Capitalism a Global History

By Sven Beckert - Penguin Press 2025

A review by Steve Halpern

Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University. He has written an important 1,325 page book on the overall global history of the capitalist system. Beckert travelled the world researching this project. Harvard University and the Ford Foundation were among the organizations that funded his research. 

Most history books are biographies, or national histories, or histories of events. Beckert's book is unique in that he looks at the entire history of the political economic system we know as capitalism.

President Donald Trump, like all Presidents, claims to represent people who live in the United States. His famous slogan is "Make America Great Again." Certainly there were outstanding moments in the history of this country. However, I don't believe there was ever a period in the history of this country that we can label as great. 

Another problem with this slogan is Beckert's compelling argument that capitalism has always been a global system. In fact, the world learned something from Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio (Bad Bunny) in the recent Super Bowl game. His performance made clear that "America" consists of the entire hemisphere of North, South, Central America and the Caribbean.   

When we look at the vast history of capitalism, there has been a recurring and persistent problem. Throughout its history, capitalism has bounced from one unimaginable disaster to another like a wrecking ball. A summary of the events in Beckert's book will underscore that conclusion.

Seeds of capitalism: 1150 AD and the trade in the Indian Ocean    

Much of the history students learn in this country has been criticized for being "Eurocentric." Clearly there is a lot that can be learned from the history of that continent. However, Europe is only one of seven continents of the world.

Sven Beckert gives the evidence that the seeds of capitalism sprang from trade across the Indian Ocean. Beckert used the word "archipelago" to describe the islands of merchant trade in a sea of feudal societies. The center of that trade was the city of Aden in Yemen. Aden connected merchant trade from West Africa to India, and China. 

So, for hundreds of years Europe was the relatively underdeveloped section of the world. There were two events that began to change this reality.

First, the bubonic plague caused the deaths of about thirty percent of the European population. At that time royal families were dependent on peasants for their income. The plague killed many peasants and decreased the revenue of the royal families. The response was to rely more on income the royal families received from merchants. 

The other event was the contact with the Americas. Before that contact, there was international trade that included the enslavement of human beings. With the contact of an entire hemisphere, that trade exploded and European powers began to play a more dominant role in the world. Other areas of the world continued to rely on entrenched feudal regimes. 

Single crop economies replace self sustaining economies

In the feudal system most people were peasants who farmed the land. A portion of their crops went to the feudal lords. In other words, the feudal manors were largely self-sustaining communities. 

The tribal societies in the Americas had different levels of development. Some tribes were nomadic and travelled from place to place in order to sustain themselves. Other native tribes had a more stationary lifestyle. While there was trade between tribes, Native American societies were also largely self-sufficient. With capitalism this changed.

Before European contact with the Western Hemisphere, there had been trade in sugar and other commodities. Human beings, including many from Europe, were viewed as commodities that merchants bought and sold. 

With the European contact of the Americas, this trade exploded. Instead of creating self-sustaining manors, single crop economies were the new source of wealth. 

Feudal lords realized that they could enrich themselves by forcing peasants off the manors. In order for that to happen, the lords needed to rely on the government to enforce this effective theft of land. Merchants then used that land to gouge out profits. 

Then in a process that took hundreds of years, most peasants were effectively forced into cities where many worked in factories. The lands taken from the peasants were called "enclosures."  Marx argued that peasants were then "free." Because they lost everything, they were free of possessions and coerced to toil under horrendous conditions in factories.

In the Americas settlers carried out a series of wars over hundreds of years that effectively stole the entire hemisphere from the native inhabitants. Initially colonial settlers centered their economies on gold and silver mines in Mexico and Bolivia. Then they organized the extremely lucrative sugar trade. Then cotton supplied the factories of Europe that produced cloth. The unimaginably horrendous conditions on enslaved plantations and in the first textile factories gave birth to the political economic system of capitalism. 

Capitalism is born drenched in blood

Karl Marx was highly critical of the theories of Adam Smith who was an ardent supporter of capitalism. However, there was one issue that Marx and Smith agreed on. They both argued that capitalism was a more advanced system from feudalism. In fact, one of the reasons for the revolution of the thirteen colonies was was the pervasive desire to a break with feudal property relations.   

Saying that, I also support the argument of Frederick Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin that the state was born with capitalism as a "special instrument of repression." Some of the first actions of the United States government consisted of a genocide against Native Americans, support for chattel slavery, and an armed repression of Shay's Rebellion. That rebellion consisted of veterans of the revolution who were starving and demanded the means to live.

Sven Beckert labelled much of the history of capitalism as a history of the British styled "enclosures." These enclosures consisted of forced or voluntary world wide migrations, unimaginably horrendous working conditions, and theft of land from indigenous inhabitants.

First we see how people from all over the world came to Bolivian city of Potosi in search of riches derived from the mining of silver. Native Americans did most of the mining and that work produced the silver that became a foundation of capitalism. 

Then there was the forced kidnapping and transport of African slaves under unimaginably horrendous conditions. This was to derive wealth from the production of sugar, tobacco, and cotton.

Clearly one of the primary reasons for the Civil War in the United States was the tenacious desire to abolish the system of chattel slavery. However, up until that war, slavery had been the primary way of securing wealth in the United States. As a result, before the Civil War, the U.S. government was dominated by supporters of the system of chattel slavery.

About 350,000 Union soldiers died defeating the army of slave owners in the Civil War. Then the government adopted the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery except in cases of penal servitude. 

President Andrew Johnson has been labelled as the worst president in the history of the United States. He attempted to implement his "Black Codes" to effectively reintroduce slavery by another name. The government responded with the 14th and 15th Amendments that were supposed to guarantee "equal protection" and "voting rights" for all men who were citizens in this country.

Mother Jones was a leader of the labor movement in this country and an organizer for the United Mine Workers Union. She was also a leader of the movement to abolish child labor. Mother Jones ridiculed those who argued that slavery had been abolished in this country. Paraphrasing her words, They used to sell children on the auction block. Now they sell children on the installment plan.

Sven Beckert quoted Willemina Klusterboer's book Involuntary Labor Since the Abolition of Slavery. She argued, It was this novel combination of the "pistol and pen" that brought many cultivators into commodity production, mobilizing workers in order to immobilize them, blocking their escape with a web of debt, contracts, laws, and taxes just at the time when global rebellions had brought plantation slavery to an end. Yes, capitalism has proven to be a tricky and ruthless customer. 

Enclosures erected around the world

After the Civil War, the United States government worked to create an effective enclosure in the western half of the country. General Philip Henry Sheridan outlined the first step in this process. He argued that, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." This insidious statement might be taken in the context of the over 100 year hot war by the United States government against the indigenous people of this part of the world.

