Solidarity 568, 21 October 2020

Howie Hawkins interview, part 2: "We need a left party that organises in the unions"

Howie Hawkins, a socialist running in the US presidential election on the ticket of the Green Party, spoke to Stephen Wood from Solidarity. Part 1 of this interview was in Solidarity 567. Workers’ Liberty backs Hawkins in the election. Bernie Sanders, during the Democratic primaries, was clear about his policies. But it looks like now he’s making almost no demands on Biden? Bernie Sanders is saying if we get Joe Biden in there, we can push him. But in the course of this campaign, he’s compromised on his signature issue, Medicare for All. He went on MSNBC and said: I’m willing to compromise to...

Lesser-evilism in the 2020 US elections

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . If there is one proposition that most anti-Stalinist socialists should agree on it is this: capitalism does not need democracy and democracy does not require capitalism. Only socialism does. Socialists in every struggle are the left-wing, the revolutionary wing of democracy. This is what distinguishes us from the left-wing of capitalism and why, in comparison to the small gaps that separate the conservative from the liberal wing of capitalist democracy, we as socialists stand a mile apart from both in irreconcilable...

Trump and epoch

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . Trump is a central part of a global wave of authoritarian nationalist populism, but he goes beyond it towards fascism in that: • the idea of violence and locking up his political opponents is a central part of his political thought. The nature of the US state has made that impossible on a grand scale. However, where he can, by rhetorically encouraging his supporters or using the Department for Homeland Security, he has pushed this violence. • Trump has been in actual dialogue with the existing organisations of the violent far...

Social self-defence against a Trump coup

President Donald Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power no matter who wins the election. What is to be done if Trump loses the election but refuses to concede? Tyrannical regimes from Serbia to the Philippines to Brazil and many other places have been brought down by “people power” — non-violent revolts that made society ungovernable and led to regime change. While the US has a strong tradition of social movements based on people power, it does not have a tradition of using mass action and general strikes for the defence of democracy. However, in other countries where...

Women's Fightback: Pandemic hits women's mental health

New studies indicate that the pandemic has caused a crisis in mental health in women and girls.  CARE spoke to 6,200 women and 4,000 men in nearly 40 countries around the world. They found 27% of women had reported increased mental health challenges. This compared to 10% of men. They identified increased unpaid work in the home and worries about food, work and health care. Women were almost twice as likely to report that accessing quality healthcare services that they needed had been harder during the pandemic. CARE identified three key areas of difference between the genders during the...

Use election to build socialist politics

Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins. • See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . Much of the debate amongst Workers’ Liberty members about the US election has focused on the question of whether Donald Trump, and the movement around him, can meaningfully be described as “fascist”. Whilst this question has an analytical significance (personally I think “proto-fascist” is a more accurate description), it does not, in and of itself, settle the matter of how we think the class-struggle left should orient in the election. One might think Trump is a fascist, and...

Why American unions back Biden

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is “lamentable”, “utterly useless”, a “creep” and a “shit”. Those are not the words of Donald Trump, but they are all used in an article in this newspaper last week. The author of that article, it seems, does not like Joe Biden. He prefers that American workers throw their support behind the little-known candidate of the Green Party, Howie Hawkins. American trade unionists have a rather different view of the former Vice President. They are throwing everything they have into ensuring...

Diary of an engineer: Distance in the training centre

We’ve begun the new college term in strange circumstances. The training centre needs to provide some face-to-face teaching – working remotely and teacher absence hasn’t suited many of the apprentices, and the first years need to do six months of practical workshops. My group is split in two; half of us watch classes remotely, and the other half goes into the training centre, the next week we swap. The training centre is almost deserted. Staff are secluded in their offices, and everyone indoors is masked. We follow a strict one-way system, and the dining hall is spread with small round tables...

Kino Eye: The Watergate story

Another US film seems appropriate this week. All the President’s Men (1976, Alan Pakula) begins with the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee HQ in the Watergate complex in Washington D.C. Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) investigate and, on the advice of the furtive “Deep Throat”, “follow the money”. They steadily unearth a labyrinth of financial corruption and illegal activities pointing to the White House and Republican President Richard Nixon. Despite winning the election of November 1972, Nixon comes under...

John Moloney's column: Strike ballot in DWP

Around 800 workers in Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) job centres in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Merseyside, Sunderland, and Washington will be balloted for action over health and safety concerns. We’re also empowering members to take immediate action to refuse unsafe work using Section 44 of the 1996 Employment Rights Act, issuing members with pro forma letters they can use with their bosses. The ballot will likely begin on or around Tuesday 27 October, which will set up the possibility of industrial action in early November. Union pressure and the threat of a national ballot already secured...

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