by James BThis is a draft of a speech delivered in front of the Rock Island City Council I am James, I am a citizen of Rock Island, and I serve as the co-chair of the Quad Cities chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. I am here today to ask, on behalf of our […]

by Kelly K On August 8th German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a ban on Germany selling weapons to Israel. To people in the know about the situation on the ground in Palestine, it was too little and too late and only further proved that the West could have stopped the ethnic cleansing and genocide playing […]

by B. Maloney Capitalism and its social conditioning are deeply pervasive.   People of the Quad Cities need to fight not only to maintain current public services and community resources but also to enhance, increase, and invest in them. This fight starts with examining the learned characteristics of our society and critically questioning who benefits from […]

by B. Maloney I recently had the opportunity to gather in a ballroom in Chicago with over one thousand comrades for the DSA National Convention, and it was an amazing and unforgettable experience. The energy in the room, the sense of unity, and the shared purpose among such a large group created an atmosphere unlike […]

Kids in Vermont have gone back to school. On their first day after the summer vacation, Windham County students may have expected to say hello again to their usual bus drivers, but that'll have to wait. Travel Kuz, the supervisory union's transportation contractor, has locked out members of Teamsters Local 597 and brought in scabs.

Bus drivers and monitors responded to their bosses' refusal to bargain by organizing pickets. On Wednesday, Travel Kuz sent them a cease-and-desist letter, calling a demonstration at Brattleboro Union High School "unlawful" and "unsafe." Local law enforcement disagreed.

The Teamsters want Windham Southeast superintendent Mark Speno to pressure Travel Kuz to end the lockout and have encouraged allies to contact him. Tell Speno (802-254-3730, mspeno@wsesdvt.org) to support the transportation workers' fight for fair wages and benefits. You can even attend the next school board meeting.

Follow Local 597's Facebook page for the latest updates. An injury to one is an injury to all.

And speaking of the Teamsters, you may see some of them in Burlington at the Labor Day Solidarity March, Rally & Picnic. Dozens of unions and activist organizations (including Green Mountain DSA) have endorsed the event.

You can help us get ready by joining us at Migrant Justice (179 S. Winooski Ave., Burlington) today (8/30) at 4 p.m. to create art for the rally. Feel free to bring materials.

We expect a massive turnout for the rally itself. Meet us at Battery Park at 1 p.m. on Monday, Sept 1. Labor Day belongs to workers.

Unfortunately, as the schoolkids already know, Labor Day also means that summer is over. Thanks for the memories – here are a few shots from our chapter's barbecue at Oakledge Park.

GMDSA MEETINGS & EVENTS
🚲 In order to avoid a conflict with the Labor Day rally, GMDSA's Urbanism Committee will meet on Tuesday, Sept. 2, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

👋 Find out how you can help our Membership Committee improve recruitment and involvement in our chapter on Thursday, Sept. 4, and Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

🧑‍🏭 Our Labor Committee will hold its next meeting on Monday, Sept. 8, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

🔨 Talk about your job and learn about shop-floor organizing from peers at Workers' Circle (co-hosted by the Green Mountain IWW) on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, including Sept. 10, at 6 p.m. at Migrant Justice (179 S. Winooski Ave., Burlington).

🍿 Socialist Film Club will host another backyard screening in Burlington on Friday, Sept. 12, at 7 p.m. Please email us for more information if you're interested.

🗳️ The next meeting of our Electoral Committee will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 17, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

🤝 GMDSA's East Branch and West Branch will come together for a general meeting on Saturday, Sept. 20, at 11 a.m. at Montpelier's Christ Episcopal Church (64 State St.), with an optional orientation for newcomers at 10 a.m.

🍉 Our Palestine Solidarity Committee will meet on Monday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. on Zoom.

STATE & LOCAL NEWS
📰 GMDSA-endorsed state senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Chittenden-Central) toured Ukraine, meeting with activists, politicians, students, and trade unionists.

📰 Protesting the Trump administration, Vermonters and Quebecois gathered at the US-Canada line in an expression of international solidarity.

