Spritzler, John
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  1. After the Revolution, What?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    A revolution to politically defeat a social class can take place relatively quickly compared to the task of re-shaping an entire society and economy by very different values. A fundamentally new kind of economy must therefore be able to arise somewhat gradually from the old, or it probably can never arise at all.
  2. Azmi Bishara and Muslims Worldwide Say No to Attacks on Non-Combatants
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    We need the public to know that the choice is between supporting equality or supporting racism, not between opposing or supporting the killing of non-combatants, as the Zionists try to make the public believe. We should tell the public that, yes, we do disagree with the actions of some Palestinians, but that doesn't at all take away from the fact that Zionist ethnic cleansing is the root of the conflict and must be abolished.
  3. Billionaires, Crime, and Corruption 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2001
    What does it really mean when somebody claims to own hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars? What is a billionaire like David Rockefeller really telling us? He's saying that land he may never have set foot on, but which thousands of other people spend their lives farming, belongs to him alone. He's saying that buildings and machinery which he probably has never seen and certainly has never worked at, but which whole communities of people spend their lives working at to produce goods like clothing and automobiles, belong to him alone.
  4. Corporations Meet Resistance Inside Boston's Schools
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1998
    The corporate elite are a small minority and their values are the opposite of most peoples' values. Things that most people consider immoral, like deliberately increasing the number of students who fail to graduate, are ruthlessly pursued by the corporate elite in order to control people and to justify increasing inequality in society.
  5. Democracy in the Unites States? Fugetaboutit!
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    We who want a more equal and democratic society are the vast majority. There is no reason for us to feel hesitant about speaking our minds and talking revolution to our friends and neighbors, our co-workers, and even people we meet in the course of shopping and so forth. When millions of Americans feel that they are not alone in wanting a revolution, that's when things will start to change. That's when people will start to think creatively and concretely about how to make it happen. Until then, we'll remain on a treadmill to nowhere, with everybody feeling that they are just one lonely person who "can't fight city hall."
  6. Falsifying History and Ourselves: Anti-Democratic Propaganda in the Classroom
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2001
    Contrary to the views promoted by FHAO, the true facts about Germany during the Holocaust show that 1) working class Germans fought the Nazis; 2) anti-Semitism did not come from ordinary people; and 3) anti-Semitism was a weapon used by Germany's industrial and aristocratic elite to attack not only the Jewish minority but the entire working class.
  7. The Great Fear of Israel's Leaders
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    The great fear of Israel's Zionist leaders is that ordinary people in all of historic Palestine, no matter what their religion, will define the struggle against Zionism not as Jew versus non-Jew but as a struggle by those who seek equality under the law for all people, no matter what their religion, versus those who oppose that goal.
  8. Higher Education Free for All?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2002
    The transformation of our society from one in which few working class people went to college into one in which a larger proportion do so has been accompanied by the growth of "lower tier" colleges, junior colleges and professional schools designed to prepare their students for "careers" in the new global economy that do not pay as much as people with only a high school degree used to make in jobs with a history of solidarity.
  9. How Can We End the U.S. Government's Pro-Israel Foreign Policy?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    We need to start thinking about building a revolutionary movement and not a reform movement focused just on one issue.
  10. Is It Realistic to Demand the Right of Return of Palestinian Refugees?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
  11. The Israel Lobby and the "National Interest"
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    Israel's ethnic cleansing does, in fact, serve the elite's interest. It is a classic example of divide-and-rule applied to the population of the Middle East: foment an ethnic war of Arab versus Jew. Israel plays the same role in the Middle East that the Klu Klux Klan played in the American South for the benefit of the South's upper class: keep the working class population fighting each other along racial lines.
  12. The Israel Lobby's Power Comes from The American Ruling Class
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    By ensuring that the American mass media refrain from telling Americans the true reason (Israel's ethnic cleansing) why Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims take up arms against Israel, the American ruling class ensures that Americans will believe the lie that Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims are hateful, irrational, anti-semitic terrorists who kill decent Israelis "just like us" and would likewise kill Americans if we fail to obey our upper class rulers who protect us from terrorism.
  13. Israel/Palestine: "It's Complicated" ... Or Is It?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    We often hear it said that the Israel/Palestine conflict is complicated. But is it really?
