Economics

Capitalist society has a dynamic tendency towards constant technological change — change in products, methods of production, and in the ways workers are managed in the production process. I am going to suggest that capitalism has a very distinctive way of developing technology that is inherently conflicted — it provides human benefits but is also highly destructive in various ways. The destructive character of capitalist technological development is rooted in autocratic control and exploitation of workers and a constant tendency to externalize costs onto workers, the larger community, and nature.

Relying on capital to deliver an energy transition is a dangerously bad strategy. The only way to deal with this crisis is with public planning. On the one hand, we need massive public investment in renewable energy, public transit and other decarbonization strategies. And this should not just be about derisking private capital – it should be about public production of public goods.

Discusses the need for labor activists to go beyond “lowest common denominator” union organizing.

The ILWU has always criticized NATO’s war moves. Since the end of World War II we’ve opposed U.S. wars and coups in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Serbia (former Yugoslavia), Cuba (Bay of Pigs Invasion), Chile (coup), El Salvador and Nicaragua. On May Day 2008, ILWU shutdown all West Coast ports to oppose the “imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” (as the Caucus resolution read). We have taken action at the point of production against U.S. wars and the apartheid government in South Africa. We refused to load military cargo to the anti-communist military juntas in Chile and El Salvador. We are […]

Bolivia’s President Luis Arce used his platform at the United Nationss to propose a revolutionary 14-point socialist program to transform the world.  “Today we find ourselves facing a wide-ranging, systemic capitalist crisis that increasingly endangers the life of humanity and the planet,” he warned.  “We should not only reflect on the economic, social, food, climate, energy, water, and trade crises, but also identify with clarity the origin, in order to change a system that reproduces domination, exploitation, and exclusion of the large majorities, that generates the concentration of wealth in a few hands, and that prioritizes the production and reproduction of […]

On June 20, Gabriel Boric’s recently inaugurated reform government announced the closing of a copper smelter in the Punchuncaví-Quintero industrial corridor. The plant, which had polluted the air and riverways of the neighboring towns for decades, was frequently responsible for public health crises in the region. The most recent occurred in May when pollutants from the factory contaminated the local water and poisoned over five hundred children. The Federación de Trabajadores del Cobre, the union representing employees of Chile’s state copper industry, also a crucial constituency of the new government, immediately responded to the announcement with a national strike. Endorsed […]

When the coup was looking inevitable, Morales had gone underground.  Days after Morales and Linera arrived in El Trópico, Mexico’s left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent a plane to rescue them, flying them out of Chimoré airport again.  Obrador later said that the Bolivian armed forces targeted the aircraft with an RPG rocket moments after it took off. It appears the U.K.-backed coup regime wanted the deposed president – who had served for 13 years – dead.  Morales then brings up the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “I feel that it is time now, seeing the problems between Russia and Ukraine … to do […]

In the 1930s, a new type of union, an ​“industrial” union that welcomed all workers in a single workplace emerged as the cutting edge of working-class struggle. Previously, unions and employers both had a long history of racism and support for white supremacy. Certain jobs were reserved for whites, and Black workers were kept out of factories and union halls. This had catastrophic consequences. For example, in the 1919 Steel Strike, employers brought in 30,000 Black and immigrant workers to break the strike staged by white workers and their racially exclusive unions. With that, employers got production moving again, defeated the strike, and […]