COMMUNITY FLYERS

The Democratic Socialists of America International Committee (DSA IC) unequivocally condemns the “peace” plan brokered by President Donald Trump between Armenia and Azerbaijan. We call on the United States to immediately reverse course and ensure that any peace agreement is finalized with full consequences for Azerbaijan’s officials for perpetrating a genocide against the indigenous Armenians of Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh). This means ensuring the right of return for Artsakh Armenians, recognition of their right to self-determination, and prosecution for crimes against humanity by Azerbaijan’s ethno-supremacist government under Ilham Aliyev. 

Nearly two years ago, Azerbaijan finalized a brutal assault on the de facto autonomous region of Artsakh, besieging, starving, and ultimately expelling the native Armenian population. As the world first saw in 2020, this assault was made possible by U.S. complicity in the actions of two of its allies, Turkey and Israel. Despite State Department Acting Assistant Secretary Yuri Kim assuring the world that “the United States will not countenance any action or effort—short-term or long-term—to ethnically cleanse or commit other atrocities against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh,” the United States did exactly that.

Despite Azerbaijan’s documented and numerous crimes against humanity, its occupation of sovereign Armenian territory, and its genocide of Artsakh’s Armenian population, administrations of both major parties have now acquiesced to this regime’s demands. This includes repeatedly waving Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act to send American tax dollars to arm the Azerbaijani military. The shameful situation can be explained by the geopolitics of the South Caucasus. 

Turkey, for its part, continues to engage in vehement denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and uses fascistic, hyper-nationalist rhetoric both at home and in its foreign policy. Towards Azerbaijan, this means advancing Pan-Turkism, which largely scapegoats Armenians as an inferior and sub-human people worthy of extermination in order to create a contiguous Turkic nation. Both Turkish President Reccep Erdogan and Azerbaijani President Aliyev have, for instance, publicly praised the actions of the perpetrators of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and their immediate underlings repeatedly advance the idea of “completing” the task. However, support for Azerbaijan from U.S. allies neither starts nor ends with Turkey.

Israel, since the fall of the Soviet Union, has cultivated a deep relationship with Azerbaijan. Reports suggest that Azerbaijan continues to be one of the top three energy suppliers of Israel. In exchange, Israel sells weapons to and tests developing systems in partnership with Azerbaijan’s military. In fact, around 70 percent of Azerbaijan’s weapons are reported to come from Israel. In 2020, Israeli drones were a key factor in Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenian forces protecting Artsakh. It is likely for this reason that Israel also proudly denies the Armenian Genocide even today. Furthermore, Israel views Azerbaijan as a key geostrategic asset to gain leverage, intelligence, and supremacy over Iran, with a number of Israeli bases being hosted close to the Iranian border.

The U.S.should not sacrifice Artsakh’s Armenians on an altar to these two genocidal allies. Assisting Azerbaijan in whitewashing genocide in exchange for oil to flow from Baku to Europe and Israel and to further Pan-Turkism is criminal. As socialists, we recognize that the dignity of any people should not be contingent on their value to global capital. Tragically, this peace plan does exactly the opposite: subjugating Armenia at the expense of profit, Pan-Turkism, and Zionism. The Armenians of Artsakh have been indigenous to the region for millennia, with some of the Armenian people’s earliest cultural heritage originating in the area. Their right to self-determination is inalienable and the right of return for the over 100,000 forcibly displaced people must be part of any U.S. brokered peace along with release of prisoners of war, political prisoners, and withdrawal from occupied lands.

This injustice is compounded by the provision for a 99-year, privatized lease on a transit corridor for Azerbaijan that would cut through the Armenian region of Syunik. Profiteering on a route that will likely be used by Turkey and Israel to supply weapons to Azerbaijan to use against Armenia or Iran. The creation of such a route also calls into question Armenian sovereignty, as the corridor would potentially cut off Armenia from its only friendly neighbor, Iran.  

This would undeniably be an extension of American neo-colonial power into Armenia that, as history suggests for 99-year leases, any future Armenian government will find incredibly difficult to get out of. Troublingly, U.S. diplomatic history is checkered with interventions into smaller, less powerful countries to uphold such strategic trade routes and enrich private enterprises. This includes the Panama Canal in Panama, United Fruit in Guatemala, the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government, and the military takeover of Chile. This history must not be allowed to repeat itself in Armenia. Instead, the United States must go back to the table and reverse the genocide of Artsakh Armenians. 

