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I was driving down Interstate 85 about dusk last night. I saw a whitetail deer standing on a rise about 30 yards off the road. She was staring at the headlights coming up the highway. Mesmerized by the bright lights.

The scene reminded me of what is happening in the United States right now. Many are staring into the bright light of socialism, attracted by the dreams of free everything, unaware of the destruction that awaits when they pursue those dreams. Unaware that their freedom of life will be lost in the pursuit of the non-existent socialist utopia. Unconscious of the fact that the oligarchs who are encouraging their pursuit are the very ones who will steal their freedom and rape their future.

I prayed for that deer as I pray for this nation. Please, Lord, protect them from their own ignorance and guide them in the paths of righteousness.

Tom Day

Buford

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Opinion: Nation blind in the headlights of socialism - Gainesville Times

As the COVID-19 virus rages across the US, killing thousands of people a day, hundreds of K-12 schools, colleges and universities are beginning to resume in-person classes. This will bring thousands of students and educators together in school buildings and on campuses in the upcoming spring semester.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in the US, the youth and student section of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), is resolutely opposed to the reopening of schools. The reopening of schools is a criminal act that will only stand to add thousands of names to the horrific toll of death from the pandemic.

The experience of the fall semester has produced incontrovertible evidence that in-person learning led to an increase in community spread, hospitalizations and deaths. In particular, towns and cities with colleges that reopened for in-person learning, or which, for one reason or another, allowed large numbers of students to return to their dorms, quickly became some of the worst hot spots in the country.

Data compiled by the New York Times recorded almost 400,000 known coronavirus cases linked to American universities and campuses from March to December last year.

Among 101 counties with large universities or colleges (university counties), which accommodate 29.4 percent of the US population, only 22 percent implemented fully remote learning for the fall. These counties experienced a 17.9 percent decline in mean COVID-19 incidence during the 21 days before through 21 days after the start of classes, a change from 17.9 to 14.7 cases per 100,000. In that same period, university counties with in-person instruction saw a 52.6 percent increase in incidence, from 15.3 to 23.9 cases per 100,000. Counties without large colleges or universities saw COVID-19 cases decline 5.9 percent.

Now, as the pandemic is killing over 3,000 people a day, the highest death rate since it started over a year ago, schools are moving forward with the same reckless plans.

In the Washington D.C. area, American University plans on doubling its number of in-person courses. George Washington University will allow 1,600 students to reside on campus in the spring, compared to 500 in the fall. Georgetown University will double the number of students living on campus to 1,000 while keeping all classes virtual.

Texas A&M University at College Station held primarily in-person classes in the fall and will continue to do so in the spring. More than 2,700 cases have been recorded at the campus, or 4 percent of the student population of 67,679. Despite having a five-tier program for campus operations during the pandemic, university administrators are only carrying out the second-lowest tier, titled Initial Operations.

The State University of New York (SUNY) system, which includes 29 state universities and 30 community colleges, is operating under a policy that will allow campuses to safely return to in-person instruction for the spring semester. Students returning to campus will be required to submit documentation showing that they have completed a seven-day quarantine or had a negative COVID-19 test before returning to campus. Additionally, in-person courses will begin on February 1 after being fully remote for a short period.

The University of California at San Diego (UCSD) welcomed approximately 1,000 new undergraduate students to live on campus for its winter quarter. UCSD will implement mostly online courses and states that less than 10 percent of undergraduate classes will be held in person in outdoor classrooms. Students, however, will live together in dormitories.

In addition, some institutions in areas with more stringent guidelines have emphatically pushed for the approval to reopen their campuses. Among these are the University of Southern California, Harvey Mudd College and Pomona Collegeall in Los Angeles County, where ambulance crews have been told to not take patients with little chance of survival to overflowing hospitals.

Behind these reckless decisions is a broader campaign, spearheaded by the Trump administration but now continued under Biden and supported by both parties, to reopen the economy and prevent any loss in corporate profits. There is no doubt that in the fall universities were also driven by profit concerns (having in mind tuition, college sports, dormitory real estate contracts, etc.), prioritizing their bottom line over the health and safety of students and the broader community.

