The Neoliberal University: Part 1

Summary and Review of “Universities in a Neo-Liberal World” by Alex Callinicos (Bookmarks 2006)

Although the scale of both the neoliberal assault and student/worker resistance has increased dramatically in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the privatization of higher education has been underway for decades. While written in 2006 and from a British perspective, Alex Callinicos' pamphlet “Universities in a Neo-liberal World” provides a valuable overview of that transformation and of the new form capitalism is imposing on the University.

Callinicos finds the ideological foundation of the modern University more broadly within Neoliberalism, but specifically within the concept of the “Knowledge Economy” which came to the forefront during the dotcom bubble of the 1990's. Essentially the advocates of the knowledge economy advance the idea that with a shift in production from material to service goods production becomes more knowledge intensive, relying on highly trained workers, “human capital” which is the key to maintaining global competitiveness. Although the claims of “knowledge capitalism” are highly questionable, as are the claims of a relationship between a nation's “competitiveness” and the actual well being of it's poor and working class, it remains the dominant ideology driving a turn towards neoliberalism and competition within the University.

In line with most of the practice of neoliberalism the neoliberal university is not only leaner and more “efficient” but where it is funded it serves as a direct public subsidy to corporate interests. As Capitalism has come to rely on increasingly more and more advanced technologies the cost of research and development has skyrocketed, causing major corporations to move from in house research to a reliance on external firms, whether research powerhouses, smaller venture capitalist sponsored enterprises, or public and private Universities. It is as a research powerhouse for corporate projects that Universities, which have had their standard budgets gutted, are to reborn as “efficient” and “competitive” institutions.

As the logic of capitalism has imposed itself on the University it has been reflected not only in budget cuts and overcrowded classrooms but increasingly in the measurement and production of academic work. Seeking to quantify knowledge and creativity the new business oriented management of Universities has constructed elaborate and bureaucratic evaluation systems which privilege quantity and “quality” of academic publishing in determining the future of academic workers.* These evaluate academic employees based on crude measurements of research output which become harder to live up to as more workers adhere to and seek to compete within the framework. Ironically Neoliberalism, the pure logic of capitalism, finds that it's academic reflection bears more in common with the absurdities and inefficiencies of a Stalinist bureaucracy, desperately and tragicomically attempting to judge theory and knowledge by the same categories as tractor production.

Particularly in Britain the competition among individual workers to speed up academic production has been reflected in a broader acceleration of competition and selectivity among Universities. Competition is fierce to attract the most renowned researchers and maintain the kind of "efficiency" which attracts the bulk of state and corporate funding. The results are that “At both the institutional and individual level, success and the rewards associated with it come from research performance”. This despite and seemingly in contradiction to the growth of a “now all pervasive ideology that treats students as customers exercising freedom of choice when applying for courses”. Yet the development in Britain reflects international trends towards a minority of renowned research powerhouses and a majority of underfunded teaching institutions, with a middle ground desperately trying to make it into the former rather then be dragged into the latter.

This transformation of the University has led in turn to a transformation of the class dynamics at work within it. A definite managerial elite, bureaucratic, hierarchical and emulating the corporations they seek to bring the University close to, sits at the top. Vice Chancellors act as the new CEOs, with a mix of former Academics and business school graduates comprising their well paid managerial arm. While a minority of renowned researchers and publicists remains well paid, most university teachers are increasingly “reduced to the condition of highly qualified wage laborers” with temporary lecturers and graduate students taking on the most precarious and poorly paid positions within the system. At the other end is a growing mass of students, increasingly overburdened with debt and low pay retail work, struggling to attain the education that will bring them into the middle-upper strata of the working class.

The acknowledgement of these dynamics however is more then a sad overview of the existing state of affairs, it provides a key to understanding the resistance they must provoke. Callinicos, writing in 2006, points to student uprisings in France and the coherence of a labor movement among lecturers and Britain as the main signs of the potential for resistance in the University. Today it's easy to expand the list of such actions to a student movement which has emerged from Germany to California, as well as a small resurgence in labor organizing in the US by lecturers and graduate students in particular.

For any movement seeking to oppose the neoliberal forces transforming academia and education an effective theorization of the development and direction of the University is essential. Callinicos' Pamphlet while mostly limited to the British context draws out many trends which are being applied by Capitalist governments and corporations internationally. As such it can provide a valuable and effective, if not complete, guide to the neoliberalization of Universities here in the United States and around the world.

The PDF of "Universities in a Neoliberal World" is available here

[Part 2 will explore more in depth the development of these trends in the United States and specifically in California where a significant new movement has emerged to oppose the privatization of Higher Education]

*(For a more in depth and theoretical analysis of the emergence of “Academic Taylorism”, I would recommend “Cognitive Capitalism and the Rat Race” by Massimo de Angeles and David Harvie in Historical Materialism 17)

Book Review: Revolutionary Suicide

"By having no family I have inherited the family of humanity.

By having no possessions I have possessed all.

By rejecting the love of one I have received the love of all.

By surrendering my life to the revolution I have found eternal life.

Revolutionary suicide."



“Revolutionary Suicide” by Huey P. Newton was recently republished and made broadly available as part of the Penguin Classics series. As an autobiography and as a window into the life of the Black Panthers it is extremely significant. However the power of “Revolutionary Suicide” lies not merely in the story it tells but for the way in which it enunciates the moral foundations upon which broader revolutionary theory and practice is based. In this way Newton earns his place not only among the great revolutionary activists of the world, but stands with and of the tradition of authors like Maxim Gorky, giving voice to the inspiration behind lives dedicated to the struggle against capitalism.

Newton begins the book aptly enough not with a discussion of birth but one of death. He opens with reflections on the growing rates of suicide among black men which came to his attention while reading during his imprisonment. Basing himself on the Sociologist Emile Durkheim's conception of all suicides being based in broader social conditions, Newton elaborated his theory of revolutionary and reactionary suicide. Reactionary Suicide is “the reaction of a man who takes his own life in response to social conditions that overwhelm him and condemn him to helplessness”. Beyond reactionary suicide and even more degrading is the cynical acceptance of ones own oppression, “a death of the spirit rather then of the flesh” which consigns its victims to a life without meaning or decency, a life of “quiet desperation” which is a death of it's own kind.

