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Abraham Lincoln repeatedly tops polls as our greatest and most revered president. But few people thought so on March 4, 1865, when he took the oath of office for the second time.

On that day, America was still mired in the terrible war that the Republicans had been determined to wage. The refusal of Southern states to accept his election in 1860and Lincolns stubborn insistence that they do so, lest the American system of representative government fall aparthad cost some 750,000 lives by early 1865. Those who think the ferocity of todays partisanship is unprecedented would find the record of history sobering.

Lincoln had survived reelection in November 1864, but in early 1865, even as the North steadily dismantled the Souths ability to fight, Lincoln was getting it from all sides.

Many liberal Republicans found Lincoln weak and vacillating, too prone to calibrate his actions to the faltering pace of public opinion. They feared that this tendency would work against punishing the Souths establishment and risk not extending full civil rights to African-Americans, which they saw as the ultimate purpose of the war.

Frederick Douglass was among those who believed Lincoln had moved too slowly against slavery. When there was any shadow of a hope that a man of a more decided anti-slavery conviction and policy could be elected, I was not for Mr. Lincoln, Douglass wrote.

Northern Democrats, meanwhile, argued that Lincoln had done permanent damage to the nation and its Constitution with what they saw as his incompetent management of a disastrously prolonged war, his jailing of newspaper editors and other enemies of the administration, his arming of former slaves , and his massive expansion of the powers of the federal government.

Many from both parties, and the South, found Lincolns smutty frontier jokes and cackling enjoyment of lowbrow humor grotesquely unpresidentialnever mind his uncombable hair and tendency to throw one leg over an arm of his chair.

In the capital of the Confederacy, the Richmond Daily Dispatch found it appalling that the people of the supposedly civilized North had reelected a vulgar tyrant . . . whose career has been one of unlimited and unmitigated disaster; whose personal qualities are those of a low buffoon, and whose most noteworthy conversation is a medley of profane jests and obscene anecdotesa creature who has squandered the lives of millions without remorse and without even the decency of pretending to feel for their misfortunes; who still cries for blood and for money in the pursuit of his atrocious designs.

Healing a nation consumed by such hatred was a task as monumental as destroying the Souths resistance to Republican majority rule.

How Lincoln went about it is fascinating. He used his second inaugural address in a manner that would seem entirely alien to other politicians, including many today.

Lincoln did not try to elevate his popularity by boasting of his success in breaking the South. Nor did he denounce his enemieseven in the slaveholding statesas his moral inferiors. In sharp contrast to typical politicians, he did not insult his political opponents or accuse them of despicable, deplorable, cruel, and unpatriotic motives. He even eschewed the opportunity to wave the flag.

Rather, in a five-minute speech of about 700 words, short enough to run in a single column of a newspaper, he argued that all AmericansNorth and Southshared culpability for the unimaginable horrors the nation had endured. This war of unexpected duration and ferocity, he posited, may have been Gods judgment on all of America for the evil of slavery.

In overwhelmingly Christian America, North and South prayed to the same God, and both sides tended to interpret the results of the wars ebb and flow as evidence of Gods will. Southerners had difficulty understanding how God could support the Norths cruel, unjust and wicked war of invasion of states that merely wished to form their own nation. In the North, such preachers as Henry Ward Beecher denounced the ambitious, educated, plotting leaders of the South and promised that God would punish them severely for shedding an ocean of blood.

Lincoln was almost alone in seeing the wars suffering as a verdict on both sides. Perhaps it might be deemed an act of Gods justice, he argued, even if all the wealth piled up by 250 years of unrequited toil by the enslaved should be sunk into the war, and even if every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.

Lincolns most resonant line was his plea to Americans to finish the war and seek a lasting peace, With malice toward none, with charity for all. His refusal to condemn the South alone gave that phrase great resonance, particularly after his assassination, when he became a hallowed martyr to the cause of healing the nation.

Few politicians today seem to be following his example. Lincoln, with his rare ability to step outside of the emotions that we all feel when we are attacked, believed that harsh words and acts of revenge rarely pay off; that we are all flawed human beings, all bringing our own motives and complicated understanding of the world to politics.

But, without attacking others, he managed to implant in that great speech an interpretation of the war that has enduredthat, for all its evils and horrors, the Civil War was ultimately an act of justice because it destroyed the curse of slavery.

Frederick Douglass, who had long argued that the wars meaning was defeating slavery, stood in the mud outside the Capitol, listening to Lincoln deliver his speech. That night, despite being forcibly removed by guards because he was a black man, Douglass managed to get into the White House to shake Lincolns hand at a public reception.

Here comes my friend Douglass, Lincoln said, and he urged his former political foe to tell him what he thought of the speech.

Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort, Douglass said.

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Abraham Lincoln Healed a Divided Nation. We Should Heed His Words Today. - TIME

Alain Mingam/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)Louis Althusser in his study, Paris, France, April 26, 1978

The singular hackneyed biographical detail about Louis Althusser (19181990) is his notoriety as the French Marxist philosopher who, in 1980, killed his wife, the sociologist Hlne Rytmann, and got off with being committed to a psychiatric hospital. The horror of his crime cannot be overstated, and there were those at the time who insisted Althusser stand trial for murder, but the French Penal Code allowed for a judgment of juridical-legal non-responsibility, attested to in Althussers case by three psychiatrists. Althusser was confined to a psychiatric institution for three years, one of several such hospitalizations, including treatment that had led to his absence during the events of May 1968. The tragic event of Rytmanns death serves to obscure his real significance from the early 1960s until the present, as his version of Structuralism-tinged Marxism became part of a dominant school in the academy: French Theory.

Despite the gaps he admitted to in his reading of philosophy, Althusser, who was a member of the French Communist Party (PCF) from 1948, effected a revolution in Marxism, positing that there had been an epistemological break in Marxs thought in 18451846 that placed his Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts of 1844stained with idealist aspirations, in Althussers wordsoutside what should properly be considered Marxism. That philosophy, Althusser believed, was most clearly articulated in Capital, the founding moment of a new discipline, the founding moment of a science. Marxism, he wrote, is, in a single movement and by virtue of the unique epistemological rupture which established it, an anti-humanism and an anti-historicism.

Althussers anti-humanism was a reaction to different camps within Marxism he believed had deviated into socialist humanism, which he described not only as a critique of the contradictions of bourgeois humanism, but also and above all as the consummation of its noblest aspirations. This drive to combine socialism and humanism was of dubious theoretical value, he reasoned, for the concept socialism is a scientific concept, but the concept humanism is no more than an ideological one. The unevenness between the two made them incompatible.

Rosa Luxemburg, George Lukacs, and Antonio Gramsci, as well as dissident Marxists like Karl Korsch, were prominent figures of one camp of what he considered Marxist humanists. In his own time, such left-humanists could be found in the Frankfurt School and the Yugoslavian Praxis Group, but also in certain tendencies within the USSR. In the mid-1970s, more threatening still for Althusser was the social-democratizing trend in the Western European Communist movement known as Eurocommunism, which opposed smashing the state and favored the electoral road, while stripping communism of the embarrassing notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

As French Theory incorporated Althussers ideas, one important aspect was left behind: his involvement in the issues confronting the French left and specifically the PCF in the late 1970s. The positions he took in the life of the PCF were a continuation of the theoretical work that can be found in his essential early works, Reading Capital and For Marx. For Althusser, the jettisoning by the Communist Parties of Spain, Italy, and France, the core of Eurocommunism, of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, was unacceptable, for, he wrote, this dictatorship was central to Marxism in the realm of theory, and in practice was at least partially necessary if the revolution is not to get bogged down and come to grief.

Althusser was not just a Marxist philosopher, he was a Communist philosopher, which isnt necessarily the same thing. As he wrote in 1976, [W]hat defines the Party is not so much simply the class character of its membership or its scientific theory alone, but the fusion of these two things in the class struggle. In the English-speaking world, Althussers specifically Communist commitments took a back seat during his heyday. The absence of a serious working-class movement in the US and the UK led to Althussers ideas becoming chiefly a subject for academic study and abstruse intra-left debate, rather than a motor for action.

In France, though, he was very much present on the left, where his refusal to accept any softening of Marxism bridged the Sino-Soviet split in the Communist movement. He even wrote (anonymously) for the journal of the Maoist Union de la Jeunesse Communiste Marxiste Lniniste, a group that included the cream of the intellectual far left in France, most of them students of Althussers at the most elite of Frances universities, the cole Normale Suprieure. (Later, when illusions about the Cultural Revolution, Mao, and revolution in general crumbled, many of these Althusserian Maoists would form the basis for the anti-Marxist school of New Philosophers.)