In those years, much of the economy of the United States came from mining, manufacture, agriculture, railroads, and manufacturing in the western part of the country. This effective enclosure inspired Japanese capitalists to create their own enclosure.

The northern island of Japan is called Hokkaido. In the early 19th century that island was relatively undeveloped and populated by indigenous inhabitants. Japanese capitalists hired a planner from the United States to learn how to develop Hokkaido. They were inspired by the enormous wealth derived from the westward expansion in the United States. 

Japan then worked to subjugate the indigenous people of Hokkaido. They mobilized Japanese nationals to develop the Island and constructed railroads to facilitate trade. Because of this success Japan then colonized Korea, Taiwan, and the northeast of China that they called Manchukuo. 

French capitalists also wanted their own enclosure. They decided on the continent of Africa. The French needed to share their enclosure with the nations of Britain, Belgium, Germany, and Italy. As a result, millions of Africans died as a result of these effective enclosures that became colonies.

The capitalist drive to dominate the world was driven by the need of capitalist enterprises to continually grow. Henry Ford profited from this need of capitalism with his automotive assembly plant. Workers produced thousands of automotive parts that other workers put together on the assembly line. 

The owner of Italian corporation Fiat was inspired by Ford's operation. Workers who toiled for Fiat built an assembly plant in Turin, Italy. This plant was modeled on the Ford assembly process. 

Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, a central leader of the Russian Revolution, was aware of the capitalist attempt to dominate the world. He was also aware of globalized cartels that competed for access to the world's natural resources. Analyzing this atmosphere in 1917, Lenin concluded that the underlying reasons for the First World War were about global competition of imperialist powers. 

In other words, the First World War didn't happen because of mistakes in judgement by powerful people. No, Lenin argued that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism and that led to the inevitability of two world wars that cost the lives of perhaps 80 million people.

Keynesian economics, and the Communist Manifesto

When we look at the history of capitalism, one continuous feature of this system is war. Capitalist politicians don't like to talk about the financial or human costs of war. Those costs were one of the reasons for the global depression of the 1930s. 

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote their Communist Manifesto in 1848. In that document they explained why depressions like the one in the 1930s are inevitable. 

"In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war, of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much commerce."

John Maynard Keynes studied economics and was aware of the Communist Manifesto. He was also aware of the possibility that depressions like the one in the 1930s could be the undoing of capitalism. However, instead of learning from Marx and Engels, he was indifferent to their arguments. Keynes believed that depressions might be avoided through regulations of capitalist enterprises.

After the Second World War there was an upturn for capitalism and many nations adopted Keynesian economics. Under those conditions workers organized in unions and went on strikes demanding higher wages and better working conditions. For most workers in the United States and Europe there was a significant improvement in the standard of living.

However, something else happened after the Second World War. As Lenin argued, the state was invented for capitalism as a "special instrument of repression." After WWII that instrument of repression was unleashed with a vengeance.

Before the end of WWII, the United States invited representatives of capitalists in 44 nations to a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. There the United States government effectively announced that it would be the new world's superpower replacing Britain. The U.S. dollar would be the new international currency. Then the United States Air Force showed the world what would happen as a punishment for non-compliance with the dictates of Washington and Wall Street.

Air Force General Curtis LeMay organized the fire-bombing of about 67 of Japan's largest cities. That bombing campaign destroyed large parts of those cities. At the end of this campaign, the Air Force dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

General LeMay was also involved in the near total destruction of northern Korea during the U.S. invasion of that country. In Vietnam General LeMay summarized the massive bombing campaign of that country with the following words. He argued that he wanted to bomb Vietnam "back into the stone age." LeMay also favored using atomic bombs against the sovereign nation of Cuba.

We might also consider that during most of the economic upturn after WWII the government consistently violated the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. All branches of the government supported the infamous Jim Crow laws that stripped Black people of citizenship rights here.

Only because of the civil rights and Black power movements did the government concede to give Black people citizenship rights they were denied. However, the massive demonstrations in 2020 protesting murders by the police of Black people is clear evidence that institutionalized discrimination in this country continues.

Also during the period of capitalist upturn many women were segregated into jobs as nurses, secretaries, or housekeepers. Many were prohibited from wearing pants at work. They weren't allowed to have credit cards in their own name, and sexual harassment was routine. Women did not have the right to decide if and when they became mothers. This all began to change with government concessions prompted by the Second Wave of Feminism in the early 1970s.

Neoliberalism

In the early 1970s Paul Volcker informed President Nixon that the United States didn't have the money to pay for the war against Vietnam. Volcker convinced Nixon to take the dollar off the gold standard. This action eventually prompted the government to drastically increase interest rates. 

Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman both studied economics and were aware of the Communist Manifesto. Like John Maynard Keynes they were both either indifferent of hostile to its arguments. 

Hayek and Friedman were also hostile to the regulatory policies of Keynes. They believed in a complex economic formula that in essence mirrored capitalist economic policy before the depression of the 1930s. Instead of favoring government regulation their neoliberal policies favored deregulation of capitalist enterprises. Their system is known as neoliberalism. 

Up until the 1970s manufacturing enterprises in the United States were the driving force of the economy. Then banks became the dominant force. Banks invested huge amounts of money all over the world searching for places where wages were the lowest.   

Sven Beckert presented the event that gave birth to neoliberalism. This was the military overthrow of the democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende. The military murdered thousands of Chileans so the economy would be deregulated. 

As a result, a minority of the Chilean population grew wealthy while the vast majority saw their standard of living collapse. Wall Street investors celebrated, while Chileans needed to wear gas masks on their way to work in Santiago because of the intense pollution in the city. This was caused by eliminating pollution controls in favor of free market economics.  

I worked in two automotive factories in Philadelphia for twenty-one years. Those factories were among the hundreds of factories that closed in the Delaware Valley due to the free market economics of neoliberalism. 

We can see where much of that work went by reading the labels on our clothing. Workers from all over the world produce the clothing we wear at wages that hover around two dollars per day. These conditions explain why the United Nations estimates that about 15,000 children die every day due to preventable diseases.

We might consider that both Hayek and Friedman, the architects of neoliberalism, received Nobel Prizes for the unimaginable horror their theories inflicted on the world. Then, after the economic crash of 2008 another Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, argued that the neoliberal experiment had "in every aspect failed."   

Apparently Stiglitz is also indifferent to the arguments in the Communist Manifesto. Had he taken a serious look at those arguments, he would have understood that both the arguments of Keynes and neoliberalism were doomed from the start. The problem isn't a question of economic strategy in capitalism, but the inherent contradictions of the political economic system of capitalism. 

