They Believe in Greed

Disparity of class

  By Chris Floyd

This is the system, the creed, the extremist faith that "serious" players in all the "major" power factions on both sides of the Atlantic adhere to.

Their ideology is capitalism. Their god is greed. Both demand human sacrifices. So the poor must go to the wall. And to keep the system going, more and more people must be made poor.

First those in the "outer darkness" of faraway lands, then finally those in the sacred "Homelands" themselves. We have been watching the latter process play out slowly in the past few decades -- but it is accelerating now at dizzying speed.

News from the UK the disparity in death rates between the well-off and the poor in the UK is now greater than at any time since 1921.

The London Review of Books points to a new study by the British Medical Journal that shows that by 2997, "for every 100 people under the age of 65 dying in the best-off areas, 199 were dying in the poorest tenth of areas."

The Journal study said that the data suggest "it was only prolonged and enthusiastic state intervention" that kept the disparity from being greater.

On the other hand, the elite-coddling market jihadism of the Clintonian-Obamaish "New Labour" government helped stretch the yawning gap even further.

The few spare pence that the war criminals of the Labour government threw at the poor kept them from dying quite as fast as they would have done otherwise under the system of voracious corporate rapine that Labour entrenched and expanded after inheriting it from the Thatcherite Tories in 1997.

Now, even those few pence are being stripped away -- gleefully -- by what many say is the most extremist government Britain has ever seen, outstripping even Margaret Thatcher in the scope of its draconian cuts and the fervor of its market fundamentalism.

The savage cutbacks and vast, churning upheavals being pushed through, at breakneck speed, by the new Conservative government (and its truly pathetic coalition "partner," the lapdog Liberal Democrats) will send millions of people tumbling down into a permanent underclass.

Finally, after 60 years of trying, the Lib-Cons will gut the national health service with a stealth "Americanization" that will turn the operation of local doctors' offices over to private firms (many of them from the US) and privatize public hospitals.

They will be allowed them to "fail" if they don't produce enough cash for their elite shareholders.

Meanwhile, the schools are now in the hands of the arch-neocon Michael Gove. He's plotting with revisionist historian Niall Ferguson to impose a pro-Empire, pro-elite "national greatness" ideology on the young.

Gove is also using "emergency" legislative procedures to strip public schools away from the oversight of democratically elected local government and put them into the hands of unaccountable corporations, religious groups and wealthy elites.

This Revolution of the Rich is being justified by a carefully crafted, constantly stoked panic about budget deficits, pointing to the example of the perpetually weak government and economy of Greece as a horror story to be avoided at all costs.

Yet even if the Greek situation was as dire as the fear-mongers make out, the fact remains that the cuts which the Tory-LapDog coalition is making in the much stronger, much more stable UK are actually far in excess than those being imposed upon Greece.

As with the fear-mongering about "Iraqi WMDs," the "dangers of the deficit" are being exaggerated -- and manufactured -- in order to put into place a pre-existing (and transatlantic) ideological agenda: a neo-feudal oligarchy.

But in almost all of these measures, the Tory-LapDog government is only entrenching and expanding the "market-led reforms" imposed by New Labour. And "New Labour" was of course a close copy of the "New Democrats" of Bill Clinton and his clique of "triangulating" bagmen for Big Money.

Clinton, in turn, wasscarcely distinguishable from the Reagan-Bush faction that preceded them, and then succeeded them in the Bush dynasty's second turn in the White House.

And we all know that "continuity" is the byword of the Obama administration, which is chock-a-block with holdovers not only from strangulating triangulators of the Clinton era but also the imperial militarists from the two Bush reigns.

Thus for more than 30 years, the world-dominating Anglo-American alliance has been under the sway of factions which, for all their internal squabbling and hair-splitting, are strongly united in their steadfast, unshakable adherence to the perpetuation -- and expansion -- of elite power and privilege.

They have shown themselves willing and eager to degrade their own societies (and destroy many others) in the service of this brutal, barbaric, inhuman faith.

The poor have no place in this system, which is a retrograde, hi-tech, rhetorically sugarcoated revival of the laissez-faire fantasies of the past, as Jeremy Seabrook notes:

'Pauperism' long ago took on the colour of culpability. The distinction between the idle and improvident poor and the "deserving" goes back at least to the Elizabethan poor law. It took on a new force in the early industrial era, which saw an unprecedented growth in pauperism. The enthusiasts of laissez-faire capitalism concluded that the evil was compounded by efforts to relieve it, and helping the poor only increased their number.
Everything indicated that 'natural' processes should be allowed to take their course. In this version of the world, the market mechanism is as flawless a creation as the earth. It should remain untouched by the hand of meddlers, whose only effect is to upset its power to enrich us all.
It is remarkable that the establishment of laissez-faire itself in the early 19th century required an enormous amount of government intervention and regulation."