After securing a multi-trillion-dollar handout for the rich through the CARES Act in March 2020, the ruling class implemented a policy of herd immunity that allowed the coronavirus to circulate without restraint.

Sending workers back to work required sending their children back to school. The schools were opened. When major outbreaks inevitably occurred, they were often covered up, downplayed and obscured. Whistleblowers were silenced, or worse, persecuted, as in the case of Rebekah Jones.

In college towns, school officials tried to shift blame onto students. Contrary to claims of university officials, the rise in COVID-19 cases linked to campuses is not explained by a relatively small number of young people ignoring social distancing measures.

The conditions in K-12 schools, let alone in college dorms, are completely incompatible with social distancing. Furthermore, older college-age students often work in industries that increase their chances of contracting the virus. In fact, more than 1.1 million undergraduates work in health-related occupations, according to census data. Nearly two-thirds of restaurant workers are 34 or younger, and the same age group accounts for nearly half of grocery store workers.

The interests of the wealthy are undoubtedly represented in the university administrations across the US. There is no shortage of university regents and trustees with close ties to corporations and the political establishment, Republicans and Democrats alike. Those in the governing bodies of Americas universities are acutely aware of the financial consequences that proper safety measures would have on their millionaire and billionaire friends.

Both factions of the ruling class are committed to exposing millions of Americans to the deadly virus for the sake of profit. Despite its pretensions, the incoming Biden administration refuses to implement measures that will minimize death until a vaccine is widely distributed. Biden has pledged to keep schools and workplaces open and warned of a dark winter. That is to say that workers will continue to die by the thousands every day as the spectacular rise of Wall Street continues.

In terms of the pandemic, the incoming Biden administrations position and policies are largely the same as his Republican counterparts. Bidens plan consists of a limited mask mandate and promises of more rapid vaccine distribution. His advisers have already acknowledged that it will still be months before most people can get a vaccine, however, even if they meet their goals. They have ruled out shutting down nonessential production to get the spread of the virus under control and have declared that all K-8 schools will be reopened within three months.

At the same time, Biden has called for unity with the Republican Party in the aftermath of the failed fascistic coup attempt on January 6, incited and abetted by leading Republicans. The central demand of the organizations mobilized by the Trump administration is an end to all restraints on the spread of the virus. While Democrats and Republicans differ on tactical questions, mostly over issues of foreign policy, they agree on one basic issue: no restrictions can be put in place that will curb the drive for profit.

The murderous policies of the ruling class are incompatible with democratic forms of rule. Already the giant social media companies, working at the behest of the ruling class, are engaged in an escalating campaign of internet censorship targeting the socialist left.

The latest act of censorship was Facebooks deletion of the official page of the IYSSE at the University of Michigan, along with the pages of leading members of the IYSSE and SEP, for four days without explanation. This comes on the heels of a week-long disablement of the IYSSE US Twitter account.

Such acts of censorship are a desperate response to the growth of popular opposition to inequality, social misery and the ruling classs disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has put profits above the protection of human lives.

To fight against these homicidal policies, workers must organize themselves as an independent social and political force. This fight is already underway. Facilitated by the World Socialist Web Site, workers have begun forming rank-and-file safety committees, independent of the corporate controlled trade unions like the American Federation of Teachers.

Capitalism stands exposed as a historically bankrupt social and economic system. The trillions hoarded during the pandemic by the billionaires must be seized in order to compensate workers and provide full funding for education; childcare for families in need; full income provided to all workers; and free, high quality medical care, including mental health care for all students and workers.

Schools and campuses have been turned into a battleground in which the lives of students, teachers and parents are at stake. In this battle, the interests of the two main classes in society, the working class and the capitalist class, stand most nakedly exposed. The working class stands for life, science and progress, while the ruling class stands for death, lies and profits.

Nothing can be resolved without a frontal assault on the wealth hoarded by the ruling class and the fight for socialism. The trillions that have been handed over to Wall Street and the financial oligarchy must be redirected to provide full unemployment benefits to all workers and universal access to health care and public education.

The IYSSE insists that this fight must be completely independent of the Democrats and the Republicans, along with the corporate-controlled trade unions. It must reject all efforts to divide the working class, whether through the fascistic politics of Trump or the racialist identity politics of the Democrats. It must fight for the international unity of workers in every country, who have the same social interests and the same class enemies.