In contrast the path of the revolutionary, of any human being seeking to retain dignity and self respect in the face of oppression, is one of resistance at any cost. “I do not think life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment... Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder then to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions.” Revolutionary Suicide is nothing less then the total commitment to demand respect and humanity at any cost, a demand which as history would prove was sure to bring the state's murderous represseion down upon the Panthers. Yet this is not to be confused with a cynical acceptance of death or repression, in contrast it, like all revolutionary ideologies is grounded in the hope and longing for a world that could be. “The concept of revolutionary suicide is not defeatist or fatalistic. On the contrary, it conveys an awareness of reality in combination with the possibility of hope – reality because the revolutionary must always be prepared to face death, and hope because it symbolizes a resolute determination to bring about change.”

Newton relates his background and upbringing (including the somewhat surprising origin of his name), his progress from a disillusioned youth to one of the founders of the Black Panther party, his trial and imprisonment, release, and the work of the Black Panther Party in the aftermath of the split with Eldridge Cleaver. Newton's writing style is direct and clear, yet rhetorically effective and engaging. He succeeds in weaving the underlying philosophy of revolutionary suicide into each conflict and transformation, demonstrating in practice what he advocates in theory. Though at times the narrative appears dragged down by some of the infighting within and without the Black Panthers, the work is a product of it's time of which the first cracks in the Party are as much a part of as the incredible revolutionary devotion the book captures. "Revolutionary Suicide", and in particular the revolutionary philosophy Newton incorporates into each aspect of his story, is in many ways a more accurate representation of the spirit and potential of Newton and Panthers then any history showing their decline and collapse in the face of resurgent conservatism and state repression could be.

We Will Sweep them Aside

[March 4th, 2010, Main Rally of Successful UC Santa Cruz One Day Strike]

Nearly 50 years after the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, we find ourselves in a world in which all the traces of a progressive society, every organ of resistance and every concession rested through years of struggle has been so emaciated by decades of reaction that the very thing against which they rebelled appears to us almost like a fantasy.

Whereas the radicals of the 1960′s were inspired to rebel against a process in which they were crafted and shaped into products for Corporate America, we now find ourselves compelled to revolt against a world which no longer wants the product we’re mortgaging more and more of our lives to become.

Yet there is a unity to these two eras, both then and now the institution of the UC and it’s role within society has remained essentially the same. The UC was created not in any way to advance social justice or equality, but as an instrument of corporate welfare. A so called “Knowledge factory” through which society as a whole would finance the training of workers for big business. The offices and laboratories constructed through student fees and state funding host research advancing the interest of Corporate America.

What is happening now is that all the frills and fringe benefits are being stripped away leaving only the corporate core of exploitation.

What we are experiencing here at the UC is a structural adjustment, liquidation on a scale contingent with the closed factories of Michigan, the ruins of New Orleans and the slave conditions under which everything we consume is produced.

The slashing of worker’s wages and the exponential growth of student fees to pay for administrator salaries and construction contracts is part of the same program behind the bank bailout and the Health Insurance sellout, a program which constitutes nothing less then the relentless exploitation, taxation and immiseration of the Working Class to maintain a system in crisis. A system which has become so broken and so incapable of managing society that it has begun to turn on and devour every positive, human achievement it was made to spawn.

The Administration here say that our strike is impeding learning, that we are destructive, that we are even violent. Their unbridled hypocrisy would be amusing if it were not believed by so many.

You say we are impeding learning? Who’s the one slashing majors, cutting classes and firing lecturers?

You say we are destructive? What’s a dirty carpet or broken table against the corrupt way the UC regents are appointed and the shattered dreams of students saddled with debt?

You say we are violent? Who’s the one obliterating the wages and hours of workers, enforcing cuts that will rip food off working class tables and push families out of their homes?

The strikes and occupations which our movement advances are acts of self defense by the Students and Workers of this University against the systematic violence being perpetrated against us.

We are here shutting down this campus here rather then begging for crumbs in Sacramento because we do not merely seek the rejuvenation of this University, we seek its transformation. We seek a University which moves beyond a hollow facade of commitment to social justice and which under Student and Worker control actively provides an emancipatory education to catalyze the construction of a human society.

We are a generation which woke up to find itself abandoned by the establishment. With every layoff, with every fee hike, with every liquidated job and every cut social service we are witnessing the thin veneer which has concealed a society of exploitation being stripped away and the naked emperor of the Market revealed in all it’s vile, disgusting mass.

Yet we have woken up to find each other. To find lying next to us the unemployed, the workers, the oppressed and exploited of the world who have been suffering even more and for longer then we’ve been alive.

And we have found that together, united in solidarity, we can, we must Struggle.

And we will struggle until we compel their surrender.

We will struggle until we force them to see that the growing discontent of world’s exploited in the face of their program of cutbacks and bailouts is the real crisis.

We will show them, that if they are unwilling or incapable of allowing us a decent existence, if they can’t find the money for education and food and health care while they still find all the money in the world for their executive bonuses, then we will sweep them aside and advance our own radical vision of a society without them as an accomplished fact.

One Year of Obama

[January 14th, 2010]

January 20th, a little less then a week from today, will mark the first anniversary of Obama’s inauguration. Obama’s promises of change and reform, as well as the historic nature of electing the first African American President, was able to galvanize the hopes of millions, mobilizing students, workers and communities of color to help bring about an unprecedented Democratic majority in the House and Senate. Before I became a Socialist and a Marxist I was actually one of them, and I remember with a mix of nostalgia and embarrassment supporting him against Clinton in the Primaries even as I began to take left politics more seriously. Yet the campaign promises of Obama as he was elected, not to even mention those pushed in the primaries, seem like a wistful dream compared to the reality of a Democratic Administration.

Today, the list of issues progressive expected real action on reads like a mass funeral

Employee Free Choice Act, expected to reward Organized Labor for the immense support it lent Obama in the election, would have helped to combat the drastically undemocratic and illegal union busting practices of big business. It was eviscerated by Democratic Party controlled Committees before being sent off to die without a fight

Health Care Reform, after having the public option whittled down and finally cast away as “unrealistic” despite broad public support, is set to pass in a form that will drastically reduce access to Abortion for most women and which mandates that everyone purchase a broken product from Private Insurance Companies. It provides some government subsidies which will for all intents and purposes act as a massive financial donation to an industry which has betrayed the interests of Americans for decades. And as if the betrayal of Labor over Employee Free Choice Act was insufficient, the Democratic Party Health Care Plan with the support of Obama rubs sulfuric acid in the wounds with a plan to tax the few, hard won decent healthcare plans that Unions have struggled and sacrificed to maintain, in order to finance a tragically backward reform that stands as a firm rebuke to the popular will in the country and the dreams of so many.

