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A Special Appeal to All Our Online Readers:We Need Your Help to Keep News & Letters alive!News and Letters, January-February 2004Lead Article Capture of Hussein fails to secure a frayed occupation Iraqis cheered the capture Dec. 15 of the hated dictator Saddam Hussein, in hiding since the U.S. invaded and occupied the country last year. If the trials of Serb war criminals in The Hague is an indication, the U.S. will never allow a full accounting of Hussein's crimes which would implicate past U.S. administrations. The terrorist vestiges of the Ba'athist regime and the upsurge of conservative Islamic leaders signal a perilous course for freedom for the country's wage workers, ethnic minorities, women and young people. Editorial Free trade, capitalism and catastrophe The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect on Jan. 1, 1994, uniting Mexico, the U.S. and Canada into one common market. Indigenous communities in Chiapas rose in revolt, knowing immediately that it would threaten their lives. In the process they heralded a new movement against global capital. A decade later, the overriding reality of global free trade has been growing immiseration of working people. In the U.S. ongoing job losses, to runaway manufacturing and services and to automation, characterize a "jobless" recovery. From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Marxist-Humanist Archives To commemorate Black History Month, we reprint Raya Dunayevskaya's 1944 essay "Marxism and the Negro Question," written when she was a co-leader with C.L.R. James of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, a dissident grouping in the U.S. Trotskyist movement of the 1940s which argued in support of the independent self-activity of the African-American masses. The selection from the essay delves into Lenin on Blacks in America, the "boss and Black relationship," and the proletarianization and unionization of African Americans. Essay The fate of totalitarianism: Marxist-Humanism in conversation with Orwell, Sartre, and Adorno In a world of globalized capital imposing its conditions of production and life, and with the USA PATRIOT Act putting "doublespeak" into practice, Tom More explores the relevance of several thinkers on totalitarianism--Orwell, Adorno, Sartre, and Dunayevskaya. He muses, "If Dunayevskaya criticizes philosophers as great as Sartre and dialecticians as profound as Adorno, it is only because their misreading of Hegel (not without warrant by its widespread acceptance), correlates directly with the understanding they propose of the times we live in." Black challenge to IBEW leadership This March, Black telephone workers at Verizon in New Jersey will attempt to make history. For the first time ever, a Black telephone worker will attempt to get elected to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 827 Executive Board. In 2004, a Black worker running for union office hardly sounds groundbreaking. What makes this situation different? Thoughts on victory for gay marriage The recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage unleashed and exacerbated a myriad of opinions. Adrienne Rich reminds us that leaving lesbians out repeats the historic subsuming and neglect of women. We should also extend this to the whole GLBTQ spectrum. HIV-positive gays are denied healthcare, immigration options, inheritance and life-support decisions taken for granted in heterosexual unions. And in this dehumanized world, marriage and birth control are not separate from the various forms of alienated relationships. MORE ARTICLES...
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