1948 and the establishment of South Africa and Israel

As the United States capitalist government asserted itself in the world after the Second World War, they decided to manage things differently from British colonial imperialism. In most cases, instead of using colonial authorities to manage entire nations, they used the economic incentives and punishments to enforce their will. 

Up until 1948 South Africa and Israel were colonies of Britain. Then the largely European immigrants of those countries imitated colonial policy in the world and erected colonial settler regimes.

In South Africa the ruling powers established the apartheid laws. These laws mirrored the Jim Crow laws of the United States that prohibited any form of equality between the indigenous Black habitants and the descendants of the European immigrants. 

Because of anti-apartheid struggles in South African and the support they received from around the world, the apartheid laws were abolished in the early 1990s. Then the people of South Africa elected Nelson Mandela, who had been incarcerated for 27 years, to be their President.

In British Palestine the indigenous Palestinian people were the large majority. There was a minority Jewish community who lived in this area continuously and they usually spoke the predominant language that was Arabic. Before the establishment of Israel Jewish people had been living in the Arabic speaking countries for centuries.

Then Jews who were escaping vicious persecution in Europe immigrated to British Palestine. Most of those immigrants supported the political ideas of Zionism. Zionism argued for an exclusively Jewish nation where Jews would dominate the politics and economics of the country.

Then in the 1940s the Zionist organizations of the Haganah, the Irgun, and the Stern Gang (Lehi) carried out a series of terrorist actions against the British, the Palestinians, as well as against Jews who opposed their actions.

The goal of these terrorist organizations was clear. They were about creating a majority Jewish community in the nation that became Israel. In order to do this the majority of the Palestinians were forced out of their homeland without compensation. Millions of those Palestinians have lived in territories occupied by Israel. There they are denied equal rights to the descendants of immigrants who came to Palestine.

Since 1948 Palestinians used every form of protest to gain equal rights in their homeland. They even agreed to establishing a nation on 22% of the land occupied by Israel. The Israeli government adamantly refused even this modest concession. 

This is the background to the Hamas organized raid on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. While the Israeli government worked diligently in preventing the world from finding out what happened on that day, we can make a few conclusions. 

There were civilians who the Hamas insurgents murdered or kidnapped. Successful revolutionary movements from around the world have made it clear that they were adamantly opposed to the murder of civilians. 

An exception was the written order by General George Washington to General Sullivan. Today we can see how Washington gave the order to murder and kidnap Iroquois civilians during the revolution of the thirteen colonies. 

After October 7 the Israeli government went on a genocidal campaign of mass murder, mutilation, and starvation of Palestinians. The Gaza Strip is about the same size as the city of Philadelphia where I live. About 80% of all the buildings in the Gaza Strip were destroyed by the so-called Israeli Defense Force. 

Immigration, a necessary creation of capitalism

When we look at the history of capitalism, we see that either forced or voluntary immigration or migration has been a consistent feature. The unimaginably horrendous conditions endured by kidnapped Africans transported to the Americas was the first step of international capitalism. British nationals convicted of insignificant crimes served their sentences as indentured servants in the Americas.

I'm 73-years-old and during my entire life I've attended school and worked with people who were born outside of this country. These immigrants came here from every part of the world.

When we look at the astronomical economic growth in China, we see that this growth wouldn't have happened were it not for the migration of perhaps 300 million people from the Chinese countryside to the cities. Because of the Hukou laws, these Chinese nationals, who were born in the countryside, do not have the same rights to education, health care, and housing as Chinese nationals who were born in cities. 

It isn't a secret as to why people come here from other countries. The United Nations estimates that about 13,000 children die every day due to preventable diseases. Sven Beckert reported on the underlying reasons for this state of affairs. "almost half of the world's people—46.4 percent, or a total of 3.6 billion—still live on $6.85 or less a day."

It isn't a secret as to who those people are who live on $6.85 or less. All we need to do is to look at the labels on the clothes we wear every day. Then we can think about the coffee we drink and the cars most people ride in. Most of the commodities we use are made outside of this country by people who receive nearly starvation wages.

Therefore capitalists profit from commodities made in other countries as well as goods and services produced here by immigrants. Today we see how the government is on an all out drive to kidnap people who live here because they were born in other countries.

The excuse the government gives for these horrendous crimes is that about twelve million immigrants who live here don't have the documents that would make them legal. Well, forcing Africans to come here to be enslaved was legal. Forcing the Cherokee off their land in the trail of tears in violation of a treaty was legal. Refusing to give 937 Jewish refugees on the ship the MS  St, Louis refuge from Nazi Germany was legal. About 250 of those passengers would be murdered in the Nazi concentration camps. Increasing the prison population in the United States from about 300,000 to two million, that was also legal.

There is another explanation for why the United States government gave Israel $20 billion for their genocidal campaign against Palestinians. Then they voted to spend $75 billion to fund the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). They did this in their effort to kidnap brutalize working people all over the world. This has been the history of capitalism.

Conclusion

Today growing numbers of people see that there are profound and worsening problems all over the world. We've seen this in the massive international demonstrations protesting Israeli organized genocide. Then there were the massive No Kings demonstrations protesting the move to totalitarian rule in this country. Numerous groups are organizing to defend our immigrant sisters and brothers from kidnapping, warehousing, and deportations.

When I look at the news everyday it appears that we have reached a clear flash point in the history of the capitalist system. Keynesian economics and neoliberalism have been pushed aside. For many years successive Presidential Administrations have been taking more and more power.

After the Second World War the United States manufactured about 60% of the commodities in the world. Now Asia manufactures about 50% of the commodities in the world, while the United States' share is about 16%. There is no force in the world that can bring the capitalists in the United States back to their dominance after WWII.

The Administration of Donald Trump seeks to dominate the world through naked coercion. He has sued corporate law firms and universities. He has issued tariffs on any nation that refuses to bow to his will. He ordered the military to murder people on the high seas and has defended ICE agents who murdered U.S. citizens for taking photos.

Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro refused to bow to the will of Washington. Trump responded by ordering the military to kidnap him as well as his wife Cilia Flores. We might consider that the U.S. government has a long history of organizing to overthrow elected leaders.

Ever since the 1959 Cuban Revolution the U.S. government used considerable resources to overthrow the Cuban government. Those efforts included an onerous trade embargo. 

Now the Trump Administration has declared a "National Emergency" in its efforts to overturn the Cuba Revolution. He is using the full force of the United States to block oil shipments to the island. Those efforts are aimed at the Cuban people who continue to support their government that makes a priority of human life over the drive to maximize profits.

Cuba has shown the world that a completely different kind of world is possible. Cuba not only has twice the numbers of doctors per capita as the United States, they send their doctors all over the world to treat people who lack medical care. They also have trained thousands of people to become doctors. Their priorities have been to ensure that all Cubans have the necessities of life as well as whatever support they can give to people in the world who are in need.

