cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/66278227

Does anyone agree with that statement?

There is a capitalist class. Epstein and his crimes are only one incarnation of a deeper systemic structure.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/64667861

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/64667859

I've never seen Trump's State of the Union address. Seriously!

And that therefore we still have to, in order to break down capitalism, prevent exploitation of the masses, on every possible front.

This includes the theft of work and wage from independent small time artists, to create AI slop

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/64491397

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/64491345

Should all monopolies be split into different companies which would be given to the workers who would collectivize them?

I'm happy to see a socialism community catering those who don't like oppressionist regimes. However, the rules are still loaded with gatekeeping, including many forms of socialism being off-limits. Since democratic socialism is not allowed, does this mean I get banned for mentioning reform? If I want to speak about peaceful transitions leftward from social democracy, is that a no-no? Can't we agree to disagree on things? And if not here, is this allowed anywhere in the fediverse?

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/7712365

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/7712363

We still desperately need your support, especially with Ramadan approaching. Prices have risen so much, and it has become very hard for us to meet our basic needs. I am doing my best to support my family and my brother, but the situation is getting heavier every day. Any help, no matter how small, can truly make a difference for us. Please don’t forget us in this blessed time. Your kindness and support mean more than words can say. 🙏💔 https://gofund.me/00439328

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7691761

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/29020

On February 10, Jacobin published an op-ed by contributing writer Liza Featherstone titled “Kathy Hochul Is a Good Problem for Zohran Mamdani to Have.” In the article, Featherstone — who frequently writes for Jacobin and has been a champion of the mayor since before his primary win in June — offers a pragmatic defense of his endorsement of Governor Hochul, claiming that such necessary concessions actually reveal the true power of Mamdani’s victory.

According to Featherstone, winning is hard, and the Left needs to learn to “govern with grace” and to strategically navigate the pitfalls of New York state politics so that the mayor can deliver on as many of his campaign promises as possible. And we mustn’t let any whining purists stand in the way.

As Featherstone explains:

The Hochul endorsement fulfills some leftists’ perpetual desire to feel betrayed and denounce whoever is in office. But it’s important to see the endorsement more clearly for what it is: a concession to a centrist governor who Mamdani needs to enact his agenda that is embedded in huge victories; a potential harbinger of more concessions that will also be embedded in more victories for the mayor and the city’s working class — a sign of how much power the Left has won suddenly, embedded in a rebuke that we haven’t yet won enough.

In other words, Mamdani’s endorsement, which came just days before the State Democratic Party Convention where Hochul trounced the left-leaning Lieutenant Governor Andrew Delgado, is just politics; and winning the game of politics requires concessions, strange bedfellows, and, it seems, lots of lobbying and electioneering. But, for Featherstone, it will all be worth it in the end (whenever that day comes) because the reforms that Mamdani plans to win as a consequence of these concessions will spur further enthusiasm for his politics, more organization, and supposedly lead to even greater victories, securing the future of municipal socialism in NYC and beyond.

Setting aside for the time being the fallacious and rather simplistic suggestion — that Mamdani’s mayoralty is just going to be (as Phillip Larkin put it) one “long slide to happiness,” building victory upon victory — there are several other serious problems with Featherstone’s arguments and the arguments of those that share her view of how Mamdani should lead and the larger strategy of municipal socialism he represents. People like Featherstone, who are apologizing for Mamdani’s endorsement, are either unwilling to admit or simply willing to accept  that such political maneuvering can lead to real negative material consequences for the working class and oppressed they claim to support. Their arguments for the necessity of such compromises also downplay the degree to which they undermine the very kind of principled organization that has helped to make socialism a household name and brought self-proclaimed socialist politicians like Mamdani into office. But most importantly, and worst of all, they fundamentally misrepresent and misunderstand the real purpose of working class socialist politics, which is not merely to win elections or a few watered down demands, but to organize for real class power, without which every victory is temporary and every gain subject to the whims of the market and attacks from establishment Democrats and the reactionary Right.