For Althusser, philosophy was not a matter of abstract intellectual inquiry but a guide to actionand an action in itself: the demystifying of capitalism (as the excerpt below shows). His idiosyncratic canon included Lenin and Mao every bit as much as those classical thinkers usually taught in university classrooms. For Althusser, these two revolutionary leaders, normally viewed solely as political actors, were, thanks to their intellectual rigor, true philosophers. Even more, they fulfilled a central tenet of Marxism: The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Mitchell Abidor

Thus it is that the capitalist is born. He is, at the outset, an independent petty producer who, thanks to his labour and his merits and his moral virtues, has succeeded in producing enough to sell enough to buy a few more tools, just what it takes to employ a few unfortunates who dont have anything to eat, because theres no room left on earth (which is round, that is, finite, limited, as Kant magnificently puts it) and because they werent able to become independent petty producers; he renders them the magnanimous service of giving them wages in exchange for their work. What generosity! But generosity too is in human nature. The fact that all this goes sour later, that the wage-workers have the bad grace to find that the work-day is too long and that their wages are too short, is also in human nature, which has its bad sides, just as it is in human nature that certain capitalistic independent petty producers take unfair advantage (evil sorts that they are!) of their wage-workers or, still worse, play tricks in their fashion, dirty tricks, on the other independent petty producers whom they regard (just imagine!) as their competitors and treat mercilessly on the market. These things ought not to exist, but there are not only good people in this world: one has to bear the cross of human wickedness or thoughtlessness. For if they only knew!

If they knew, they would know what we have just said: that there exists one natural mode of production and just one, the mercantile mode of production, constituted by independent petty producers with families, who produce in order to sell either their surplus or everything they produce, working alone with their little family or employing wretches without house or home whom they provide, out of love for their fellow man, with the bread of a wage, thus becoming, quite naturally, capitalists, who can get bigger, if the God of Calvin, who rewards good works, bestows that grace on them.

Thus it is that the mercantile mode of production or the mode of mercantile productionbased on the existence of independent petty producers who started out as subsistence farmers but were naturally destined to become merchants, part-time and then full-time merchants, and then merchants relying on wage-based (capitalist) productionis, for bourgeois ideology, the only mode of production there is.

There is no other. The others are just deviations or aberrations, conceived on the basis of this one and only mode: aberrations due to the fact that the Enlightenment had not penetrated peoples minds with its self-evident truths in these times of darkness and obscurantism. This explains the scandalous horror of slavery: people did not know at the time that all men are free (= have a right to human nature = can be independent petty producers). This explains the horror of feudalism: people did not know at the time that the feudal independent petty producer, the serf, was capable of leaving his land, taking up residence elsewhere and trading his products for other products, like every man on earthinstead of remaining confined to the horrid closed circle of bare subsistence, merely attenuated by that other horror, the corve for the lord and tithe for the Church.

Since the mercantile mode of production is perfectly mythical, an invention of the ideological imaginary, and since the act of foundation depends on the same imaginary, we have, on the one hand, the fact of the existence of the capitalist mode of production, which is terribly real, and, on the other, its theory, its essence, furnished us by the mythical, founding construction of the mercantile mode of production. The result of this act of imaginary foundation is as follows:

1). The capitalist mode of production, which exists, is the only one that can exist, the only one that exists, the only one that has a right to existence. The fact that it has not always existed (and even that must be qualified, for when we look into the matter in detail, we always find this reality, which is natural, everywhere: independent petty producers), or that it has not always visibly existed, obscured as it was by horrid realitiesthis is merely an accident of history. It should have existed from all eternity and, thank God, it exists today, having carried the day against obscurantism, and we may be sure that nature having finally vanquished non-nature, light having finally triumphed over darkness, nature and light, that is, the capitalist mode of production, can be sure of existing for all eternity. It has finally been recognized!

2). This guarantee having been obtained at last, the essence having at last attained to existence, we can, at last, understand everything. If we want to understand what the capitalist mode of production is, it is enough to go have a look at its origin, that is, its essence, the mercantile mode of production: we will find men, the independent petty producers, their families and all the tra-la-la.

3). We have at last arrived at existence and since what has arrived at existence is the essence, we have everything we need: existence, murmuring with satisfaction, and the essence that allows us to understand it. That way everyone is happy.

That way, in other words, bourgeois ideology has reached its goal: representing the capitalist mode of production as the development of an imaginary mercantile mode of production, and the genesis of the capitalist mode of production as the result of the work of deserving independent petty producers who became capitalists only because they really deserved to. It remains only to strike up the universal anthem of humanitys gratitude to free enterprise.

*

Give yourself, for starters, a capitalist honest enough to answer your questions and admit that he is driven to increase his fortune indefinitely, without pause and without respite. Ask him why he yields to this irresistible tendency. You will receive, in this order (disorder would be another order, the same order) the following answers:

1). The psychological capitalist will tell you: Im greedy and bent on acquiring wealth. My nature is such that I thirst for gold and my thirst is such that it makes me thirsty even when its slaked. Everyone knows the story about the sea: Why doesnt it overflow? Answer: because there is a goodly number of fish in the sea, and they drink a tremendous amount of water; since the waters salty, theyre always thirsty. We can only conclude that gold too is salty, since it makes a man thirsty all the time (thirsty for gold). Enough joking. Psychology, which always keeps philosophy and religion in the corner of its eye, answers: its in the nature of things and in human nature too; man is a creature of desire and is therefore insatiable, for desire is infinite. Whatever the world contains in the way of philosophers knows this, from Aristotle talking about Chrematistics down to Pascal and countless others: it is because man is finite that he is condemned to desires bad infinity (Hegel). There you have the reason that the capitalist enriches himself without end, to the point of losing sleep and desirehuman natures to blame.

2). The philosophical capitalist (a notch more sophisticated), versed in Hobbes and Hegel, will tell you: but my dear fellow, nature only reveals itself in its sublation! This desire that you think you bring to bear on mere things, such as goods, wealth or power (power is merely a means of procuring goods, or the men who procure goods) reaches infinitely higher! For example, if so-and-so chases after gold, it is less to satisfy a need (or desire) for wealth or power (for in these matters everything has its limits, and if mans desire is infinite, man isnt) than because he is seeking an altogether different good: the esteem of his peers, that which Hobbes calls glory and Hegel calls recognition. Thus the race for wealth and the race for power (the means of attaining wealth) are merely the obligatory detour that a law takes in order to impose itself on human individuals. In fact, look! The rich man always enriches himself at another mans expense; the powerful man always becomes powerful at a third partys expense. Universal competition rules the world and men are merely its puppets. Not competition for property and power: no, whoa! Competition is a more mysterious, more sophisticated desire: the desire for glory and recognition. Man wants only to be esteemed and recognized for what he is: more deserving than the others (Hobbes) or simply free (Hegel), by way of the figures of the master and slave. Thus, competition for goods and power is simply the means of, and a pretext for, competition of another kind, in which every man expects recognition of his glory or freedom from those he dominates. The insatiable thirst for riches thereby becomes an altogether spiritual affair, in which man can stand tall and proud for being endowed with a nature so dignified that it puts him a hundred feet above the base passions that were attributed to him. One may well be a bourgeois, one still has ones sense of honor.

3). The realistic capitalist (a notch more sophisticated theoretically), better versed in Hobbes, will tell you: the quest for glory is one thing! What matters is something else: the law that forces all men to seek glory, without sparing a one. For how is it that men are brought to engage in this frantic quest, by what power? To be sure, they all start out by desiring goods and, later, glory; but the fact that they all desire them with so equal a desire that this desire surpasses and governs them, and the fact that they are all, without exception, enrolled in the racethat is what calls for explanation. The reason is that, when the time comes, they unleash, unawares, the power of a law that annuls its origin: universal war, the war of all against all. The whole mystery of the matter resides in this conversion: individuals desiring goods, each for [his own] petty ends, and suddenly all of them together are thrown into a war so universal that it becomes a State of War. That is, a State of relations such that the war can flare up at any moment and anywhere (its like bad weather, Hobbes writes: it doesnt rain every day or everywhere, but it could rain anytime, anywhere at all) should someone attack someone else. With the establishment of this State of Universal Competition, aptly called the State of War and a War of All Against All, that is to say, a war of the first person who happens along against the second, things are converted a second time. Fear of being attacked makes men make the first move and war reveals itself for what it is: the essence of war is to be preventive.

With that, the portrait of competition is complete.

