The Historical Challenges Facing the Socialist Movement

SOCIALIST MOVEMENT 

Translation of Introduction to the Latin American Edition of Beyond Capital

István Mészáros and John Bellamy Foster

MR Online | March 26, 2021

Preface to the English Edition

On February 16, 2015, István Mészáros sent me a letter addressing the history of the Latin American Spanish edition of Beyond Capital and its reception by President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, along with a narrative of the origins of his close friendship with Chávez. In that letter, he explained that Vadell Hermanos, the publisher of the Spanish edition, had “asked me to write a special Introduction for the Latin American edition in Spanish, and I completed this special introduction—nearly 10,000 words, not published in English—in January 2000.” The entire book incorporating this special introduction was published by Vadell Hermanos in 2001, followed by the Brazilian Portuguese translation in 2002.

A Journal of People report

CARBON FOOTPRINT 

As oil prices rallied and investor confidence in excessively punished oil stocks returned, the world’s oil billionaires became richer in the first quarter of 2021, adding a combined net worth of $51 billion in the first quarter. The energy tycoons from the U.S. to Russia and India boosted their fortunes at the fastest rate of any group in the Bloomberg index.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s richest people, U.S. oil tycoon Harold Hamm saw his net worth jump by $3.3 billion year to date to stand at $8.4 billion as of April 2.

A Journal of People report

BIG CORPORATIONS 

Fifty-five of the biggest U.S. companies paid $0 in federal taxes or no tax last year, found a new study from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

Despite raking in billions, Nike, Duke Energy, FedEx, and other public companies have paid no federal corporate income tax in the U.S. since 2018, according to the study.

The 55 publicly traded companies would have paid an estimated $12 billion in federal taxes if not for corporate tax breaks in 2020, including $8.5 billion in tax avoidance and $3.5 billion in tax rebates, the report found using regulatory filings and other information.

A Journal of People report

WATER SCARCITY IN USA

Two Indigenous communities in New Mexico are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over a revised federal rule that lifts protections for many streams, creeks and wetlands across the nation, saying the federal government is violating its trust responsibility to Native American tribes.

The pueblos of Jemez and Laguna are the latest to raise concerns over inadequate protections for local water sources in the desert Southwest. The challenge filed last week in federal court follows a similar case brought in 2020 by the Navajo Nation, the nation’s largest Native American tribe, and several environmental groups.

IMF’s double standards on pandemic packages

IMF’S HYPOCRISY 

Prabhat Patnaik

People’s Dispatch | April 04, 2021

The COVID-19 crisis has seen a very different response from the advanced countries compared with the Third World countries. The former have unrolled substantial fiscal packages for rescue and recovery while the latter have been trapped in fiscal austerity.

Among Third World countries, India’s fiscal package has been perhaps the most niggardly, amounting to no more than 1% of GDP; but even other Third World countries have not fared all that much better.

Ultra-Wealthy Evade 20% of Taxable Income

CAPITALISTS IN USA 

POLITSTURM | April 01, 2021

According to new research published in the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the wealthiest Americans are more successful at evading taxes than was previously expected. The paper suggests that due to the use of sophisticated techniques, the sampled data of random audits do not capture the true amount of tax evasion. The authors estimate that the top 1% shelter 20% of their taxable income. 

Audit data showed a very small amount of tax evasion for the wealthiest Americans which can be explained by the use of foreign intermediaries (ex. Foreign bank accounts) and pass-through business entities which serve to complicate detection efforts.

Explained: How Intellectual Property Rights are blocking vaccine production

COVID-19 VACCINE

Peoples Dispatch | April 04, 2021

Estimates suggest that the mass of the population in wealthier countries are likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by mid of 2022. However, in poorer economies, mass immunization will take until 2024, if it happens at all. These countries will pay the cost of this delay in the form of 2.5 million avoidable deaths.

What is standing in the way of expanding production and carrying out mass vaccination campaigns across the world?

How pharma companies created a bottleneck in vaccine distribution

BIG PHARMA

Newsclick | April 03, 2021

In this episode of ‘Talking Science & Tech’, we look at how private pharma companies and developed nations have created a bottleneck in vaccine distribution through the use of patents and legislation.

Remembering Gustave Lefrançais

REVOLUTIONARIES 

Daniel Bensaïd

VERSO | March 17, 2021

Though less famous than Varlin, Vallès, Flourens or Rossel, Gustave Lefrançais was the first president of the Paris Commune and the dedicatee of Eugène Pottier’s L’Internationale.

Born into an anti-Bonapartist family in Anjou in 1826, Lefrançais attended the teacher training college at Versailles from 1842, but was unable to find a job when he left: he was already banned from working on account of his scurrilous opinions. After temporarily replacing a colleague in Dourdan, where he tussled with the local priest, he had to resign himself to becoming a clerk for a Parisian businessman, who dismissed him when the revolution broke out in February 1848. His future life was exemplary for a nineteenth-century communist militant. Arrested even before the June days, he was sentenced to three months in prison and two years’ surveillance for possession of weapons, and sent to Dijon under house arrest. Exiled in London from 1851, he might have crossed paths in Soho with Marx, Mazzini or Louis Blanc. He founded a cooperative restaurant, ‘La Sociale’, before returning to Paris in 1853.

Mike Taber (ed)

BOOK REVIEW 

 

The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922-1923

tr. John Riddell, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2019. 796 pp., $50 pb

ISBN 9781642590128

Reviewed by Chris James Newlove

Marx and Philosophy Review of Books | April 01, 2021

The Communist Movement at a Crossroads documents discussion of the fundamental issues of revolutionary strategy and tactics, many of which are still relevant today including the question of the United Front, Workers Governments and the fight against fascism. The plenums documented in the book are meetings of an enlarged executive committee of the Communist International that were held between the main World Congresses, the first four of which (when V. I. Lenin was alive) have been documented in English in John Riddell’s series. The plenums described by Grigorri Zinoviev as ‘small world congresses’ are of equal interest to the main congresses predominantly organised by the Russian Communist Party, debating and taking important decisions that directly shaped the practice of Communist Parties (and other forces) around the world.