involved. Some 20,000 health workers, members of Unite, Unison and the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance, joined a one-day strike on Jan. 26, with lively picket lines across Northern Ireland.

Three unions representing the bulk of teachers in Northern Ireland have announced a joint half-day strike Feb. 21. These include the historically pro-British Ulster Teachers Union, the all-Ireland Irish National Teachers Union and a union that organizes teachers across the U.K.

“Decades of struggle dealt an irreversible blow to the divisions between Catholic and Protestant workers,” Peter Clifford, Communist League candidate for Manchester City Council in the May elections, told the Militant. “Workers in Britain should demand Britain get out of Northern Ireland and let the Irish people decide their own future. This will put us in the strongest position to fight for workers and farmers governments here and in Ireland.”

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Pro-unification forces gain ground in Northern Ireland – The Militant

As truth about train spill leaks out, rail workers look to fight for safety – The Militant

....In a statement, Candace Wagner, the 2022 Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, a freight rail conductor and Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen member based in Pittsburgh, 40 miles from East Palestine, said:

 

“We’re beginning to see the consequences of this most recent train derailment in northern Ohio. Only united union action, not appeals to the government, will stop the rail companies from running mileslong trains, scrimping on inspections and maintenance, forcing erratic schedules on many rail workers that bring fatigue, damage health and decrease time at home. We can win public support for our demands.

“Our unions must fight for shorter trains and larger crews, for maintenance and inspection workforces up to the necessary size to adequately inspect the trains and engines, track and associated equipment. Rail transport of dangerous, but vital substances, can be done safely, but only if the voracious profit drive of the bosses, facilitated by the bosses’ government and their two political parties, is confronted.

“What is necessary is to organize and fight for workers control to ensure the safety and health of rail workers and the communities along the tracks,” Wagner said. “Without this the rail bosses will continue to gamble with our lives and well-being. For them it’s just a financial calculation. For the working class and small farmers, it is our lives and future.”

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As truth about train spill leaks out, rail workers look to fight for safety – The Militant

Piketty or Marx? Capital in the Twenty-first century: a fundamental criticism by James Miller

Piketty or Marx? Capital in the Twenty-first century: a fundamental criticism

Part 1

Preliminary remarks

Thomas Piketty's 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-first Century, made a big splash among economists and the major media when it was released in 2013. Weighing in at over 750 pages, and with several appendices, it gave the appearance of being a solid piece of work. It shot to the top of the best-seller list of Amazon.com, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It received many glowing reviews, and some critical ones. It seemed to focus on the growing gap between the rich and the poor, and offered a remedy. The problem with the book is that, in terms of its analysis of capitalism, it offers nothing new, and in terms of the remedy, there's nothing new there either. By 2018 the hullaballoo had long since subsided, and millions of copies of Piketty's book, perhaps partly read or leafed through, had been quietly set aside….

Full: https://jmiller803.substack.com/p/piketty-or-marx?publication_id=850683&isFreemail=true

Mary Lou Montauk, 78 years a builder, supporter of the SWP

OAKLAND, Calif. — More than 50 people gathered here Jan. 21 to celebrate the life and political contributions of Mary Lou Montauk, a member and supporter of the Socialist Workers Party for 78 years. She died Jan. 5.

"Mary Lou stayed the course," SWP leader Betsey Stone told the gathering. "She was a cadre of the Socialist Workers Party, ready to do whatever was needed to strengthen the revolutionary party and the working class."

Born in 1930 in Minnesota, Montauk grew up during a time of labor battles and approaching war. Her father, Farrell Dobbs, was the central organizer of the Teamsters' 11-state over-the-road campaign in the Midwest and later served as national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.

"We got a feeling of the solidarity, the power, the potential strength of the union movement" at large Teamster rallies, Montauk recalled about her childhood. 

During a buffet reception organized by party supporters, participants studied a panel display depicting her life, and read 18 messages to the meeting, including from the Communist Leagues in Australia and Canada. 

"Mary Lou had a serious approach to every party task, small or large, based on her understanding of the stakes in what the party is dedicated to — organizing the working class to take power out of the hands of the capitalists," Stone said.

Montauk lived through several internal struggles in the party, Sandler said.

In the mid-1950s, she was part of an important fight in the party. Under the pressures of the Cold War witch hunt that targeted union militants, and the retreat of the labor movement, Bert Cochran in Detroit and a layer around him recoiled from revolutionary activity. They aligned themselves with an international current that was convinced that the capitalist expansion would last for a long time. They lost confidence in the working class.

Montauk and other party members did the opposite, continuing to carry out revolutionary activity, taking part in union struggles, standing up to the witch hunters, joining the battle for Black rights and running SWP candidates. Just a few years later, Fidel Castro led workers and farmers in Cuba to make the first socialist revolution in the Americas.