However, when we take a closer look at this preventive war that the capitalists wage on each other, it turns out to be a singular war! It pits the combatants against each other, of course, like every war, even the war of all against all. But the combatants, that is, the capitalists, do not really confront each other, since they spend their time protecting themselves against attack by taking preventive measures. In Hobbess war, we might suppose that it is a question of real attacks and that the parties preventively carry out real attacks so as not to be attacked. The same holds here: but rather than preventively launching real attacks, one simply beefs up ones forces, preventively, so as not to fall. To be sure, there are victims, bankruptcies, people left by the wayside. Yet, overall, the capitalists as a group come off rather well, so much so that Marx says of competition that it is ordinarily their friendly society: it is less the rule of the war they wage on each other than that of the war that they dont. Can we therefore say that this State of War is a State of Peace? My word, as far as the capitalist class as a whole is concerned, yes.

But then where is the war? Elsewhere: between the capitalists and their workers. By means of competition, the capitalist class adjusts its accounts rather than settling thembut behind competition, which Marx calls an illusion, the capitalist class wages a veritable war on the working class. For, ultimately, taken at its word, this theory of preventive war shows that prevention, well conducted, spares the capitalists war against other capitalists; it shows that the working class bears the full brunt of prevention, that prevention of the pseudo-war between capitalists is a permanent war against the working class. In that, the war is not at all universal, a war of all against all, as Hobbes claims; it is a war of the capitalist class against the working class. Thus the war that the capitalist class wages on the working class simply allows the capitalists to live in peace. We had been mixing up our wars. We had mistaken competition for a war. We had forgotten the class struggle.

This essay is adapted from Louis Althussers Book on Imperialism, which appears in History and Imperialism: Writings, 19631986, previously unpublished work translated and edited by G.M. Goshgarian, and published by Polity Press.

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Louis Althusser's Class Warfare - The New York Review of Books

In Parshat Mishpatim (Shmot 22:20) we are commanded You must not abuse or oppress the ger, stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Rashi explains that we should not verbally abuse the stranger and we should not rob him of his money. Rashi adds that the word ger refers to a person who was not born in that country but came from another land to reside there.

The Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 228:2 teaches that we must be careful how we treat strangers as we are warned over and over about this mitzvah to show how severe it is. Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol points out that there are 33 places in the Torah that remind us to treat the ger properly. Malbim counts 36.

As the Jewish people experienced being the other for so many years, starting from when Avraham arrived in the land of Cnaan followed by Yitzchaks visit to Grar, Yaakovs time in Aram and Bnai Yisraels sojourn and slavery in Egypt, one would think that it would be obvious that we would know to treat strangers properly. As well, when the Jewish people were exiled of after the destruction of the First and Second Temples, we became strangers once again and we were persecuted throughout the ages. One would think that we would have learned our lesson.

Unfortunately, after all of the difficulties that we have experienced as a nation, we have still not learned our lesson. In Israel today, there are many foreign workers who are brought in to care for the elderly and to work in agriculture and construction. Many of these workers earn minimum wage and do not receive all of the same benefits as Israeli workers.

In the past, there were Israelis who complained that we should not bring in foreign workers as they are taking jobs away from Israelis who were unemployed. Because of these accusations, there was an experiment done to see if Israelis could handle these jobs which require a lot of manual labor. The Israelis who tried working as caregivers, as well as in the fields and in construction could not even last one day due to the taxing work. They begged to have a foreign worker take over for them.

Yet there are politicians who are trying to make it more difficult for the foreign workers by trying to take away their benefits or by taxing the owners of the fields who hire foreign workers. Instead of appreciating the fact that the foreign workers are filling a void, they are often being mistreated.

We must review the mitzvot pertaining to treating the stranger with respect and show our appreciation for those who dutifully care for our elderly residents, those who risk their lives to pick vegetables under constant threats of rocket fire and those who are endangered by difficult working conditions while trying to help us build up the State of Israel.

Sharona holds a BA in Judaic Studies from Stern College and an MS in Jewish Education from Azrieli Graduate School, Yeshiva University. Sharona was the first Congregational Intern and Madricha Ruchanit at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, NY. After making aliya in 2004, Sharona founded Torat Reva Yerushalayim, a non profit organization based in Jerusalem which provides Torah study groups for students of all ages and backgrounds.

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Treating foreigners with respect | Sharona Margolin Halickman - The Times of Israel

When the woman suffrage movement first began in the mid-19th century, its champions had all become human-rights activists in the searing fires of the abolitionist movement. In 1838, Angelina Grimk, renegade daughter of South Carolina slave owners, laid down the basics of womens rights, in her book, Letters to Catherine Beecher: Whatever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights.

In the aftermath of Civil War, emancipation and the constitutional enfranchisement of African American men, this expansive alliance on behalf of human rights tragically faltered. Enraged at the exclusion of women from enfranchisement in the 15th Amendment, Elizabeth Cady Stanton insisted that, if political rights were not to be accorded to all citizens, then educated women, descendants of the Founding Fathers, should take precedence. Betraying her underlying elitism, she wrote in the womens rights periodical The Revolution, in December 1868, If woman find it hard to bear the oppressive laws of a few Saxon Fathers, of the best orders of manhood, what may she not be called to endure when all the lower orders, native and foreigners, Dutch, Irish, Chinese and African, legislate for her and her daughters?

From that point on, for the next 50 years, the major suffrage organizations and their most prominent leaders were white, middle-class women and their arguments rested on the allegedly lofty characteristics of women-as-women rather than on universal human rights. Yet by the turn of the century, national woman suffrage had still not been secured, and political realities were making the constitutional enfranchisement of women a distant dream.

The demand for woman suffrage could not succeed unless it came from a mass movement, reflecting the voices of a diverse and large portion of the nations women. Luckily for the generations of American women who followed, even during the frustrating decades when the previous, exclusionary formulation ruled, American suffragism had grown far beyond its origins.

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Certainly, once one looks past the top tiers of national suffrage leadership, the suffrage movement was not uniformly white. The determined, eager suffragism of African American women is impressive. The battle that had been fought to win and increasingly to protect the voting rights of African American men had affected them deeply. As early as 1874, African American activist Mary Ann Shadd Cary presented her case, as recorded in the official record of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee: The colored women of this country though heretofore silent, in great measure upon the question of the right to vote have neither been indifferent to their own just claims nor to their demand for political representation.

By the late 19th century, just two generations out of slavery, and despite Jim Crow-era racist violence and segregation, many more African American women were realizing that political rights were crucial to their ability to protect their communities and to advance themselves as women. If white American women, with all their natural and acquired advantages, need the ballot, explained, Adele Hunt Logan of Alabama, in the pages of the Colored American Magazine in 1905, how much more do Black Americans, male and female need the strong defense of the vote to help secure them their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? At the national level, the southern-controlled Democratic Party was totally closed to African Americans. However, at the state level in the North and West, wherever African Americans had standing in local Republican parties, black women were well organized and politically sophisticated participants in the battle for the vote.

Nor was the movement solely the realm of wealthy, educated women. In the early 20th century, white immigrant working-class women also turned to the suffrage movement in great numbers. Working in factories, joining trade unions, moving freely through major cities, they helped to turn 20th century woman suffragism into a mass movement. First and second-generation Italian, Irish and Eastern European Jewish women were especially prominent in the ranks of the great suffrage parades of the 1910s in New York City; Chicago; San Francisco; Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.

Inspired by the spirit of Progressive Era social change, aware of new protective labor and housing laws, these working-class women recognized the importance of making their own political presence felt and influencing how these laws would be shaped and enforced. In researching my new book, Suffrage: Womens Long Battle for the Vote, I discovered this forceful 1907 statement by a British-born garment worker speaking before the New York legislature: Gentlemen, we need every help in the battle of life . To be left out by the State just sets up a prejudice against us. Bosses think and women come to think themselves that they dont count for so much as men.

The most famous womens labor event of these years, the Triangle Shirtwaist Strike of 1910-1911, highlighted the importance of working-class womens suffrage activism. New York City garment workers wore suffrage pins when they picketed their factories and noted that, if they had the right to vote, police would not be so quick to harass and arrest them. The famous heroine of the strike, garment worker Clara Lemlich, issued this challenge to New York legislatures: We are here Senators. We are 800,000 strong in New York State alone. The name of the organization behind the pamphlet that circulated her words is telling: the Wage Earners Suffrage League.

In the final years of the suffrage movement, this power of this unprecedented mass movement was clear. Though sometimes separated in their own organizations, black and white, rich and poor women were unified by their common exclusion from the political affairs of the nation. When the U.S. Constitution was finally amended to prohibit states from political discrimination on the grounds of sex, all celebrated their victory. Speaking before the final convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1920, its leader, Carrie Chapman Catt, declared that the suffragists of this country in the last half century, more than any other group of people in this land, have kept the flying flag of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the principles of the constitution, and have held them before the people of this country.

