46

In Defense of Washington and Wall Street

by Robert Fitch

Winter 2009

THE VERY ELDERLY ARE PRONE TO FALL. And unlike infants who also tumble frequently, each time seniors stumble, they risk a disabling or even a fatal injury. On August 9th 2007, after an unparalleled quarter century long expansion, which had been checked in the developed countries only mildly and briefly, capitalism finally tripped and lost its balance with predictable results: banks tottered, while credit and commercial paper markets writhed in paralysis.

Albert Shanker's Legacy: Reply to Michael Hirsch

by NORMAN SCOTT and VERA PAVONE

Winter 2009

MICHAEL HIRSCH’S CRITIQUE misleads, or outrightly distorts, many of the points we made in our review.*

Shanker and NCLB

Albert Shanker's Legacy: Comment on Norm Scott and Vera Pavone's Review in #45

by Michael Hirsch

Winter 2009

LEON TROTSKY’S TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM begins with words that have made the left nuts ever since. “The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat,” the old exiled Bolshevik and Red Army founder wrote.That analysis was arguable in 1938, when it was written, less so in the 1960s, when the United Federation of Teachers was formed. Would that it were remotely plausible today.

The Change We REALLY Want?

by Joanne Landy

Winter 2009

WITH THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA, millions in the United States and around the world are hoping for relief from the dangerous arrogance and destructiveness of George Bush’s foreign policy. President Obama is expected to take important positive initiatives — like closing Guantanamo and lifting the rule denying international organizations receiving U.S. aid the right to let women know about abortion. When the inevitable right-wing reaction to these initiatives comes, it will be crucial for us in the peace movement to defend them.

LGBT Political Cul-de-sac: Make a U-Turn

by Sherry Wolf

Winter 2009

Electoral Cul-de-sac

Socialism and Gay Liberation: Back to the Future

by Doug Ireland

Winter 2009

IN 1865, WHILE MARX, IN HOLLAND, was playing the Victorian parlor game “Confessions” with his daughter Jenny, when asked for his favorite maxim he replied, “Nihil humani a me alienum puto” or “nothing human is alien to me,” a dictum he had lifted from the second century B.C. Carthaginian slave-turned-playwright Terentius (Terence.)

Socialism and Homosexuality

by Thomas Harrison

Winter 2009

SAME-SEX DESIRE has always been a part of human life.There is much evidence, though not yet conclusive, that a predominant sexual attraction to members of one’s own sex is innate. But innate or not, we know that it is definitely formed early in life, certainly before the age of ten.

The New Class Struggle

by Milan Rai

Winter 2009

REAL UTOPIA IS A WIDE-RANGING BOOK that can deliver for the open-minded reader. It relates ideas and actions that develop naturally out of commonly held values, but that can still bring surprise, the shock of revelation, the rearrangement of familiar territory, and a different framework for us to see ourselves within.

Who is the “us”? People who subscribe to the cry of the World Social Forum: “Another World Is Possible!”

Eight Kinds of Strength

by Marcia Gallo

Winter 2009

A Tribute to Valerie Taylor, Lesbian Writer and Revolutionary
Marcia Gallo

The Sweet Little Old
Gray-Haired Lady in Sneakers1

I am a woman,
a lesbian,
a poet,
poor,
handicapped,
radical,
Indian,
over seventy --
an eight-time loser.

How shall I not be
a revolutionary?