The capitalist government of the United States understands that the existence of the Cuban government is an obstacle to their tenacious drive to control the markets of the world. While the U.S. government succeeded in overturning governments all over the world, since 1959 they have failed in all their efforts to overthrow the Cuban government.    

Sven Beckert gave us and important global history of capitalism. However, he doesn't appear to be an advocate for socialism, or a workers government that would make human needs and not profits the priority. If he had that perspective it is unlikely that he would have received funding from Harvard University and the Ford Foundation.

Another limitation in Beckert's book is that he paid little attention to the tenacious movements that challenged the horrors of capitalism throughout its history. We can think about the hundreds of years of wars where Native Americans did everything in their power to defend themselves from the theft of their land and culture. Then there were the rebellions against slavery, legalized discrimination, institutionalized discrimination, and murders by the police.

The labor movement in the United States has been battling ever since the rail strike of 1877. Women engaged in two waves of feminism in their struggle to be treated with dignity and not as sexual objects.

There have been socialist inspired revolutions in the world. Supporters of capitalism are quick to argue that these revolutions evolved into disasters. 

In fact the Russian Revolution was betrayed by Joseph Stalin and his supporters. Stalin then became a dictator who used capitalist methods to run the Soviet Union. Today Vladimir Putin openly castigates Lenin who was the central leader of the Russian Revolution.

In China we also see how the government has bowed to capitalism. Banks invested heavily in China for a few reasons. During the 1980s China had some of the lowest wages in the world. Unlike India, China made massive investments to modernize their transportation system. Because there has been a significant improvement in the standard of living, China is now outsourcing work just as the United States outsourced work in the past.  

We can imagine the possibilities for a future world where there is genuine democracy and the needs of all humanity become the priority. We all need and want food, clothing, housing, transportation, communication, health care, education, and exposure to culture. 

However, in the capitalist system there are many enterprises that add no value to those goods and services, yet the costs of those enterprises are included in the prices we pay. These include corporate profits, interest, insurance, advertising, rents, corporate law, as well as the military. 

What we need today is the vision and organization to create an international movement aimed at transforming the world. That is the only way humanity can escape from the long history of the horrors of capitalism. When we look at the history of the resistance to this system, we can conclude that we indeed have the potential to transform the world and rebuild it using completely new foundations.

             

      

           

  

Why Does the United States Government Choose to be Defeated Over and Over Again?

Recently President Donald Trump ordered the military to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicholàs Maduro and his wife Cilia Florez. The President also reported that the U.S. military had conducted bombing raids on Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. 

He then announced that the United States government would "run" Venezuela apparently under the command of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Peter Hegseth. Apparently President Trump believes that Rubio and Hegseth would do a better job of running Venezuela than an elected Venezuelan government. This press conference was held at Trump's estate known as Mar-a-Lago. Then Trump might have engaged in perhaps his top priority. That is his tee-off time for a golf game.  

The news media ran this story with banner headlines. However, when we look at the history of this country, Trump's actions reflect a long and disastrous series of military engagements. This blog will look at that history and show how the military has, for the most part, been used for the sole purpose of enriching the most affluent people in this country.

The revolution of the thirteen colonies

Today the President argues that his criminal kidnapping of President Maduro will benefit the people of Venezuela. Apparently Trump feels that this will happen by giving billions of dollars of Venezuelan money to the U.S. oil companies. 

He might recall that the United States became a nation because of a revolutionary war for independence. During that war there were many British supporters known as "tories" who opposed the revolution. After the revolution many of those tories moved to Canada. 

The new United States government responded by confiscating the land that was owned by the tories who no longer lived here. If we look at the value of that land, with interest compounded over a period of 250 years that price tag would be the equivalent of the value of several of the largest cities in this country.

The Haitian Revolution

A revolution erupted in Haiti after the revolution of the thirteen colonies. Haitian slaves were the backbone of the armed forces that decisively defeated armies from Spain, Britain, and France. 

We might consider that when Toussaint Louverture came to a meeting the negotiate peace, the French armed forces kidnapped him. Since the French armed forces under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte weren't interested in peace, the armed forces of former Haitian slaves gave them another outcome. Under the command of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the entire French armed force was destroyed. 

That defeat also destroyed the French economy. As a result, Napoleon sold the French Louisiana Territory to the United States. So, today when we look at that former Louisiana Territory, we are looking at land purchased because of a revolution for independence and an abolition of slavery.

Two world wars 

Today we live under a political economic system of capitalism. When we look at the long history of this system, we see that its core has always been international in character. We also see that this system needs to continually grow and sell more and more commodities. 

A central leader of the Russian Revolution was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lenin argued that "Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism." So here we see a fundamental contradiction of capitalism. As the system grows continually, this growth isn't shared by everyone. No, nations compete with each other to determine what capitalist nation will dominate the world.

Before the First World War, Britain was the world's superpower. Then their international influence deteriorated. As a result, there were two world wars that cost the lives of about 80 million people.

Even before the end of World War II, the United States convened a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. There U.S. representatives declared that the United States was the new world superpower. After that meeting the U.S. Air Force dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was a clear signal of what would happen to nations that didn't go along with U.S. world domination. 

Korea

The Korean people didn't go along with this new state of affairs. They had the temerity of demanding their own government. The U.S. government didn't agree with this and installed Syngman Rhee, who had been educated in the United States while the Korean people were resisting Japanese domination.

General Douglas MacArthur didn't think the Koreans would offer much resistance to the U.S. armed forces. Then a combined force of Chinese and Korean soldiers captured an entire brigade of the United States invading army. President Truman then fired General MacArthur. 

Then the U.S. Air Force conducted intense bombing raids against North Korea that destroyed most buildings and led to the murder of millions.  To this day, the United States hasn't signed a peace agreement with Korea. Apparently the reason for this is because the U.S. government doesn't want to admit that their armed forces were decisively defeated by Chinese and Korean soldiers who defended Korea from a U.S. invasion.

Vietnam

The Vietnamese people didn't want to be dominated by a puppet regime controlled by the United States. Even U.S. President Eisenhower acknowledged that if there was a vote in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, the national leader of Vietnam, would have won 90%. That wasn't acceptable to the U.S. government. 

So, President Lyndon Bains Johnson decided to end his Great Society program aimed at eliminating poverty here. Instead he mobilized hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers and ordered a bombing campaign he called Rolling Thunder. 

The anti-war movement mushroomed in this country. Johnson became President because of a landslide election victory. However, after people began to see the effects of the war against Vietnam, many changed their attitude about President Johnson. Some people greeted him with the slogan "Hey, hey LBJ. How many babies did you kill today?" Faced with that environment Lyndon Johnson chose not to run for reelection.