However, looking back at the victory of the suffrage movement in her 1933 book, Women in the Twentieth Century, sociologist Sophonsiba Breckenridge insightfully observed that, much like at the end of the World War, the demobilization that began after 1920 was followed by the development of a diversification of aims and interest among and between those who had been united in the attack upon a common enemy.

As women of different politics, races and classes sought to make use of their new voting power, their differences reemerged. Many of those divisions are still an important factor in American politics a century later but they have been overcome before, and may be again. After all, the history of woman suffrage is not yet over.

Ellen Carol DuBois is the author of Suffrage: Womens Long Battle for the Vote, available Feb. 25 from Simon & Schuster.

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American Women Won the Right to Vote After the Suffrage Movement Became More Diverse. Thats No Coincidence - TIME

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The United Nations is calling on the fashion industry to help it achieve its Sustainable Development Goals, which include relevant topics like ending poverty and climate action.

In addition to lessening its impact, fashion is positioned to serve as an awareness platform for the public, the UN says.

At the core of fashions connection to the SDGs is the promotion of sustainable consumption, which involves moving away from selling more to consumers.

The evening before New York Fashion Week kicked off in February, guests gathered at an art space in Manhattan for an event unrelated to the runway shows. The art exhibition Arcadia Earth and the UN Office for Partnerships hosted representatives from Gucci, Theory and Mara Hoffman, along with influencers like Sierra Quitiquit and Marina Testino to discuss the connections between fashion and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The UNs main message: Fashion has a responsibility and the creative leadership to help it achieve its sustainability goals, which were laid out in 2015 to benefit the planet and its inhabitants. Also known as the Global Goals or SDGs, they cover areas like ocean health, gender equality and sustainable consumption. While nonprofits and developmental agencies are closely tied to these goals, achieving what the UN has laid out will be impossible without participation from the private sector. Fashion ranks high among the industries that need to take action given its size and impact.

To Arcadia Earth founder Valentino Vettori, who spent two decades in fashion, the many touch points between fashion and the UNs goals are loud and clear. Should we talk about womens rights? Its obviously connected to that. Should we talk about slavery? Its obviously connected to that, he says. The industrys consumption and pollution of water might be the most conspicuous of all. It will become the most precious thing ever and we use 2,000 gallons of it to make a pair of jeans? I dont think so.

Fashion can improve its practices in all these areas, the UN believes, and it can also be a platform to reach more people regarding the substance of these challenges.

The UN is offering resources as it calls on fashion to do its part, through a combination of brand-specific efforts, cross-industry alliances and public service, to transform production habits while also putting the onus on consumers to make informed and responsible choices.

The fashion industry has incredible potential for us for advocacy, education, creativity. We need to better tell the UNs story on sustainability, and fashion is a great platform, says Lucie Brigham, chief of office, the UN Office for Partnerships. We need to engage the creative industry to help us educate customers.

Established to steer progress toward the UNs 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and designed to build on, and fill in gaps left by, the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs are made up of calls for action like ending poverty, ocean conservation, climate change mitigation and ensuring quality education and clean water for all. Fashion is arguably most directly related to the no poverty; gender equality; decent work and economic growth; sustainable development and consumption; climate action; and partnerships goals.

The goals have helped some fashion and related companies set their priorities. A Kering spokesperson says the company used the SDGs when developing its 2025 strategy to ensure it was addressing the full suite of global challenges, from climate change to employees wellbeing. Textile Exchange, a nonprofit that works with brands and suppliers to shift to more sustainable fibres, has used the Global Goals as a framework for promoting organic and lower-impact fibres since 2016, saying they can serve not only as a risk management tool but also to drive innovation, and that investors and businesses are increasingly incorporating them into their risk and materiality assessments.

Attendees at Arcadia Earth's New York Fashion Week event in February 2020.

Arcadia Earth

Guidance from the UN can also help brands to set more ambitious goals, rather than simply meet the bare minimum. For brands already focused on issues covered by the goals, looking to the SDGs can help them solidify their priorities or shed light on areas they havent prioritised before.

UK bag and accessories brand Bottletop, founded in 2002, started exploring natural rubber as a material, says co-founder Cameron Saul, in pursuit of meeting Sustainable Development Goal 15: preserve life on land. The brand was chosen last year by the UN to produce bracelets to represent a larger public awareness campaign.

The UN came to us and said, Listen, were not going to achieve these goals unless people on the street are aware and empowered to deliver them, he recalls. According to Saul, the campaign has sold 55,000 bracelets, which are made out of upcycled illegal firearms and ocean plastic, and resulted in 900 million social impressions.

Saul argues that while awareness doesnt necessarily translate into action, it does represent the first step. The industry has enormous impacts on the planet. If you can transform that, were talking about a seismic impact on people and planet, but also fashion can be the cheerleader. It can carry people and voice in a way that nothing else can. We all relate to fashion.

#TOGETHERBAND (the bracelet that works with the UN to further advancing towards the global goals).

Bottletop

The Global Goals are also prompting companies to form partnerships to work collaboratively on an issue. The UN launched its Alliance for Sustainable Fashion last year to promote and coordinate such efforts from within the UN. The UN Office for Partnerships is trying to work with other organisations and sectors of the industry to increase these efforts, recognising that they wont necessarily happen on their own.

One initiative the UN has backed is One X One, led by Swarovski and the Slow Factory Foundation with support from the UN Office for Partnerships, which matches designers with scientists or advocates to explore solutions for various challenges; New York designer Mara Hoffman, for example, is working with workforce development programme Custom Collaborative to build a training programme for renewing garments.

The goals also raise areas to attention where the least progress is getting done. For Ayesha Barenblat, founder of the California nonprofit Remake, gender equality and opportunities for safe and inclusive employment with fair wages for all is where the fashion industry falls most short. Whether youre looking at aspiring designers or garment workers, its very unusual for an industry to be made up predominantly of women but run by men, she says. Were talking about a $3 trillion industry, but for the most part its built on degradation and poverty wages.

These issues have been documented. But Barenblat says large companies typically address them with little more than training sessions, which she calls window dressing rather than substantial change. Its more claiming the empowerment of women rather than getting to the structural issues, says Barenblat.

Some brands, though, are exploring ways to effectively address these issues, which are covered in the UN goals of gender equality, no poverty, and decent work and economic growth. US apparel and footwear brands Able and Nisolo have partnered on a campaign, the Lowest Wage Challenge, to encourage brands to share their lowest wages to boost transparency. Nudie Jeans has committed to paying workers a living wage, while apparel brand Alta Gracia runs a factory in the Dominican Republic certified by the Worker Rights Consortium to pay a living wage.

Ultimately, changing customer behaviour is necessary for many of the other efforts to succeed. Kevin Moss, global director of the nonprofit World Resources Institutes Business Center, says the goal of sustainable consumption sits at the intersection of nearly all the others. That to me is at the nexus of what people do, what people buy and the environment.

The UN describes sustainable consumption as filling peoples basic needs and improving quality of life while minimising emissions, waste, toxic materials and the use of natural resources in order to protect future generations. Its an issue that has been left out of many sustainability and development initiatives in the past. According to the international agency, worldwide material consumption reached 92.1 billion tons in 2017 a 254 per cent jump from 27 billion tons in 1970.

Jode Rodrigo de Araujo aka The Rubber Doctor in #TOGETHERBAND Voices, created by Andrew Morgan.

Andrew Morgan

The solution, he says, lies in finding models of growth that provide jobs and economic wellbeing that dont depend on selling more stuff to more people. That may include sales of more services rather than material goods; and more brands getting into resale and abandoning the model of selling only new items. Such steps will also require behaviour change on the part of consumers, but he thinks thats not unreasonable to expect, with some effort.

I don't think its innate human behaviour to want to possess more and more and more stuff. I think its been brands and industry [pushing] to make us want more, he says. Companies can play a role in shifting consumer behaviour to reverse that mentality while figuring out the business models to accommodate. If you change the model but not the behaviour, it can fail. If you change behaviour but not the business model, youll drive customers elsewhere. The trick for businesses is to be doing both at the same time. Not waiting though theyve got to do it now.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Arcadia Earth is for-profit art exhibition, rather than a non-profit.

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The UN set 17 sustainability goals. It needs fashion's help meeting them - Vogue Business

New York, NY The instigators behind the massive anti-cop subway fare protest in New York City on Jan. 31 are professors at New York University and the University of Buffalo.

The antifa group Decolonize This Place launched a social media campaign encouraging disruptive demonstrations in the New York City transit system on Jan. 31 as a reaction to the swearing in of 500 new subway cops who were sworn into the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) earlier in the month.

The streets are ours. The trains our ours. The walls are ours. This moment is ours. How will you and your crew build and f--k shit up for #FTP3 on #J31 (THIS FRIDAY)? Issa mothaf--kin' movement, @decolonize_this tweeted on Jan. 28.

