Author: icsswpadmin

This Sunday at the Marxist Library, we will review the destructive impact of the Covid pandemic, the catastrophic capitalist response, political and economic repercussions, and a prognosis for our future. Speaker: Allan Miller, ICSS Program Committee

Anne Lewis is an independent documentary-maker and professor of practice at UT-Austin. Her work reveals working class people fighting for social change. Anne was associate director/assistant camera for HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A. After the strike, she moved to the east Kentucky coalfields where she lived for 25 years. Documentaries she produced, directed, and edited include: ANNE BRADEN: SOUTHERN PATRIOT; MORRISTOWN: IN THE AIR AND SUN, a working class critique of globalization; JUSTICE IN THE COALFIELDS about the UMWA strike against Pittston; ON OUR OWN LAND about community organizing against stripmining; CHEMICAL VALLEY about environmental racism; FAST FOOD WOMEN; and A STRIKE AND AN UPRISING (IN TEXAS).

Anne recently completed a series of print and video pieces with Jennifer Harbury about the U.S./Mexico border, and RAULRSALINAS AND THE POETRY OF LIBERATION: UN TRIP. She is a proud member of the executive board of the Texas State Employees Union, TSEU-CWA 6186. www.annelewis.org

The presentation will describe what’s in the US six packages of sanctions announced to date, distinguish between financial sanctions from goods & trade sanctions and individuals’ sanctions, and estimate their current stage of implementation of each. How US capitalists are enormously benefiting from the Russian sanctions. Thereafter, the discussion focuses on what’s been the impact of sanctions on Russia’s economy to date, as well as the growing consequence for Europe, US, and emerging markets economies–in terms of inflation, recession, and growing global financial markets’ fragility and potential instability. The presentation concludes with an assessment of the contradictions of sanctions for US imperialism and why sanctions on Russia represent a de facto declaration of economic war on Russia by the US as US imperialism comes under increasing challenge in the 21st century, becomes more aggressive in decline, and seeks to restore its prior hegemony, first in Europe and soon therefore in Asia.

Dr. Jack Rasmus, Ph.D Political Economy, teaches economics at St. Mary’s College in California. He is the author and producer of the various nonfiction and fictional workers, including the books The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy From Reagan to Bush, Clarity Press, October 2019

The midterm congressional elections will soon be upon us. We will again be told, as we are every two years, that the most important election of our lifetimes is impending.

Meanwhile the super-rich take recreational flights into outer space, and neoliberalism – the contemporary form of capitalism – is not meeting working people’s needs.

Was Biden’s primetime lecture from Liberty Hall on September 1 a democracy speech or a demonization speech against half of our fellow citizens?

Was it a needed prop to “our democracy” or another slide down the path of a heightened security state lurching in the direction of fascism?

How does the circus of the two-party system function to serve class interests?

Roger Harris, who is on the program committee for the ICSS and the state central committee of the Peace and Freedom Party, will kick off the discussion, based on his recent Counterpunch article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/02/the-politics-of-anti-trumpism/

Other panelists and participants will be invited to join in a robust discussion of political response to the failures of neoliberalism and dangers ahead.