President Nixon attempted to be just like Johnson. He ordered the bombing campaigns that he called Linebacker I and Linebacker II. Then Nixon was effectively forced out of office rather than face impeachment proceedings. 

Cuba

Fulgensio Batista was one of many ruthless dictators in the world who had the full support of the United States government. On January 1, 1959, a popular revolution forced Batista out of the country. The new revolutionary government headed by Fidel Castro immediately initiated a literacy program. Within a few years nearly every Cuban had the ability to read. Today, Cuba might have more doctors per capita than any other nation in the world.

The United States government clearly didn't like these initiatives. They organized an invasion of the island at the Bay of Pigs or Playa Girón. That invasion was quickly defeated. The U.S. government continued to advocate for the overthrow of the new Cuban revolutionary government. So, the Presidential Administration of John F. Kennedy threatened the world with nuclear annihilation. This was to prevent Cuba from having some of the same armaments as the United States. 

However, today the Cuban government continues to hold power. I was in Havana on May 1 in 2017 and 2019 and witnessed the Cuban celebration of May Day. There I saw over one-million Cubans enthusiastically supporting their government.

Jim Crow and America on Fire  

Before the early 1960s, the United States government denied Black people citizenship rights because of Jim Crow segregation. Then masses of people mobilized in Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, Alabama and in many other states. These demonstrators were met with fire hoses, attack dogs, and prison sentences. Yet they persevered and the government did away with the Jim Crow laws.

Then in hundreds of cities across the country Black communities erupted in rebellions protesting institutionalized racist discrimination and routine police brutality. Elizabeth Hinton documented this in her important book America on Fire. The government responded by offering some educational and employment opportunities to Black people. However, institutionalized discrimination continues to this day.

Palestine

Over the past two years the world has witnessed the unimaginable mass murder, mutilation, and starvation of the Palestinian people. These atrocities are merely a continuation of the 76 year old Israeli policy to make Israel and exclusively Jewish nation. 

These atrocities have made Israel a pariah nation in the world. Israeli citizens today have no idea of what the future will bring. Many view the status quo as unsustainable. These horrors have been made possible by massive financial and military support from the United States. 

Iraq and Afghanistan

Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth argues that the current military engagements by the United States will not end as they did in Iraq. According to Hegseth, the military was held back in Iraq. Had they been allowed to have unrestricted use of military force, he believes the United States might have been successful. The war in Iraq only created an environment of instability in the area. 

Before the war against Afghanistan the Taliban was the ruling power. After the longest war in U.S. history, the United States armed forces withdrew from Afghanistan. As a result, the Taliban gained political power again.

Conclusion

So, when we look at this long history, there are a few obvious conclusions. People throughout the world have been fighting for independence for a long time. The United States government hasn't learned anything from this long history. Democratic and Republican politicians have been agreed that it is more important to murder people in other countries, rather than improve the standard of living here. They are in fundamental agreement with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who argued that, "There is no other way."

However, just because the government hasn't learned anything from history, this doesn't mean working people haven't learned anything. 

We have no interest in murdering our sisters and brothers in other countries. We might think of how the U.S. government wasn't able to engage in war for an entire decade because of their decisive defeat in their war against Vietnam. 

It is in that spirit that we demand, Hands Off Venezuela Now!!!    

             

  

The $79 trillion gift to the most affluent one percent

There is an old saying that, “The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” That old saying is backed up by a recent Rand Corporation study. It concluded that from 1975 to 2023 there was a transfer of wealth from the least affluent ninety percent of the population to the most affluent one percent in the United States. That amount totaled about seventy-nine trillion dollars.

The Rand Corporation used three factors to come up with their conclusion. One was the tremendous growth in the U.S. economy since 1975. Then, there was inflation that reduced the buying power of working people. Then, there was a decline in the share of the economy owed by the least affluent 90% of the population. This decline went from about 65% in 1975 to about 45% in 2023. According to my calculations, this meant that if working people had an equivalent wealth as we did in 1975, everyone in the least affluent 90% of the population would have about $250,000 more assets.  

The billionaires of the world had many schemes that allowed them to take this vast amount of money. 

Health Care

During the years 1975 to 2023 about 700 hospitals closed their doors. While this was happening, drug companies were making a fortune selling astronomically expensive drugs. Opioids were some of the most lucrative selling drugs. Opioids also caused millions of people to become addicted to drugs. Now, drug addiction is one of the leading causes of death. 

President Trump has been murdering people on boats sailing in the Caribbean Sea. He claims that he is saving the lives of 20,000 people for each person he’s murdered. Yet he offers no evidence that these people are trafficking drugs. The President hasn’t been saying anything about the fact that large numbers of people became addicted to drugs after using legal opioids prescribed by doctors. 

I live in Philadelphia and this city offers a good example of how the affluent are gouging out huge amounts of money from health care. At the same time as 700 hospitals closed their doors. The University of Pennsylvania Hospital and Jefferson Hospital have invested billions of dollars in new health care buildings. We can speculate that the money used to put up these buildings came from banks, or investment companies. Those investors will expect interest payments on their investments every month. 

Temple University Hospital is also located in Philadelphia. Temple isn’t making the same investments as the other two hospitals. One reason is that Temple has the more hospital beds than the other two hospitals in the city. This means that the investors in health care see that financing beds in hospitals isn’t the best way to make money. They would prefer to invest in the most lucrative specialties. This, so patients can see a doctor and leave in a hurry. 

Education

Back in 1972 I attended Rutgers University. At that time the tuition for a New Jersey resident was $200 per semester. Today that same tuition is $11,619. So, imagine if a worker had an annual wage of $10,000 in 1975. If that worker had the same wage increase as the price increase for tuition at Rutgers, their annual wage would be about $580,000. Clearly most of us don’t even know anyone who has that salary. 

Back in 1975 the United States was one of the primary manufacturing nations in the world. In those years there were plentiful jobs for engineering graduates.

Today China is the leading manufacturing nation in the world. So, engineers have no problem in finding work there. In the United States students are gravitating towards degrees in business administration. This is because those jobs are more lucrative than the engineering jobs. Because of the astronomical cost of education, university students have a real incentive to major in the most lucrative specialties. However, while engineering is necessary for industrial production, business administration is about maximizing corporate profits. 

Racism

The overall decline in the standard of living has been the most brutal with respect to the least affluent 20% of the population. Because of the institutionalized racist discrimination in this country, Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected. This means there are fewer resources for health care, education, and housing in those areas. More people rely on substandard mass transit systems. Access to fresh food in supermarkets is more difficult to obtain.