At the urging of Decolonize This Place, the protesters vandalized subway turnstiles and bus windows, causing more than $100,000 in damage to city property, according to the New York Post.

Campus Reform recently reported that Decolonize This Place, the group behind the violent protests, was founded in 2016 by New York University (NYU) Professor Amin Husain and University of Buffalo Professor Nitasha Dhillon.

NYUs website said that Husain teaches a class on militant activism at the university, the New York Post reported.

Husain and Dhillon were both actively involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In 2012, Husain spoke at an Al-Quds Day celebration in New York City and said he was from Palestine and had fought to free Gaza.

He talked about throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli settlers and said that hed moved to the United States for an American Dream that didnt exist.

Husain talked about the same sort of violent uprisings in 2016 at a Pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square, the New York Post reported.

The Decolonize This Place website features revolutionary manuals and a diagram that explains how to How to Shut Down the City.

The guides discuss how to overpower an opponent and have thought bubbles with the words nails, glass bottles, and masks, the New York Post reported.

"For us, decolonization necessitates abolition, the Decolonize This Place website explained. But what does abolition demand? Not only does it demand the abolition of prisons and police, bosses and borders, but as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney write, its the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the founding of a new society.

Husain led a protest in 2018 and 2019 that forced the resignation of a board member of the Whitney Museum of American Art after it was revealed that a company he owned manufactured the tear gas being used at the U.S.-Mexico border, the New York Post reported.

The NYU professor uses movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Direct Action Front for Palestine as case studies for the course he teaches at NYU.

NYU appeared not to want a close association with Husain, the New York Post reported.

Our records reflect that he is one of the thousands of part-time faculty that are hired each year by schools and academic departments, NYU Spokesman John Beckman said when asked about the militant instructor.

Husains contact information was removed from the NYU website shortly after the New York Post contacted the university for comment.

The New York Post also reported that Husain had recently scrubbed his Twitter account and removed any references to his role in the incident on Jan. 31.

Excerpt from:

NYU Professor Involved With Anti-Police Protests That Caused $100K In Damage - Blue Lives Matter

At Domain comes a freshly uploaded press release from some lobby or other:

The chief executives of two of the nations largest retail employers have blamed incorrectly configured software as a key cause of staff underpayments, arguing this issue also often leads to businesses overpaying workers.

Rob Scott, who heads up Bunnings, Kmart and Target owner Wesfarmers, and Anthony Heraghty, the managing director of Rebel Sports parent, Super Retail Group, both pinpointed software bought from offshore vendors and not configured for Australias relatively complex labour environment as a key factor in staff being underpaid.

Theres more from businomics moraliser, Jennifrer Hewitt, at the AFR:

the furore over what the ACTU likes to call wage theft is a bizarre example of the contradictions in Australias workplace culture and absurdly complicated industrial relations system of awards and entitlements. Now those contradictions are pushing employees and employers way back into last century instead of what was supposed to be a modern era of sensible, flexible work arrangements.

Theres plenty of blame to go around. Unlike New Zealand, Australias peculiar national skill has been to maintain and build on its arcane labyrinth of award classifications, minimum rates, overtime and penalty conditions. Its enough to confuse the sharpest mathematician, let alone a small business owner or even a corporate HR department.

Investment in payroll systems and technology and the human brain cant always keep up. Underpayment in corporate Australia is more often inadvertent than deliberate, insufficiently attentive about detail rather than overly greedy about profit.

Why do the errors always favour the employer? Hmmm

It seems everybody is using the same software, too, given Fair Work has identified one in five businesses are doing it.

This is all rubbish. Wage theft is not even a glitch in the system any more. It is the system.

Academic research finally caught up to this reality late last year. Below are key excepts fromChapter 13entitledTemporary migrant workers (TMWs), underpayment and predatory business models, written by Iain Campbell:

This chapter argues that the expansion of temporary labour migration is a significant development in Australia and that it has implications for wage stagnation

Three main facts about their presence in Australia are relevant to the discussion of wage stagnation. First, there are large numbers of TMWs in Australia, currently around 1.2 million persons. Second, those numbers have increased strongly over the past 15 years. Third, when employed, many TMWs are subject to exploitation, including wage payments that fall below sometimes well below the minimum levels specified in employment regulation

One link to slow wages growth, as highlighted by orthodox economics, stems from the simple fact of increased numbers, which add to labour supply and thereby help to moderate wages growth. This chapter argues, however, that the more salient point concerns the way many TMWs are mistreated within the workplace in industry sectors such as food services, horticulture, construction, personal services and cleaning. TMW underpayments, which appear both widespread in these sectors and systemic, offer insights into labour market dynamics that are also relevant to the general problem of slow wages growth

Official stock data indicate that the visa programmes for international students, temporary skilled workers and working holiday makers have tripled in numbers since the late 1990s In all, the total number of TMWs in Australia is around 1.2 million persons. If we include New Zealand citizens and permanent residents, who can enter Australia under a special subclass 444 visa, without time limits on their stay and with unrestricted work rights (though without access to most social security payments), then the total is close to 2 million persons TMWs now make up around 6% of the total Australian workforce

Decisions by the federal Coalition government under John Howard to introduce easier pathways to permanent residency for temporary visa holders, especially international students and temporary skilled workers, gave a major impetus to TMW visa programmes.

Most international students and temporary skilled workers, together with many working holiday makers, see themselves as involved in a project of staggered or multi-step migration, whereby they hope to leap from their present status into a more long-term visa status, ideally permanent residency. One result, as temporary migration expands while the permanent stream remains effectively capped, is a lengthening queue of onshore applicants for permanent residency

Though standard accounts describe Australian immigration as oriented to skilled labour, this characterisation stands at odds with the abundant evidence on expanding temporary migration and the character of TMW jobs. It is true that many TMWs, like their counterparts in the permanent stream, are highly qualified and in this sense skilled. However, the fact that their work is primarily in lower-skilled jobs suggests that it is more accurate, as several scholars point out, to speak of a shift in Australia towards ade facto low-skilled migration programme

A focus on raw numbers of TMWs may miss the main link to slow wages growth. It is the third point concerning underpayments and predatory business models that seems richest in implications. This point suggests, first and most obviously, added drag on wages growth in sectors where such underpayments and predatory business models have become embedded. If they become more widely practised, underpayments pull down average hourly wages. If a substantial number of firms in a specific labour market intensify strategies of labour cost minimisation by pushing wage rates below the legal floor, it can unleash a dynamic of competition around wage rates that foreshadows wage decline rather than wage growth for employees

Increases in labour supply allow employers in sectors already oriented to flexible and low-wage employment, such as horticulture and food services, to sustain and extend strategies of labour cost minimisation The arguments and evidence cited above suggest a spread of predatory business models within low-wage industries.37 They suggest an unfolding process of degradation in these labour markets

And below are extracts fromChapter 14, entitledIs there a wages crisis facing skilled temporary migrants?, byJoanna Howe:

Scarcely a day goes by without another headline of wage theft involving temporary migrant workers

In this chapter we explore a largely untold story in relation to temporary migrant workersit exposes a very real wages crisis facing workers on the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa (formerly the 457 visa) in Australia. This crisis has been precipitated by the federal governments decision to freeze the salary floor for temporary skilled migrant workers since 2013the government has chosen to put downward pressure on real wages for temporary skilled migrants, thereby surreptitiously allowing the TSS visa to be used in lower-paid jobs

In Australia, these workers are employed via the TSS visa and they must be paid no less than a salary floor. This salary floor is called the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT). TSMIT was introduced in 2009 in response to widespread concerns during the Howard Government years of migrant worker exploitation. This protection was considered important because an independent review found that many 457 visa workers were not receiving wages equivalent to those received by Australian workers

In effect, TSMIT is intended to act as a proxy for the skill level of a particular occupation. It prevents unscrupulous employers misclassifying an occupation at a higher skill level in order to employ a TSS visa holder at a lower level

TSMITs protective ability is only as strong as the level at which it is set. In its original iteration back in 2009, it was set at A$45 220. This level was determined by reference to average weekly earnings for Australians, with the intention that TSMIT would be pegged to this because the Australian government considered it important that TSMIT keep pace with wage growth across the Australian labour market. This indexation occurred like clockwork for five years. But since 1 July 2013, TSMIT has been frozen at a level of A$53 900. ..

There is now a gap of more than A$26 000 between the salary floor for temporary skilled migrant workers and annual average salaries for Australian workers. This means that the TSS visa can increasingly be used to employ temporary migrant workers in occupations that attract a far lower salary than that earned by the average Australian worker. This begs the question is the erosion of TSMIT allowing the TSS visa to morph into a general labour supply visa rather than a visa restricted to filling labour market gaps in skilled, high-wage occupations?..

