Rouge Forum Update--4-9-09--from Rich

[Check out the RF News here]

Dear Friends,

For those teaching or learning about the current depression, here are some more good sources:

*Lewis Corey's outstanding 1934 book, Decline of American Capitalism, is online free at http://www.marxists.org/archive/corey/1934/decline/index.html
*How Goldman Sachs was at the Center of the Oil Trading Fiasco that Bankrupted SemGroup: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0413/096-sachs-semgroup-goldman-goose-oil.html
*The auto crisis, likely leading to the bankruptcy of GM (and the end of retiree health benefits, etc.) but this is also an indicator of the power of finance capital over industrial capital and the shift to the corporate state as US society decays: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/business/31assess.html?_r=1&hp
*Stiglitz on State Capitalism as Robbing Workers: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
*Updated interview with John Bellamy Foster: http://democracyandclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2009/03/interview-with-john-bellamy-foster-of.html
*Bello's Primer on the Meltdown: http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/bello031008.html
* The Economist on the Huge Fraud Beneath the Fiscal Crisis: Missing the Deeper Fraud; Exploited Labor. http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=15090
**Five Million Jobs Lost So Far This Depression http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/business/economy/04jobs.html

Current Developments:

*Centinela CalfiorniaTeachers Wildcat Strike http://www.dailybreeze.com/latestnews/ci_12034343
*Al Sharpton and the Ruling Class http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/04/pols_press_part.php
*Labor Bosses Forge Unity Committee: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040703222.html

The plum here is the dues from 3.5 million education workers, members of the National Education Association who will quickly learn that they are funding yet another layer of enemies.

Criticism of "Progressive" Warmongers: The term "progressive" may have no meaning anymore. If it is Move.on, that means slavish support for the demagogue, Obama. If it is United For Peace and Justice, it means the same thing in shifty terms.

UFPJ's recent Wall Street demos, deliberately set up to counter demands from rank and filers to demonstrate on the anniversary of the war, failed completely. This is nothing to gloat about even though we said, years ago, that following UFPJ would do just this.

Still, it is tragic.

Less than 10,000 people demonstrated, down from the one million who hit the streets six years ago. But numbers are not everything. UFPJ trumped that by teaching people nothing at all important about why things are as they are, what to do in order to develop grand strategy (peace, justice, equality, freedom, etc.) or strategy (how to understand specific local circumstances and to seek out choke points where people can use powerful direct action moves) and tactics (particular actions that link these three elements).

Why would that be? Because UFPJ is run by remnants of the Communist Party USA, people who have never sought to build a mass class conscious movement and who have always fought those who try. The current Rouge Forum News has a very fine article by Tom Suber about the wreckage that UFPJ leadership is creating. http://blogs.ubc.ca/ross/2009/04/rouge-forum-news-issue-13/

Let us be clear. The core issue of our time is accelerating color coded inequality met by the potential of organized mass class conscious resistance. Neither the CP nor UFPJ want any part of that.

Here is a sampling of UFPJ's failures: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/04/content_11129335.htmhttp://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jPati7jbLo532dVb5D55XbX9T3bgD97B8IUG0http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKN0335443120090403 The task at hand is ours. The $10.9 trillion dollars the corporate state just printed for the banks and insurance companies is going to come from the lives and labor of someone. Either it will come from the ruin of hundreds of thousand of poor and working people, or, if we fight back, it can come from the rich. Let them suffer and pay, as they should. The degree of the pain will be determined by the levels of our real resistance in schools, in communities, at work places, and in the military. When they say Cut Back; We should say Fight Back.

This is a critique from Antiwar.com: Progressive Warmongers: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/07/progressive-warmongers/

We note with sadness the death of a friend, Janet Jagan http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/30/janet-jagan-guyana-america-marxist

Thanks to Joe and Charles B., Steve and all the sharp eyes who caught the misspelled word in the last update (argh), Adam, Gina, Greg and Katie, Wayne, Sandra, Colin, Josh and M, Suber (s), the Sally's, Penny and Rick, Doug and Connie, Betty, Joe C, Susan O and H, Ginny H, Jim S, Ricky C., Chris, Carol Panetta, Sharon A, David, Donnie A, the Breedloves, and the entire RF Steering Committee and folks working on the upcoming conference. http://www.rougeforumconference.org/

All the best and good luck to us, every one.
r