Sleeping With the Enemy

Contrary to Featherstone’s rather pollyannaish analysis, endorsing Governor Hochul, whom everyone knows is a corporate Democrat and staunch Zionist, is not merely a political maneuver. It will have, and already has had, real consequences for working people and the Left. Even as Mamdani was penning his op-ed for the Nation, Hochul was actively working to undermine the massive nurses strikes in New York City by making it easier for hospitals to hire unqualified scabs to replace striking nurses. And she seems to have succeeded. Just days after Mamdani’s endorsement, the bureaucratic leadership of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) successfully forced and passed a vote at four hospitals on a tentative agreement that failed to address any of the major demands of the striking nurses. While nurses at New York Presbyterian are continuing the fight for safer staffing ratios, higher wages, and guaranteed protections for immigrants, the settled contracts represent a real defeat that Mamdani could have fought to avoid. Rather than endorsing Hochul and allowing the New York Police Department (NYPD) to arrest striking nurses, Mamdani could have instead used his position and his bully pulpit to defend nurses against the police and to organize New Yorkers to demand that the Governor stop allowing hospitals to use scab labor.

It is also telling that Featherstone overlooks the fact that Mamdani, whose campaign was unabashedly pro-Palestine and anti-genocide, wound up endorsing one of the most pro-Israel governors in the country. Indeed, Featherstone’s article doesn’t mention Palestine once. Hochul has not only threatened to withhold state funds from institutions and organizations that support divesting from Israel, she dedicated $75 millon in new NYPD funding to repress those protesting Israel’s genocide at Columbia. She also forced CUNY to increase surveillance of students who support Palestine or are critical of Israel — a move that has also opened the door to attacks on CUNY faculty, whom Mamdani promised to defend, but has yet done nothing to address.

And of course Hochul has made it clear many times that she has no interest in significantly raising taxes on corporations or the state’s wealthiest residents to fund necessary programs for working people and the poor, and it’s unlikely that Mamdani’s endorsement will change that. This means that any money that is negotiated with Mamdani for social services will have to come from cuts to the state’s already existing budget, effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Allowing the continuation of such attacks on working people and students in exchange for potentially greater access to childcare or free buses is not a victory, it’s a Faustian bargain with dire long-term consequences. And yet this is precisely one of the central problems with municipal socialism, which pragmatically seeks to win a raft of narrow populist reforms that do nothing to address the underlying problems of exploitation and oppression, without ever challenging or threatening the stability of the state that reproduces those problems.

Whither the “Insurgent” Left

While the DSA’s strategy of endorsing left populists like Bernie Sanders or using the Democratic ballot line to promote so-called socialist candidates is fundamentally flawed, and ultimately weakens the Left, it at least had the virtue of helping to elect some left-wing candidates and helped to expose a whole generation to the idea that socialism is an acceptable alternative to the liberal status quo. But now that Mamdani is in office, he and his supporters seem more than happy to close the door on those who want to follow in his footsteps.

Featherstone’s argument that Mamdani’s endorsement is somehow part of a long game of three dimensional chess overlooks the fact that his endorsement is also part of a broader pattern of protecting some of the worst Democratic politicians by undermining the campaigns of fellow Leftists. Mamdani’s and Alexandria Ocasio Cortes’s endorsements after all seem to have been pivotal to helping Hochul defeat Lieutenant Governor Delgado and his running mate and DSA member, India Walton, who were waging an insurgent campaign much like Mamdani’s own primary campaign against Andrew Cuomo. While Delgado seemed to have had little chance of winning the official backing of the New York State Democratic Party, an endorsement from Mamdani might have given him the boost he needed to wage an insurgent primary campaign that, even had it failed, could have raised a whole host of debates about the priorities of the state and the shortcomings of Hochul and the state Democratic Party, mobilizing New Yorkers to demand more and potentially pushing her to the left on key positions.