Students and young people should proceed in this struggle with immense confidence. Over the past several years, workers and youth have proven their strength and willingness to fight in countless protests and demonstrations in defense of immigrants, democratic rights and against capitalism. There is enormous opposition in all sections of the working class to the homicidal policy of the ruling elites.

There is no doubt that workers and youth want to fight. What is needed, above all, is a political program, perspective and leadership. We urge all youth and students committed to this fight to get off the sidelines and make the decision to join the IYSSE, the student and youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party, and take up the fight for life, progress and socialism!

We urge youth who want to get involved to contact us today and sign up for our newsletter to get the latest updates. Help us share this statement widely among young people.

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Oppose the unsafe reopening of colleges and universities! - WSWS

Ten years ago today, mass protests began in Egypt that led 18 days later to the fall of long-standing dictator Hosni Mubarak, electrifying workers and youth worldwide.

The Egyptian revolution was a powerful revolutionary uprising in which the working class played the central role. On January 25, 2011, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in cities across the country, including Suez, Port Sad and Alexandria. On the so-called Friday of rage three days later, these growing masses of people defeated the regimes notorious security forces in street fighting that came to resemble civil war.

Millions demonstrated across Egypt over subsequent days. Tahrir Square, occupied by hundreds of thousands of people who came to downtown Cairo, emerged as an international symbol of the uprising, but it was the intervention of the working class that ultimately delivered the decisive blow to Mubarak. On February 78, a wave of strikes and factory occupations erupted across the country, continuing to grow after Mubarak stepped down on February 11.

At the high point of the revolution, there were an estimated 40 to 60 strikes per day. As many strikes occurred in just the month of February 2011 as in the entire previous year. Hundreds of thousands of workers in Egypts key industrial centres were on strike, including Suez canal workers, steelworkers in Suez and Port Sad, and the 27,000 textile workers at Ghazl al-Mahalla, Egypts largest industrial facility in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla al-Kubra.

The World Socialist Web Site assessed the developments in Egypt and Tunisia, where mass protests brought down the long-standing dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali days earlier, as the beginning of a new revolutionary epoch. In a perspective entitled The Egyptian revolution, David North, the chairman of the WSWS international editorial board, wrote:

The Egyptian revolution is dealing a devastating blow to the pro-capitalist triumphalism that followed the Soviet bureaucracys liquidation of the USSR in 1991. The class struggle, socialism and Marxism were declared irrelevant in the modern world. Historyas in The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels)had ended. Henceforth, the only revolutions conceivable to the media were those that were color-coded in advance, politically scripted by the US State Department, and then implemented by the affluent pro-capitalist sections of society.

This complacent and reactionary scenario has been exploded in Tunisia and Egypt. History has returned with a vengeance. What is presently unfolding in Cairo and throughout Egypt is revolution, the real thing. The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events, wrote Leon Trotsky, the foremost specialist on the subject. This definition of revolution applies completely to what is now happening in Egypt.

Ten years later, however, it is not the working class that is in power in Egypt, but a blood-soaked military dictatorship backed by the imperialist powers that lives in terror of a renewed mass uprising and suppresses every sign of social opposition. On January 22, the Egyptian Parliament, at the request of Mubaraks former general and current dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, extended the state of emergency another three years. Since his coup against elected President Mohammed Mursi in 2013, more than 60,000 political prisoners have disappeared into the regimes torture chambers. Thousands have been condemned to death and executed.

Amid a renewed upsurge of class struggle around the worldfueled by the horrific consequences of the pandemic, and the bourgeoisies increasingly open resort to dictatorship and fascistic forms of rule, it is necessary to draw political lessons from these experiences. How could counter-revolution in Egypt be victorious, and what political tasks does this pose for the class battles to come? The key to answering these critical questions is a concrete study of the events and the role of political tendencies and programs. The chief problem of the Egyptian revolution was the lack of a revolutionary leadership.

