The US Election: The Times they aren’t A-changing

U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2020

A Morning Star Editorial | November 07, 2020

IT was billed as the election that would triumphantly restore the liberal-capitalist centre: back to 2008, before the financial crash and succeeding crises shattered political systems globally.

Even if the late counts narrowly deliver more states than Joe Biden needs to secure the 270 votes in the Electoral College, an anti-democratic product of the slave-owning era, the US presidential election has certainly not done that.

Results are in: Americans Lose, Duopoly Wins, Trumpism wasn’t a Cult of Personality

U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2020

Ramin Mazaheri

“Donald, you’re fired!” Maybe. But not “The Great Disgruntlement” he exploited to attain power. The Dems refuse to look at the legitimate reasons for that phenomenon.

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It’s Day 3 of the US Election Debacle and – as we’re still mid-debacle – it’s very possible that Donald Trump will be the only conservative casualty, because it’s already certain the US election was an undeniable disaster for Democrats.

The Democrats had everything on their side in 2020: the mainstream media, the Deep State, the (self-proclaimed) moral high ground, more campaign money than ever, a hysterically-motivated base – and yet if Trump does end up winning Democrats will have nothing to show for all that. [Note: At this writing, Friday 10:06 AM, various reports are proclaiming Biden the winner on account of Pennsylvania vote tilting decisively to Biden.—Ed)

That should be stunning news. Here is the roundup of the non-presidential elections:

Don’t Fool Yourself: Your Biden Vote Was Not A “Vote Against Fascism”

U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2020

Caitlin Johnstone

 

Well the post-election battle rages on, with rank-and-file Democrats freaking out that Trump will remain in office by force (spoiler: he won’t, he’ll leave office peacefully like his predecessors) and rank-and-file Republicans freaking out that Biden will enslave them to communism (spoiler: he won’t, he’ll enslave you to end-stage imperialist neoliberalism like everyone else).

There are accusations of cheating and shenanigans on both sides, and at this point I honestly don’t know how to care about any of it. Like what am I supposed to say? “Oh no, you mean the fake election for two fake candidates is really fake??” One corporate war whore is as good as another. Let Raytheon pick the winner for all I care.

Working-Class and Bourgeois Democracy

BOUGEOIS DEMOCRACY

V. I. Lenin

Published: Vperyod, No. 3, January 24 (11), 1905. Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962, Moscow, Volume 8, pages 72-82.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs and The Late Isidor Lasker
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. • README

The question of the attitude of the Social-Democrats, or working-class democrats, to the bourgeois democrats is an old and yet ever new question. It is old because it has been an issue ever since the inception of Social-Democracy. Its theoretical principles were elucidated in the earliest Marxist literature, in the Communist Manifesto and in Capital. It is ever new because every step in the development of every capitalist country produces a peculiar, original blending of different shades of bourgeois democracy and different trends within the socialist movement.

The US Economy – Some Facts

U.S. ECONOMY

Michael Roberts Blog | November 03, 2020

As we await the result of the US presidential election, here are some facts about the US economy within a world context.

Share of world GDP

In 1980, it looked like this:

The US had more than twice of the share of global GDP than Japan, and more than Japan, Germany and France combined.  China’s share was less than 2% and virtually the same as India.

October Revolution: Strengthen People’s Struggles

OCTOBER REVOLUTION

Sitaram Yechury

People’s Democracy | November 07, 2020

THE anniversary of the great October Socialist Revolution in 2020 comes at a time when the vast majority of the world’s people are victims of the double whammy attack on their life and livelihoods due to the raging Covid-19 pandemic, the consequent lockdowns and disruption in their day-to-day life and the deepening economic recession in the capitalist world.  In this situation, the significance of the October Revolution and the superiority of Socialism over capitalism is tellingly vindicated.

Capitalism and Inheritance

POLITICAL ECONOMY

Prabhat Patnaik

People’s Democracy | November 07, 2020

IT is often believed that the ability to pass on property to one’s progeny is an essential element of capitalism, without which the capitalists’ incentives will dry up and the system will lose its dynamism. Nothing could be further from the truth; indeed the acquisition of property through inheritance is contrary to the bourgeois justification for capitalist property.

This justification lies in the claim that the capitalists have some special quality that is rare, whose employment makes the nation prosperous and for which they must be rewarded; but there is no unanimity among bourgeois spokesmen on what exactly this special quality is. This quality cannot consist in their supervising the process of production, for such supervision is typically exercised by salaried personnel who are at best superior workers; they get a salary and not profits (unless they also happen to own some property in the form of shares). It is in recognition of this fact that John Kenneth Galbraith had talked of firms being run not by the capitalists but by what he called the “technostructure”.

Femicide Continues to rise in Turkey as Women’s Organisations Targeted

WOMEN’S STRUGGLE IN TURKEY

Steve Sweeney

Morning Star| November 04, 2020

CAMPAIGNERS battling against femicide in Turkey warned of a state cover-up today after the latest figures showed that at least 21 women were murdered by a man in October.

And according to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform (KCDP), a women’s rights organisation, another eight women have died in suspicious circumstances.

KDCP said that nine women were killed because they either wanted a divorce or to end a relationship with a male partner.

It Not About Right or Left, Its About Neoliberalism. Mickey Huff on Big Tech’s Efforts To Purge Dissent

BIG TECH

Raul Diego

MintPress News | November 04, 2020

In mid-October, one day after Twitter and Facebook banned a story by the New York Post about a laptop alleged to belong to Hunter Biden, YouTube published a short announcement on its blog called “Managing harmful conspiracy theories on YouTube” where new “efforts to curb hate and harassment by removing more conspiracy theory content used to justify real-world violence.”

In the official statement, the Google subsidiary defined the terms of its growing model of censorship:

The US has Left the Paris Climate Deal — What’s Next?

CLIMATE CRISIS

Quirin Schiermeier

Nature | November 04, 2020

Nations struck the Paris climate agreement in 2015.Credit: Chesnot/Getty

Regardless of who wins the US presidential election, the United States officially pulls out of the Paris climate agreement on 4 November. The move marks a blow to international efforts to halt global warming.

The landmark deal, struck in 2015, aims to limit global warming to “well below” 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures. But in June 2017, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States — the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases — would withdraw from the agreement.

Nature examines how the withdrawal will affect global efforts to mitigate climate change.