Democratic Socialists of America’s International Committee stands with oppressed people around the world fighting for liberation against imperialism, racism, and capitalism. From Palestine, to the Congo, to Sudan, to Armenia and Artsakh, and beyond, we recognize that these struggles are interconnected. In solidarity with comrades around the world, we strongly condemn this reprehensible proposal and call on the US government to change course.

The post DSA IC Condemns US-brokered “peace” eroding Armenia’s sovereignty and rewarding  Azerbaijan’s genocide in Artsakh appeared first on DSA International Committee.

By: Nate Foster

LOWELL, MA – UMass Lowell (UML) has always had deep ties to American industry. Located in a city that was founded to manufacture textiles during the Industrial Revolution, the university can trace its roots back to the Lowell Textile School in 1895. Integrated into the University of Massachusetts System in 1991, the UML mission statement echoes its predecessor’s founding purpose: preparing students for the American workforce through industry connection. 

Much has changed since the days of the Lowell Textile School. Domestic textile manufacturing is a thing of the past in the mill town, retreating to urban immigrant worker enclaves. Now, UML uses debt to turn students into engineers that leave Lowell to find employment in tech hubs far from Lowell. In the 21st century, students in the former mill town find career and research opportunities in the military and security sectors. And with each passing year of graduates, UML welcomes thousands of new undergraduates each year that are drawn to its trademark programs leading to careers in U.S. tech industries – all five of the highest earning degrees at UML are in computer science or engineering.

These are tech disciplines increasingly dominated by large corporate contractors. These behemoths have come to control increasingly larger portions of the U.S. military in recent decades, with the Department of Defense spending over $431 billion in corporate contracts last year and over $100 million of those funds allocated toward just fourteen university R&D programs. These staggering figures illustrate the integral role the U.S. military plays in research funding for UMass Lowell, which has prioritized institutional connections to the booming military and security markets. Focusing on a growing military industry is a predictable move for UML, given its status as a public university with state funding concerns, a strong research apparatus in engineering and technology, and a student body filled with future industry professionals.

Six-figure opportunities are available to escape the financial hurdles and career uncertainties attached to higher education in Massachusetts. Lowell students are 41% students of color, 39% first-generation college students, and 30% of are pell grant recipients. Incentives for comfortable careers in lucrative defense fields are abundant, which makes the university’s push toward funnelling students with limited options toward these fields all the more insidious. All students have to do in return is join the ranks of the leading U.S. war profiteers, where designing the most destructive technologies in human history is another 9 to 5. 

In Debt? Sell Your Labor to War.

UML is sharpening its military focus at a time when college is historically unaffordable for students in Massachusetts. As a public, state-funded institution, UML is supposed to present an affordable path to higher education for its students. In reality, students at Massachusetts public schools have been missing out on assistance for decades. 

Despite a national 15% increase in state-funded financial aid across the country between 2001-2021, aid in Massachusetts simultaneously decreased by 47%. The cost of attendance for public universities in Massachusetts went up by 59% over the same timespan. With the absence of aid, many students are forced to borrow their access to education: 2001-2021 saw a 105% increase in students taking out loans at public universities in Massachusetts. UML is no exception, as 73% of students graduated with some form of student debt in 2020, with an average debt load of $33,500 per graduate. Debt drags upon students like a chain. 

As financial pressures mount, many students prioritize fiscal responsibility over ethics and passion. Cost-consciousness is accommodated to avoid class-consciousness. Students take lucrative majors that will pay the bills in the future, complete with undergraduate research and networking opportunities for employment after graduation – military-funded jobs for military-funded purposes. Student debt doesn’t just lead to selling out to some corporate position; instead, because of how industry has captured engineering, student debt leads to selling labor to facilitate a smoother, more technologically savvy war machine.

Corporate Recruitment on Campus

UML students are an invaluable resource to the US military-industrial complex. Every fall semester, a campus full of future working professionals keeps its eyes peeled for career opportunities that offer financial stability. These students are at a critical juncture in the recruitment process for war profiteering companies that need college-educated employees and sustained university research systems. 

Industry partnerships are further incentivized by the U.S. government, which provides funding to UML research initiatives that prop up its defense apparatuses. In a DOGE era, when the federal government is slashing one agency and one research fund after another, universities like UML have even greater incentives to do everything to facilitate the most stable research funds and institutional relationships with the institution: those prioritized by the U.S. government itself, in areas deemed critical by the government, like defense. Post-graduation employment rates, an increasingly important metric among powerful college rank lists, also push universities to match students’ skills with market needs dominated by defense. 