Turn to the industrial unions

She was part of a second battle in the party in the early 1980s over the party's turn to the industrial unions. Developments in the class struggle, including the 1974-75 recession, the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, the Boston school desegregation fight and the Steelworkers Fight Back campaign for union democracy, marked a shift in consciousness of the working class that convinced the SWP it was now possible to carry out union-building work on a wide-ranging scale and organized to get a big majority of party members into the industrial unions. 

A layer of party members opposed this. Montauk defended the party and its turn to the industrial unions when some of her generation in the party abandoned them, Sandler said. During the early '80s she took part in the party-wide classes to systematically study the writings of V.I. Lenin, the central leader of the 1917 Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution. 

At the same time, revolutionary upsurges led to workers and farmers governments coming to power in Nicaragua and Grenada. Party members who recoiled from the turn also refused to recognize the importance of the revolutionary advances in Central America and the Caribbean. They split from the party in 1983. 

Montauk was deeply involved in the party's work to fight extradition of the H-Block 4, Irish freedom fighters who had escaped from prison in Northern Ireland and made their way to the Bay Area where they were arrested by the FBI. "Montauk had real standing among those fighters," Sandler said. "Their extradition order was dropped with the signing of the 1998 Good Friday accords.

"And the party helped link up fighters from different labor and social struggles," he said. "The party arranged for touring Puerto Rican independence fighters Rafael Cancel Miranda and Luis Rosa to meet Terry Kirby, one of the H-Block defendants fighting extradition." Sandler noted to applause the presence of Puerto Rican independence fighter Willie Rivera at the meeting. 

In 2003, as age and health challenges increased, Mary Lou Montauk settled in North Carolina, where her daughter, Juliette, resided. She decided to become a party supporter, helping to produce books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries. 

Over 30 copies of the just-released book, The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by SWP leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark were bought by meeting participants. Sandler pointed to party members in the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union and in the rail unions who are part of struggles with fellow workers to push back against the employers' attacks on wages and working conditions and a growing willingness of workers to extend solidarity to other union fights. 

"Cadres like Mary Lou are essential to the continuity and stability of the communist movement," Sandler concluded. "She appreciated the different generations of the party and knew the human material that makes up the party consists of ordinary people who work at it over a lifetime."

A collection raised more than $4,000 for the SWP in honor of Montauk.

Source: https://themilitant.com/2023/02/04/mary-lou-montauk-78-years-a-builder-supporter-of-the-swp/

Political crises of US capitalist rulers’ two parties deepen heading to 2024 – The Militant

[....]   Both parties fear deepening struggles by working people for things we need — higher wages, cost-of-living protection against the scourge of inflation, more effective health care, retirement pay we can live on, livable work schedules and more.

[....]   Republicans, Trump opposes cuts to Social Security and Medicare, making this part of his campaign for the party’s 2024 nomination. He hopes this will help position his party as “the party of the working class.” But the class character of any party is determined by which class it serves, not who votes for it. Both Democrats and Republicans loyally serve the U.S. imperialist rulers. Neither can nor will be bent to serve the interests of those the rulers exploit.

[....]   Broader political questions than the handling of classified documents or the debt ceiling lie underneath the mounting clashes between the bosses’ parties. Cracks in the imperialist world order put together by the U.S. rulers at the end of World War II are widening. Moscow’s war in Ukraine and the worldwide slowdown in production and trade are exacerbating antagonisms between Washington, Beijing and Moscow, as well as tensions between Washington, Paris and Berlin.

In this world, the Socialist Workers Party gets a hearing for its program and working-class line of march forward. The SWP explains that working people have to break from the Democratic and Republican parties.

“Workers need our own party, a labor party based on our unions to unite all working people and others exploited and oppressed by capital to advance the interests we share against the bosses and their parties,” Joanne Kuniansky, SWP candidate for New Jersey Senate, said Jan. 31.

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Political crises of US capitalist rulers’ two parties deepen heading to 2024 – The Militant

Memphis cops charged with murder in killing of Tyre Nichols – The Militant

[....]  Modest protests against the murder took place in Memphis and nationwide, reflecting the fact the cops involved had been charged with murder and face up to 60 years in prison. Nichols’ parents urged people to protest, and urged them to do so without violence or disruption, a request that was largely followed.

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Memphis cops charged with murder in killing of Tyre Nichols – The Militant

SLAVERY AS OBSTACLE TO INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT: MARXISM VS. THE ‘NEW HISTORIANS OF CAPITALISM’: Part 2 of 3

Slavery, on the other hand, no matter how thoroughly it became financially and commercially intertwined with capitalism, was unable to produce the kind of rapid industrial technological development that was characteristic of capitalism. Slave labor remained a form of production radically different from wage labor throughout all the varieties of the interactions with capitalism….

Full:

https://jmiller803.substack.com/p/marxism-vs-the-new-historians-of-0dd?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=850683&post_id=100298540&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email