Page 7 - Hal Draper News Today

From the Editors In our last issue we noted that while we were greatly relieved that Trump was gone, we also recognized “Biden represents the status quo ante, the policies of the Democratic Party” and suggested “any progress under Biden will be the result of militant pressure from mass social movements, including organized labor.” Several months into the new presidency, this seems an accurate description if we change “any” to “significant progress.” Biden has adopted a diff...

War criminal! Lessons from the life of Donald Rumsfeld By John Catalinotto posted on July 7, 2021 When an ordinary official of an imperialist government dies, since there is usually nothing good to write about them, common practice for a working-class newspaper is to write nothing. When someone like Donald Rumsfeld dies, to avoid comment means avoiding struggle. Rumsfeld, who died June 30, was far from ordinary. He was a world-class war criminal, who had major responsibility for the murder of...

Notes on Class Struggle Unionism under Biden Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden meets with union leaders outside at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Harrisburg, Pa., Monday, Sept. 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) This expands my remarks in a panel with Joe Burns, Donna Murch, and Paul Kirk-Davidoff, organized by Tempest,  about class struggle unionism under Biden.  Opening and closing remarks of on May 30, 2021 were recorded. The history of our tendency (I say �...

Reviews Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) Monday 24 May 2021, by Dan Davison The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804 is increasingly recognized as at least as historically significant as the American and French Revolutions. It began as a slave revolt in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue. The rebellion brought about the abolition of slavery in Sain...

Ernest Haberkern The Fate of the Russian Revolution: Lost Texts of Critical Marxism Volume One is a significant contribution to the literature of the anti-Stalinist left. Long buried in the archives the polemics and analyses of those socialists who refused to accept the definition of Stalins barbaric regime as a "workers state" simply because property was nationalised and private property, large and small, was obliterated, deserve to see the light. My criticism of this anthology should in no wa...

In Defence of Bolshevism Author: Sean Matgamna and Max Shachtman Max Shachtmans Under the Banner of Marxism, which forms the bulk of this book, deserves to be considered one of the classic polemics of the Marxist movement, alongside The Poverty of Philosophy, Anti-Dühring, and others. It defends the Bolsheviks, their revolution, their work to build a revolutionary socialist movement, and the continued relevance of their approach. The British political labour movement is trying to recreate i...

Letters Diane Abbott made a particularly stupid comment when interviewed on the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme on Sky News (May 9). She has taken to trying to talk very slowly - either in a vain attempt to add ‘gravitas’ or, more likely, to try and enable her brain to keep pace with her mouth. Asked whether Labour could ever win a general election again, Abbott replied that Eric Hobsbawm had written a widely circulated article in 1978 entitled ‘The forward march of Labour halted?’ and...

No Joint Struggle With Settler Colonialism New Politics , responds to Daniel Fischer’s “ . For Marx, the working class was the revolutionary class, the only class for whose self-liberation would mean the liberation of all. In Daphna Thier’s chapter “Not An Ally” she argues that the Israeli working class is an exception to this rule. The reason for this is that the class character reflects the settler colonial nature of the Zionist state. The very class formation of the Israeli working...

Stan Newens, 1930-2021 Author: Martin Thomas Stan Newens died on 2 March, at the age of 91. He got a jaundiced obituary in the Guardian, warmer ones elsewhere, and a tribute from Jeremy Corbyn which airbrushed out Newens revolutionary Marxist activity in his 20s. In old age Newens wrote an autobiography, which I have not read, but is reviewed here by Ian Birchall. In February 1995 Newens gave an account, in Workers Liberty magazine, vol.1 no.18, of his earlier political days and what he then m...

In Support of Joint Struggle More than six thousand Israeli Jews and Palestinians assemble in Tel Aviv, waving Palestinian flags and denouncing Israeli policy as apartheid. Thousands of young Ethiopian-Israelis march against police brutality, blocking highways, even throwing stones at police, and some chanting, “Free Palestine.” Mizrahi Jews petition Israel’s High Court to reject the Nation-State Law as anti-Arab and therefore both anti-Palestinian and anti-Mizrahi. An increase in draft-d...