Financial Reform has, despite Trillions of dollars being taken on in debt to cover the costs of a corrupt investment banking system, failed to materialize whatsoever. In fact quite ironically, it’s John McCain who’s proposing a bill for financial reform being opposed by President Obama that does precisely what Obama the candidate claimed was necessary by restoring the Glass-Steagul Banking Act that was repealed under Clinton.

In Foreign Policy despite formally dropping the term “War on Terror” Obama has practically maintained continuity with the Bush administration, from the initial disappointment around the maintenance of Robert Gates as Defense Secretary, to a new surge into Afghanistan, an expansion of bombing into Northern Pakistan and now, recently, the expansion of US Military operations to Yemen. Obama had the audaucity to accept the Nobel Peace Prize and use his platform their to justify a policy of continued militarization and occupation that has brought misery to millions.

Not that long ago in late December, according to a UN investigation, 8 Afghan school children, one as young as 11 years old, were executed by NATO forces, some of them being roused from their sleep and then handcuffed before they were murdered. Crimes like this put to rest claims among some liberals that although Bush waged the war badly, Obama will wage it in a just and humanitarian fashion that would be an exception to the whole history of US Foreign Policy.

Closely related to Foreign Policy is the administrations atrocious failure to make any significant improvement for Civil Liberties. Bush policies on indefinite detention in oversea prisons like Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition of prisoners to be tortured overseas, warrantless wiretapping, trial by military tribunals and protection for officials and corporations involved in violating civil rights have all been continued under Obama.

Much of this I’m sure many of you were aware of, and given your presence tonight I suspect most of you don’t need that much more convincing to be disappointed with the results of the Obama Administration’s first year. However the question in the air in the broader left is how did this come to be? How did the promise of the campaign turn into the reality of a compromised Presidency.

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The answer can be found on two closely related levels. First the nature of the state Obama leads, and the role of the Democratic Party within that State.

First, the big question, What is the State? The State as Marxists have traditionally defined it is the instrument through which one class maintains it’s dictatorship over another. Taken at face value this is an almost indefensible statement, we have a government made up of elected representatives, with near universal suffrage and free elections every two years. Taken in isolation, as frequently done in Political and Social Science classes, our governmental structure is an imperfect if democratic government for which it would be ridiculous to claim it was some sort of dictatorship under the rule of Capitalist Oligarchs, complete with top hats, monocles and cigars, sending out their dictates from a smoke filled back room.

In fact the Marxist view stands completely in opposition to this sort of caricatured view. We could actually even assume for the purpose of argument the most democratic imaginable government, the very ideal of liberal ideology unimpaired by the electoral system, campaign financing, etc.– and we could still claim it to be the instrument of Class Rule. This is because however democratic the government appears in isolation, it can only be understood in the real world as an entity part of and fundamentally shaped by the totality of Global Capitalism.

Everything in the world exists within the reality of Capitalism, a system predicated on the organization of everything that creates social wealth as Private Property, in which the Market will compel the concentration of private property in fewer and fewer hands, shaping a world like the one today, in which just the richest 2% of the world controls half the world’s wealth, in which the poorest 50% of the world controls just 1% of the wealth.*

It is a system driven by the process of accumulation, the search for profit which takes the immense circulation of commodities to a scale almost beyond our comprehension, with Trillions of dollars pouring into this or that region, this or that financial market or sector and rushing back out again in the course of moments of trading on the stock exchange. One which can liquidate factories and jobs, which can make or break lives and bury nations according to the whims of the Market. Under these conditions anything which threatens that process of accumulation, any social program maintained through higher taxes or reform aimed towards reigning in these forces, will be punished by the withdrawal of Capital.

(As a contemporary example, earlier today I was watching an episode of PBS’ Bill Moyer’s Journal, a liberal program, in which they pointed out that in the face of increased taxes and regulations the UK’s local branch of Goldman Sachs was threatening to move to Switzerland.)

In our theoretical ideal liberal democracy, the state is continuously forced to adapt to the whims and temper tantrums of the Market which determines people real livelihoods, how they eat and sleep, all things which constitute the real essence of power in society. Unless confronted with mass power and presented with a situation potentially dangerous enough to threaten Capitalism, as existed in the 1930′s and 1960′s, the Capitalist Class will not impose the kind of discipline upon itself that makes it allow significant reforms to preserve the system.

This explains why much of the more serious reform expected by people from Obama has failed to materialize, yet even with the role of Capital in mind, much more might be possible even under existing conditions and the parameters of what the Market considers acceptable. This is where the fact of our being a very, very imperfect democracy comes into play and the role of the Democratic Party becomes apparent.

The Democratic Party must be understood as something which is, above all else in the world, committed to electing Democratic Party Politicians. Leadership of movements for Social Justice has never come from Democratic Politicians, the New Deal was the result of concessions wrested by the organized Radicals of the Old Left, the Great Society and Civil Rights legislation was the product of the active struggle of what was and what became the New Left. Throughout the most tense moments of rising struggle, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, every politician in office would tell the movement “Dont hold this march” “Dont be too radical” “Let’s be reasonable and wait”. The movement only advanced when these warnings were defied.

The Democratic Party will adapt itself to whatever way seems the most comfortable way of maintaining power. In our Modern State, this means accommodating to the Corporate Lobbyists that make their election possible, the Democrats took more money in this last election then the Republicans, and keep in mind, it would actually be illegal for a corporation to make any investment it didn’t think would pay off for it’s shareholders. While Capital may be willing to make some concessions, it’s eager to prevent whatever it can and the Democrats are happy to accomodate them.

Lance Selfa in his book The Democrats: A Critical History[Haymarket 2008], highly recommended reading for understanding the present moment by the way, describes the Democrats as “History’s Second Most Enthusiastic Capitalist Party”. It is true that the Republicans are even more objectively the Party of Business, however the Democrats fulfill a very specific role by stepping in whenever people become fed up with blatantly being screwed over, they act effectively as the reserve contender in the Tag Team of one Business Party.

This is not to say Democrats have not implemented changes and very significant reforms, rather that the historical role they fulfill is primarily as the wing of the government which absorbs mass discontent and diffuses it, when they can through nothing but symbolic changes, when they must through the implementation of real reform. Today, the Democrats have not been forced by a large enough swell of popular upheaval to be made to implement real gains for the Working Class.