And this is not the first time that Mayor Mamdani has used his influence to protect Democratic politicians and throw fellow left-wing contenders under the bus. In November, just weeks after winning the election, Mamdani endorsed anti-socialist genocide apologist Hakeem Jeffries for House Minority Leader. At the same time, Mamdani played a pivotal role in ending DSA member Chi Ossé‘s primary campaign against Jeffries by ensuring that he did not receive the DSA’s endorsement. Even from the perspective of those who support an inside/outside strategy in the Democratic Party, providing cover for the worst Democrats while undermining leftist challengers is a demonstrably terrible way to build socialist power.

Socialist Power and Working Class Independence

But of all the things that municipal socialists like Featherstone get wrong, it is their fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of socialist politics that is the biggest obstacle to working class power. For Featherstone and many Jacobin writers, politics is primarily about winning seats in Congress to achieve reforms, usually very limited reforms, where workers are merely voters rather than subjects of their own political agency. But politics is not just a program; it must also involve the laying out of a real strategy for power beyond elections. And for socialists this means the power of the working class to rule themselves free of the outsized influence and control of capital over production and the institutions of bourgeois society. Winning such power can’t be achieved solely with elections, or through alliances with representatives of capitalist stability like Hochul, but only through the independent organization of the working class and its true representatives as a class for itself, a situation that no amount of elections or reforms can achieve.

It is clear already that Mamdani has no interest in building such power. When he ran on the Democratic ticket, his supporters argued time and again, that this was merely a practical maneuver to win the election and that he would govern not as a Democrat but as a socialist. We have seen that this is not true. Rather than confronting the system head on, rather than convincing the millions who voted for him of the necessity of building working class power by directly challenging the power of capital, he has taken every step possible to defend, endorse, and prop up the worst Democrats in the hopes of winning some good favor for a limited and shrinking agenda of reforms. And now he is leading those same voters right back into the dead end of a lobbying strategy grounded in supporting the Democratic Party.

Lobbying Albany for higher taxes on the very wealthy is all fine and well but such tactics only sow illusions in the idea that the state can ever be a fair arbiter of class conflict. Hochul may pivot and eventually agree to some minor increases in taxes on the very wealthy just as she changed her position on immigration (Hochul used to be a staunch supporter of ICE after all), but any such policy changes are going to come with their own set of unaccountable problems and contradictions. Such political shifts, however, work both ways, and Mamdani is already coming up against the reality of the NYC budget and, right on cue, is shamelessly pivoting away from some of his core campaign promises, including his promise to expand housing vouchers for families at risk of eviction who would otherwise wind up on the street or in city shelters.

Real socialist legislators, on the other hand, such as Myriam Bregman and Nicolás del Caño in the socialist workers party (PTS) in Argentina, who wish to actually overthrow and transform the capitalist system, not merely tinker with it, do not lead like this. They do not backtrack on the needs of the working class or make excuses for why basic common sense programs are impossible. They do not apologize for the system by conforming to its limits and its logic. Instead, they use their positions to point out the contradictions and the absurdities of the capitalist system and seek to undermine and weaken it with independent working class power. These socialists don’t arrest striking workers; they don’t turn their backs on homeless families because of budget constraints; and they don’t endorse liberal politicians who are sworn to uphold the very system of exploitation and oppression that socialism seeks to destroy.

This is why working people need a party of our own completely independent of the influence of capitalist interests; a party built, formed, and led by workers and the oppressed, whose candidates are tribunes and organic representatives of the most important struggles, from the fight against ICE to the struggles for better working conditions, such as the fight by nurses in NYC. The DSA has the potential to be such a party, but only if it is able to develop a program beyond the limits of municipal socialism, and commits to completely breaking with the Democrats, including the ones in their own organization.

The post The Problem with Municipal Socialism: A Response to Liza Featherstone appeared first on Left Voice.

