The other author, Margaret Poydock, a policy associate at the think tank, pointed out that “the resurgence in recent strike activity has occurred despite current policy that makes it difficult for many workers to effectively engage in their fundamental right to strike.” She also praised the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which passed the Democrat-majority U.S. House last week but is unlikely to be approved by the GOP-controlled Senate and Trump. “Corporate influence has eroded labor law and allowed worker protections to stagnate,” said Poydock. “We need fundamental labor law reforms like the PRO Act in order to bring worker protections into the 21st century.”



Along with the PRO Act, the EPI report promoted “additional solutions under discussion that would strengthen the right to strike, including extending unemployment benefits to striking workers, creating tax-deductible strike funds to make it easier for unions to sustain long-term strikes, and forming digital picket lines to inform consumers of real-life collective actions during online interactions with the workers’ employer.”



The Dow is at a record high and unemployment rates are lower than they have been in decades – but 140 million people are also poor or low wealth.  Sixty per cent of African Americans are poor or low-income, as are 64% of Hispanics, but the largest single racial group among America’s poor and low-income – 66 million Americans – are white.

“Yes, the Dow is at a record high and official unemployment rates are lower than they have been in decades. But measuring the health of the economy by these stats is like measuring the 19th-century’s plantation economy by the price of cotton. However much the slaveholders profited, enslaved people and the poor white farmers whose wages were stifled by free labor did not see the benefits of the boom.”

Workers know solidarity is the best way to fight back.



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/11/were-just-getting-started-says-union-leader-worker-strike-activity-hits-35-year-high

Air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for more than 4m premature deaths around the world each year.

The Socialist Party is a political party, which means that its concern is the struggle of the working class as a whole for political power. Whereas the primary concern of trade unions is the economic struggle for better conditions, the Socialist Party concerns itself with unifying our fellow-workers, giving them direction, filling them with the spirit of the class struggle, orientating them towards the overthrow of the capitalist system. Its aim is to effect the capture of the state-machine to acquire political power by the workers.



The Socialist Party participates in the election campaigns as a separate and distinct independent political party. It is anxious to have its representatives in all the legislative bodies. But its election campaigns and its activities are fundamentally different from those of the left-wing. We socialists are not here to help the masters to govern the masses. We are here to help the people press their masters, get from the capitalists and their government a maximum of concessions. We do not spread the false notion that there can be cooperation between the exploited and their exploiters. In other words, we conduct our election campaigns in the spirit of the class struggle. We use the platform of Parliament, from which our voice can be heard better than the voice of private citizens, to help organize the workers and help them conduct all their daily struggles. We do so, not by pretty speeches, not by telling the law-makers, who are servants of the Big Business, how fine and noble they are, but by heading great movements of the masses which would make those gentlemen sit up and take notice. In other words, while the Left solicit votes in order to reform the State and thereby to make it more effective for the capitalists, we socialists practice revolutionary parliamentarianism, by which is meant strengthening the working class and weakening its enemies. We go to the law-making institutions, not to tinker them up for the benefit of the capitalists, but to be a monkey wrench in their machinery, preventing them from working smoothly on behalf of the masters. We use, while there, every step of those agents of the capitalists to expose them before the people, to show what these so-called representatives of the people and what all these so-called democratic institutions actually are. The workers no longer look to the benevolent action of the Labour Party for help in attaining the workers’ objective – the emancipation from wage slavery. The Socialist Party is the political organisation of the working class



The aim of the Socialist Party is to replace the world capitalist system with world socialism which will mark the end of classes and private property. We aim at ending the present capitalist system to its very foundation, such as its various institutions, organisations, even its traditions, science and art. which all are accessories to the capitalist system. we intend to realise a society that has neither rich nor poor, without classes, a society whose members can all secure their food, clothes and dwelling. Exploitation, oppression, and degradation will not exist in socialist society. Commodity production, that is, production for sale or exchange on the market, will not exist. The system of wage labour will be abolished and the guiding principle of labour will be “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” The means of production will be held communally and private property will be eliminated.



With the abolition of classes and class distinctions, all social and political inequality arising from them will disappear. The conflicts of interest between workers and farmers, town and country, manual and intellectual labour will disappear. As classes will not exist, the State will not be necessary as an instrument of class rule and will gradually have withered away. The social relationships between people will be above-board and principled. Labour will be conscious and enthusiastic as the way of life rather than only as a means of survival. The forces of production will be unleashed and there will be high standards of social wealth. There will be broad and profound advances made in the fields of education, art, culture and science, as the masses of people are free to pursue these endeavours. There will no longer be the struggle between opposing classes. The debates and discussions between old and new, humanity and nature, what is correct and incorrect, will propel the development of human society forward. 



Real power in this class struggle lies with the workers themselves, the Socialist Party shall strive for their awakening and organisation.

Ours is a class society. The handful of capitalists who are in control of the factories, the banks, the natural resources and the government, are steadily reducing the living standards of working people and eroding our environment. Those who protest against the capitalists are still under the influence of reformism. Reformism thinks only of how to solve problems within the framework allowed by capital. Reformists are concerned for the health of capitalism. Goods are not produced to meet the needs of the people but to make profits for the bosses. If it is profitable to pollute the streams and the sea that will happen. If it is profitable to destroy food crops in a starving world to keep prices up, they will certainly be destroyed. For working people the future is less and less certain. Wages fall or remain stagnant while hours increase and working conditions deteriorate. People are homeless or living in overcrowded homes. People live in squalor so a small clique of very wealthy individuals can live in luxury.