  14. Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage: What is at Stake?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    There are good people on either side of the same-sex marriage debate. Unfortunately, however, it has been one of the most divisive issues in society. Opponents of same-sex marriage perceive the other side as part of a cabal of gay activists and social-engineering judges and politicians, intent on making a mockery of important social values. Proponents of same-sex marriage often perceive the other side as "homophobic" bigots or religious fundamentalists who want to deprive gay or lesbian couples of a right enjoyed by others because they hate homosexuals. The debate over same-sex marriage has divided people who share common values and beliefs on many fundamental questions--war and peace, economic security, democracy versus the increasingly anti-democratic and repressive nature of American society. This divisive debate cripples the ability of ordinary Americans to unite around the things that we agree on.
  15. Obama's Afghanistan War: Morally Wrong, or Incompetently Waged?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    For our rulers, the point of a war is to make us Americans feel the way only a war can--determined to prevail over a dangerous foreign enemy by supporting our leaders when we would otherwise oppose them over domestic issues. Wars are waged for domestic social control and to justify enormous arms expenditures and contracts. Our leaders need wars to drag on so the enemy can be deemed sufficiently dangerous and implacable and thus the war made to seem important or necessary.
  16. One State is Not Snake Oil: A Reply to Michael Neumann
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    The income of the 18 wealthiest families in Israel is equivalent to 77 percent of Israel's national budget, which is NIS 256 billion a year. This means that in less than 4.4 years the 18 wealthiest families in Israel could pay the entire debt owed by Israeli Jews living in homes and land stolen from Palestinians. It means that in 4.5 years a fund set up by these 18 wealthiest families could offer every Jewish Israeli who lives on stolen land a million U.S. dollars which they would use either to buy their home from the rightful Palestinian owner or buy another home (probably it would have to be newly constructed) so they could return the stolen one but not end up homeless.
  17. Race and Class in Civil War Mississippi
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    The poor whites of Mississippi who fought the Confederacy alongside slaves did so because of working class values that they shared with slaves. The fact that poor whites may have believed some racist lies about blacks that constituted the dominant ideas of the day is not nearly as important or significant as the fact that their working class values led them to ally with slaves to fight the racist ruling class. Racism came from the upper class, and anti-racism came from the working class -- black and white.
  18. Religion, The Golden Rule, and Revolution
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    Why is it that all of the world's great religions, though disagreeing greatly about theology, nonetheless concur on the Golden Rule? The explanation must be that there is something common to all human beings that is captured by the Golden Rule and reflected in all of these religions.
  19. Right and Wrong Responses to Palestinian Suicide Bombers
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2005
    The Israeli government hypocritically seizes upon every suicide bombing to justify the far greater Israeli state terror against Palestinians. To side with Israel in this hypocrisy is as morally bankrupt as it would have been to side with slave owners or the genocidal U.S. cavalry or the apartheid South African government because of objections to terrorism.
  20. Rocket Attacks on Israeli Civilians
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    I challenge anybody to show how attacks on Israeli non-combatants help defeat the Israeli ruling class. It is as clear as day that it only strengthens our enemy. If the Israeli rulers didn't have rockets landing in Haifa and other civilian targets, they wouldn't have nearly the support for their war on Gaza and Lebanon that they unfortunately enjoy today from the Israeli Jewish population and much of the North American and European population, gentile as well as Jewish.
  21. Should People Opposed to Bigotry and Anti-Semitism Support Israel?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2005
    That the Zionist project is bad for Jews as well as for non-Jews is an idea which, for many decades, has been suppressed. It is time good people -- of all faiths -- rediscovered it.
  22. Should There Be A Jewish State?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2002
    The very concept of ethnically pure states is divisive and destined to stoke conflict. The so-called "two state solution" in the Middle East - establishing a Palestinian state to counter the Jewish state - is a conceptual and political trap that prevents Arab and Jewish working people from uniting around their common interests and values. The situation in the Middle East cannot be solved within this framework; it leads nowhere except to more destruction and hate and more elite control.
  23. "Take This Test and Shove It!"
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1999
    Open resistance to high stakes tests is an important development: it can be the first step in a movement uniting students, teachers, parents, and others against the corporate assault on public education and for a democratic society.
  24. "Two State Solution" Equals Racism
    Palestinians and Jews CAN Live Peacefully as Equals in One Democratic State
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    The mutual fear and distrust between Jews and non-Jews in Palestine today is no more innate to these people than the belief in anti-black stereotypes so widely accepted by white Americans in the past was innate to white people. The animosity between Palestinians and Israeli Jews was deliberately fomented by Israeli Zionist leaders with the help of British and American leaders for decades. It was not the presence of Jews in Palestine, per se, that angered the native Palestinians; rather it was the intention (and then the reality) of Zionists removing non-Jews from their homeland to turn most of it into an exclusively Jewish state.
