Nate's blog

There’s a kind of common sense about the IWW, among some members and some nonmembers that says “the IWW is apolitical.” I think that’s a weird idea.

In the discussion on a blog post that Joseph Kay wrote the conversation turned briefly to 'class composition'. This is a term used by some people in the Italian New Left, particularly a current called 'operaismo'.

Occupy vs Eviction: Radicals, Reform, and Dispossession

No more double-edged swords: institutions that reinforce capitalism

In his short, readable book Historical Capitalism, Immanuel Wallerstein writes about movements that sought to take state power in the twentieth century. He says that when

Hypotheses on reform and repression in the United States

I remember a lot of talk in the air growing up about The Market and how it would take care of things if we just trust it. This vision is in part a political claim about the actions of the state and other actors, that the market will just take care of things if only people would stop messing around politically trying to control economic activity.

I walked in to the grocery store with a big smile, I could almost feel that check in my wallet. Beth was a god damn champ to loan me that money. Maybe I'd buy some beers and food to fix a good dinner for the whole crew of us. Would it be weird to do that with money she loaned me? I was going to pay it all back anyway so it'd be all right. Plus Beth liked beer and was always so chilled out.

Recently Occupy activists helped the ILWU win a new contract.

We live after a shipwreck at sea, the water slaps at us, strong winds rush at us, we fear sharks and rocks, and the sun bakes. Worst of all are the days of dead calm. Will we float here forever? We disagree about much – what sort of craft, how shall it be propelled, which direction to go?

Here’s what I think may be going on in the present today. A lot more people are interested in fighting. The official powers that be are not disposed to negotiations and concessions.

Influential right wing leaders like Sarah Palin “routinely drop words like ‘tyranny’ and ‘socialism,’" writes Matt Bai in a New York Times article, “A Turning Point in the Discourse, but in Which Direction?” Bai points out that these politicians talks this way "as if blind to the idea that Americans legitimately faced with either enemy would almost certainly take up arms.” Bai quotes other right w

In my view, Karl Marx's analysis of capitalism is really powerful and important. I think the best formulation of this analysis is in his book Capital, Volume 1. Joseph Kay recently wrote a blog post about a book I've not read yet, by David Graeber, and that post made me want to write this post about aspects of Marx.

Some of my friends and I have been saying for a while stuff like “struggle changes people” and about what we’ve called “developing” people. In this post I want to lay out some of the specific things that I think can happen in struggles, in terms of how people develop. In the first section below I try to lay out some ways that people in struggle can change.

This is an article about Occupy and immigration and demands. I've worked on this for a while off and on for a few months and I think this is as done as it gets. I'm sure there's more to say but this is the best I can do for now. I should also say, I'm aware that immigrant issues are in the mix in Occupy in the US to some extent and are growing, I don't say enough about that.

This fall the Canadian magazine Adbusters issued a call that Occupy Wall Street take action in support of a so-called Robin Hood Tax, which would "slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that's sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the worl

Life During Wartime

I got home after ten. The door was locked. I knocked and Mom answered, holding a bag of ice to a swollen lip.

“Sorry - I forgot my house keys.”

“We were up anyway. I was just getting Ricky some ice cream, you want some?”

“No,” I said, “we had ice cream in the cafeteria at intermission.”

In 1935 the United States Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). This Act is often credited by progressives with creating incredible new opportunities for the U.S. working class. The NLRA created a new regime of industrial relations in the U.S., but that change was less a matter of creating something new and was more a matter of further spreading practices that already existed.