The Digger

With nearly 500,000 subscribers the self-identified progressive Jimmy Dore's persistent leftward tracking finally brought him to the gates of Socialism. And he seems elated and animated by it. #MATAMOROS • • • • • While the López Obrador administration has promised that the legal mechanisms protecting the old “protection” unions will be dismantled, it has been slow to support the movement in the streets of Matamoros. In a November interview, Alfredo Domínguez Marrufo, deputy to the new Labour Secretary Luisa María Alcalde, said that “this government will defend the freedom of workers to organize,” and that “we’re not just fighting for an economic goal, not just for decent wages, but for the revitalization of the democratic life of workers.” Nevertheless, Domínguez held a press conference in Matamoros on January 25, and asked workers to postpone their strike for ten days while negotiations took place. “I expected more,” Quiñones said. “It was a very cold response. I t...

Excerpt : Why I Don’t Support Corbyn Anybody who has read my earlier essays on Corbyn will probably have already sussed my views on the man and more especially, the political party that has been his life-long domain (35 years or so in Parliament as a Labour back bencher).[2] Before that, a full-time trade union worker. The major reason that most of the left advance for supporting Jeremy Corbyn appears to boil down to the fact that there is simply no alternative, that Corbyn is the best we’ve got to offer. That even a bad Labour government is better than a Tory one. But is this really true? This is, after all, the argument that has been used to justify voting for Labour, literally for decades. If true, then there is no alternative to the endless, first this then that approach to (no) real change. The end product of this view is an endless spiral downwards to the bottom, with the idea of socialism receding ever further into the distance with every election that passes. At the e...

Bernie Sanders, we hear, is interested in running for President in 2020. Bernie has once again shot himself in the foot before the starter’s gun goes off. Sanders best known Trump-like statement was calling Venezuelan revolutionary President Hugo Chavez  “a dead communist dictator.” Now Sanders, while bucking the establishment on regime change in Venezuela, remains woefully uninformed about neoliberalism’s effects on a global level, and therefore cannot be taken seriously as an agent of radical change. Sanders released a statement on Venezuela that had nothing of substance in relationship to the 1%, neoliberalism, neocolonialism or any of the driving forces of a clear political crisis in the country. Instead, Sanders merely echoed right-wing talking points on Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, and then, almost as an aside, said the U.S. intervening in Latin America, well, it ends badly. And perhaps, one could argue, that a non-intervention response, no matter how you get th...

The Russia collusion narrative is on its last legs. Brexit has vaguely shown up in the MSM while the ‘gilets jaunes’ movement has been unceremoniously buried. As expected, Theresa May has survived Corbyn’ no-confidence vote in her government by 19 votes. Of the 256 Labour MPs 81 (the neoliberal Blairite wing) support a fresh Brexit referendum. The Maastricht model rules their undemocratic World Order.   And two socialist strategists; “pragmatic” reformist Leo Panitch and revolutionary socialist Costas Lapavitsas’ diverging tactics indirectly butt heads on Labour’s socialist path to socialism in the Brexit context. The differences in their respective understanding of the fierce and indomitable power of the anti-democratic, liberal-illiberal, neoliberal EU technocracy confronting socialists seem to lie at the core of their irreconcilably divergent opinions. If socialism in its final democratic form is to have a chance socialists must come down from their lofty ac...

Ralph Nader, left liberal, and Jimmy Dore, a near-inexorably socialism drifting progressive, are, IMO, tuned into the working class mood of the era; in touch and woke.  Are their demands sufficient? Not, IMO, by a long stretch, if socialism is the ultimate cure. But, if we keep in mind that revolution is not an event in time marked by historians, but a process culminating in such an historical event, then let's intelligently and purposefully participate in tearing down the capitalist edifice with all currently available forces which may stop shy of what socialists envision but will have brought socialism within range of possibility.  Currently, socialism resides well beyond the horizon of the working class "shlep's" comprehension and imagination. If the best some doctrinaire socialists can do is tell a "one year old": shape up junior, stop pissing in your bed, or else... socialism as a project is doomed.

"Murray Bookchin's 1986 article analyzing Bernie Sanders' Burlington Vermont mayoral campaign and the aftermath is equally relevant in relation to his 2016 presidential campaign. Also includes a response from Brian Higgins and rejoinder from Murry Bookchin from the next issue." Excerpts: "That Sanders has out-Republicaned the Republicans should not be taken lightly. Viewed in terms of its overall economic policies, the Sanders administration bears certain fascinating similarities to the Reagan administration. What Sanders has adopted with a vengeance is “trickle-down” economics — the philosophy that “growth” for profit has a spillover effect in creating jobs and improving the public welfare. Not surprisingly, the City’s 1984 “Annual Report” of the Community and Economic Development Office (a Sanders creation) really begins with a chunky section on “UDAG Spur Development.” UDAGs are Urban Development Action Grants that are meant to “leverage” commitments to ...

Given a certain mood in a few local disqus threads the following two essays seemed aprops: Bernie Sanders: Just What Kind of Socialist? - LA Progressive Trump and Russia: What Can Go Wrong? Longish excerpt: Bernie Sanders: Just What Kind of Socialist? BY  WILLIAM BLUM  POSTED ON  FEBRUARY 5, 2016 "Self-described socialist” … How many times have we all read that term in regard to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders? But is he really a socialist? Or is he a “social democrat”, which is what he’d be called in Europe? Or is he a “democratic socialist”, which is the American party he has been a member of (DSA – Democratic Socialists of America)? And does it really matter which one he is? They’re all socialists, are they not? Why does a person raised in a capitalist society become a socialist? It could be because of a parent or parents who are committed socialists and raise their children that way. But it’s usually because the person has seen capitalism up c...

Link:  It is imperative to construct a 5th International of workers and peoples  — by Samir Amin "We are now in the phase of the ‘autumn of capitalism’ without this being strengthened by the emergence of ‘the people’s spring’ and a socialist perspective. The possibility of substantial progressive reforms of capitalism in its current stage is only an illusion. There is no alternative other than that enabled by a renewal of the international radical left, capable of carrying out – and not just imagining – socialist advances. It is necessary to end crisis-ridden capitalism rather than try to end the crisis of capitalism." Excerpt:  " i)Contemporary capitalism is presented as being ‘open’ to criticism and reform, as innovative and flexible.  Some voices claim to put an end to the abuses of its uncontrolled finance and the permanent austerity policies that accompany it – and thus ‘save capitalism’.  But such calls will remain in vain as present practice...

Link:   Which way forward for France’s “yellow vest” protests? Excerpts: • " The danger, however, is that without a clear political perspective and orientation for a broader struggle against Macron, the movement can be frittered away in fruitless protest actions or subordinated to the maneuvers of the ruling elite." Where have (Maxwell's) Marxists gone, BTW? • " It is significant that some “yellow vest” groups like that in Commercy are calling for the building of popular committees to decide upon and coordinate the activities of the movement. What is developing, in a highly embryonic form, is dual power. Against the bankers’ government, protected by its hordes of riot police, the specter of separate and opposed institutions, representing and organizing the workers in struggle, is beginning to emerge." • " Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the middle-class student leader in May 1968, shamelessly slandered it as fascistic, telling Germany’s  taz  newpaper that “...