  25. Uri Avnery Is Dead Wrong
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    In order to move forward and overcome the arguments people like him will hurl against us, we will need to get outside the reformist box and adopt a frankly revolutionary outlook, one that clearly sees the class conflict that rages all around us, that speaks to people about it directly, that asks people to evaluate ideas and events in light of their own insights into the world based on their personal experience of the class war, and that aims not merely to act as a cheerleader for this or that "lesser evil" scheme of our capitalist rulers but to win the class war so that ordinary people can shape society by their positive values.
  26. What Is a Liberal to Do?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    Seventy percent of African-American voters in California voted for Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage. Liberals, however, say that opposing same-sex marriage is a form of bigotry no better than the racism of those who wanted inter-racial marriage to be illegal and Jim Crow laws to remain. How, liberals wonder, can African-Americans--the victims of racism-- switch from being champions of equality to champions of bigotry? It is a true paradox. Liberals, by definition, support the victims of racism. But how can they do that when those very same victims are bigoted against gays? Oh dear! What is a liberal to do?
  27. What Kind of Society Do We Want?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1997
    In a society based on solidarity and trust, the economics of producing and distributing things would be like sharing within a family, rather than buying and selling for profit in a marketplace.
  28. What Will It Take To Win?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2005
    Our current strategy engages people in an arena - history and events in Palestine/Israel - far from their direct experience. We are the experts on a topic they know little about. We ask people to learn from us about something far away, and to take some local action (like voting for divestment) to express their agreement with us about it. There is a limit to how many people will be interested in doing this. A revolutionary strategy, in contrast, engages people in the arena which they know a lot about, and into which they have tremendous insights from direct personal experience.
  29. The White Cop and the Black Professor
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    Police are trained to act as authoritarian thugs when they are dealing with people who are not obviously of, or loyal to, the very wealthy elite who rule the nation. The police are trained to enforce law and order in an unjust and unequal society, and a big part of doing this requires that they make ordinary people obey them out of fear.
  30. Whom Should We Support in Iran?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    The people we should support in Iran are those who are trying to make Iran more equal, more democratic and more friendly to the principle of solidarity--concern for one another. Since we want the world to move in this direction, we should support those who are pushing it in that direction. The people doing this are working class Iranians.
  31. Why Are Families Under Attack?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    The media are full of very sophisticated anti-family messages, which can come from both the right and the left. Liberals denigrate the value of families in which children are raised by their real mother and father, and they sometimes suggest that such families are often patriarchies with abusive fathers. Conservatives often call for "family values" in which women are subordinate to men and inequality prevails. Neither liberal nor conservative views reflect true family values of equality and commitment to each other.
  32. Why Is Israel Killing Gazans?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
  33. Why Israeli Leaders Love Qassam Rockets
    A Reply to Michael Neumann
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    Israeli leaders want Jews to believe that they are surrounded by violent anti-Semites. This is how the billionaires and generals and politicians who rule over the Israeli population get away with what they are doing: getting richer and more powerful while driving the rest of the population down economically. They need the Israeli population to believe that the rulers of Israel are protecting Jews from the "real enemy"--violent anti-Semitic Arabs. To make sure the "real enemy" remains credible, non-combatant Jews must die at the hands of apparent anti-Semites.
  34. Why 'Pick On' Israel? Here's Why
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    There are a lot of excellent reasons for singling Israel out, and none of them have anything to do with anti-Semitism. Israel is the only nation that self-righteously accuses any critic of its ethnic cleansing of being a bigot (anti-Semite.) It is the only nation that insists that its racist policies are 'a light unto the nations.' If we let Israel get away with this we are contributing not only to its actual ethnic cleansing, but to its glorification of the principle of ethnic cleansing, which aids and abets this crime everywhere in the world.
  35. Why They Voted For Obama But Against Same-Sex Marriage
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    People who think that it is wrong to make same-sex marriage legal because it would give social approval to the practice of using sperm or egg donors to conceive children who will, by design, not know their biological mother or biological father are, according to liberals, "hateful and bigoted." In the world of these liberals, placing the welfare of children before the desires of adults is "hateful and bigoted."
  36. Winstanley & The Diggers
    The Spirtual and Political Story of a Seventeenth Century Communist Movement
    Resource Type: Article
    Spritzler sets out to show that the resistance to the Hobbesian ideas that rule our lives today is as old as those ideas themselves. Hobbes' basic assumption is that men are necessarily locked into a struggle for power over one another This assumption is also the basis of the most powerful political forces at work in the world today. Winstanley, and many of his contempoaries, defy this dominant paradigm.