One day prior to Mubaraks overthrow, David North warned in another perspective:

The greatest danger confronting Egyptian workers is that, after providing the essential social force to wrest power from the hands of an aging dictator, nothing of political substance will change except the names and faces of some of the leading personnel. In other words, the capitalist state will remain intact. Political power and control over economic life will remain in the hands of the Egyptian capitalists, backed by the military, and their imperialist overlords in Europe and North America. Promises of democracy and social reform will be repudiated at the first opportunity, and a new regime of savage repression will be instituted.

These dangers are not exaggerated. The entire history of revolutionary struggle in the Twentieth Century proves that the struggle for democracy and for the liberation of countries oppressed by imperialism can be achieved, as Leon Trotsky insisted in his theory of permanent revolution, only by the conquest of power by the working class on the basis of an internationalist and socialist program.

Over the course of the Egyptian Revolution, this assessment was confirmed. All factions and parties of the bourgeoisie and their Stalinist and pseudo-leftist appendages showed their essentially counterrevolutionary character. They collaborated with the imperialists and defended Egyptian capitalism and its institutions. This is as true of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now banned again as it was under Mubarak, as it is of Nasserist or liberal parties. As the ruling party before the coup, the Brotherhood conspired with the military, banned strikes and protests, and supported imperialist interventions in Libya and Syria,

One can mention a few prominent examples. Mohamed El Baradei, the former leader of the National Association for Change, became the first vice president in Sisis military junta. Independent trade union leader Kamal Abu Eita became Labor Minister. Hamdeen Sabahi, the leader of the Nasserist Egyptian Popular Current, publicly defended the juntas massacres. When the army murdered at least 900 coup opponents, including women and children, while breaking up protests by Mursi supporters in Rabaa El-Adaweya Square in Cairo, Sabahi declared on television: We will stay hand in hand, the people, the army and the police.

A particularly corrupt tendency that paved the way for the counterrevolution, however, was the so-called Revolutionary Socialists (RS), a pseudo-left group in Egypt with close ties to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain and the Left Party in Germany, among others. At every stage of the revolution, they insisted that workers could not play an independent role but had to subordinate themselves to one faction or another of the bourgeoisie to struggle for their democratic and social rights.

After Mubaraks fall, the RS fueled illusions in the military, which had taken power under the leadership of Mubaraks former defense minister, Muhammed Tantawi. Writing in Britains Guardian, RS activist Hossam el-Hamalawy said, young officers and soldiers are our allies, declaring that the army will eventually engineer the transition to a civilian government.

As the army cracked down on protests and strikes and calls for a second revolution emerged, the RS revived their earlier support for the Muslim Brotherhood. In party statements, they called the Islamists the right wing of the revolution, advocating a vote for Mursi in the 2012 presidential election. They then celebrated Mursis victory as a victory for the revolution and a great achievement in pushing back the counterrevolution.

When new strikes and protests erupted against Mursis anti-worker and pro-imperialist policies, the RS reoriented themselves once again toward the military. They supported the Tamarod Alliance, backed and funded by El Baradei, Egyptian multibillionaire Naguib Sawiris and former officials of the Mubarak regime, among others, and which called for the military to overthrow Mursi. In a statement, published on May 19, 2013, the RS hailed Tamarod as a way to complete the revolution and declared their intention to fully participate in this campaign.

The RS response to the July 3 military coup fully confirmed its counterrevolutionary nature. They celebrated the coup as a second revolution, calling on protesters to protect their revolution. While the military restored the Mubarak regimes repressive apparatus, the RS once again spread the fairy tale that the military government could be pressured to obtain democratic and social reforms. In their July 11 statement, they called for pressure on the new government to take measures immediately for achieving social justice for the benefit of the millions of poor Egyptians.

Since then, the RS have been primarily concerned with covering their tracks. In his own article on the anniversary of the revolution published in the SWP paper Socialist Worker, Hamalawy writes of the counterrevolutionary conspiracy: The military in secret reached out to the secular opposition (leftists, Arab nationalists, liberals), and secured its backing for a coup in July 2013. What followed were the biggest massacres in Egypts modern history, amid the cheering of the Egyptian leftists.

Hamalawy studiously conceals the fact that among these Egyptian leftists who cheered on Sisis massacres were his own organization.