In the past, when the economy was growing, there was a labor shortage. So, there were incentives to attract workers from other countries to come here. Now as the economy is in a downturn, politicians in the democratic and republican parties are targeting workers for deportation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) officers are raiding homes and workplaces to apprehend wealth producing workers so they can be deported. 

While racist attitudes aren’t as open as they used to be among workers, many workers do not understand the need to advance the demand of equal rights for everyone. However, when we look at the $79 trillion gift working people gave to the most affluent, we see how the driving force for racist discrimination is the tenacious drive to maximize corporate profits.

Problems with the Rand Corporation study

In my opinion, there are a few problems with the study by the Rand Corporation. One is that corporations profit from the working class all over the world. This is the driving force behind the fact that about 80% of the world’s population lives on $10 per day. So, the $79 trillion that the most affluent one percent took came from workers all over the world.

The other problem is about all the enterprises that add nothing to the value of goods and services we all need and want. However, those enterprises add to the overall cost of living. I’m talking about banks, insurance companies, advertising agencies, landlords, and corporate law firms. Most of the skyscrapers in the large cities house these enterprises and these are visual aids to the exploitation of the working class. 

The cost of these enterprises in included in the prices we pay, yet goods and services are in no way better because of the existence of these enterprises. So, when we look at this reality, I believe we can say that the working class gave up a lot more than $79 trillion in the last fifty years.

Is there another way?

Reading this blog, someone might ask the question. How could that $79 trillion be used in a more meaningful way? From the capitalist point of view, this is a meaningless question. The former Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, explained this with the following words. “There is no other way.”

The author Francis Fukuyama wrote a book where he argued that we are living with “the end of history.”  In other words, the political economic system that took $79 trillion away from working people is the best humanity is capable of.

I happen to be a communist. While many people support aspects of socialism, most people aren’t ready to participate in a movement that puts another political economic system in power. So, why do I advocate for this perspective?

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels developed a philosophy they called dialectical materialism. This way of thinking is different from the formal logic we were all raised with. 

We would all like to believe that if we save our money, one day we might be able to purchase the things we need, as well as some of the things we want. Then one day we might be able to retire. 

Dialectical materialism argues that society doesn’t conform to preconceived ideas. Rather our reality is a continuous battle between contending forces. 

This explains why there was an economic upturn in this country for about thirty years after the Second World War. Then, as the economy here stagnated, and the Chinese economy erupted. So, while Chinese manufacturing dominates the world today, we can anticipate a sharp downturn in that economy as well.

Marx and Engels also exposed the weakness of the capitalist economy in their Communist Manifesto published in 1848. They argued that the disease of capitalism is the crisis of “overproduction.” In other words, there comes a time when workers are not buying the capitalists are selling. Then, producing commodities is no longer profitable. 

In the 1990s I experienced this when an automobile plant I worked in closed its doors. The company terminated the jobs of about 2,500 workers. The newspaper reported that the reason given for this shutdown was “excess capacity.” What the newspaper didn’t report is that Marx and Engels predicted this in the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

In the capitalist framework correcting wealth inequality is about giving workers more money. However, socialism isn’t only about a redistribution of wealth. Socialism is about making human needs and not profits the top priority.

In other words, a socialist government would make it their top priority to provide for the needs of everyone all over the world. Rather than merely giving people money, that government would establish lifetime rights for all our needs. Goods and services would be routinely made of the highest quality. The production process would operate in harmony with the environment. The goal would be to give everyone lifetime rights to food, clothing, housing, health care, education, transportation, communication, and exposure to culture that would include art, music, theater, film, literature, sports, and recreation.

As our standard of living continues to deteriorate, I believe millions of workers will begin to demand fundamental change. Understanding that transformative change is indeed possible I believe workers can be won to the perspective of making this a world where young people can begin to live and flourish in the world.    

Zionism is Racism—50 years since UN Resolution

A review of the meeting by Steve Halpern 

A few days ago, I attended a meeting titled Zionism is Racism—50 years since UN Resolution 3379 sponsored by the Unitarian Society of Germantown in Philadelphia. This meeting protested the unimaginable Israeli organized genocide against the Palestinian people.  

About 200 people came to fill the church for the meeting. There were four important speeches. These were by Noura Erakat, a Palestinian attorney and professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Rutgers University, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, Emmala Gelman, the director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, and Arun Kundnani, a member of Philadelphia Parents for Palestine. 

Many groups co-sponsored this event. Those groups set up tables we all could view after the formal meeting. Food was served, but the ample amount of prepared food ran out because of the large number of attendees. 

I was glad I attended the meeting for a few reasons. While I’ve been reading a lot about the Zionist organized genocide in Gaza, I learned many things from the speakers. This meeting was organized to allow the speakers to give extended presentations so those who attended would be better prepared to advance the demand of Ceasefire Now and support for Palestinian liberation. The theme of the meeting was “Zionism is Racism—50 years since UN Resolution 3379.” The speakers gave the long history to underscore the argument. It was encouraging to see all the people who came out to support the movement in some way. However, I felt there was also a limitation to the meeting.

The dictatorship of Donald J. Trump

When I attended school, my teachers argued that we not only live in a “democracy”, but that the United States is the “greatest democracy in the history of the world.” When we look at the facts, it becomes clear that this country was never a genuine democracy. 

The government has always made it their top priority to support the interests of the most affluent people who live here. So, I believe we live in a plutocracy or a nation where the government serves the interests of the wealthy. We can also say that this has been a brutally ruthless dictatorship. 

Donald Trump has removed the democratic veneer that hid this dictatorship. Now we can say that the United States government is about doing basically whatever Donald Trump wants. The Democratic Party and the courts have shown that they have no serious interest in challenging Trump’s dictates. 

This meeting and many others demonstrate that there are large numbers of people who disapprove of Trump’s dictates. Around the world there have been continuous demonstrations of hundreds of thousands who are enraged by the crimes of the Israeli government in the Middle East.

I have attended many Ceasefire Now demonstrations in Philadelphia, Washington DC, and New York City. During the initial months of the genocide hundreds of thousands of people attended these demonstrations. However, while large demonstrations continue erupt in other countries, currently the demonstrations here are smaller and sporadically organized.

Today many people who are demanding an end to the genocide are not convinced that large demonstrations are fundamentally important. They see how there have been large actions and the genocide continues. As a result, there are several groups organizing small actions. So, my question is: Are demonstrations the most effective way to protest Israeli organized genocide?

A short history of the mass movements in the United States

First, we can look at history to see how demonstrations were effective. During the 1930s the labor movement erupted with the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. At that time workers found it difficult to feed and house a family on the wages they received. There was a reluctance to protest these conditions because of the huge numbers of workers who were unemployed. 