(Though here at the UC we may be beginning to see a change to this state of affairs, although Schwarzenegger’s proposal is fundamentally flawed and must be opposed, the acknowledgement that the protests were the reason for it shows we are starting to have an impact)

In Sum, there has not been Change because the balance of Class forces is not yet in our favor, the will of the Working Class which constitutes the vast majority of the population, has on the one hand been diffused into the Democrats and on the other has not adopted the depth of anger that can be directed towards more threatening, revolutionary acts. If we are to win reforms, from the Republicans, the Democrats, and who knows, maybe some Third Party soon, then we must focus on building the kind of independent infrastructure through Mass work like the fight against the Budget Cuts and through the strengthening of Revolutionary organizations like the ISO that can help direct discontent into rank and file militancy that can change the world.

Throughout history radical organizations have played an essential part in building and pushing forward meaningful protests. From the dawn of the labor movement and the struggle for an 8 hour day to the General Strikes and Unemployed Riots of the 1930′s, from the Civil Rights movement of the 60′s and the contemporary movement for LGBT Equality, the struggle against War and the fight to stop Budget Cuts, Organized Socialists have been the most consistent, dedicated activists most clearly able to understand theoretically and practically how to encourage and direct rank and file struggle. Socialists are the ones who helped bring you the weekend, decent working wages, public education, voting rights and welfare, and as we enter a new period of struggle to defend and advance those past gains, you can expect socialists to continue that leading role. But, if we are going to win real change, we’ll need a lot more socialists to do it. And that’s why we need you to join us and help us in the struggle for a better world.

What We Mean by Socialism

[October 13th, 2009]
-Published at SocialistWorker.org, see
http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/29/what-we-mean-by-socialism

AS MANY of you have no doubt witnessed, the word "socialism" has returned to the forefront of the American political debate. Newsweek had a front cover declaring "We Are All Socialists," the Nation magazine had a forum on what socialism is today, and even the New York Times had a discussion on the meaning of the word.

Socialism, depending on who you're talking to, can mean anything from the bureaucratic dictatorship of the Soviet Union, to the social reforms of Western Europe, to even, in the case of people like those in Glenn Beck's "9/12" movement, a guttural curse word to be spat at every policy deviating slightly from the reactionary cesspool from which they emerged.

What I, an actual living socialist, will advance tonight as socialism differs fundamentally from all of these, and is the definition of socialism which stands in the revolutionary, self-emancipatory tradition of Marxism--a tradition which takes as it's foundation that it is those who work and produce and farm and create who are responsible for all the wealth in the world, and that it is they, not an elite of the super-rich or a bureaucratic clique, that have the right and power to take and manage the world's resources in society's interests.

However, this idea--that people should be able to come together to democratically decide their future as a community, as a county, city, nation and ultimately species--one which seems on the surface so self-evident, is one which is completely at odds with the capitalist system under which we live today.

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DESCRIBING CAPITALISM to us today can seem almost like describing water to fish--it so permeates our existence as to be almost invisible and is presupposed in every dominant form of discourse. Yet this was not always so. Capitalism is, in fact, a relatively recent phenomenon in the scope of human history.

Capitalism was born in fits of world-shaking violence out of the old feudal society. It emerged on a foundation of the extermination of aboriginal lives and cultures the world over.

As the Spanish galleons hauled off the gold of two ravaged continents, capitalism was beginning to crawl forth from the womb. As millions of African slaves, ripped from their families, were made to suffer unspeakable indignities, as they shed their blood and tears and anguish, capitalism drank deep its violent sustenance and grew. As nations from Egypt to India to China were exploited under the yoke of European colonialism, capitalism took its first steps and prepared for the epoch of its reign.

With the blood money of countless atrocities, the accumulated misery of most of the world's population, were built the looms and engines and factories which would constitute private property. Industrialization, then in its ruthless efficiency, swept away all the old modes of production, the small farmers and the artisans, building from their expropriation a growing class of those left with nothing to sell but their labor--their time, in essence, their very lives--for nothing more than the ability to continue living, a working class living in a condition of wage slavery.

Capitalism is, in essence, this relationship--this process in which the vast majority of the human race is compelled in order to maintain their existence to sign over control of how, and for what, their existence counts to an elite of owners.

Yet even this is not the full extent of capitalism's tyranny over humanity, for even the capitalists do not have control over what they do.

There can be no appeal to their individual generosity or humanity, because every concession they make to any value besides the bottom line is something which strengthens their competition, which makes them less able to invest or pay off shareholders, and which buries them beneath the weight of the marketplace. What they have, workers produce, and what they pay workers, how they organize the factory, and how many workers they hire is all determined by the dictatorship of the market.

We live under capitalism in an absurd condition, under which in the name of "liberty" and "freedom," we spend most of our lives subjected to the boss' dictatorship in the workplace, in which the bosses are subjected to the dictatorship of the market, in which in sum, humanity is subjected to the yoke of the inhumane, in which the Frankenstein of the market let loose by our accumulated suffering rules over us all and restrains us from achieving any measure of genuine freedom.

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SOCIALISM IS the reasonable and necessary answer to this absurdity.

Throughout history, capitalism, through its basic inhumanity and through the economic crises which are endemic to it, has bred resistance to the system spearheaded by the working class, which is simultaneously both the most exploited and potentially the most powerful force in society.

It is through the strikes and protests--through the shutdown of factories or ports or university campuses--that labor is able to wring concessions from capital. It was by fighting and not by begging, through mass protests and general strikes which shook the system, that we won the weekend, the 40-hour work week, and all the benefits of the New Deal.

Yet although these reforms are important and valuable, they do not provide a lasting solution to the problem. Though concessions may be made here and there, as a whole, any protest which does not threaten the system, does not plan to go beyond it, will ultimately be rendered helpless, and the reforms which they won will slowly but surely be taken back.

The past 30 years have been a perfect example of this--though worker productivity has soared and the economy has grown, real wages have actually decreased, and the average person is worse off now than they were in the 1970s.

Today, a 40-hour workweek seems like a dream to many Americans forced to work multiple full-time jobs, and every attempt to organize a union or fight for better wages is met with the threat of outsourcing or liquidation.

