Analysis

Over 50 comrades attended the second annual North American Marxist School in Montreal last weekend. Organized by supporters of La Riposte Quebec, Fightback Canada and Socialist Appeal USA, the school was a resounding success that saw a 30% rise in attendance from the previous year. This year’s sharp increase in attendance is a reflection of the revolutionary epoch we have entered.

The Stop Only Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT IP Act, PIPA) are two bills that were put before the US House of Representatives and Senate in 2011. The two bills are supposedly designed to defend owners of copyrighted content, trademarks and pharmaceutical patents in their long-standing struggle against “pirates”. But there is a lot more to it than that!

It’s official; with Obama’s State of the Union address, the 2012 election race is underway. But does this really mean that "the era of the 1% is over," as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has asserted? The U.S. today finds itself in a situation where the gulf between rich and poor is absolutely impossible to ignore. A super majority of Americans now believe that income should be more fairly distributed. But Obama’s revived "progressive" rhetoric is too little, too late. He trying to gloss over the divide between the top 1% and the rest of society.

We all observed dramatic battles by organized labor in 2011. There were the broad militant struggles in Wisconsin by public workers responding to the vicious attacks from right-wing Republican Governor Walker. During the summer, CWA & IBEW members went on strike against Verizon. They battled against the demand for givebacks from the very profitable Verizon company. In Ohio, the labor movement mobilized its forces to repeal anti-labor laws by referendum and won a terrific victory, gaining 61% of the vote.

...The Occupy movement burst on the scene in 2011, influenced by the movements in North Africa and the Middle East. Even though it lacked a sophisticated analysis of society and it is a limited movement in terms of active participation, Occupy completely turned the tables on the capitalist politicians.

We now present part two of John Peterson's introduction to Ted Grant Selected Works Volume 2: The Work of Marxists in the Mass Organizations.  This section discusses the Trotsky's efforts to connect with the masses in the 30s, Ted's "Unbroken Thread," and the need to apply the tactical and organizational lessons of the history of our movement to the work of connecting our ideas with workers and youth in the United States and elsewhere. Order your copy of Volume 2 at MarxistBooks.com.

With the Arab revolutions, the Euro crisis, the mass movement in Greece, and the Occupy movement, more and more workers and youth are looking for a socialist alternative to capitalist austerity. La Riposte Quebec, Fightback Canada, and Socialist Appeal USA are organizing their second annual Marxist school in Northeast North America to provide Marxist answers to arm militant activists in the struggles to come.

We republish here a graph that was originally published in the New York Times, based on figures from “The State of Working America” by the Economic Policy Institute. It covers the period from 1913 to the present, with a focus on the period after 1947. This is significant because 1947 can be considered the starting point of the post-Word War II economic boom, a period during which the capitalists were extracting so much profit from the workers that they were able to throw them a few extra crumbs. The mass workers’ movements in the 1930s and the strengthening of the unions after the war had taught them a few lessons about how to try to maintain relative class peace.

We present part one of John Peterson's introduction to the newly published Ted Grant Selected Works Volume 2: The Work of Marxists in the Mass Organizations. Ted Grant’s writings on the mass organizations represent a deepening of our understanding of Bolshevik strategy and tactics when it comes to connecting the ideas of revolutionary Marxism with the working class, and Peterson's introduction concisely explains Ted's method and the history of the Marxist approach to the mass organizations. Order your copy of Volume 2 at Marxistbooks.com.