Then in San Francisco, California, Toledo, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minnesota workers went on strikes that won real gains. The success of those strikes came about because of mass determined support from working class communities. That movement continued and established the beginnings of what was once a powerful labor movement in this country.

A few months after the lynching of Emmet Till, Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Because of the Jim Crow laws, the police arrested Parks for her act of defiance. The Black community responded to the arrest of Parks with a boycott of the busses in Montgomery. That boycott lasted for over a year. Other mass actions followed for several years. Then in the mid 1960s the federal government passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Those laws as well as the changing consciousness made possible by the civil rights movement effectively did away with Jim Crow segregation.

Women needed two waves of protests to win many of the rights they have today. The first wave of feminism won the right for women to vote. President Woodrow Wilson was adamantly opposed to this right and ordered the arrest of suffragettes who demanded the right to vote in front of the White House. In prison the suffragettes went on a hunger strike. Prison guards responded by inserting a tube into the throat of the leader Alice Paul to force-feed her. This was how women won the right to vote in this country.

Before the 1970s most women were not allowed to wear pants at work. They were not allowed to have a credit card or purchase birth control if they weren’t married. Abortion was against the law and many women lost their lives or were mutilated because of injuries sustained in back alley illegal abortions. 

Then a mass movement erupted that changed the consciousness in this country. Clearly much more needs to be done so women and Black people will have full equality. However, when we look the environment before the movements for Black and women’s rights there have been significant changes.

Few people protested the war the United States organized against Korea in 1950. In the early stages of the war against Vietnam, few people protested. Then as people began to see the horror of that war on television, and saw young people drafted to fight in that war, many asked the question: Why the war was happening? 

As a result, the demonstrations against the war became larger. However, the unimaginable horror of the war continued, and some people argued that the movement needed to have a different strategy. This strategy called for deliberately breaking the law in order to make spectacular statements that might draw more attention.

The news media went along with this strategy and consistently publicized demonstrations that broke the law where people were arrested. The media gave little coverage to the much larger demonstrations that were legal. (We should keep in mind that the armed forces of the government murdered several people who legally demonstrated against the war.)

The anti-war movement responded to this situation by forming national coalitions that held conferences where the different strategies were discussed and debated. Those conferences didn’t oppose the actions that violated the law. However, the majority of the attendees at those conferences voted to organize legal demonstrations. Those actions would be defended by trained participants who were assigned to be marshals. Fred Halstead reported on this history in his book Out Now. 

While it took several years for the war against Vietnam to end, Eventually, about 80% of the population in this country opposed the war. President Lyndon Bains Johnson refused to run for reelection because of the anti-war movement. President Richard Nixon was booted out of office because of the changing atmosphere in this country caused by the anti-war movement. However, we should make no mistake, the primary reason the armed forces of this country left Vietnam was because of the national liberation movement in that country.

Ceasefire Now

When we look at the contrast between the consistent mass demonstrations in other countries to the Ceasefire Now movement here, I believe we can learn something. On the one hand, there is an international mass sentiment that is willing and able to protest the unimaginable genocide that continues to be inflicted on the Palestinian people. However, while huge actions are taking place in other countries, here the initially large actions have tapered down to smaller and sporadic demonstrations. 

This is in no way due to an unwillingness to protest against the genocide. In my opinion, the main reason why larger actions aren’t happening is because of a lack of appreciation for how large demonstrations are the most effective way to advance the movement. So, what needs to happen?

Just as in the movement that protested the war against Vietnam, we need a national coalition that is in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. There was a recent conference in Detroit where people came together to discuss solidarity. However, from what I can tell, no mass actions are being organized. If mass demonstrations are planned, I see no publicity for those actions. What does this state of affairs tell us?

At the Zionism is Racism meeting many groups summarized their actions. In my opinion, all those groups need to make it their top priority to come together and organize more educationals, mass meetings, and national demonstrations.

We’ve seen how there is little opposition within the government to Donald Trump’s dictates with respect to Palestine, deportations, the termination of federal employees, the right to freedom of speech, as well as the right to an education free of government censorship. 

The history of this country gives us a clear message. Since the courts and the Democratic Party aren’t making a serious attempt to stop Trump’s dictates. Therefore, all the people who want the genocide to stop and support Palestinian liberation need to find ways to come together. We have the potential to make a difference. Why engage in many small actions when we can come together week after week and build towards the largest demonstrations this country has ever seen?    

Two meetings I attended after the No Kings demonstration

Image by Käthe Kollwitz

By Steve Halpern

This past Saturday I attended the No Kings demonstration in Philadelphia. An estimated 100,000 people participated in Philly and about five million throughout the country. While the primary issue of these demonstrations was many of the dictatorial decisions of Donald Trump, there were many protesters who had a specific focus. These included opposition to the mass deportations, opposition to aid for the Israeli organized genocide, as well as Israel’s current war against Iran. 

I believe there was fundamental agreement that there are serious problems in this country. The Democratic Party isn’t offering any responsible opposition. As a result, about five-million people felt the need to come out in the streets.

After the demonstration, I attended two meetings where I got a feel for what people are thinking. The first was an educational organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation that focused on the Juneteenth national holiday. The other was organized by local Philadelphia politicians to discuss issues people are concerned about. Those politicians also attended the No Kings demonstration.

Juneteenth Educational

About thirty people attended the Juneteenth educational organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Most of the people were young and I appeared to be the old head at 72 years of age. Several speakers spoke about the significance of Juneteenth, the background, the aftermath, and how this holiday is relevant for us today. 

I didn’t expect to agree with all of the arguments, but that wasn’t the point. All of the speakers were well informed and the audience clearly appreciated their efforts. The presentations started with the history before the Greek and Roman Empires. This is when humanity lived in difficult times, but there was genuine equality. We were introduced to little known highly developed African civilizations. Those empires influenced the Greek and Roman Empires we learned about in school. 

Then we learned about how the Civil War was, in reality, the Second American Revolution. While capitalists in the north profited from slavery, they also developed interests that would eventually cause them to go to war against the slave owners.

Then, a speaker introduced us to W.E.B. DuBois book Black Reconstruction in America. This book gives us a feel for the transforming effect of the reconstruction governments after the Civil War. It also argued that the participation of former slaves was necessary for the Union victory. Hundreds of thousands of former slaves left the plantations and this meant the confederate army had extreme difficulty in finding food. The Black soldiers also played a pivotal role. The Union army needed soldiers because of deaths, injuries, and desertions. 

Then, for a time, there was a genuine effort to bring equality to the former slave states in the reconstruction era. This attitude, no doubt, gave Black people who lived in Galveston, Texas reason to celebrate Juneteenth when they learned of the abolition of slavery. Black people went from being slaves to sitting in government positions. The educational system was transformed. Many Blacks and whites began attending school for the first time. 