Reforms on a local, individual scale are harder than ever to achieve and hold, the scope of what common sense will deem possible is being increasingly reduced to where a decent existence becomes an impossible demand. And it is when the people's demands go beyond the reforms that the establishment deems acceptable, when what is humanly necessary goes beyond what business is willing to concede, that the real struggle emerges.

There have been many times in history when this struggle has broken out in ways which shook the world and forced the world's rich to hold their collective breath. In 1871, the Paris Commune rose up as the first democratic workers' government in history, and gave one tremendous historical example of what is possible, before it was crushed by the French and Prussian armies.

In Russia in 1917, for a few short years, the soviets--Russian for councils--ruled and began to sweep away all of capitalism's refuse, beginning to abolish sexism, racism and homophobia in ways which, a hundred years on, we have not achieved under capitalist democracy. This revolution, too, was strangled, from without, by more than a dozen invading armies, including the United States, and from within by a growing new bureaucratic class.

Other glimpses of revolution occurred in Germany in 1919, France in 1968, Iran in 1979 and Poland in 1980. In all of these, a new power emerged to challenge the old state in the form of workers' councils--bodies of elected, recallable workers' delegates who began to take control of the industries, the productive forces of our society and run them democratically.

These workers' councils are a genuine participatory democracy, in which all delegates are accountable to those they represent and actually have the power to shape society and human destiny. It is not merely another form of democracy, but a qualitatively different organization of the state, in which the dictatorship of the minority in the interest of capital is finally supplanted by the rule of the majority in the interests of humanity.

They are powerful examples of what is possible, and ones in the face of which the old state inevitably vacillates between extreme violence and resignation to defeat, attempting to exterminate them by force, and failing that, being rendered impotent with the knowledge that the consent of the governed has abandoned them--that a new power has arisen, that a truly mass revolution has begun to cast them and all their petty ideological illusions into the same refuse pile into which they cast the kings and queens of old.

Workers' councils are the real embryo of a socialist society. Socialism exists only in the mass uprising and seizure of power by the working class, for the working class, on a world scale--one which renders the attempts of a minority to institute counter-revolution like those forced on all previous revolutions impossible.

Everything else, the parodies of Marxism-Leninism that exist in China and North Korea, the attempts of a select elite to conspiratorially institute utopian society from above, the attempts to expand the revolution by the bayonets of an army or the attempts to lobby bought-off legislatures in the name of a working class that is left passive--these are all dead ends which have not and cannot emancipate humanity from the chains which bind it.

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YOU MAY say, and you would be justified in doing so, that this all sounds very good, but the reality we are presented with makes this all seem so unrealistic in the face of present conditions, class consciousness and struggle that is nowhere near these levels. There certainly aren't any workers' councils forming today, and so many previous struggles against the state have ended in defeat that we should expect a similar fate for future ones.

And you would in some ways be right, if we were to confine ourselves to passively waiting for spontaneous action--if we were to act as mere observers waiting for our specific theoretical predictions to be proven true, we would be waiting forever.

Yet we are not here having this meeting so a few more can become enlightened about the inevitable. We are here because to bring about this new form of society, we need to build the kind of organization that can act to make revolutionary situations a reality and that can provide the leadership in them to push the struggle forward to victory.

Every supposedly spontaneous action is in reality the culmination of years of built-up grievances, agitation and propaganda, of small struggles here and there providing examples of the way forward. An earthquake does not occur out of nowhere--it is the product of years, decades of stress, building and building until finally a small movement sets loose world-shaking consequences. Similarly, in every great spontaneous upheaval of the masses, the patient work of organized socialists working within the movement for years played an essential role in bringing it about.

As we enter a new age of crisis and turbulence, we will need this kind of organization more than ever.

We need an organization that unites militants from across different arenas of struggle, union work, LGBT rights, antiwar organizing, immigrants rights--the whole spectrum of struggles against injustice which face working-class people.

We need an organization in which these people come together to critically examine their experiences--to compare and contrast and vigorously debate how to move things forward, how to mobilize people around immediate demands and unify the struggles in ways which point out the contradictions and injustices inherent to the system as a whole.

Only an organization which is welded together by vigorous democratic debate and unified dedication to action can provide a strong enough challenge to capitalism to achieve real gains and ultimate victory for the working class.

This is the organization that we in the ISO are seeking to build, and one which if you share our vision of what a just society needs to look like, you should join us in building.

Socialism is, in summary, a system and an idea that takes as its foundation that people should be able to democratically come together to determine how and for what people work--to meet human needs and structure our resources and our society in such a way as to allow for every individual to reach their real potential. It is people coming together to take back their lives from the inhumane forces which control them.

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky put it best when he said: "The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces--in nature, in society, in man himself."

Everywhere around us, we see the havoc blind forces are wreaking on our educations, our health, our livelihoods, and the havoc they wreak through the whole world with wars and starvation and exploitation. The question I pose to you is this: Will you take action and step up to the historic task of building the organizations and movements that will make that next great victory of consciousness and triumph of human potential over human misery a reality?

Why We Need an Anti-War Movement

[From March 11th, 2009]

Why do we need an anti-war movement?

If all you listen to are the speeches of the liberal establishment, of President Obama or of organizations like MoveOn.org, there is none. The war in Iraq is over. The war in Afghanistan is a just and humanitarian crusade. And Palestine is not an issue. It is safe to become complacent, to relax, to let the right men take care of things and go about business as if nothing was happening.

Iraq

Yet in Iraq last month 258 Iraqi's were reported killed, twice as many were seriously wounded, and every Iraqi in the country faces the humiliation and terror of the occupation and the militia's it spawned.

This, we are supposed to ignore, because we are told that there will be but a small force of 50,000 troops left after 16 months, and supposedly all of them will be gone by 2011. Yet all of these promises are, as is frequently stressed, "dependent upon conditions on the ground."

Yet what are these conditions on the ground? A Baghdad brought "peace" by concrete walls which divide the city into partitioned neighborhoods which have long since been ethnically cleansed? A deal cut with Sunni warlords to provide money and weaponry in exchange for their temporary service as proxy warlords? A ceasefire with the Shia militia of Muqtada Al-Sadr as he bides his time and also faces pressure against fighting from Iran? There is no real political solution, and the probability that Iraq will again descend into chaos is great, and as soon as this chaos turns into the slightest threat to perceived US interests the US army will try move right back in.

And it will do so with full legality, because under the current Status of Forces Agreement (which is what is supposed to set the cap of 2011), the United States is allowed to intervene "In the event of any external or internal threat or aggression against Iraq." Iraq is made a US protectorate.

