Workers International League-NYC
The Workers International League is an organization born in the internet age, and is excited by every new technology. However, the internet can only play the limited role of helping us proliferate in an age of increased dependence on the virtual. Comrades meet face-to-face weekly. If you are serious about struggling for the socialist transformation of society, meet us. If you are in NYC and would like to attend one of our meetings email us. If you are elsewhere please use the contact us page on the Socialist Appeal website.
Learn more about us at socialistappeal.org and marxist.com
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jayaprada رنگارنگ -
subjectivedesigns Subjective Designs -
ironbroom When In Rome, Do As The Romani Do
On Saturday, September 8, 2012, 6 comrades form the NYC and NJ branches intervened in the NYC Labor Day parade. This is now held on the Saturday following Labor Day. It was a very rainy day, so we did not know if we could even set up the table, but we did get a short break in the weather to do so.
Rob Sewell, Leon Trotsky: the man and his ideas
Today marks the anniversary of Leon Trotsky’s assassination. Struck down 72 years ago by an ice-pick to the head from a cowardly Stalinist assassin, he soon fell into a coma and died the following day, 21st August 1940.
ATTN socialists in the NYC/metro area, this Saturday at 12:30pm at 60 Wall St., we’ll (the WIL) be doing a lead off on dialectical materialism. We’ll cover how Das Kapital is not only a book, but also a weapon with which you can beat reactionaries over the head, a door stopper, and even toilet paper too(!) because use-values are always so radically heterogeneous. #DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
KK is leading off and I’m chairing so it’ll be fun.
email us to RSVP.
yfis:
With the June 17 elections, Greece has entered into a new period. Austerity programmes have left the Greek economy in tatters and the working class have faced an onslaught of unprecedented proportions. The deepening of the capitalist crisis in Greece poses the need for socialism more clearly than ever before. The Greek Marxists have carried out a determined struggle for Marxism and a socialist programme, but they need your help.
Since 2007, the Greek economy has shrunk by more than 13%. Wages have fallen by an average of 30% and since the May elections the bosses have been asking for even bigger reductions. Youth unemployment is at 44% and total unemployment around 22%. The economy is in free fall, and the crisis has only begun.
The workers have answered the austerity programme with 18 general strikes but the ruling class is unrelenting. The workers have now turned to SYRIZA to redress their grievances with a massive swing, first in May and now also in June. The political situation is becoming increasingly polarised. The centre ground is quickly disappearing, with SYRIZA moving ahead. The fascists are also beginning to rear their ugly heads. Events are rapidly moving in a revolutionary direction.
Although the workers in Greece have shown their willingness to fight, time and time again, what has been lacking has been the leadership necessary to overthrow capitalism. The programme and leadership of SYRIZA are important steps forward compared to the PASOK but the leadership stops short of preparing the working class to seize power.
Now more than ever, Greece needs a strong Marxist tendency to put forward a socialist alternative. However, the comrades in Greece need financial resources. The crisis has weakened their financial position, precisely when they need to take a step forward and they have asked for our assistance. They have even had to introduce a special hardship fund for a small number of their comrades who cannot even afford to buy enough food. They are asking for our help with subsidies to take 13 comrades to the congress of the IMT this summer and for help in financing an office in Athens for one year. The total cost would be €5,000. We are asking all our readers to help raise this money.
The political and professional representatives of the troika and the Greek ruling class disregard as “impractical” any programme that is directed against the interests of the bankers and other predatory capitalists. Any demand to break the shackles of wage slavery and of the huge army of unemployed, who are being forced to eat the leftovers of society, is dubbed as “populism” and “adventurism” by these good Christian gentlemen.
“The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.”-Fredrich Engels, Socialism:Utopian and Scientific (1880)
Suggested Reading List on Historical Materialism
The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels
The German Ideology, Marx and Engels
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels
The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Man to Ape, Engels
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Lenin
The History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky
The Civil War in France, Marx
The Peasant War in Germany, Engels
The Eigteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx
The Holy Family, Marx
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Engels
The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx
The Development of the Monist View of History, Plekhanov
The Foundations of Christianity, Kautsky
On Marx and Engels, Lenin
Preface and Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx
The critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx
In honor of our upcoming Engels Day tour of the Museum of Natural History, we’ve decided to post a reading list on the subject of Historical Materialism, the Marxist philosophy which will serve as the foundation of our analysis for this event.
All of the above texts can be found online on Marxists.org, any many can be physically purchased through http://www.marxistbooks.com or http://wellred.marxist.com/
Planning on coming to Engels Day?
Don’t be shy! Come join us on an unofficial Marxist tour of the Museum of Natural History. We’re excited to meet you!
Please RSVP by emailing: kk.marxist@gmail.com
For assistance on the day of the event please call: 917-830-MARX
July 29th, 2:30pm, Museum of Natural History. 200 Central Park West.
Do you often dream of having communist friends? Then come hang out with us this Sunday, July 29th at 2:30 pm for our guided tour of the Museum of Natural History in NYC, while we discuss our favorite bourgie—Friedrich Engels’—work on the emergence of early class society and establish a solid introduction to the Youth for International Socialism.
Anyone interested in attending or learning more about the meet up should contact kk.marxist@gmail.com for further information.