However, as with all revolutions, there was a backlash. Many former abolitionists adopted themselves to the new reality where the terrorist Ku Klux Klan organized to strip Black people of their citizenship rights. After the Union Army withdrew from the former slave states terrorists organized to go to war against those who defended reconstruction. 

The defeat of reconstruction laid the foundation for the Jim Crow laws that flagrantly violated the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. The government adopted those Amendments after the Civil War. While the Supreme Court isn’t supposed to have the power to violate the Constitution, that is exactly what they did in several decisions in support of Jim Crow segregation. 

So, when we think of the repressive policies of the Administration of Donald Trump this is nothing new. However, both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement give us evidence of how masses of working people organized to force the government to change its policies. The people who attended this educational were engaged with these issues and most participated in the discussion.

The meeting of the politicians

Tarik Kahn and Vincent Hughes were two of the politicians who organized this meeting held at the Roxborough Memorial Hospital. They are both members of the Democratic Party. I believe they both attended the No Kings demonstration. About 100 people might have attended this meeting and they were of all ages.

We all received copies of the summary of the budget the Democratic Party supports in Pennsylvania. The politicians all spoke about the enormous cuts proposed by the federal government. These would affect the public transportation system known as SEPTA. Many people in the Delaware Valley depend of SEPTA to go to work. It is extremely challenging to commute to and from center city Philadelphia without public transportation. 

Other proposed cuts are of Medicaid. Today there is an opioid epidemic throughout the country and the cuts in Medicaid would adversely affect this horror. Two of the participants in this meeting had sons who died as a result of this epidemic. Vincent Hughes reported that there are many rural hospitals in Pennsylvania that would close because of the proposed cutbacks in Medicaid. 

Then, these politicians suggested that people contact the two Senators from Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick and John Fetterman. The idea is that if enough people call these senators, they will be motivated to oppose the proposed cutbacks of the federal government. 

For about a full hour people in the audience were allowed to raise their concerns. I had the impression that most people feel we are confronting profound problems. However, it appeared that most people also supported the efforts of this politicians to deal with these problems. 

Then someone spoke about the lack of air-conditioning at Roxborough High School. This person appeared to feel a genuine concern for the students who had to sit in sweltering classrooms trying to learn something.

Then I was allowed to speak and attempted to argue for a different perspective. I started by giving an answer to the question as to why there is no air-conditioning in Roxborough High. The reason is that the state and federal governments are in flagrant violation of the law. Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer wrote a 780-page decision arguing that the inequality in funding for education in Pennsylvania violates the Constitution. 

On the Philadelphia side of City Line Avenue, per student funding for education is about $10,000. When we walk across the street on City Line Avenue, we enter the Lower Merion School district. There per student funding for education is $26,000. I’m sure that students in the Lower Merion School district aren’t sweltering in classes with no air-conditioning. This is the gross disparity in funding that Judge Jubelirer argued is unconstitutional. 

One of the reasons given for this gross disparity in funding is the difference in real estate taxes. However, Philadelphia has several billion-dollar buildings and many that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Lower Merion doesn’t have real estate with those values. However, the most expensive buildings in Philly are commercial and that is the rub. 

While Judge Jubelirer’s decision was not binding, the New Jersey Supreme Court made a decision in the 1981 Abbott v. Burke case that was binding. The court ordered Governor Florio to come up with $700 million for underfunded schools in the state. 

The governor could have at least made an effort to get that money from the most affluent people who lived in the state. However, Governor Florio and the New Jersey state government chose not to take that road. Instead, New Jersey residents pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation. Yet, in spite of massive funding, inner-city schools continue to be underfunded in New Jersey.

Then there is the issue of funding for health care. While many Pennsylvania hospitals are being threatened with closure, 700 hospitals have already closed throughout the country. This is in spite of the fact that the United States pays more for health care, per person, than any other nation in the world. Yet, there are about 45 nations that have higher life expectancy than the United States.

While 700 hospitals have closed, Jefferson University and the University of Pennsylvania Hospitals invested billions of dollars in new construction in Philadelphia. Apparently, these investments are about maximizing the profits taken from health care. 

For instance, Jefferson University finished their billion-dollar Honickman Center last year. This expensive building has no beds, no maternity care, no pediatrics, no mental health, and no primary care. Yet we might speculate that the banks who invested in the Honickman Center expect payments on their investment every month. Those payments include interest, much of which goes to some of the most affluent people in the world. 

Then there is the idea of calling the Pennsylvania senators and asking them to oppose the cuts in federal aid to Pennsylvania. Senators McCormick and Fetterman are both ardent supporters of the Israeli organized genocide against the Palestinian people. I asked the question as to why would we expect anything from these senators when they gave a standing ovation to Benjamin Netanyahu, who, in effect ordered the mass murder and starvation of babies?

So, if the strategy of the politicians isn’t going to be effective, then what would be an effective strategy? I spoke about how the driving force for change in the country has always been the participation of masses of people in struggle. This started with the American Revolution, then there was the Civil War, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, and the women’s movement. I mentioned that today women feel comfortable in wearing pants and not dresses. This was a conquest of the women’s movement during the 1970’s

All this means that we need a mass movement that has realistic goals. Instead of thinking about how much money will be allocated for programs, I believe we need to talk about political rights that we all need. These would be lifetime rights to food, clothing, a place to live, education, and health care.

I received an ovation for my remarks. The politicians had nothing to say in response. My opinion is that people liked the fact that I expressed an anger at what is happening today. On a certain level, they share that anger. However, after the meeting, only a few people approached me thanking me for my remarks. 

Conclusion

In the Juneteenth meeting, I gave my opinion as to why racist discrimination has been so persistent in the history of this country. The capitalist system needs to grow continually. We see this in the obsession by politicians and the news media to support growth of the stock market. The question is, where does the money come from to finance this growth?

This comes from a reality that every worker is aware of. This is the obsession of the owners of corporations to continually cut costs. When employers can pay Black workers less than white workers, this is one way they can minimize their expenses. So, while Judge Jubelirer rules that inequality in funding for education is illegal in Pennsylvania, the state government feels free to essentially ignore that decision.

However, things are changing in the world today. The power brokers in the United States no longer dominate the world as they did in the past. There is nothing democratic or republican politicians can do about that. Their inability to make meaningful change has made this country even more repressive than it was in the past. ICE agents now are illegally arresting and deporting people who lived and worked here for decades. Even Senator Alex Padilla was assaulted, pushed to the floor, and handcuffed, for merely asking a question to Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem.

However, while the government makes this a more repressive place to live, working people will continue to find ways to resist and overcome the recent madness we are being exposed to.