Forty-four official UML corporate partners mention servicing various sectors of the defense industry on their official websites, including weapons manufacturing, aerospace, cybersecurity, communications, electronics, robotics, advanced materials and polymers, and energy. UML organizes their corporate partnerships into a tier system, recognizing special proximity to their “premier,” “select,” and “advantage” partners. At the top of the pyramid, both premier partners, Raytheon and Draper Laboratory (a nonprofit company), are active in the military industry.

UML’s partnerships with war institutions for corporate recruitment is blatant. Raytheon, for example, has collaborated with UML to establish the Raytheon UMass Lowell Research Institute (RURI). Located on campus at the Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center, Raytheon has clearly defined the founding purposes of RURI to be “workforce development” creating a “talent pipeline of new employees trained in additive and microwave technologies.” Raytheon’s UML partnership has been a profound success on both the research and recruitment fronts; the corporation employed over 700 UML alumni as of 2021, far outpacing any of the university’s other corporate affiliates. RURI has also secured numerous research projects with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Raytheon is on the front lines of corporate recruitment into war efforts at UML, but far from the only example of the school’s pipelining. RURI is just one of seven of UML’s listed research centers and institutes and eleven laboratories and research initiatives that work with military contractors or the U.S. military directly. An affiliated nonprofit entity called the UMass Lowell Applied Research Corporation (UMLARC) is explicitly dedicated to securing DoD research contracts. UMLARC is staffed by UML vice chancellors, former U.S. Air Force members, and corporate representatives, and is active through the Northstar Campus, a branch of the UML Research Institute which was established to strengthen university-corporate-government relations in the military industry.

UML has reserved entire sections of land for the pipeline.

Outcomes of War Profiteering in 2025

War profiteering only works when there is war to profit from. Markets surge with the onset of the newest invasion, proxy war, or security concern, as conflict leads to windfall profits for corporate contractors. There is a human cost associated with tying research and career opportunities to such an industry that does not show up on a corporate bottom line or the UML website. 

A potent case study in the effects of war profiteering at UML is the school’s participation in Israeli apartheid and mass-murder campaigns via military research for the U.S. defense industry. UML is partnered with numerous U.S. weapons contractors that provide the bulk of arms sales to the Israeli occupation. Most notable are UML partners Raytheon and Lockheed Martin; the world’s two largest arms dealers supply the missiles, bombs, and fighter jets that have seen heightened and indiscriminate use on large populated areas in Palestine, killing tens of thousands of people directly and likely hundreds of thousands more to follow from the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure. Raytheon also helped create Israel’s trademark Iron Dome missile defense system, and provides various other radar systems to Israel; this may raise eyebrows towards RURI at UML, which primarily conducts radar and communications research. Coincidentally, RURI was created in August of 2014, as Raytheon-made bombs were falling on Palestinians during what Israel called “Operation Protective Edge,” a high-tech killing spree of over 2,000 people in just 50 days. 

UML seems disinterested in what its closest industry partner does with its research, and the school certainly isn’t trying to distance itself from Israel. One student profiled on the official UML website as part of the UML Center for Terrorism and Security Studies (CTSS) described his experience studying abroad in Israel: 

Each week was a different topic, including Jihadi terrorism in the Middle East and Israel national security threats. In the morning there were classes and lectures, taught by numerous individuals, including faculty from The University of Tel Aviv and retired generals from the IDF… On the last day of the week they took an all day excursion to locations such as the Syrian Boarder [sic] and the Gaza Envelope. During the free time they has [sic] the ability to travel and would go to places such as Jerusalem, the beach, or the market. This program can be taken as a 3-credit course under a Security Studies elective.

UML promotes a school-sponsored trip to multiple violent occupation zones deemed illegal under international law, described with an enthusiastic sense of adventure that would not be out of place in an advertisement for a Disney cruise vacation. UML students embarking on this trip in the summer of 2017 were learning jaw-dropping “security” tactics; it was just a year later that IDF soldiers were admitting to holding kneecapping competitions while putting down the peaceful Great March of Return demonstrations, which protested Israel’s ongoing illegal blockade of Gaza and denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homelands. Over 200 Palestinians were killed and over 13,000 were wounded by Israel during the demonstrations that took place at the Gaza border fence. One imagines that the bodies were cleaned up quickly, should the next batch of UML CTSS students be sightseeing on their way to Tel Aviv beaches. 