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If I'm throwing words together, should I study and read socialist theory?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7518419

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24300

Statement from the Labor Party (Emek Partisi) of Turkey | Jan. 20, 2026 | Translated from Turkish– The Kurdish People must decide their own destiny, the siege must end! The Kurdish forces, who for years have been fighting to stop the... Read More ›

The Kurdish People must decide their own destiny, the siege must end!

The Kurdish forces, who for years have been fighting to stop the atrocities of ISIS in Syria, a key country in the Middle East, have been continuously and progressively cornered and strangled ever since the rise to power of the Al-Shaara regime which is a remnant of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The agreement of March 10th, signed between the PYD (Democratic Union Party, active in the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria, also known as North-East Syria or Rojava) and the Al-Shaara regime, which was allowed to “mature” until the new year, has increasingly been used as a sword against the Kurds.

Starting from the beginning of 2026, Syrian military forces, along with gangs from the civil-war era and Turkish-backed Syrian National Army forces (of the Al-Shaara regime), have begun attacking residential areas of Aleppo, expelling Kurds from two neighborhoods and, advancing from Raqqa, have encircled Rojava. The objective of these attacks are to destroy and drown in blood the Kurdish self administrative system formed in Rojava in 2012 and to crush the Kurdish resistance. The elimination of Rojava is one of the greatest ambition of the Erdoğan regime as well, which has launched the so-called “Turkey free from terrorism” campaign domestically. Turkey is now imposing its will on the Kurdish people in Syria (to “get rid of Rojava”) in order to further advance its strategy of becoming a regional power, while engaging in so-called shuttle diplomacy between the United States and the Al-Assad regime.

The attacks on and siege of Rojava, which the state and capitalist controlled media are portraying as a victory for Erdoğan, demonstrate a recurring pattern of betrayal against the Kurds. Behind this lies a sell-out agreement, emerging as local and international powers gradually reshape the region through negotiations and force on the ground.

ISIS forces, now aligned with the US to dismantle Rojava’s status; US imperialism, which continues to cooperate with ISIS by claiming to fight it; the Turkish government, which encourages armed gangs and declares Al-Shaara a brother; and reactionary Middle Eastern dictatorships are all descending upon Rojava together. And the appointed colonial governor, and American billionaire, Tom Barrack, is busy coordinating this united front.

From The Red Phoenix via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7496501

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23756

Mamdani may appear to occupy the office, but the office actually occupies him.

There is a seduction in the story of Zohran Mamdani. The insurgent from Queens. The son of an African exile, an anti-colonial academic, a Freedom Rider participant father, and a South Asian Golden Globe-winning cinematic royalty. A hunger striker for taxi drivers. A face of the "new" New York—brown, Muslim, diasporic, fluent in solidarity, in TikTok, and in that tender performance of Left political hope that allows American liberalism to feel clever rather than culpable.

"Once-in-a-generation political talent," as Mehdi Hasan called him. A democratic socialist for the city that invented derivatives and foreclosure. A rent-freeze prophet in the kingdom of landlords. A soft-spoken radical for a metropolis that still mistakes moderation for modernity.

Mamdani's campaign and his victory should have been beautiful.

Mamdani's candidacy is not merely a question of charisma, policy, or diasporic pride. It is a test of whether insurgency can survive within institutions designed precisely to prevent it. It asks whether one can bend the arc of history inside a party whose nefarious genius lies in its ability to absorb dissent rather than confront it. It stages, once again, the familiar American drama: how radical language becomes managerial grammar the moment power peers back and says, enter, but only if you behave.

It is a structural inquiry into how the Democratic Party functions as a containment architecture—a velvet noose that dresses obedience as participation. It is about how the socialist idiom, once spoken within the frame of its liberal, or "democratic" compromise, mutates into a rhetoric of affordability and inclusion, stripped of its capacity to defeat capitalist antagonism.

