Obama’s Auto Task Force Preparing Worst Cuts in Decades As President Barack Obama visits Europe following the G-20 summit in London, Obama is no longer addressing auto workers in terms of “Change” but rather with the cold vocabulary of Wall Street: Viability, Profitability and Liability. The administration’s recent restructuring plan is backed up with factory closings, mass layoffs, wage and benefit cuts and possibly the closing of entire companies.
Canadian Workers Occupy Auto Parts Factory On Tuesday, March 17th, a group of 80 workers in the industrial town of Windsor, Ontario, occupied the Aradco auto parts plant. This occupation marks the re-awakening of the occupied factories movement in Canada and is an important turning point in the ongoing crisis of the North American auto industry.
US: Why the UAW Should Fight for Nationalization The incoming Obama administration has begun putting new bailout plans into action for nearly-bankrupt auto companies GM and Chrysler. The most recent “rescue packages” have come with more than a few strings attached. As the economic crisis deepens, the bosses will seek to unload the burden onto workers’ shoulders. This underlines the need for militant, class struggle policies in the unions to place the burden of the crisis where it belongs: with the bosses!
Obama's Foreign Policy Speech: Imperialism as Usual On Friday, February 27th, after a round of congratulations for the imperialist war leaders, Barack Obama explained the course that the Iraq War would take under his administration. Far from an honest depiction of the war, Obama's speech glorified the war, painting it in the language of poetic nationalism and with heroic lingo.
Salvadorian workers and peasants defeat electoral fraud and win presidential election A major clash between the classes has taken place in El Salvador. One of the most reactionary ruling classes in Latin America has been kicked out of office. The masses once again defeated the scandalous electoral fraud that was being prepared by ARENA, the reactionary right wing party founded by anti-communist death squad leader Roberto D'Aubisson. The ruling class, reluctantly, had to concede the victory of the left wing FMLN in order to prevent a revolutionary explosion.
Support the struggle of Olympia de Mexico SA de CV On January 15, the workers at Olympia de México SA de CV in Edomex, México, went on strike to protest against the fact that the company had not paid them bonuses agreed in the collective bargaining contract. Faced with the lack of interest of the bosses in solving their just demands, the workers have now decided to struggle for nationalisation under workers' control.
[Leaflet] From Venezuela to Chicago: "A Factory Closed is a Factory Occupied!" The labor leadership needs to mobilize the workers to demand an economic recovery plan to re-open and capitalize closed factories, to nationalize them under public control, to be run under democratic workers’ control. And as they say in the occupied factory movement in Latin America: “A Factory Closed is a Factory Occupied!” A new leaflet from the WIL. Also available in Spanish.
USA: January 2009 - More Soldiers Commit Suicide than are Killed in Combat In 2008, the number of suicides in the U.S. armed forces increased yet again, to 128 confirmed and 15 pending further investigation, having risen every year since 2004. All indications are that things will only continue to get worse in 2009. What is perhaps most disturbing is that Lt. Col. Mike Moose, who is a spokesperson for Army personnel issues, claims that, “we have not identified any particular problem.”
Can Obama Save Capitalism? At the moment, among the US workers there is a feeling of shock, disbelief, anxiety, fear and depression. But that will not last forever. There is a profound questioning of the very system taking place, and eventually, fear and frustration will be transformed into anger and a desire to take action. Many have sincere illusions in Obama but for the US ruling class his real task is to preserve a rotting system whose historic task has been exhausted.
Brazil – A.L.L. Railways sacks five Trade Unionists In the last few days five trade unionists have been sacked by the A.L.L. (América Latina Logística S.A.) railway company (two in Bauru, one in Campo Grande and two in Corumbá), but the attack may become broader and the number of trade unionists that may be sacked is 23. We are appealing to all readers to take part in the protest campaign.
First Pan-American Marxist School of the IMT Last weekend more than 100 revolutionaries from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, El Salvador, the USA, Canada, Ecuador, Cuba, Guatemala, gathered in Mexico City for the first Pan-American Marxist School of the International Marxist Tendency. A new tri-lingual Pan-American journal of the IMT, America Socialista, was also launched at the event.
Enthusiastic launch of “Reformism or revolution” in Mexico On Thursday, February 26, the Marxist Tendency “Militante” had called a meeting in Mexico DF for Alan Woods to present his latest book Reformism or Revolution. Marxism and socialism of the 21st Century – a reply to Heinz Dieterich. Trotsky's grandson Esteban Volkov also addressed the meeting.
Alan Woods speaks to Cuban students On February 19 and 20, Alan Woods spoke to students at the International School of Cinema and TV (EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños, the Raul Roa Higher Institute of International Relations, to the national and Havana provincial secretariats of the Federation of University Students (FEU). In all the meetings there was keen interest in the genuine ideas of Marxism, highlighting the fact that among the youth there is a determination to discover the real essence of Marxism and defend the Cuban revolution.
Havana International Book Fair 2009 – Homage to Celia Hart At 3.30pm on Saturday, February 21, more than 50 people gathered at the F. Engels Foundation stand at the Havana Book Fair to participate in a brief but moving homage to Celia Hart. The tragic death of comrade Celia Hart and her brother Abel, in a car accident last September was a great shock to her many friends and comrades all over the world.
Cuba 50 years later – where is the revolution going? In this article Jorge Martin looks at how the Cuban revolution, starting out as a bourgeois democratic revolution, was forced to move against capitalism in order to achieve its aims, a brilliant confirmation of Trotsky’s theory of the Permanent Revolution. He also looks at the contradictory tendencies within Cuba in the early years after the revolution. He goes on to discuss how Cuba resisted the pressures to follow the capitalist road as happened in the Soviet Union and China, undergoing a serious crisis in the process. Now, however, there are growing pressures also inside Cuba to adopt the so-called “Chinese model”, i.e. changes that would eventually lead to the re-establishment of...
