On January 24th, the US Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision, ruled to remove the remaining spending limits on corporate involvement in elections. The ruling has been criticized by many as a dangerous encroachment by the wealthiest corporate interests and an undermining of free, democratic elections. But even before the court’s decision, corporate cash remained a prime mover of both capitalist parties in Congress and the White House. The influence of the big banks, corporations and the wealthiest will always be a controlling feature of formal democracy under capitalism.

In this article, the conditions for socialist revolution to develop are analyzed. The experiences of the Socialist Party of America and other left groups are analyzed as well, for those that are interested in building a Marxist leadership need to learn from past left and labor movements to avoid making the same mistakes past socialists have made.

An opposition group recently won the election and will become the new leadership of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100. Even though the election was held last June, the ballots were not counted until December! This was one of the many tactics used by the incumbent Toussaint leadership, which was seeking to install its handpicked successors.

This article takes note of the effects of the recession on workers in the USA (high unemployment, low wages, threats of losing homes, etc.) and how Obama is continuing Bush's program of spending billions of dollars bailing out Wall Street. The union leadership told workers that voting the Democrats into Congress and the White House would change things, but where is this change? As the Workers International League explained, voting for the "lesser evil" in a system dominated by two corporate parties would bring about an immediate "evil." People then get tired after no real change and end up bringing the "greater evil" back into power. This is precisely what happened in Massachusetts.

In Obama's State of the Union address, the President called for "national unity." It's definitely in the interest of the people who collect profit off of other people's work to assure us we all share the same set of "American values." They want us to believe we're "all in this together" when really they're parasites living off our sweat.

For young workers, the so-called recovery is meaningless to nonexistent. Most of us have been facing a crisis from the very beginning of our working lives. We’ve been unable to build up even the most meager basis for establishing ourselves. Those of us who have tried to strike out on our own in our late teens or early twenties, the way our parents or grandparents did, have found it nearly impossible.