The Mamdani phenomenon reveals a pattern already visible in the trajectories of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: the progressive who enters the political arena to rupture the machine only to end up adopting the party line and circulating to manufacture their mass of consent for compromise. The story is not betrayal in the colloquial sense, but betrayal in the historical one—it is the betrayal of possibility inherent to liberal hegemony's architecture of containment.

Read more via Scalawag: Zohran Mamdani and the Sorcery of Soft Rebellion.

From Scalawag via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7430766

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22243

After the Great Depression, a wave of industrial unionism breathed new life into the labor movement and the U.S. working class. Faced with a severe economic downturn, unemployment, and poverty, workers across the country began waging militant strikes for union recognition and better conditions.

At the center of this class battle was Teamsters Local 574. Led by Trotskyists from the Communist League of America — Carl Skoglund, the Dunne brothers, and Farrell Dobbs — the Teamsters emerged as militant leaders willing to fight the iron grip of the bosses. Having organized a successful three-day strike of coal yard drivers in February 1934, Teamsters then organized transportation workers across Minneapolis. By April, Local 574 had grown to represent thousands.

Community and Self-Organization, Against the Bosses

In response to this powerful movement, the bosses mobilized a private army of spies and thugs to destroy the working-class organizations. Local labor leaders prepared their forces for a larger confrontation with the employers. When trucking companies refused to recognize the union, 6,000 workers answered the call to go on strike on May 15.

Over the next two months, workers waged bloody battles against the bosses, the police, and the National Guard. At every moment, the capitalists and their protectors were met with militant working-class resistance. Local 574 elected a strike committee, published a daily strike bulletin, and held mass meetings to keep all the workers well informed.

Behind these thousands of organized workers stood the working class of Minneapolis. Skoglund and the Dunne brothers had enlisted allies in the unemployed councils, other unions, and diverse community organizations including farmers. The leaders of the strike fostered the self-organization of workers, even in terms of their own defense. They set up a Women’s Auxiliary which helped organize a food pantry for the strikers and their families, marched on City Hall, and even fought with clubs in hand on the picket lines when it came to it. Workers organized rapid response patrols of cars and trucks that stopped trucks full of scabs, also known as “flying pickets.” At every moment, the broadest working-class alliance was achieved.

On May 21 and 22 — the Battle of Deputies Run — the striking Teamsters, as well as thousands of other working-class people organized behind them, faced off with the bosses and their hired thugs. Faced with the formidable force of organized workers, many fled. The strike entered its final phase after the events of Bloody Friday on July 20, when the police opened fire into a crowd of picketers while escorting scab trucks. Two workers were killed, almost 70 injured, and key leaders arrested.

The funerals of John Belar and Henry Ness drew a crowd of up to 100,000 people. Other unions began to strike in sympathy, as well, or offered financial support. Ultimately, the strikers held strong and forced the employers to give in to their main demands, including the “inside” warehouse workers.

Lessons for the Working Class Today

The strike in Minneapolis was one of three major strikes that shook the labor movement in 1934. Yet, this “Teamster rebellion” was likely the most advanced expression of working-class militancy and solidarity. The success in Minneapolis would help inspire a whole generation of workers who formed the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO). In just a couple of years, sit-down strikes and other bold tactics would be key to organizing auto, steel, rubber, and other industries.

Over eight decades later, the experience of the Minneapolis Teamsters remains more relevant than ever as a new generation of workers are looking to fight back. By learning from the past, workers of all industries can face the present and prepare for the future.

Now, in the face of ICE’s terror and the imperialist attacks on Venezuela, is the time to rekindle the spirit of ’34.

Today, working people in Minnesota are shutting it all down to demand ICE out of our communities and justice for Renee Nicole Good. Unions must mobilize, as they did in 1934, to harness the power of organized labor and go on strike.

ICE out for good! Solidarity forever!

The post Revolutionary Teamsters: Remembering the 1934 Minneapolis General Strike appeared first on Left Voice.

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