UML understands the potential for public backlash to its controversial institutional connections. This is especially true in the midst of relevant political movements, which bring those connections into uncomfortably sharp focus in the public eye. However, when faced with institutional criticism, UML did not respond with institutional change in any way.

After October 7, UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen issued a single vague 119-word blurb calling for a “swift end to the violence” that managed to avoid naming a single involved state or actor. This abstract position of “neutrality” serves only to publicly distance the school from its proximity to Israel, and stands in profound contrast to the substantial volume of war profiteering opportunities at UML, which obviously indicate a strong partisan stance on the “war” in question. Such a throwaway PR campaign also misinforms students, who are exposed to all of the career specifics of war profiteering and none of its outcomes. It is no surprise that 20 months after Chen’s statement, there has been anything but a swift end to the violence in Palestine, and UML’s cheap one-time message of neutrality crumbles under the weight of its institutional actions as students are funneled into the ranks of Israel’s biggest weapons suppliers. UML’s underlying wants are clear: not a swift end to the violence, but a swift end to the perception of violence by the public or the student body that may implicate the university, or cut its funding.

From Palestine to the Border

The U.S.-Israeli genocide is not the only case of UMass Lowell’s aiding and abetting of state violence. In April 2025, Trump’s second administration revoked a UML undergraduate’s immigration status alongside fourteen other UMass students. UMass administrators condemned the anti-immigration campaigns, but without acknowledgement of its own series of  research centers and initiatives at UML that support the secret police and surveillance state apparatuses sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) itself. 

Only four months earlier, UML unveiled the plans for a new “Cyber Center” on campus in collaboration with the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a Fortune 500 technology company and prime contractor for DHS. SAIC is responsible for AI-based governance and biometric solutions in the U.S. border system – an automation and digitalization of surveillance technologies that can and are deployed against immigrants. UMass President Marty Meehan, who in April 2025 would call the “actions of the federal government” on campus “unprecedented” and “extremely troubling and upsetting”, said the following only five months earlier in December 2024 regarding the UML partnership with a major DHS contractor: 

The SAIC partnership and creation of a Cyber Center is great news for UMass Lowell and the city of Lowell… These developments promise new knowledge and technological advances in a critically important field. At the same time, this collaboration will produce an important pipeline of talent as we develop the workforce urgently needed to join the work of securing our networks and information infrastructure and ensuring their resilience into the future.

For students pursuing engineering and technology careers, this pipeline characterizes futures. Whether through campaigns of aggression using corporate weaponry, violent “security” tactics, or discriminatory federal policies, students are coerced into participation in an industry that uses university research and educated workforces to produce catastrophic real-world outcomes. Hands are wrung and emails carefully crafted when the blowback from those outcomes reaches university doorsteps, but ultimately none of this concern is translated to what UML as an institution actually does with its resources and personnel. When it comes time to announce the newest contract or research initiative, there is nothing but vociferous adulation in LinkedInese from all of the relevant higher-ups in university and industry. 

UML couples full-steam-ahead military investment with empty community assurances, and pipelines and partnerships are elevated over the people who bear their consequences. 

For the Many, Not the Few

UMass Lowell, with the breadth of its involvement in war profiteering, is yet another cog in the expansive U.S. military-industrial complex. The pipeline that creates the next generation of weapons designers and security scholars is at work on campuses across the U.S., embedded in our public schools, supported by the institutions educating the American people. 

The U.S. defense budget balloons every year, yielding more government contracts and subsequent corporate profit maximization. Well-connected to this booming industry, UML gains research funding and corporate connections. Debt-riddled engineering students get pointed towards the lucrative career paths that are spoonfed to them. People are killed at the other end of the newest weapon to hit the market, yet their deaths are never brought up in the classroom where the weapon was conceptualized.  

The solution is education that prioritizes human need and human welfare instead of the weapons supplies of apartheid states: an engineering for the many, not the few. That requires viable STEM and technological alternatives that actually serve the people made available for students, but offering that is difficult without fundamental changes to how the U.S. economy is organized. Careers in military research will be prioritized by students for as long as the military-industrial complex profits through warfare and enlists university help to bolster its workforce and technology. The increased military privatization efforts and cost of attendance spikes of the 21st century have only exacerbated this dynamic.