And the Pentagon is already preparing for such interventions, with many officers drawing up plans for a military presence beyond 2011 and one very senior military commander who is reportedly making plans for a 15-20 year presence

The military is planning and organizing to continue this war, if we are to definitively end this war then we must plan and organize and take action to stop it ourselves.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan is Obama's "good war". The usual democratic establishment opinion being that Iraq was a bad war, launched for the wrong reasons and executed terribly, but the intervention into Afghanistan is some noble and humanitarian crusade launched to defend human rights, women’s rights and democracy, against the barbarism of so called Muslim extremists.

Let’s take a break and go back a bit into history. How did the Soviet Union justify their invasion of Afghanistan in 1979? The government of Afghanistan had "requested" their intervention. They were defending "democracy", human rights, women’s rights and secular institutions in the face of the terrifying specter of "radical Islam". Yet they, and all 115,000 troops they sent in, succeeded only in bringing violence because they were there for the same reason all Empires occupy a country, to exert control, safeguard their interests and subjugate the population. The United States at that time certainly had no trouble pointing this out, and emphasizing both at home and abroad how a Soviet Military presence would give the Russians a base from which to exert influence throughout the Middle-East and the threat this posed to US interests in the region. So why should the vital role military bases in Afghanistan can play have diminished one bit since then? Especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union opened up the vast Oil and Natural Gas resources of Central Asia to exploitation.

Six months prior to the Soviet Union’s invasion, the United States had already begun to aid the Mujahadeen resistance in the specific hope of provoking the USSR into invading Afghanistan. A 1979 State Department report said

“The United States’ larger interest…would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan."

In order to hurt the Russians as much as possible, the US gave aid to the most extreme factions of the Mujahadeen. Particularly a disproportionate amount went to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who’s followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. The strategy according to Carter’s National Security Advisor was not just to damage the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, but “to export a composite ideology of nationalism and Islam to the Muslim-majority Central Asian states and Soviet Republics with a view to destroying the Soviet order."

The military continued with these ends in mind throughout the Reagan Presidency, in which one of the running jokes was that they would fight the Soviet Union “to the last Afghani life”. The annual supply of arms reached 60,000 tons in 1987, and it should have come as no surprise that under these circumstances when the Soviet Union withdrew, the factions of Afghanistan began to fight it out, with the Taliban eventually emerging on top an outcome which the US didn’t have much trouble with, as a US diplomatic official under Clinton put it.

“The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that,"

While US policy turned against the Taliban as it became clear that Afghanistan was harboring opponents, the fundamentals remained the same and this pattern of policy, of holding US geopolitical interests far above human rights or national self determination, is one that has more or less been followed since 9/11.

In the lead up to the war the Taliban was actually ready to negotiate and meet many of the US’ demands, including handing over Bin Laden if proof was presented (Something which it is clear now after more then 7 years would have been a lot better at actually catching him then an invasion), however Bush rejected this and refused to negotiate, aiming for an occupation.

In the opening round of the war the strategy was to use U.S. air power, combined with the ethnically-based militias known as the Northern Alliance. On the one hand, the indiscriminate warfare of bombing with heavy civilian death’s (Which also happened to keep a great deal of non-governmental aid in food and medical supplies from reaching Afghani’s), and on the other the use of Warlord armies who were so brutal and corrupt that the Afghan population had preferred at least the relative stability of the Taliban to their rule.

Since then we have installed the government of Hamid Karzai, first proclaimed President then elected with widespread reports of intimidation and fraud at the polling places. A government which according to the reporter Christian Parenti is so corrupt that “To pay taxes in Kabul one must first bribe the tax collector! No bribe and your taxes (which will be stolen) won’t be registered as paid.”

So if the United States has not caught Bin Laden, and it has not built a viable Afghani State, and if it has not brought secular liberal values but instead the rule of warlords who are often as bad and even worse then the Taliban, what has it brought?

The answer is that it has brought occupation, an occupation that is not just a necessity but is in fact the central goal. The Afghanistan operation allowed the U.S. to plant forces not just in Afghanistan but in the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, the gains of which have been partly reversed, but which have been more and more offsetted by every greater investment in bases in Afghanistan.

As of January 2009, the U.S. has begun work on $1.6 billion of new, permanent military installations at Kandahar, hundreds of millions are being spent across the country to establish a permanent military infrastructure to turn Afghanistan into a launch pad to ensure the United States has a firm position in Central Asia, one of the world’s most vital energy producing regions. As a country which borders Iran, Pakistan and China, which is located at one of the most strategic points in the world, Afghanistan is more valuable as a base for projecting US hegemony then any amount of buried oil or minerals.

Obama is currently implementing a plan for more troops on the ground, and more money to be spent on aid. However the increase of troops will at most establish the Karzai’s government control over areas dominated by weak warlords that have fallen under Taliban influence, not to in anyway challenge the warlords who are in many cases worse then the Taliban. The aid will mostly be spent to buy off warlords and keep them loyal to Washington, not to provide genuine aid to the people of Afghanistan

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We should, and we must fight against these wars not just because of their individual injustice, but because these wars are the most glaring examples of the systematic injustices that pervade all of our lives. It is the injustice of a world and a nation which is not accountable to it's people, the corruption of a system in which wars are launched. We do not need an anti-war movement just to end this war and that war, only to start all over again in 5 or 10 years, we need an anti-war movement that is committed to ending war, to ending the conditions that give rise to war and the men that make them. We must take back a society in which the media acts as an outlet for the Pentagon. Take back a country in which the poor have their services cut to pay for the decadence and failures of the rich. Take back a world in which billions starve among world-wide abundance.

Because that is ultimately what fighting against the war is about, it's about taking back our lives and our communities and our world from those who have hijacked them and saying that this hatred and destruction and madness will not be waged in our name!

George Orwell once said that "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." And that's what we will be doing for most of tonight, stating the facts and demystifying the illusions, and if any of us sound revolutionary it will be because we are getting that much closer to the truth. But it is not enough to know the truth, or even to tell the truth, the essential thing is to apply that knowledge to reshaping the world, and to commit to the slow patient work of building the organizations that will have the power to reshape the world. That is the most important thing we will do tonight, provide the opportunity to get involved in building the organizations that can fight for a better world and make it a reality.

