THERE IS no single theme that ties all the articles in this issue of the ISR together, but there are a number of contemporary and historical pieces that emphasize the importance of struggle from below to achieve significant change.
One of the developments that forced the U.S. out of Vietnam was the soldiers' rebellion. Soldiers and vets of the Iraq War have only begun to organize resistance, but more and more soldiers are rejecting the war. Our cover story features speeches by four members of Iraq Veterans Against the War-Adrienne Kinne, Matt Howard, Drew Cameron, and Matt Hrutkay. “This war was based on lies,” says Matt Howard, “As I like to say, you can't win a crime, you can only stop it.”
Lance Selfa analyses the changing climate in American politics, noting, “U.S. politics continue to shift leftward and away from its conservative groove at a pace that has defied predictions,” and that this shift creates an opening for the growth of social struggles.
One of the factors underscoring popular anger is the way in which the economic boom hasn't benefited the working class and the poor. Petrino DiLeo looks at the current housing bubble and argues that it threatens a coming recession that will make conditions even worse for the majority.
John Pilger urges us not to look from the sidelines as the United States gears up for another disastrous war in the Middle East, this time against Iran.
David Whitehouse investigates the latest U.S. proxy imperialist intervention in the Middle East region: Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia.
Arundhati Roy's interview discusses the violent seizure of peasant land in West Bengal to set up special economic zones that benefit only a tiny upper crust. “What we're witnessing is the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in independent India,” she argues, “the secession of the middle and upper classes from the rest of the country.”
Among a number of issues Noam Chomsky discusses with David Barsamian in this issue are the struggles against neoliberal policies in Latin America. The Cochabamba, Bolivia water wars of several years back, for example, he says, were “a good example of real globalization,” that is, globalization from below. He also emphasizes that the responsibility of intellectuals is to have a “commitment to [people] and their needs.”
In a broad survey, Chilean Orlando Sepúlveda retraces the history of Chile's years after the fall of Allende and the years of Pinochet's dictatorship-both the repression and the heroic resurgence of resistance.
In celebration of May Day, we are featuring an interview with author James Green on the Haymarket affair in Chicago in 1886 and the fight for the eight-hour day. “I hope people look back on that,” says Green, “and feel like something like...the eight-hour day...is the kind of universal demand that workers need once again.” A classic reprint of a 1971 Socialist Register article by Hal Draper dispels any idea that Marx and Engels were elitists. Their watchword, he argues, was socialism from below, and the self-emancipation of the working class.
Jason Yanowitz, in a well-researched essay, delves into the history of the Russian anarchist guerrilla Nestor Makhno, and in the process dispels a number of myths peddled about him by his admirers.
Finally, Heather Rogers examines capitalism's throw-away economy and how it is producing unprecedented amounts of garbage. “In order to truly address the problems wrought by mass wasting, merely separating our cans and bottles from paper will not do,” she insists. “Instead, we must change the system of production that relies so heavily on the exploitation of nature.”