There is no magical divestment button or replacement industry partnership to give UMass Lowell without addressing the root causes of its institutional decision making. Students and workers must also have far more democratic and empowered control over institutional decision-making, as equal stakeholders in the public institution. Students cannot control their career paths if they have no say in the administration of their universities. Workers who don’t own the products of their work have no way to challenge a boardroom decision to use those products for violent means. War profiteering is not actually profitable for the vast majority of people, and would not take its present form in a democratically organized society. 

With this ultimate goal in mind, many actions can be taken in the moment. Students should continue to organize towards a collective understanding and dismantling of war profiteering on campus, and demand participation in the decision-making processes of their tuition-funded shcools. Universities and corporations that participate in the military-industrial complex and disregard its human cost need to face popular pressure for the damage, for the sake of both students herded into the military industry and the people around the world that suffer for it.

A future of ethical technology-based livelihoods is possible – but only once students are unencumbered by an industry that exchanges bombs for bottom lines. 

Nate Foster is a member of Boston DSA.

The post Inside UMass Lowell: How to Create a University Pipeline to War Profiteering appeared first on Working Mass.

If you’re considering a union in your workplace, you may wonder, “Are union dues expensive?” The good news is, you get a lot for what you give.

The post Are union dues expensive? appeared first on EWOC.

By Gregory Lebens-Higgins

Readers new to Karl Marx may be surprised to learn that his “dangerous” writings do not contain an explicit blueprint for revolution, but more often read like an Econ 101 textbook. His most significant work, after all, is titled Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. How do these writings inform a socialist movement seeking to liberate the working class?

Capital is the material basis for our present mode of production. This economic base shapes the superstructure of our social relations. A hunter-gatherer society lives much differently than an agrarian society, which lives much differently than industrial society. Under capitalism—the mode of production premised on the private accumulation of capital—social relations are polarized into the working class (proletariat) and owning class (bourgeoisie). 

Capital is exchange value that circulates in the process of production. In Capital, Marx depicts its pathway as such: 

In its money form [M], capital is used to hire workers [L] and purchase the means of production [MP] (machines and raw materials) as commodities [C]. The labor power of workers, with the assistance of machines, acts upon these materials in the process of production [P], to manufacture commodities with augmented value [C’]. These commodities are sold at profit [M’] to begin the circuit anew. Importantly, it is the added labor of workers in the process of production that creates surplus value. Yet all but a bare minimum is accumulated by the capitalist—the worker receives merely enough for the reproduction of their labor power.

Investment in the process of production for the expansion of capital differs from other historical modes of exchange. Under barter, goods are traded for other desired goods [C–C]. Exchange is not premised on the expansion of value, but differing use values (food versus clothing, for example). Even the intervention of money [C–M–C] is not synonymous with its accumulation [M–M’]. 

The expansion of capital at all costs leads to varying crises. A blockage in circulation at any stage sends shockwaves throughout the economy. Once they are produced, the value of commodities must be realized in the marketplace; converted into money for reinvestment in labor and materials. With the exception of luxuries and materials used in the process of production, the sale of commodities depends on working class consumers. Yet capitalists, incentivized to cut costs, drive down wages, leaving workers unable to make purchases and products sitting to rot. This “overproduction” also occurs when capitalists chase irrational trends, investing in products with artificial value. When consumers move on to the next fad, capital is frozen in the form of unwanted commodities. 

Speculation is spurred, in part, by a falling rate of profit. As technological innovation increases output, each commodity takes less labor to create, leaving it inhered with less additional value.  Less profit returns to the capitalist, making them less likely to reinvest in production and leading to speculation in pursuit of higher returns. 

The process of circulation also reveals the power of the working class. As the source of capital, workers are positioned to stop the gears by withholding labor to make demands upon the capitalist; or to use numerical superiority to seize the means of production. “To be radical is to grasp things by the root,” says Marx. The victory of the working class occurs from a growing working class consciousness that understands the mechanisms underlying its exploitation, and the radical solutions necessary for liberation.

The post C is for “Capital” first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

How candid should we be when making labor propaganda?

The post ‘Union:’ Don’t Hide the Mess appeared first on EWOC.