USA
Content about workers' struggles and events in the United States of America.
US military researching microwave crowd control weapons
The United States military is still researching a controversial microwave weapon that could be deployed against crowds from aircraft.
The US military is to increase funding for the Active Denial System (ADS) from $2mil to $10mil despite the controversy surrounding the weapon. The ADS is described by the Pentagon as a 'non-lethal weapon' and is intended to be used a crowd control device.
Stephen Jay Gould: What Does it Mean to Be a Radical?
Marxist biologists Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins remember the life and career of paleontologist and science writer Stephen Jay Gould, and his role in the social criticism of science.
Early this year, Stephen Gould developed lung cancer, which spread so quickly that there was no hope of survival. He died on May 20, 2002, at the age of sixty. Twenty years ago, he had escaped death from mesothelioma, induced, we all supposed, by some exposure to asbestos.
The political economy of hybrid corn
Marxist geneticist Richard Lewontin and economist Jean-Pierre Berlan discuss the economics of and role of capital in the production of hybrid corn. This article follows their 'Technology, research, and the penetration of capital: the case of U.S. agriculture' article.
Source: Monthly Review, July-August, 1986 by Jean-Pierre Berlan, R.C. Lewontin
Technology, research, and the penetration of capital: the case of U.S. agriculture
Economist Jean-Pierre Berlan and marxist geneticist Richard Lewontin reveal the politics and economics behind 1980s US agribusiness.
Source: Monthly Review, July-August, 1986 by R.C. Lewontin, Jean-Pierre Berlan
Seattle: the first US riot against 'globalisation'? - Loren Goldner
Loren Goldner's article for Undercurrent #8 on the anti-WTO protests which took place in Seattle in 1999.
Mass politics in the streets disappeared in the U.S. between 1970 and 1973. In retrospect, it is clear that the years 1964 to 1970 were not a "pre-revolutionary situation", but anyone who lived through those years as an activist can be forgiven for thinking it was. Any number of people in the ruling circles shared the same error of judgement.
Visteon asks to pay millions in executive bonuses
Visteon Corp., which moved last week to cut off retiree health-care benefits, has asked a bankruptcy judge to authorize up to $80 million in management and insider bonuses.
Visteon hit the headlines earlier this year when their 600 UK workers responded to being sacked by occupying their workplaces and winning their redundancy pay which they had been denied. Full coverage on libcom was provided here: http://libcom.org/tags/visteon-occupation
Sebastian San Vicente 1896- 1938? aka Pedro Sanchez aka El Tampiqueno
A short biography of Spanish anarchist Sebastian San Vicente, active in the USA, Cuba and Mexico and hero of a novel by Paco Ignacio Taibo
The Shadow of a Shadow
Glaberman, Martin: 1918 - 2001 - Obituary by Red and Black Notes
Red & Black Notes was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Martin Glaberman on December 17, 2001. Marty was active in the workers' movement for almost seventy years, as a writer, agitator, activist and teacher. His death is a tremendous loss to those who knew him and the working class.
Marty Glaberman joined the Socialist Party youth group in 1932 when he was 13 years old. He came from a social democratic family and joined the SP because it was the only organization in the neigbourhood. Asked why he joined at 13, he replied they wouldn't take him any younger.
Working Class Self-Activity - George Rawick
George Rawick examines examples of history of the self-activity of the American working class.
The history of the American working class is a subject obscure to the Old and New Left alike. For the most part, academic and labour scholarship has been institutional history focusing on the trade union, and like all institutional orientations has been quite conservative.
National Struggle And Class Struggle In Puerto Rico: Lessons for Anarchists by Mike Staudenmaier
A history of national and class struggles in Puerto Rico, from the time of the Spanish colonizers to the Nationalist uprisings and armed clandestine groups until the recent lack of radicalism. We do not agree with this article but reproduce it for reference.
In the past 150 years, assertions of national identity and class identity have transformed the world in which we live, changing the self-understanding, motivations, and actions of billions of human beings.
