Bolivian VP, Alvaro Garcia Linera: Equality + Justice = Socialism

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breakingtheset on Jun 14, 2013

Manuel Rapalo talks to Bolivian Vice President, Alvaro García Linéra, about the 2013 left forum in New York, socialism in South America, and the implications of Colombia potentially joining NATO.

You Might Be a Socialist If… by Michael Engel

by Michael Engel
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Socialism for Dummies, March 28, 2013
May 12, 2013

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There’s ironic pleasure watching Republicans as they fight among themselves to see who’s more right-wing.  Thanks to pressure from the Tea Party faction, the PC Disease that supposedly was the affliction of the Left has now infected them.  Too bad they didn’t learn from our history.  For 150 years, those who called themselves socialists have argued over the “correct” interpretation of the Sacred Texts and over who was entitled to mark the “true path” to socialism.  The resulting factionalism fractured the movement as a whole.

What Socialism is NOT… by Michael Engel

by Michael Engel
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Socialism for Dummies, March 23, 2013
May 3, 2013

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So what is NOT socialism?

Obviously, capitalism isn’t.  Well, duh, you say.  But it’s important to point that out, because defining capitalism is a useful start towards answering the question.  And it’s a lot easier to define than socialism.  Specifically: Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned, and which are organized and utilized for the purpose of maximizing the profits of the owners. 

Worker Owned Businesses Point to New Forms of Ownership

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TheRealNews·Feb 13, 2013

Can co-ops come out of the margins of the economy and be part of a larger political project to transform how things are owned?

Socialist Register 2013: The Question of Strategy

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LeftStreamed·Feb 9, 2013

Moderated by Leo Panitch. Presentations by Joan Sangster and Meg Luxton: “Feminism, co-optation and the problems of amnesia: a response to Nancy Fraser.” Recorded in Toronto 31 January 2013.

Law of Value 10: Price and Value by Brendan M. Cooney

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brendanmcooney·Dec 23, 2012

[Here’s a yo-yo. Let’s say it took an hour to make, parts and everything. And here’s a bag of high-fructose jelly beans. Let’s say they took 20 minutes to make. What if they both sold for $5, despite having different labor contents? Wouldn’t this be a big problem for Marx’s value theory?

Caleb Maupin: The Anti-Capitalists Are Here + Larry Holmes: OWS and The Capitalist Crisis

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Sep 30, 2012 by wwpvideo

Caleb Maupin, Workers World Party Youth Organizer, speaks on the political impact of Occupy Wall Street. His remarks were made at a Workers World Party forum in September of 2012.

http://www.workers.org

Richard D. Wolff: Capitalism Vs Socialism, interviewed by Cindy Sheehan

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by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Sept. 30, 2012

This week, Cindy Sheehan, interviews Marxist economics professor, Richard D. Wolff.

Professor Wolff breaks a complicated subject down with easily understood analogies and with prophetic solutions.

Lance Selfa: What do socialists say about Election 2012?

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Interview with Lance Selfa
SocialistWorker.org
Sept. 5, 2012

Everyone–the media commentators, leaders of the two parties, liberal supporters of the Democrats and conservative supporters of the Republicans–are saying that the 2012 presidential election offers a clear choice between two fundamentally different political visions. So why doesn’t it seem that way most of the time? Lance Selfa, author of The Democrats: A Critical History, explains why in this interview with SocialistWorker.org.

The Real News Network’s Interview with Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, Spain’s Robin Hood Mayor

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Sep 5, 2012 by TheRealNews

Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo has become the face of the growing protest movement in Spain. The mayor of a small town in Southern Spain called Marinaleda, he has become well-known for leading combative protests and sit-ins, including a protest in a supermarket in which food was taken and redistributed to the poor. But Sánchez Gordillo has backed up his critiques of capitalism with a viable alternative. In his town of Marinaleda, there is full employment, people rent homes for 15 Euros a month, and everybody who works in the agricultural cooperative that was formed, including the mayor, earns the same salary.

Spain’s Robin Hood Mayor and Landless Peasants Battle Bankers

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Sep 3, 2012 by TheRealNews

In Southern Spain, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, mayor of the small town of Marinaleda, is helping organize a growing protest movement against the austerity measures imposed by the Spanish government. Sánchez Gordillo and the landless peasants that follow him are at the forefront of demonstrations seeking a radical change in the country’s economic policies in response to the country’s worsening crisis.

Socialism: Our Alternative To The Madness Of The Market by Eric Ruder

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by Eric Ruder
SocialistWorker.org
August 30, 2012

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THE WORLD economy is still suffering from the worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Around the world, the consequences have been devastating–jobs wiped out, exploitation intensified for those who remain employed, social services eliminated or privatized.

At the same time, U.S. banks and corporations are sitting on a record $2 trillion in cash. In most sectors, profits have returned, often to record levels–and tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals have remained at historic lows during the administration of a Democrat who promised to make the rich pay their fair share.

Eugene V. Debs: Why You Should Vote For Socialism Recited by Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
August 31, 2012

THIS IS THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THIS SPEECH!!!

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Transcript

There are ninety million reasons why you should vote for Socialism in America this year and every one of them is a pulsing, breathing, human reason!

You must either vote for or against your own material interests as a wealth producer; there is no political purgatory in this nation of ours, despite the desperate efforts of so-called Progressive capitalist politicians to establish one.

The Road Ahead Is Not An Easy One — Europe 2012 by Gaither Stewart

by Gaither Stewart
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
August 27, 2012

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The Rome Radical Left daily, Il Manifesto, recently headed a recent article about European politics (which I have summarized here) with the name of Emile Roemer. The 50-year old Roemer is the leader of Holland’s leftwing Socialist Party (SP), a man almost unknown in much of Europe even though today he is the most popular politician in The Netherlands and favored to win national elections on September 12. A Socialist victory there would represent a major electoral turn-about in The Netherlands. The sudden rise in popularity of the leftwing Socialists in Holland is attributed to the left’s opposition to the rightwing government’s proposal for austerity policies calling for a 13 billion euro budget cut in order to reduce the national deficit to less than 3% of the GDP, as per the Fiscal Compact decided and imposed on European Union members by the non-elected technocrats of the EU in nearby Brussels…

Law of Value 9: Abstract Labor by Brendan M. Cooney

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http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/

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Aug 23, 2012 by brendanmcooney

[...] What kind of social power does money have? It seems to have any social power we might want it to have. In a society in which social life is coordinated by market exchange money has the ability to buy any aspect of this social life, to compel any action, to coordinate any complex activity. The more money we have, the greater our ability to command this social power. This is a non-specific power: It is not tied to any particular activity, commodity or person. It is social power in the abstract. [...]