And so it is today. The "regulation" of the health care industry introduced by the Obama Administration is actually a gargantuan transfer of wealth, by force, from working people and the poor to a few huge corporations.

The financial "regulation" signed into law is yet another sham that will leave the rapacious fools and fraudsters who brought down the global economy -- and triggered the convenient "deficit crisis" by demanding massive bailouts of public money for their private businesses -- at large and in charge of the world's finances.

Meanwhile, more and more government regulations restrict the right of ordinary citizens to challenge the rich and powerful in court, or to register a public protest (herding them instead into the truly hideous "free speech zones").

Meanwhile, the state grants corporations extraordinary privileges to interfere with the political process with their vast resources and protects their leaders from personal accountability for the ravages they commit.

The government "intervention and regulation" on behalf of the industries and elites who service the endlessly expanding symbiosis of corporate, military and 'security' power -- stretching even to the countenancing and cover-up of torture and murder -- is one of the defining elements of our age.

As Glenn Ford writes,Obama is preparing to "regulate" the last tattered fragments of the social welfare system -- already decimated by the progressive's favorite good old boy, Bill Clinton -- right out of existence:

In April of this year, Obama once again reminded everyone that everything is and has always been 'on the table', as far as he's concerned, including Social Security. His so-called 'deficit commission' is stacked with rich sociopaths sharpening their knives to carve up, sell off or otherwise doom Social Security. It is a battle that safety net defenders thought they had won against George Bush.
Obama has picked up Bush's marbles and put them back into play. He is the right wing's most potent weapon, the one before which liberal Democrats throw up their hands in surrender without the dignity of a fight.
Obama, working in plain sight over the past 18 months, has constructed and rigged a deficit commission to render a kind of death sentence to the foundational program of Roosevelt's New Deal.

This is the system -- the creed, the extremist faith -- that all "serious" players in all the "major" power factions on both sides of the Atlantic adhere to.

Their god of greed demands human sacrifices: and so the poor must die. And to keep the system going, more and more people must be made poor.

First those in the "outer darkness" of faraway lands, then finally those in the sacred "Homelands" themselves. We have been watching the latter process play out slowly in the past few decades -- but it is accelerating now at dizzying speed.

American Oligarchy

 America, land of the wealthy elite

By Bernie Sanders

Not everybody is hurting. While the working class suffer, the wealthiest people are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else.

The American people are hurting. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes, life savings and their ability to get a higher education. Today, some 22 percent of our children live in poverty, and millions more have become dependent on food stamps for their food.

While the Great Wall Street Recession has devastated the working class, the truth is that they have been experiencing a decline for decades. During the Bush years alone, from 2000-2008, median family income dropped by nearly $2,200 and millions lost their health insurance.

Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago.

The average American today is underpaid, overworked and stressed out as to what the future will bring for his or her children. For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.

Not everybody is hurting. While the working class suffer, the wealthiest people are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else.

America has become an oligarchy in which a handful of wealthy and powerful families rule its institutions.

This upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong working class.

In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country.

The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families!

During the last 15 years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half.

While the highest paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.

Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made a combined $25 billion but because of tax policy their lobbyists helped write, they pay a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses, and police officers.

As a result of tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and elsewhere, the wealthy and large corporations are evading some $100 billion a year in U.S. taxes. Warren Buffett, one of the richest people on earth, has often commented that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary.

But it's not just wealthy individuals who grotesquely manipulate the system for their benefit. It's the multi-national corporations they own and control.

In 2009, Exxon Mobil, the most profitable corporation in history made $19 billion in profits and not only paid no federal income tax -- they actually received a $156 million refund from the government.

In 2005, one out of every four large corporations in the United States paid no federal income taxes while earning $1.1 trillion in revenue.

But, perhaps the most outrageous tax break given to multi-millionaires and billionaires happened this January when the estate tax, established in 1916, was repealed for one year as a result of President Bush's 2001 tax legislation. This tax applies only to the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent of our population.

The wealthy are are happy with huge tax breaks on their income and massive corporate tax loopholes.