Capitalism is a system of exploitation. The capitalist class seek to maintain its wealth and power. Profits can be made only by fiercer exploitation, cutting down the living standards, of the masses, taking away even such concessions as were previously made. A handful of capitalists control our world and make vast profits off the sweat and toil of the working people and the natural resources of the land. All the major means of production – the factories, forests, farms, fisheries and mines are in the hands of a relative few capitalists. The people at the centre of the corporations extract huge fortunes accumulated from the backs of the working class. This anarchic system wastes a great deal of social wealth. Capitalism is an obstacle to the further advancement of the material well-being of society. It is unjust, wasteful and irrational. Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample over somebody else. There is only room for a few capitalists. Capitalism today means the possible collapse of civilisation.



If all the natural wealth of our planet were being utilised to provide for the needs of its people, there wouldn’t be any problem. But that’s not what’s happening. Everything is produced in order to make a profit. When the profit system goes bust, the World’s population is left helpless. But we don’t have to be helpless. We’re the majority. If we get together, we can be tremendously powerful.



The material and technical resources for a socialist society unquestionably exist today. No competent researcher would doubt that insofar as it depends upon natural resources and the means of production and distribution, everybody could have a comfortable home, abundant nutritious food, ample opportunity for recreation and education, security against accident, sickness, and old age; and the sense of independence and self-respect that goes with these things. What we actually have, however, is mass misery and widespread poverty. This appalling contrast between what might be and what is arises from the nature of the economic system – capitalism. That system acts as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase goes, you have “want in the midst of plenty.” It should be added that socialism envisages planning on a world scale. National boundaries are as artificial and restrictive and socialism is in essence a global economy. Every effort to establish “planned” production under private capitalism breaks down, since the warfare between rival capitalists, in a nation and capitalist groups in different nations disrupts such efforts. 

World socialism can set free the scientists and technicians to work with adequate resources to plan for still greater efficiency in the use of our resources and thus for greater abundance of leisure as well as goods. The spectre of insecurity will be removed. The undemocratic economic domination of the few over the many will be at an end. No one can predict the cultural advances which may follow this release of the human spirit. The one way to security, to peace, to freedom, to cultural advancement is the path of socialist revolution. This is your choice – capitalist chaos or a world of civilisation and culture.



YOU CHOOSE HOW WE USE TECHNOLOGY

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/09/how-poverty-has-become-the-scourge-of-those-in-work

The UN’s top official in Lebanon has warned of a potential new migrant crisis is unfolding. Jan Kubis, a former Slovakian foreign minister, has told Sky News that Lebanon faces a new level of social unrest and chaos without the implementation of reforms to address a deepening economic crisis.  Kubis’ previous UN postings were in Iraq and Afghanistan. He knows what failed states look like, and he warned of the dangers of Lebanon becoming another.



“Without reforms, the crisis will turn into a security crisis. Then of course we will have not only those Syrians that are still in droves as refugees here but many others, starting with the Lebanese, that simply try to example this kind of social strife.” Kubis’ assessment of the state of the country is bleak. “Some are saying that it’s an existential crisis for Lebanon…”



“Lebanon is on the shores of the Mediterranean. Just look at what is happening now. Look at the waves of migration being generated by many other countries. And what is the destination? It’s Europe.”

Today, the newly formed government’s vote of confidence will take place amid a continued crackdown on protesters.

https://news.sky.com/story/europe-faces-new-wave-of-migrants-unless-lebanon-acts-un-official-warns-11931077

2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people, which means there is more wealth in the hands of 0.00003% of the world population than in 60% of it.



In the US, where the highest number of billionaires live, the disparity between the ultra rich and everyone else is at a five-decade high: The richer 0.1% earn almost 200 times as much as the remaining 90%.



According to the Economic Policy Institute, as of 2018 the threshold to qualify to the 1% was about $421,000 a year. This means that someone making $400,000 a year and someone making $20,000 a year both belong to the 99%, while surely their lives and struggles are not alike.



Bertell Ollman, a professor of political science and a leading expert in Marxism told Quartz the current debate over inequality isn’t too far from Karl Marx’s representation of capitalist society:

 On top, says Ollman, are the capitalists—a small group of people who are interested in maximizing profit at all cost; below them is everyone else, whose work is exploited for the capitalists’ profits. Although it might look different in terms of social status, and income, the position of professionals and that of factory workers, for instance, isn’t intrinsically different.



“Whether it’s the 99%—or maybe the 95%—the middle class is still workers,” says Ollman. “People calling themselves social-democrats are focused on making it easier for the mass of comfortable workers,” says Ollman, pointing to the reforms social-democrats have carried forward in Europe. But Ollman says the European experiments, where some mitigations of capitalism were brought in in the form of the welfare state and regulations, show precisely the limits of maintaining a capitalistic framework while trying to make its reality more palatable to the middle class (as opposed to the working class). “Insofar as social-democrats don’t do away with capitalism, it’s going to turn around and bite them in the butt,” says Ollman. 



So long as the system isn’t changed, he explains, reform can always be undone as soon as there is a government aligned with the interests of wealth. This also ends up alienating workers, who see only incremental progress, and don’t get necessarily captivated by social-democratic political forces. Better welfare structures are important progress, but “most workers are still doing something that is long, hard, dirty, and insecure,” says Ollman, “and that is what they think of, first and foremost.” This explains why those who would benefit from redistribution are often less engaged in the fight for it.



Michael Thompson, a professor of political science at William Patterson University, also sees merit in the framing of everyone against the ultra-rich, while sharing Ollman’s cautiousness. “The idea of 99% versus 1% is significant for one level of analysis,” he told Quartz, “since it’s the traditional middle class that is falling apart.” Patterson says that the current debate on inequality is focused on re-establishing access to the kind of welfare programs that, with Franklin D. Roosevelt and after World War II, all but artificially created a middle class, and that lumping together people of different income (especially when they may have high earnings, but not a lot of accumulated wealth) with the aim of gathering momentum against inequality makes sense from a historical point of view.