But why would employers go to all the effort of hiring a temporary migrant worker on a TSS visa over an Australian worker?

Renowned Australian demographer Graeme Hugo observed that employers will always have a demand for foreign workers if it results in a lowering of their costs. The simplistic notion that employers will only go to the trouble and expense of making a TSS visa application when they want to meet a skill shortage skims over a range of motives an employer may have for using the TSS visa. These could be a reluctance to invest in training for existing or prospective staff, or a desire to move towards a deunionised workforce. Additionally, for some employers, there could be a belief that, despite the requirement that TSS visa workers be employed on equivalent terms to locals, it is easier to avoid paying market salary rates and conditions for temporary migrant workers who have been recognised as being in a vulnerable labour market position. A recent example of this is the massive underpayments of chefs and cooks employed by Australias largest high-end restaurant business, Rockpool Dining Group, which found that visa holders were being paid at levels just above TSMIT but well below the award when taking into account the amount of overtime being done

Put simply,temporarydemand for migrant workers often creates apermanentneed for them in the labour market. Research shows that in industries whereemployers have turned to temporary migrants en masse, it erodes wages and conditions in these industries over time, making them less attractive to locals

A national survey of temporary migrant workers found that 24% of 457 visa holders who responded to the survey were paid less than A$18 an hour. Not only are these workers not being paid in according with TSMIT, but they are also receiving less than the minimum wage. A number of cases also expose creative attempts by employers to subvert TSMIT. Given the challenges many temporary migrants face in accessing legal remedies, these cases are likely only scratching the surface in terms of employer non-compliance with TSMIT

Combined, then, with the problems with enforcement and compliance, it is not hard to conclude that the failure to index TSMIT is contributing to a wages crisis for skilled temporary migrant workers So the failure to index the salary floor for skilled migrant workers is likely to affect wages growth for these workers, as well as to have broader implications for all workers in the Australian labour market.

The micro-economic evidence has been overwhelming for years:

I gave up listing is all eventually.

What we are seeing is the systemic rorting of Australian workers thanks to an out of control immigration system that has rendered industrial relations ungovernable.

It is loved by the Right because it delivers fat rentiers easier profits. It is loved by the Left because its not racist. It is loved by the media because it drives property listings. It is loved by Treasury because more warm bodies boost tax receipts. It is loved by the RBA because it doesnt have to account for its housing bubble.

Australias migrant slavery economy is the core of broader weak wages growth but that doesnt matter either. The macro-economic enabler is running mass immigration into material economic slack for the first time ever:

Its not just temporary visas. It is the entire mass immigration model:

These problems have been documented by MB for years (e.g.here,hereandhere).

The first best solution to Australias wage stagnation and theft is simple: cut-off the supply to cheap foreign labour by halving immigration.

He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.

The rest is here:

Wage theft turns to truth theft - MacroBusiness

Donald Trump addresses supporters at a rally in central Pennsylvania in May 2019. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

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The Democratic nomination contest is at a pivotal point, especially for the left. Progressive issues are ascendant, moderate candidates are vote-splitting, Bernie Sanders tops the polls, and Elizabeth Warren just had a very strong debate performance in Nevada. And yet despite the tantalizing proximity of progressive victory, there remains a glaring hole at the heart of the lefts strategy: the failure to prioritize the fight against white nationalism and racial resentmentthe sources of this presidents power, and the cornerstones of capitalisms structural inequality.Ad Policy

If the structural change that Warren espouses and the political revolution that Sanders champions dont explicitly address the racial realities that lie at the heart of this country, then their movements could fail to inspire the kind of transformation the candidates say they want. My research has found thatnearly half of Democratic voters are people of color, and a dramatic drop-off in African American turnout in 2016 was a principal factor in Hillary Clintons defeat. Conveying the urgency of the fight against white supremacy could be critical to propelling the kind of turnout that will help Democrats win in November.

Donald Trump is obviously unlike any president we have seen in a long time. Trump, who famously said he could shoot somebody on New Yorks Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, seems to defy the laws of political gravity. But many fail to appreciate what has kept him afloat.

White identity politics are at the foundation of the United Statesenshrined in slavery starting in 1619 and codified at the nations conception, with the passage of the 1790 Naturalization Act restricting citizenship to free white persons. Typically, political appeals to white racial resentment have come in more implicit and coded dog whistles, such as Ronald Reagans demonization of black welfare queens. It has been a long time since someone with Trumps stature openly and unapologetically embraced the racist right wing; many might have assumed it would be political suicide to brand Mexican immigrants rapists, enact bans on Muslim immigration, or whip up a xenophobic mob chanting, Build the wall! Trumps speech and policies have unleashed deep wells of racial resentment, and myriad academic studiesmost of them ignored by Democratic consultants and leadershave shown that this is a motivating factor for many of his supporters. (I have started a list of these studies here.) The engine driving the Trump machine is white supremacy.Related Article

Despite this, the most progressive candidates in this race have spent far more time critiquing other, more moderate candidates and supposedly race-neutral aspects of Trumps time in office, such as his tax cuts for the rich, than they have fighting white nationalism. (Ironically, moderate Joe Biden may be the only one who has directly refuted Trump on this point: One of his early campaign ads challenged the presidents 2017 defense of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.) Warren and Sanders are correct to decry the rise of corporate interests within the Democratic Party. Its admirable to fight for a higher minimum wage, universal health care, and aggressive action to save the planet from climate catastrophe. But in doing so, both progressive voting groups and candidates like Warren and Sanders are missing the strategic and moral imperative of reframing this election.

With upcoming primaries in the more diverse states of the South and Southwest, candidates are starting to bump up issues pertaining to voters of color. Yet none of the remaining candidates have made Trumps drive to make America white again a centerpiece of their campaign. This would go beyond talking about issues that resonate with communities of color. It would require ably and enthusiastically countering Trumps vision of a white America with what it really is: a proudly multiracial country. When progressive candidates fail to call out Trumps appeals to white racial resentmentor to match the force with which he makes themtheyre allowing him to reap the benefits, without paying the price.

The default playbook for too many Democrats is to talk around white supremacy, usually for fear of turning off white voters. But there is compelling evidence that the best way to blunt racist dog-whistling is to call it out. In her 2001 book The Race Card, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg revealed how Republicans use of coded racial messages, and their impact on voters, lost power when the implicit was made explicit. In studying voluminous survey data on the 1988 presidential elections when George H. W. Bush used ads about Willie Hortonan African American who committed a crime after being released from prisonMendelberg noted that Democrats feared that if they [spoke] explicitly about race they [would] lose crucial white votes. But her research found the opposite to be true: when campaign discourse is clearly about racewhen it is explicitly racialit has the fewest racial consequences for white opinion. Even Trump usually prefers to talk about a border wall than about the pro-white immigration agenda advanced by Stephen Miller, one the White Houses most enthusiastic white supremacists.Current Issue

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The through line between this Novembers election and the long-term goal of transforming this unequal nation should be an agenda that speaks to the pain so many Americans feel: the pain rooted in the racial wealth gap. The average white family now has more than 10 times the wealth of the average black family, and 7.5 times that of the average Latino family. That is a direct consequence of centuries of public policies that have sanctioned white wealth creation by seizing land from indigenous people, importing Africans to do backbreaking unpaid labor, and exploiting Mexican and Central American farm workerstopped off by government-sanctioned racial discrimination in housing and hiring.

Although its not widely discussed, Republicans are, in fact, experiencing some blowback from Trumps actionsespecially from white-collar suburban voters who gave Trump a chance in 2016 but defected to the Democrats in 2018, contributing to the Democratic takeover of the House and seven previously Republican-held governors offices. Groups and leaders on the left have an opportunity, and an obligation, to push their preferred candidates to lead on the fight over Americas racial identity. Warrens and Sanderss speeches are replete with references to Wall Street, big corporations, and corruption in Washington, DC. Although both have been critical of Trumps deportation policies and ICE, they have not distinguished themselves in a field of candidates who tiptoe around the issue of immigrationeven though children are still in cages at our nations borderand dance away from reparations, ignoring the gargantuan racial wealth gap that cleaves the fabric of our society. None of the candidates onstage in Las Vegas on Wednesday even mentioned immigration until late in the evening. It was clearly not top of mind, even in a state as Latino as Nevada.

It is still not too late for these candidates to course-correct. There are at least three concrete steps that progressives could take to make a meaningful difference:

Forge a united front to demand that the Democratic nominee choose a person of color as their vice presidential pick. For all the appeal of hoping Sanders and Warren would team up, an all-white ticket is not what will inspire and mobilize the most racially diverse electorate in the history of this country. None of the current candidates have been willing to make this commitment, and a chorus of voices from the left on this issue could push them do so.