In Solidarity With Gaza

[From January 25th, 2009]
-Speech Given at a protest against the Israeli invasion of Gaza sponsored by the Committee For Justice in Palestine, Santa Cruz Campus Anti-War Network and Santa Cruz International Socialist Organization.

In Gaza a hundred thousand Palestinians will begin to return to their homes to find they no longer have any. Thousands more have been left mauled, injured doesn't even begin to describe the body's packed with shrapnel, burns from white phosphorus and blown off limbs that not only cause immense personal pain but can destroy the very livelihood of a family. Over 1300 are dead, many of them children. There are mothers who will never again know the soft touch of their children. There are sons who will grow up without ever again hearing their fathers voice. The whole of Gaza struggles for water, food, medicine and electricity because of Israel's barbaric assault. And for what? Is it for the 13 Israeli dead? Is it For Israel's Security?

No, this is a war of collective punishment waged against the Palestinian people for choosing not to be cowed, for choosing not to bow down to Israel and to Washington. Because when they had a chance in one of the only truly democratic elections in the Middle-East they chose to cast out the corrupt Fatah party and repudiate its collaboration with the occupiers in favor of a party that however flawed would at least stand up for the Palestinian people's basic right of self determination.

What Israel has done is an atrocity, but Israel’s blank check does not happen and is not so massively supported and funded by both American political parties just because of AIPAC, or because enough Zionists show up to counter protest.

It happens for the same reason that Millions suffer under the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the same reason that the tinpot dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Egypt are propped up in their suppression of democracy and human rights. It’s the same reason that the death of half a million Iraqi children due to sanctions was seen as worth it by Madeline Albright. It's the preservation of American hegemony over the middle-east. It's the strategic dominance of the US with Israel over the most important, oil rich region of the world and the rest of the world with it.

And Israel has been a more then willing servant of Imperialism for some time. When Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized Iran's oil reserves in 1953, the “moderate” Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz explictly made the offer to the the United States for Israel to become a tool.

"The feudal regimes there have to make such concessions to the nationalist movements...that they become more and more reluctant to supply Britain and the United States with their natural resources and military bases...Therefore, strengthening Israel helps the Western powers maintain equilibrium and stability in the Middle East. Israel is to become the watchdog."

Since that time Israel has become more then just the watchdog regionally, Israel has taken a vital role in working to suppress freedom and democracy internationally.

*Israel trained the armies and secret polices of the Shah, Mobuto Sese Seko, Idi Amin and Ian Smith
*Israel Sold US weaponry to Indonesia in the midst of what was a massive genocide that killed over 200,000 being committed against the Timorese
*Israel sold weaponry to terrible military dictatorships throughout South America
*Israel disobeyed the international arms embargo against Apartheid South Africa, and helped to train the South African armies and secret police

Regionally, the vital role of Israel is made clear enough with much more recent examples, like the oft threatened possibility of an attack by Israel on Iranian nuclear facilities, the invasion of Lebanon, an air strike against Syria, what they’re doing now in Gaza and Israel's work to suppress any threat from the Arab people to the US backed Arab regimes. Israel has and continues to play the essential role in suppressing radical Arab movements to wrest control of their own oil resources which are so essential to the functioning of the global capitalist economic system and US geopolitical aims.

And where do they get the money to finance their atrocities in Gaza? From us, all of us here and across the nation who have to pay taxes that fail to provide the basic social and educational services we need. While our schools are failing, millions go without jobs and tens of millions go without health care our taxes fund the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

They take money out of our pockets to put blood on our hands!

We cannot tolerate this anymore

The Palestinian struggle becomes our struggle too, because it is the struggle against the few corporate and political elites here and abroad that benefit from Imperialism while the vast majority are asked to sacrifice their wages and to fight and die on the battlefields. The Palestinian struggle to liberate themselves from Imperialism is our struggle against the system of Imperialism.

Ultimately their struggle for self determination is intricately tied to the global struggle for a world order that finally recognizes the fundamental moral principle from which all others are derived.

One human life is as good as another

From that basic idea which is the cornerstone of morality all else that I have said follows. A life in Gaza is worth as much as a life in Tel Aviv. A life in Sudan is worth as much as a life in Rome. A life in Oakland, like that of the late Oscar Grant murdered by police, is worth as much as a life in Malibu. That is the world which is needed and that is the world for which we must fight.

The Socialist Case for a Free Palestine

[From January 14th, 2009]

The Socialist Case for a Free Palestine

-Is fundamentally opposed to Zionism, an ideology rooted in racism and tied to the project of imperialist powers.

-Is correspondingly opposed to the state of Israel, as it rejects that any national or religious group should be valued over another.

-Advocates the creation of a secular, democratic, socialist Palestine where Jews and Arabs live together as the only viable and just long term solution.

-Argues that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is understandable only in the larger context of imperialism in the Middle-East and the vital role of Oil to the modern capitalist economy. We see US backing of Israel as similar to US backing of the dictatorial regimes of Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf monarchies.

-We argue that essential to Palestinian liberation are democratic challenges from working class Arabs to these complacent and corrupt US backed regimes. The unique situation of the Palestinian people with many living expelled outside of Palestine, and with those in Palestine marginalized in the Israeli economy, means that Palestinians must connect their struggle to the struggle of the only force with the power to challenge Imperialism, the Arab and International Working Class.

What is Zionism?

-Religious zionism has existed for a long time, and the formation of small religious communities has gone on for centuries, however political zionism built around the formation of a Jewish state is a relatively recent phenomenon rooted in the effects of industrialization and the divide and conquer strategy of the ruling class towards the working class. With the destruction of the old fuedal order many Jew's lost their position as lenders and organizers of commerce, and the powerful new factories led to the obliteration of the artisanal economy, leading to the creation of a very large Jewish working class, particularly in Eastern Europe. The new jewish working class faced intense repression, and in Russia in particular the Tsarist police would stir up pogroms (essentially lynchings of Jews) in the same way racism was used as a tool to undermine unions and divide the working class throughout the industrializing world and in America in particular.

-Jewish and non-jewish Socialists throughout the world saw that anti-semitism was a ridiculous, ignorant ideology being stoked by conservative organizations like the Army and Catholic church to help maintain control. Socialists consistently organized and fought against anti-semitism and because of this drew many Jewish people to their ranks. In particular anti-semitism was condemned by the SDP (German Social Democratic Party) as the "Socialism of fools" and in Russia leading jewish members of the Bolshevik party like Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Sverdlov took on prominent roles before and after the revolution (Trotsky's role was so important in fact that it was often refferred to as the government of Lenin-Trotsky). The socialist position has always been firmly for fighting descrimination in anyway possible and standing for internationalism.