They like trade laws enabling them to outsource the jobs of millions of American workers to low-wage countries and not content with tax havens around the world.

Now the final straw. The ruling elite and their lobbyists are working feverishly to either eliminate the estate tax or substantially lower it.

If they are successful at wiping out the estate tax, as they came close to doing in 2006 with every Republican but two voting to do, it would increase the national debt by over $1 trillion during a 10-year period.

At a time when we already have a $13 trillion debt, enormous unmet needs and the highest level of wealth inequality in the industrialized world, it is simply obscene to provide more tax breaks to multi-millionaires and billionaires.

That is why I have introduced the Responsible Estate Tax Act. This legislation would raise $318 billion over the next decade by establishing a graduated inheritance tax on estates over $3.5 million retroactive to this year.

This bill ensures that the wealthiest 0.3 percent of Americans pays their fair share of estate taxes, while making sure that 99.7 percent of Americans never have to pay a dime when they lose a loved one.

It also makes certain that the overwhelming majority of family farmers and small businesses never have to pay an estate tax.

This legislation must be passed because, with a $13 trillion national debt and huge unmet needs, we cannot afford more tax breaks for millionaire and billionaire families.

Soft Left Sides With Wallstreet Rich

During a recession, soft left sides with big money

By blackandred

Liberals support fiscal austerity during the recession because they no longer care about economic performance, much less the interests of workers and the poor, but instead identify their interests with those of Wall Street and the upper middle class.

At the recently concluded G-20 meetings in Toronto, Canada the leaders of the major economies issued a communiqué pledging to cut their budget deficits in half over the next three years.

Instead of draconian fiscal austerity, what is needed is a massive, globally coordinated, fiscal stimulus to pull the economy out of the worst global recession in over eighty years.

In Greece, when PASOK was in opposition it called for pro-growth policies favoring middle income sectors. Now, as Prime Minister, Papandreou is presiding over policies even more draconian than those of the previous right wing government he and PASOK criticized. How does one explain this madness?

One possibility is that many in the economics profession have contracted amnesia and forgotten the most important economics lesson learned during the twentieth century.

Governments must spend more when the economy is depressed and save only after the economy has recovered -- and that center left, along with right wing politicians, have now made the mistake of embracing the advice from misguided establishment economists to do just the opposite.

Two Nobel Prize winning economists, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, who have not forgotten Keynes’ lesson believe this is exactly what has happened, and there is evidence to support their hypothesis.

Keynes was only able to successfully challenge the wisdom of traditional, balanced budget orthodoxy which requires governments to cut spending when recessions reduce their tax revenues with a powerful assist from practical experience during the Great Depression.

Even when conservative economists like Milton Friedman and right wing politicians like Richard Nixon were quoted saying “We are all Keynesians now” during the late 1960s and early 1970s, many economists and politicians remained uncomfortable with Keynesianism and were already hard at work organizing an economics counter revolution.

Over the ensuing decades establishment economists labored mightily to write Keynes out of their macroeconomic theories, models, and text books, and conservative politicians happily reverted to their pre-Keynesian, balanced budget orthodoxy.

These conservative politicians and their advisers focused on balanced-budgets and zero inflation in order to accomplish their real agenda -- decreasing the bargaining power of working people.

There was never any great mystery about why right wing political parties pushed an agenda designed to increase unemployment rates, weaken unions, and raise the cost to workers of being unemployed by cutting the social wage.

But now center left political parties are embracing the same economic policies and consorting with anti-Keynesian macro-economists, leaving the likes of Krugman and Stiglitz to wring their hands on the sidelines.

Is this simply an intellectual mistake on their part? What if we drop the assumption that the purpose of today’s economic policies is to rescue us from the Great Recession

We should put in its place the hypothesis that center left political parties are now aimed at benefiting higher income groups rather than promoting the interests of their former political constituencies.

After all, for decades prior to the financial crisis of 2008 and the onset of the Great Recession neo-liberal economic policies were championed by center left as well as right wing governments.

Not only Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but Tony Blair and Bill Clinton also claimed that neo-liberal policies would improve economic performance by removing unnecessary and counterproductive shackles on corporate creativity.

Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, capital liberalization, and trade liberalization did not increase global growth rates or reduce poverty as advertised.

But these policies did greatly enhance corporate power, disempower workers, consumers, and citizens, and produce the greatest redistribution of income and wealth from poor to rich the world has ever seen.

