Shifting Focus: Organizing for Revolution, Not Crisis Avoidance, Part 1

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Notes

1 In this article we are using the “left” to mean those forces in society consciously and deliberately seeking to eliminate exploitation and the systems of oppression.

2 The phrase “Global South” refers broadly to the regions of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

3 Commodity = goods or services (including labor itself) produced for exchange in the market.

4 “Bourgeoisie” is a French term used by Marx and others for the capitalist class, the owners of the means of production and the vast majority of society’s wealth.

5 The aristocracy in the 13 North American colonies chafed against economic and political domination by the British colonial empire. The French, competing for colonial dominance with the British in Europe and the “new world” backed the North American revolt.

6 Many colonial exceptions remain such as Palestine, Kashmir, East Timor, Western Sahara, Euskal Herria, Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Northern Ireland, Quebec, New Afrika, etc.)

7 The OECD has 38 country members. Including Western European, most East European, the US, Australia, Japan and a few Latin American. Within the OECD there is significant uneven development

8 See “Billionaires in Space” https://www.thenation.com/article/society/branson-bezos-space/”, “Billionaires in Space: Launch of a dream or a just out of this world ego” https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/07/18/billionaire-space-race/, “Leave the Billionaires in Space”, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/billionaires-space-richard-branson-jeff-bezos-elon-musk, “NASA to pay $1 to collect rocks from the moon” https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55170788, and “The Space Economy is about to get a lot bigger” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EocNWqu9JrI.

9 The Popular Front arose as a strategy of building multiclass coalitions to fight fascism by the communist parties of Spain, France and Germany and the US. It resulted in the subordination of the class struggle of the working class in order to work with middle-class and anti-fascist capitalist forces against the segments of capital embracing fascism. It meant adopting nationalist and social democratic goals, in effect abandoning the struggle against capitalism itself.

10 Proponents of Modern Monetary Theory, influential in the Democrat Party, argue that no state with a robust economy that controls its own currency has to worry about printing money to pay off private and public debt, as long as they keep an eye on inflation. But the conjuring of new money debases the value of existing capital and the US is already floating its economy on government, corporate and private debt now.