United States

Hurricane Katrina highlighted the extreme class contradictions that exist within US society. In this interview John Peterson, Editor of the US Socialist Appeal, outlines how attitudes are changing and how awareness of the real situation is sinking into the consciousness of millions of Americans. (This text is also available in the original Dutch version at: http://www.vonk.org/CallReadOnly.asp?artikelID=1658&status=1)

Twenty-five years ago today John Lennon was killed in New York. There was a mass outpouring of grief all over the world. This was because he symbolised something different from the mainstream music industry. He gave expression in the words of some of his songs the genuine feeling of disgust of many workers and youth at what capitalist society stands for.

Living standards for the US working class have been falling for some time. Inside the richest country in the world we have “third-world” type conditions for a layer of the population.

While poverty levels grow and living standards fall, the American bosses keep up the pressure to drive down real wages even further. The latest example is what is happening at Delphi (that supplies parts to GM) where the bosses asked workers to take a 63% pay cut. In December the UAW votes on what response to give and GM are bracing themselves for possible strike action.

With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, his approval ratings steadily dropping, the aftermath of Katrina still haunting the nation, divisions in his own party, and the DeLay case causing a widespread erosion of faith in the government, Bush may well be threatened with impeachment. But even if the reactionary Bush Administration goes the way of Richard Nixon, where does that leave the working class in the United States?

The events of the past year have awakened millions of Americans to the bitter reality of life under capitalism. To many, the entire planet appears to have gone insane. The world has been shaken from top to bottom by natural disasters, wars, famines, political crises, riots, and revolutionary uprisings. This is a graphic reflection of the impasse of capitalism in the epoch of its decay and decline: an era of wars, revolutions, and counter-revolutions. Editorial statement of the US Socialist Appeal.

The recent blackout on the US East coast highlights the inability of the capitalist class to provide even the most basic services in the heart of imperialism. The ability of capitalism to keep even something as important as its global headquarters, New York,  has been undermined by the blind mechanics of the profit-drive, the central component of capitalism itself. By Kurt Penca. Originally published on the new issue of the American Socialist Appeal.

In a first in US Labor history, nearly 100,000 grocery workers are on strike or locked out in California, St. Louis, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, demanding a halt to the ever-increasing bosses' assault on one of the working class' most essential needs: health care. Under the heavy skies of recession, these multi-billion dollar companies want to make the workers pay the full bill for the economic downturn. In order to maintain their huge profits, the capitalists are more than willing to put the physical health of the working class to the ax. This is a threat that the Labor Movement cannot tolerate, despite the braking action of their own leadership...

This summer the Teamsters, SEIU, UFCW, and UNITE HERE split from the AFL-CIO union federation at their annual convention in Chicago. For the first time in half a century, the US trade unions are officially divided into large, separate camps.  The break up of the AFL-CIO came as a shock to many trade unionists and activists.  These four unions alone represent over one third of the federation’s 13 million members. But is it a step forward for US workers?

Venezuela was the first country to offer help to the United States in dealing with the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Chavez has offered money and personnel to help in the relief operations. The answer of an unnamed "senior State official" was that “unsolicited offers can be counterproductive." They would rather some of their own people died than have the people of the USA see Venezuela for what it is, a country where its people are challenging the very capitalist system upon which so much poverty and devastation is based.

Hurricane Katrina will be remembered for years to come as an important turning point in the USA. Thousands, tens of thousands of poor people have been left to fend for themselves, many dying dehydrated, in what is the richest country in the world. People are noting that the Bush administration, very quick to mobilize a huge army to invade Iraq, has been painfully slow in helping the people of New Orleans. The class question is emerging clearly and this will have profound effects on the whole of US society.

The recent terrorist attacks in London only confirm the volatile position the world finds itself in at the beginning of the 21st century. Bush and Blair’s war on terror and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have done nothing but further destabilize the situation. In the United States, the mood is finally turning against the war. This is the editorial of the latest issue of the American Socialist Appeal.

Titanic sums of money - the taxes paid in mostly by the working class - have been spent by the Bush Administration primarily on two things: the continuing slaughter in Iraq and the further enrichment of the top 10 percent of Americans. Millions of working people in the United States continue to worry about whether or not they will have a job two months from now or even next week. And how does the ‘compassionate conservative’ in the White House soothe the nation’s anxiety? By handing out billions of dollars to the modern-day robber barons of Capital.