-There was however another group, who saw the people of Europe as fundamentally, inherently anti-semitic and advocated the formation of a separate Jewish state. This was given expression by Theodore Herzl, an Austrian journalist who covered the infamous Dreyfus trial. The Dreyfus trial involved the framing of a Jewish officer and showed the ridiculous level of anti-semitism in France at the time. Whereas Socialists and anti-racists used this to launch a campaign against anti-semitism, Herzl in his 1896 work "The Jewish State" accepted anti-semitism and pushed immigration to Palestine. It effectively amounted to an ideology of defeat in the fact of anti-semitism.

"I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to "combat" anti-Semitism."-Herzl

-He with other Zionist intellectuals formed the World Zionist Organization to advocated for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, unfortunately for him however the vast majority of Jewish people were simply not interested in it.

"In 1914, there were only about 12,000 members of Zionist organizations in the U.S. At the same time, there were as many Jewish members of the Socialist Party in the Lower East Side neighborhoods of New York's Manhattan!"

-Zionism only really began to gain a mass following in the 30's in the face of the ascendancy of the Nazis in Germany, an event which corresponded with the degeneration and defeat of the international left.

-No real socialist alternative existed to challenge the institutions of anti-semitism, and in fact Jewish organizations seeking to fight anti-semitism and the rise of the Nazi's were actually hampered by the existing Zionist organizations. These organizations which had been more then happy to appeal to British Imperialism in aiding them in the colonization of Palestine now sought to appeal to the most anti-semitic regime in the history to help them achieve their goal.

In 1933, the Zionist Federation of Germany sent a memorandum of support to the Nazis:

"On the foundation of the new [Nazi] state which has established the principle of race, we wish to fit our community into the total structure so that for us, too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible.10"

Later that year, the World Zionist Organization congress defeated a resolution for action against Hitler by a vote of 240 to 43.

Ben-Gurion opposed a plan to allow German Jewish children to emigrate to Britain in 1938. To justify himself, Ben-Gurion said: "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them to [Israel], then I would opt for the second alternative.

Contrary to the Israeli mythology now promoted that opposition to Zionism and anti-semitism are intertwined, Zionism was in fact founded on the acceptance of and collaboration with the most virulent anti-semitism.

Israel and Imperialism

The zionist movement from it's inception has attempted to "promote" itself to Imperialist powers, first to the British whose interests in protecting the Suez canal and supressing arab nationalism resulted in the Balfour declaration. It had support from both the US and the USSR.

However zionist leaders knew they stood most to gain from the vast resources of the United States. When Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized Iran's oil reserves, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz explictly made the offer to the the United States.

"The feudal regimes there have to make such concessions to the nationalist movements...that they become more and more reluctant to supply Britain and the United States with their natural resources and military bases...Therefore, strengthening Israel helps the Western powers maintain equilibrium and stability in the Middle East. Israel is to become the watchdog."

Despite this offer however it was only after the 1967 war that Israel took it's place as the favorite in Despite this offer however it was only after the 1967 war, when Israel obliterated the arab nationalist movement that it began to enter into the truly special relationship that it now has. US direct aid jumped and loans for purchases of weapons increased by a factor of 20. Israel now not only took on the US' dirty work in the Middle-East but internationally as well.

*Israel saved the regime of King Hussein in Jordan from Syria after being asked to by the United States
*Israel trained the armies and secret polices of the Shah, Mobuto Sese Seko, Idi Amin and Ian Smith
*Israel Sold US weaponry to Indonesia in the midst of what was a massive genocide being committed against the Timorese
*Israel sold weaponry to military dictatorships throughout South America
*Israel disobeyed the international arms embargo against Apartheid South Africa, and helped to train the South Africa armies and secret police

Regionally, the vital role of Israel is made clear enough with much more recent examples, like the oft threatened possibility of an attack by Israel on Iranian nuclear facilities and Israel's current work trying to suppress the Islamic movement that has become the main threat to the US backed arab regimes. Israel has and continues to play the essential role in suppressing radical arab movements to wrest control of their own oil resources which are so essential to the functioning of the global capitalist economic system and US geopolitical aims.The essential role of Israel to the US Imperialist project in the Middle-East poses two distinct challenge to the Palestinian fight for self determination.

The first is the distorted class nature of Israeli society. The extensive foreign aid from both official governments and zionist organizations, combined with the extensive role of the Military-Industrial complex in Israel's economy means that the challenge to the Israeli ruling classes that would traditionally be posed by the working class is deferred and distorted. Although individuals and groups have done significant work within Israel to improve the lot of the Palestinians a serious challenge from within is unlikely to emerge without a significant change in external circumstances.

The second is that the United States will back Israel to the hilt so long as it remains essential to US regional interest, and every American Politician and Political Organization built around the maintenance of United States hegemony in the world will back Israel (As the recent votes of support from Congress, including nearly every Democrat and spearheaded by leading Democrats shows). There is no doubt that an "Israel Lobby" exists and plays a significant role, but the far bigger project is the essential role of Israel to the preservation of US hegemony over the single most important region in the world.

Beyond that, a two state solution could not provide any real measure of independence

“.Divided into bantustans geographically disconnected from one another, with little control over air space, borders, water resources and the economy, a Palestinian mini-state would be entirely at the mercy of the U.S. and Israel.”-Snehal Shengavi, Socialist Worker

So a two state solution would effectively preserve Israel’s dominance over Palestine, and with the provision of greater moral legitimacy to Israel would help facilitate the enforcement of US imperialism in the Middle-East to the detriment of the world.

The key then to solving the problem created by Zionism is the creation of a single democratic state that casts out Imperialism and unites Jews and Arabs together. The only force capable of achieving this is the Arab and International Working Classes. By challenging and overthrowing the complacent puppet regimes and fighting for an end to US Imperialism and Zionism the Arab masses can strike significant blows for Palestinian liberation. By fighting against Imperialism and Zionism here, within the belly of the beast we can aid there cause significantly and work to alleviate the immediate suffering of the Palestinians. Ultimately however, a real, fundamental solution to the oppression and displacement of the Palestinian people will require a struggle against the global capitalist system and the imperialism that feed off of each other and for a world founded on democratic socialism, equality and internationalism.