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Create a common war room to drive the narrative about this administration and its enablers white-supremacist priorities. Progressive and left groups could each dedicate staffers to this joint effort, which could provide tools, information, and coordination for activists. This could lead to creative, attention-getting actions in cities across the country, exposing both the presidential reelection campaign and key Senate elections as the referendums on whiteness that they are.

Launch a joint petition to demand a Democratic campaign budget and plan that reflect the actual demographics of the voters they need to reach. The default focus of much Democratic spending remains on running television or digital ads targeting white swing voters. The organizations and committees in the Democratic ecosystem typically spend significantly more than $1 billion in a presidential election year; a coalition of progressive groups could demand that half of those funds go toward organizing and turning out the vote in communities of color.

The black Marxist author Manning Marable wrote in 1985 that at the heart of the American experience is a series of crimes: the violent theft of the land itself, the violent theft of millions of people from Africa and their subsequent bondage as chattel, the bloody conquest of the Southwest from Mexico, and the government-sponsored war on Native Americans. That series of crimes has created the conditions which the left is now working to transform. But during this campaign, they have done it wearing racial blinders. That could lead them to failure. The resurgent progressive movement could both win this electionand lay the foundations for a better societyby tackling the existential threat that white supremacy poses to this countrys social contract and democratic institutions. It is not too late, but the clock is ticking.

The rest is here:

If Progressives Want to Win, They'll Have to Talk About White Supremacy - The Nation

Tuesday, 18 February 2020, 9:25 amOpinion: Dr Nayvin Gordon

Class domination has not alwaysexisted in human society, but once established, socialhierarchy has deeply penetrated and permeated culture tocreate both implicit and explicit biases for social status,for hierarchy. Returning to an egalitarian society requiresboth systemic-institutional change and change in ourconscious and unconscious minds.

As long as classsociety has existed, it has been a social dominancehierarchy. Hierarchy is a social construct, used to justifydomination and exploitation. Myths have always been used tojustify the rule of the few over the many. Kings and Lordsmaintained that God gave them the authority to rule overpeasants. Slave-owners declared that non Christians could beenslaved. Today capitalists say that they are smarter andworked harder and thus have the right to privately ownproduction and pay workers wages. They made themselvesrulers, and then they sought to divide those whom theyruled.

The brutal economic system of slavery inAmerica required social control to prevent the unity ofblack and white labor. The slave-owners created the lies andlaws of racism. Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist,wrote: The hostility between the Whites and the Blacks ofthe South is easily explained. It has its root and sap inthe relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides bythe cunning of the slave masters. Those masters securedtheir ascendancy over both the poor White and the Blacks byputting enmity between them. They divided both to conquereach. The demonizing myths of racism created aculture of race hierarchy in the general population. Whenindustrial capitalism began to expand it used the racistideology to divide black and white to exploit and profitfrom the wage worker.

Today we live in a capitalisteconomy where the 1% owns controlling interest incorporations, industry, finance and land, while the 99% areexploited. A few thousand years of social hierarchy hascreated a cultural environment where it is largely acceptedas natural. It is in the air, consciously andunconsciously embedded in our culture. We generally acceptthe oppressive system of social dominance. Children as youngas six are implicitly (unconsciously) awareof status.

Social status is widely acceptedimplicitly even among those whohold egalitarian world views. Studies have shownthat status is more important thanmoney.

Significantly, social status isstrongly linked to fear in our brains emotional center.The 1% use their power to deflect and divide the 99% bypromoting stereotypes and mass propaganda to dehumanizecertain groups which impact the limbic system, theprimitive brain, with the powerful emotions of fear andhate When status is threatened the emotion offear is generated leading to hatred and violence.History reveals that when the 99% begin to organize forprogressive social change that could create more socialequality, the ruling class feels threatened.Confrontation is inevitablesince it is invariablyinitiated by the forces of reaction whosee their power threatened. A famous economist oncewrote: the most violent, mean and malignant passionsof the human breast, the Furiesof private interest.

The top down dominance ofcorporate capitalism continue to divide and subdivide the99% into those who are considered worthy and those who areless worthy --race, nation, religion, sex, immigrant, tribeand more, ad infinitum. The power systems of dominancehierarchy are built into the major institutions andorganizations of society- corporations, the state, thepolice and the military for example. It is not a few badapples, but the rotten barrel of the barrelmakers .

There are those who maintain that itis in human nature to dominate and exploitthey sayit has always been so. Nothing could be further fromthe truth. Anthropologists have repeatedlydemonstrated that humans have lived for thousands of yearsin egalitarian societies. In fact many have practicedreverse hierarchythose who sought to dominate asdespots were punished,banished or killed.

Social hierarchy is acreated oppressive social construct as isracism. It can be abolished. Socialdominance hierarchy and the fear of losing status are notinevitable. We have the potential to unite the worlds 99%and create a society of equals. It is crucial that thoseseeking to transform the political and economic systemacknowledge not only must they build a movement foreconomic, social and political equality but also struggle toovercome their own implicit hierarchical biases. If not,social hierarchy will be carried into the futurewhere leaders will become rulers whoundermine and corrupt the egalitarian world view. Historyhas clearly shown that only eternal vigilance of the rankand file mobilized against social hierarchy has thepotential to win and maintain the solidarity of anegalitarian society. We must change ourselveswhile also seeking to changesociety.

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Class Domination, Social Hierarchy And The Fight For Equality - Scoop.co.nz

The competition for the Democratic presidential nomination has become a focus of political life in the United States. For revolutionaries debating how to view this campaign, we must answer the following questions: What is the class character of the Sanders movement? What is the potential impact of the Sanders movement on the worldwide interests of the working class and the oppressed? How can this development lead to a broader revolutionary upsurge in the heart of the U.S. empire? From there we must chart a plan of action.

Character and context of Sanders movement

The rejuvenation of social democracy and liberal reformism, most notably in the rise of the left in the Democratic Party, comes as a response to the decline of the U.S. empire and the inability of the U.S. capitalist economy to provide decent, well-paying jobs to a majority of the working class.

On one hand, the Peoples Republic of China has risen as a clear economic and geopolitical challenge to U.S. imperialist world domination. On the other, the U.S. remains plagued by endless imperialist war, mass incarceration, low wages, enormous debt, underemployment, sexual and gender-based violence, and outbursts of racist, fascist terror. A major financial collapse looms, threatening to finally reveal the weaknesses of the real economy and then unleash a deeper ruling-class assault on workers quality of life.

In struggle against neoliberal economic terrorism by U.S. banks and corporations and their client states, our class has taken to the streets across the world. Tens of millions have fought against austerity and the capitalist ruling class in Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, France, Colombia and elsewhere; hundreds of millions if India is included. The desperate attempts of the U.S. empire to maintain its stranglehold on the world economy have caused anti-imperialist reactions in Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and Palestine.

The unifying issue of this global struggle is the declining prospects for working-class youth who live in capitalist societies. A multinational youth movement has identified neoliberal capitalism as its primary enemy. In some ways, the second presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders gets its popular energy from and provides a voice for part of the U.S. wing of this working-class youth movement.

The viability of any reformist movement like the Sanders campaign, in the face of a weakening global capitalist system, can be debated. Can social democracy and progressive reformism be revived? Insecure about maintaining its profits in a capitalist economy that is declining relative to other world powers, the U.S. ruling class has increased its exploitation of the working class, taking an ever larger proportion of the wealth the workers produce.

Without the material basis provided by the expansion of U.S. imperialism and its reaping of superprofits, any rebirth of social democracy would find it difficult to deliver meaningful benefits to the workers, even should it win an election. What is needed instead is a movement that seeks nothing short of the end of capitalism.

Ruling class attacks Sanders

Earlier this month, Sanders said: In many respects, we are a socialist society today. Donald Trump, before he was president, as a private businessperson, he received $800 million in tax breaks and subsidies to build luxury housing in New York. The difference between my socialism and Trumps socialism is I believe the government should help working families, not billionaires. (Axios, Feb. 9)

As communists, we are well aware that Sanders holds political positions we cant support: his lack of solidarity with international anti-imperialist struggles, his lack of support for reparations for slavery along with Black Lives Matter, his vitriolic attack on pro-socialist leaders like Hugo Chvez and Nicols Maduro in Venezuela, his support for laws criminalizing sex workers and much more.

Sanders program is more like Lyndon Johnsons War on Poverty in the mid-1960s or Franklin Roosevelts New Deal in the 1930s. Sanders social democracy is only seen as a radical socialist project because the U.S. ruling class has imposed such right-wing, pro-capitalist ideology and programs on the population.

