The Coming Storm

** This article appeared in  TruthOut  December 15, 2014 ** What if there was a way to address climate change, halt police brutality, heal the environment, end unemployment, take the profit out of exploitation and racism, and put an end to endless war?  It stands to reason that the powers that be would do all they could to keep it from us.  Those who profit from the violence, injustice and destruction all around us have every incentive to obfuscate, misrepresent and undermine anything that might threaten their privilege. Well it turns out there  is  a concrete, eminently practical way to build a better world.  But don’t expect to read about it in the  New York Times  or the  Washington Post.   Don’t look for it to be featured on network TV news.  It’s called  A Bill of Rights for Working People  and it’s detailed below. The BRWP is more than just a set of ideas; it’s an action plan....

Joshua Frank is spot-on as he argues against tying movements to the Democratic Party in his article, We Don’t Need Climate Marches, We Need a Political Awakening in the October 3-5 edition of Counterpunch.  I also quite agree (as I have written about here and here ) that it’s high time working people break with the Democratic and Republican parties and build a party of our own.  However, Frank’s piece flounders when it comes to analyzing the essential nature of the September 21 climate march in New York City.  Moreover, I submit that Frank’s well-intentioned critique misses the point when it comes to evaluating marches, tactics and movements for social change in general. Let’s take for granted that we live in a class society, with those at the top pulling all the strings.  The vast majority of us may lean a particular direction on some important issue or policy, but what counts is what the small stratum that owns Wall Street, the banking sector, our ma...

Naomi Klein’s welcome new book, This Changes Everything , identifies the capitalist economic system as the chief obstacle to addressing the threat posed by anthropogenic climate change, but also as the main roadblock to addressing so many other seemingly intractable problems facing humanity—poverty, economic inequality, austerity, shredded civil liberties, endless war, racism and injustice in its many forms.  She’s right.  Of course, some have been arguing this very point for generations.  It’s not as if human civilization was rational and equitable before climate change reared its head.  But each of us reaches the point of epiphany in our own way, and if official inaction on climate change helps you to see the big picture, so much the better. As difficult as it may be to reach consensus on the need to move beyond capitalism, that’s actually the easy part.  The real difficulty lies in how .  Thanks to Klein’s book, many more people will be ...

Disillusionment with the Democratic and Republican parties has always been high.  Not since 1964 have more than 60% of eligible voters turned out for a presidential election.  Since 1900, 42% of eligible voters on average stay home each presidential election, effectively choosing “none of the above” rather than voting for either of the anointed candidates.  The number abstaining in non-presidential election years is even higher. For many, elections are irrelevant as they know their lives will not fundamentally change, regardless of which of the major parties rules the roost.  But for an increasing number, abstention is more conscious.  There is growing recognition that both the Democrats and Republicans represent Wall St. and big business, leaving the majority who slave away, working for a living, only the narrowest of choices between this or that representative of the slave masters.  In 2013, a record 42% of Americans identified themselves ...

First the bad news: To address anthropogenic climate change, capitalism will have to be replaced as the dominant world economic system.  How do we know this?  Well, we know that eliminating ongoing exposure to a poison is a prerequisite for curing an illness due to poisoning.  We know that any hope of modifying a dog’s aggressive behavior requires, at a minimum, that you stop rewarding the animal when it bites someone.  In short, we know that to solve a problem you must eliminate the causes before you can hope to effectively treat the symptoms. But is capitalism itself part of the problem?  Are private ownership and management of the world’s resources, energy supplies, industry and infrastructure compatible with the current needs of society, the environment and our planet?  Is the current system sustainable when it rewards industrial titans for maximizing returns at all cost, while existentially punishing any who might forgo profits for the p...