The crucial lesson of the Egyptian Revolution is the necessity to build a revolutionary leadership in the working class before mass struggles break out. Only in this way can the political independence of the working class be established from the bourgeoisie and its petty-bourgeois stooges, and the masses be armed with a socialist program and the perspective of permanent revolution to overthrow capitalism.

The ICFI and its sections are guided by the conception that also guided the Bolshevik Party and its leaders Lenin and Trotsky before the October Revolution in Russia. In the resolution adopted at the Second National Congress of the SEP (US) in 2012, one year after the Egyptian revolution, we wrote:

It is not enough to predict the inevitability of revolutionary struggles and then await their unfolding. Such passivity has nothing in common with Marxism, which insists upon the unity of theoretically guided cognition and revolutionary practice. Moreover, as the aftermath of Mubaraks downfall demonstrates all too clearly, the victory of the socialist revolution requires the presence of a revolutionary party. The Socialist Equality Party must do everything it can to develop, prior to the outbreak of mass struggles, a significant political presence within the working classabove all, among its most advanced elements.

Amid a renewed upsurge of the class struggle worldwide, this work must now be pursued with renewed energy. This is the task of the ICFI and its sections and sympathizing groups.

See the rest here:
Ten years since the beginning of the Egyptian revolution - WSWS

Sir Keir Starmer

YOUR editorial Comment of January 14 noted how Sir Keir Starmers shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, had announced the abandonment of Jeremy Corbyns economic policy, in what will be another U-turn, (Stuck on old, failed ways instead of seeking a new path).

A year ago, on January 23 2020, you published an interview with Sir Keir, when he was running to be the next Labour Party leader, (Im a socialist for me it has a very practical application).

Your interviewer, Richard Osley, attempted to draw from Sir Keir what his politics actually were.

The future Labour leader declared that I am a socialist. He added that there needed to be a fundamental change with a shift in power and wealth. Also that certain services simply shouldnt be in the private sector.

He accepted that Jeremy Corbyn had been vilified in the national press but when asked if the BBC had been biased, as Corbyn supporters had argued, he replied Ive never gone down that route.

Sir Keir was seeking the votes of those hundreds of thousands of them who had joined the Labour Party because of Corbyn and his attempt to move his party from the old centre-right consensus of parliamentary politics.

Sir Keirs mailing to those with votes in the leadership election stated 10 principles, which he offered as his pledges.

These included defence of workers rights and repeal of the Trade Union Act; increased taxes for high earners and corporations, and tackling tax avoidance; that public services (including rail, mail, energy and water) should be in public hands and not making profits for shareholders; no more illegal wars and a review of UK arms sales.

One issue that Richard Osley did not report on in his piece was the source of Sir Keirs funding. His main opponent from the left, Rebecca Long-Bailey, had done so before the votes were cast.

Although Sir Keir announced ahead of the election that he had received 100,000 from a local lawyer, he did not reveal possibly using a delaying tactic based on parliamentary rules the names of some other large donors. This meant that by the time the donors were identified, the election was over.

These donors included wealthy New Labour and anti-Corbyn types, including a hedge fund manager, and a pro-Israel lobbyist. We might assume that they were at ease with Sir Keirs brand of socialism.

Since the leadership election we have learned, through the leaked internal Labour Party report, of attempts from within the party machinery to undermine Corbyn and his campaign to win the 2017 general election.

There has been no serious condemnation by Sir Keir of these plotters, neither of those Labour MPs who were part of this anti-Corbyn subversion.

In 2016, a year after Jeremy Corbyn was first elected leader, Sir Keir was one of the shadow cabinet members who resigned in timed sequence, in an attempt to force Corbyn to stand down.

There are suspensions from the party once more, as there were in 2016 during the leadership contest. The Corbyn-backing leader of Scottish Labour, Richard Leonard, has resigned.

The left-wing MSP Neil Findlay called those who made efforts to oust him flinching cowards and sneering traitors. I wonder if Sir Keir, who formulaically praised Mr Leonard after the fact, would agree.

ERIC KRIEGER Haverstock Road, NW5

The rest is here:
A year is a long time for a socialist - Camden New Journal newspapers website

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Letter to the editor: Scared by prospect of socialism - TribLIVE