current events

France is Not Alone

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Gerye Proletari

November 15, 2015
319bI woke up to a ton of French flags on my Facebook newsfeed. The recent attacks in France from terrorist organizations are very real, as real as the terrorist attacks of the French imperialists around the world, as real as the attacks of the French bourgeoisie against the French proletariat every day, as real as the capitalist and imperialist attacks against workers and the masses of people every second around the world.

Why are my friends photos hidden behind a French flag today? Because people are outraged and rightly so. They are also well-intentioned and lack the presence of a progressive and revolutionary alternative to transform those good intentions into concrete steps towards building an alternative. What happened in Paris was a brutal attack. But let us not be fooled, massacres and terrorism happen on a daily basis all over this world, fueled by feudalism, capitalism and imperialism the world over.

We live in troubling times when capitalism/imperialism is driving this planet to its first ever great extinction led by an animal which calls this planet home. But it is not the whole species of this animal responsible, but certain classes. The environment is being devastated. The working class is sweating daily, under the brutal exploitation of the capitalist class. From the sweatshops in Haiti, China, Dominican Republic, Bangladesh, etc, to the favelas of Brazil, from the projects in East New York, to the slums in New Orleans, from the caserios in Puerto Rico, to occupied Gaza, from the industrial parks in Poland, to the prisons of North Korea, terrorism is our daily visitor.

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Capitulating to Bernie Would Be Marching in Our Own Funeral

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Jan Makandal

November 15, 2015

 

electionsSome assert that the Bernie Sanders campaign is helping the struggle to fight capitalism or to construct a combative mass movement. Can anyone explain how this is the case? Did we already forget (as usual), that the Rainbow Coalition had the same ambition? And what happened to that, were no lessons learned by the farce of the Rainbow Coalition? Now some are saying we should now embark on a new scheme to build a mass movement by tailgating a bourgeois politician, a political militant of the capitalist class. To hope that this new quest will give us a different result is ludicrous. This is opportunism at it lowest. Hopping on the Sanders bandwagon in a quest to build a mass movement can only to give the same result already given by the Rainbow Coalition.

 

How is Bernie campaign helping the genuine progressive movement? To argue that Sanders’ campaign is helping our movement even without a clear political line or coordinated practice among all involved, including Sanders himself, is pure demagogy. So far, there is nothing in Bernie’s rhetoric that gives a hint, even a minute hint, that he is helping our movement.

 

In the recent debates and forum, Sanders articulated his own brand of capitalist and imperialist line to make US imperialism work better. He appeals to the workers to join the petite bourgeoisie [middle class], to break from conservatism and live peacefully in capitalism. Forget about you being exploited; forget that your labor power is being violently expropriated.

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