Tag: Militant

Mar 10 2011

Wisconsin unions have a choice: militancy or death

This is going to be short.  I have a clear and succinct point to make.

Wisconsin unions can now either give it all they’ve got, or they’re done for.

Right now, after Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Senate Republicans have pushed through this step in the decades-long corporate assault on labor, the unions really have their backs against a wall.  Membership has declined, manufacturing has gone oversees, the national Democratic Party has abandoned them, and the cancer of the corporation has metastasized over not just government, but society.  If the unions don’t rediscover their past, if they don’t turn around their more recent history of capitulation and infighting, they’ll die soon enough anyway.  It’s their choice:  militancy or death.

Dec 27 2010

‘Don’t Go, Don’t Kill’

In the past few weeks a series of reforms have been passed which some are saying justify President Obama’s, the Democratic Party’s, and American liberals’ extreme moderation and corporatism (or, in some cases, a mere subservience to, if not an outright embrace of, this horribly corrupt form of capitalism).

However, I would advise you to consider these words which Malcolm X uttered in another terribly corrupt and unequal world which, as the US continues its decline as an empire and omnipotent economic presence, even many liberals and radicals are starting to get nostalgic for:

You don’t stick a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and call it progress.

That is, if you ignore the context in which these mild reforms are taking place, you are ignoring the fundamental problems which need to be solved.  This is particularly apparent in the case of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  

Oct 13 2008

On the possibility of calling a general strike

Original article, titled The General Strike and the “Communist Party” by Ted Grant (originally published in Militant (July 1971)) via the Ted Grant archives:

The possibility and the problems of a general strike are coming up for discussion among advanced militants in the trade union movement all over the country. Even ordinary trade unionists not particularly active in the trade union and Labour movement, in response to the economic and political situation, are raising the question in their factories and workplaces, and union branches. Resolutions are coming before union conferences.