The U.S. ruling class may own finance capital, oil, pharmaceutical giants and the health profit industry, be landlords or real estate investors, own big data, agriculture and/or other sectors. Their slightly different specific interests are reflected by the two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.

Most big capitalists, however, are overjoyed with Trumps transfer of wealth to their pockets. Others may see Trump as a loose cannon and consider Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg or another politician as more competent to protect and expand their interests. Yet they all unite against Sanders, not just because of the potential impact on their profits, but because they fear a greater social movement could develop that will call into question the elites plunder and profit.

Thus, we can expect anti-communist attacks against Sanders to continue to escalate if his campaign continues to gain steam. This red-baiting must be met with an active campaign to popularize real socialism, one that goes beyond Sanders deflective statement (in the Axios quote) about how socialism already exists for the rich.

Our movement must unequivocally defend the necessity of socialism and the obvious, documented superiority of workers ownership of the means of production, paired with planning that prioritizes human needs and the life of the Earth over profits.

Internationalism is a necessity, not an inconvenience

Along with the red-baiting, the attacks on Sanders from pro-Israeli forces similar to the outrageous attacks on former Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by the British media will continue. This is even though Sanders limits his statements on Palestine to support for basic human rights.

Sanders himself is Jewish. Yet this will not stop the attacks on him for alleged anti-Semitism simply because he doesnt give full backing to Israels murderous campaign to annihilate the Palestinian people. These attacks must be met by a strong, anti-racist movement in defense of the Palestinian peoples right to exist, from the river to the sea.

Sanders claims to be against U.S. wars in Iraq and beyond, yet his voting record doesnt reflect that. Sanders support for U.S. imperialism must be fought by those who wish to see his domestic program be successful. The domestic and foreign policies of the empire are directly connected. Both policies are about the balance of power between the oppressed and the oppressor.

While liberal politicians may fear taking anti-war positions, socialists must expose the foreign policy of the empire as directed by the needs of capitalism. Ruthless sanctions and murder must be contested in the name of international solidarity and the survival of the more than 7.5 billion people in the world threatened by the most violent ruling elite ever, based in Wall Street and Washington.

Our struggle, that of the working class in the U.S., is primarily against the U.S. billionaires, not against other countries. The strategy of revolutionary defeatism to defeat our own ruling class as expressed by V.I. Lenin during World War I, should be elementary for revolutionaries and must be learned by a resurgent left that, for too long, has been infected by bourgeois pro-war propaganda.

We must also learn how to resist the imperialist attacks on China, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and beyond. Working-class internationalism and solidarity with the oppressed are central to our long-term goal of socialist revolution.

Allies of the U.S. working class abroad may view the election of Sanders as a victory against the empire. A Sanders victory could open serious struggles over the need to dismantle the U.S. empire in order to save the planet, to rebuild the global economy and to pay reparations to those dispossessed by the U.S.

To the extent, however, that Sanders gives public support for closed borders, sanctions, U.S. air strikes and other measures, this would alienate his popular base a base he would have to rely upon to beat back the inevitable attacks from the right. This contradiction could give rise to a greater level of struggle.

Elections: A barometer or an organizing tool?

As revolutionaries, we know that socialist transformation is necessary for humanity and to sustain life on Earth, and we know this transformation cannot come about by using the masters tools described in the U.S. Constitution. Rather, we view capitalist elections as a limited survey of the attitudes of the multinational working class and the other classes in U.S. society. Every four years, about 55 percent of the voting-age population with a greater proportion of voters from the less oppressed and older sectors of the working class choose a president from either of the two major parties, both of which are owned and operated by the capitalists.

Sanders campaign has attempted to use the Democratic Party to raise issues in the interests of the working class. Many Democratic Socialists of America members view the Sanders campaign, and electoral politics more generally, as the primary channel to engage and radicalize the working class. This is unlike the period from the 1930s to the 1970s when the left looked toward the labor movement or other social movements as the centers of politicization and class identity development.

The argument of DSA and other left groups that have worked alongside the Sanders campaign is that the campaign a shortcut to building mass consciousness. Many young activists have hit the streets in the name of the Sanders campaign to promote classwide solidarity against the billionaire ruling class and to try to win supporters to their socialist organization.

Ruling-class ideology insists that the primary arena of politics is bourgeois elections, particularly national elections for president. Thus, when the left plans a political strategy, the question of whether to run in elections is a question of what is the most effective type of mass organizing that can build revolutionary socialist consciousness.

The Sanders campaign has prioritized the central tenet of the Occupy movement from the last decade: the struggle of the 99% versus the 1%. Sanders has put forth stronger positions on racial justice, migrant rights and many other policies that reflect the hard work of organizers in peoples movements.

Sanders 2016 primary campaign took on the right-wing establishment Democratic Party and had a major impact in winning thousands of new people to socialist organizations. The DSA and others have joined this years campaign with the goal of recruiting new members and pushing the campaign to the left, riding the wave and seeing where they will end up.

What happens when or if the DNC steals the nomination from Sanders? Will organizations to the left of the Democratic Party still insist on voting Blue no matter who? Will there be a political fracture in which the Sanders movement, even despite the refusal of Sanders himself, decides to make a dirty break from the Democratic Party and form a new socialist electoral third party?

What if Sanders were to get the nomination and then win the election against Trump? Who will defend him from the wrath of the capitalists and a stock market that could be in free fall? Will a mass movement emerge and move in a more radical direction, emboldened by the results?

Will the mirage of capitalist democracy be revealed as a fraud? Will that demoralize the masses or radicalize them?

While the fate of the Sanders movement is yet to unfold, the most pressing question for revolutionary socialists may be: What is the most effective way to agitate, educate and organize this Sanders movement into an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, revolutionary movement?

Which road to socialism?

Workers World Party believes that the goal of revolutionary parties when entering capitalist electoral politics should be to advance a revolutionary program in order to shatter illusions of capitalist democracy and win broad working-class support. The Democratic Party in the past has been the graveyard of social movements. Still, bourgeois political campaigns can reflect and show the significance of peoples movements.

The question of critical support for or independence from the Sanders movement is one we plan to answer through action. We will attend Sanders campaign rallies in order to meet this movement and push for revolutionary socialism. We will be in the streets with this movement, raising demands that speak to young people looking for revolutionary change. We look at this development with revolutionary optimism and we will study it closely.

WWP is still considering how to intervene in the 2020 presidential campaign. We will definitely run a major ideological campaign, entitled Which road to socialism? With this effort, we will put forth our revolutionary socialist perspective in a wide variety of ways. We will organize regular discussion groups in our branches across the country to engage these questions, all the while reaching out to the Sanders movement and those to its left to discuss the contradictions of social democracy and attempt to win people to fight for revolutionary socialism.

We will challenge the weaknesses of Sanders movement and push it in a revolutionary direction, not by being sectarian or opportunist, but by waging an honest ideological and mass struggle that speaks to the needs of the working class and the oppressed to go further.

Even moderate social reforms can take place only under the pressure of mass movements in the streets and in our workplaces. Real revolutionary socialism, including the seizure and liberation of private property in the means of production, cannot occur by amending the U.S. Constitution. It must be the result of a worldwide mass movement that uses various tactics and strategies to defeat capitalist rule.

With this in mind, we will launch a series of mobilizations to fight the racist, anti-worker policies of the Trump administration. That the Democratic Party has enabled these policies for example, the U.S. sanctions that have terrorized hundreds of millions of people on the planet will expose the imperialist character of both parties.

Currently we are working with hundreds of organizations to launch an international campaign against U.S. sanctions, entitled Sanctions Kill. Campaigns like this allow us to connect with those directly impacted by U.S. sanctions passed by Democrats and Republicans. We will mobilize on May Day to unite the movements against capitalism, imperialism, racism and all the crimes of this system with a show of solidarity on this socialist-inspired, international day of struggle.

We will continue to mobilize against U.S. imperialism in all its manifestations, as part of our devotion to our worldwide class. We will continue to organize for the most oppressed of our class for incarcerated workers, for political prisoners, for low-wage workers, for people with disabilities, for the homeless, for those oppressed because of gender or gender expression or national origin, and for migrants and refugees all with the goal of building a broadly popular communist party steeled in combat and the day-to-day struggles of our class.

Finally, we will use this election to push for real democracy. While this election may be seen as a referendum on Trumps social and economic policies, we will push to make this election a referendum on the crimes of capitalism. Imagine, a peoples referendum in which we vote with our feet, by withholding our labor and by fighting for a real future, a socialist society.

See more here:

A revolutionary view of the Sanders campaign - Workers World