The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Brian K. Noe

Thoughts on 2016

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Tony Wilsdon analyzes U.S. politics in flux ahead of the 2016 elections.

The central contradiction of our time is that capitalism is in decline, which means the system’s ability to make concessions has been significantly narrowed. Corporate profitability has been maintained by massively increasing exploitation while in the public sector there is endless austerity. Both major parties lie to the public to get elected, and then do the dirty work of big business once in office. Behind both parties and the mass media lies an elite 0.01% whose massive wealth rests in ownership of shares in big companies, financial institutions and real estate and other assets. They plough money into the two parties to represent their interests. They flood the corridors of Washington with their paid representatives to make sure pro-big business policies are enacted. These corporate-serving politicians from both parties then have to come back to the public with a new story as to why we should put faith in them again. As the cracks grow between corporate politics and the needs of the 99%, so the cracks grow in the political system, and so the opportunities grow to build a new political party of the working class and the poor.

Read the Article: 2016 Presidential Campaign Underway | Socialist Alternative

My Introduction to Debord

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John Perry Barlow

Many, many moons ago, some time in the mid-to-late 1990s, I ran across this interview with Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation John Perry Barlow. It has had a profound effect on my way of looking at things. It was the first I had ever heard of Guy DeBord, whose book The Society of the Spectacle completely reframed my ideas about society, and nudged me down the road to political awakening.

Barlow’s words concerning society and the media are still apt twenty years later, I think.

A brief conversation this morning on Twitter concerning free-range versus helicopter parenting (and the irrational fear that many of we parents now face) prompted me to look for the link. I would highly encourage you to take a look.

Read the Interview: Go Placidly Amidst the Noise and Haste

Photo by Cellanr.

Death at Quad Graphics

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An average of thirteen workers a day die on the job in the U.S.

One of those who perished recently was a veteran electrician crushed to death at 5 a.m. on April 24, 2015 at the Oklahoma City Quad/Graphics plant. He was servicing equipment on a maintenance call when he was pinned under a crane. The company decided not to shut down the plant. Workers were sent back to the presses to finish their shifts printing magazines while their co-worker lay dying. Lawyers and insurance agents were in the plant before the man’s family was even notified of the incident.

Read the Report from Labor Notes: Blood on Your National Geographic | Labor Notes

Read More from Solidarity: Life Has No Dignity at Quad | Solidarity

Reflections on the Second Revolution

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One hundred and fifty years ago, on June 2, 1865, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, signed the Union Army’s terms of surrender. This marked the final end of the Civil War which, as Patrick Ayers explains, can also truly be described as America’s Second Revolution.

Read More: 1865: A Revolutionary Turning Point in U.S. History | Socialist Alternative

Hedges on Marx

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At the Left Forum in New York City on May 30th, Chris Hedges opened a discussion of why Karl Marx is essential at a time when global capitalism is collapsing.

The final stages of capitalism, Marx wrote, would be marked by developments that are intimately familiar to most of us. Unable to expand and generate profits at past levels, the capitalist system would begin to consume the structures that sustained it. It would prey upon, in the name of austerity, the working class and the poor, driving them ever deeper into debt and poverty and diminishing the capacity of the state to serve the needs of ordinary citizens. It would, as it has, increasingly relocate jobs, including both manufacturing and professional positions, to countries with cheap pools of laborers. Industries would mechanize their workplaces. This would trigger an economic assault on not only the working class but the middle class—the bulwark of a capitalist system—that would be disguised by the imposition of massive personal debt as incomes declined or remained stagnant. Politics would in the late stages of capitalism become subordinate to economics, leading to political parties hollowed out of any real political content and abjectly subservient to the dictates and money of global capitalism.

But as Marx warned, there is a limit to an economy built on scaffolding of debt expansion. There comes a moment, Marx knew, when there would be no new markets available and no new pools of people who could take on more debt. This is what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis. Once the banks cannot conjure up new subprime borrowers, the scheme falls apart and the system crashes.

Read the Remarks in Full: Chris Hedges: Karl Marx Was Right – Chris Hedges – Truthdig

Joe Hill Road Show Chicago Performance

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Here’s the full video of the first night of the Joe Hill Roadshow, from the Hideout in Chicago, featuring Bucky Halker, Anne Feeney, Jan Hammarlund, JP Wright and Alexis Buss with emcee Paul Durica. This program was recorded by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

S15

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It’s been one of the pleasures of my life to attend the annual Socialism Conference in Chicago the past couple of years. Socialism 2015 is July 2nd through the 5th. Click the banner below for details.

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