It is now apparent that these neo-liberal policies which laid the groundwork for the present crisis were never about improving economic performance, but merely about redistributing power, income, and wealth.

So why should we now believe that the same center left political parties, following the advice of the same economic advisors, actually believe, or care if lavishing generous bailouts on banks without conditions while imposing fiscal austerity on workers and ordinary citizens will pull the global economy out of recession?

There is a more simple explanation for the behavior of today’s center left politicians, which is becoming more credible by the day.

Fiscal austerity and stalling financial reform in response to the worst financial crisis and deepest recession in eighty years is not about improving economic performance as its proponents claim.

These policies are simply about continuing to shift income and wealth from the poor to the rich, and from the manufacturing sector to finance, insurance, and real estate (known as FIRE) which have become increasingly ascendant in the US and Europe -- despite the fact that these policies will worsen the economic slump and make another financial crisis likely.

The claim that fiscal austerity during recession is “good economics” when it is actually “bad economics” is merely a “cover story” for public consumption.

As for why center left political parties and politicians now support this disastrous policy, the simple answer is these parties no longer care about economic performance.

They care much less about the interests of workers and the poor, but instead identify their interests with those of Wall Street and the upper middle class who appear to be the focus group for the Obama Administration and Nancy Pelosi.

Democratic Party politicians used to promise to press for policies to help workers, minorities, and the poor. They usually failed to do so, but that was their campaign rhetoric nonetheless.

But for many election cycles in the United States Democratic Party candidates have been promising instead to champion the interests of what they call middle-class Americans.

If center left politicians no longer make a secret of pretending they are concerned about unemployed workers and the poor, why should we be surprised when they adopt policies detrimental to their interests?

Voters in the UK already sent Gordon Brown and the Labor Party packing. Will other center left politicians and their parties -- Zapatero and the Socialist Party in Spain, Papandreou and PASOK in Greece, and Obama and the Democrats in the US -- who agree to impose fiscal austerity also be punished at the polls by voters who know we did not create the crisis and are furious at governments who subject us to counterproductive austerity?

When center left politicians echo false hopes that the economy is recovering promoted by right wing think tanks and the corporate owned media who shout “green shoots” whenever the prices of bank stocks or an index of consumer confidence stabilize momentarily.

They do this while unemployment and home foreclosure rates hold steady or worsen. One can only hope they badly miscalculate their own political self-interest.

But it is apparent that more and more center left politicians are quite willing to gamble that they can bamboozle a guileless public into thinking that fiscal austerity is necessary and wise and avoid voters’ wrath.

It is also increasingly apparent that center left political parties are more afraid of angering Wall Street and upper middle class funders by opposing policies that continue to redistribute income and wealth their way than they are of angering ordinary people who have traditionally voted center left because the right wing alternative is even worse.

However, people know when either they or some relative or friend has lost their job or home. And they will eventually turn on those who persist in telling them that the economy is recovering when they know it is not.

The question is where voters will turn when they abandon traditional center left parties who have abandoned them.

What is needed are social movements and new political parties who answer to and are led by those whose interests are being trampled on, who fight for policies which actually do generate high employment and greater economic equality, and who say no to counterproductive fiscal austerity, trickle down economic nonsense, and corporate sponsored globalization.

We need to build movements and parties which will take power back from multinational corporations and Wall Street, and launch the kind of Green New Deal needed to address the economic and ecological crises which otherwise will continue to worsen by the day.

Wiki Leaks is Old News

Passing off old news for brand new news

By Chris Floyd

These leaked "bombshells" will simply bounce off the hardened shell of American exceptionalism, which easily ustifies the slaughter of civilians, "targeted killings", "indefinite detention" and any number of other atrocities.

The much ballyhooed dump of intelligence and diplomatic files concerning the Afghan War has been trumpeted as some kind of shocking expose, "painting a different picture" than the official version of events -- revelations that are sure to rock the Anglo-American political establishments to their foundations.

The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel were given 92,000 reports by Wikileaks, including thousands of pages of raw "human intelligence."

That is, uncorroborated claims and gossip from interested parties and anonymous sources pushing a multitude of agendas.

They diplomatic notes passed between the promulgators of the occupation in Washington and their factotums "in country" -- reports which you might imagine also purvey a multitude of agendas ... not least the supreme agenda of all officials involved in a dubious enterprise: ass-covering.

Yet these reports are being treated as if they are the "grim truth" behind the shining picture of official propaganda. But what do these stories in the NYT and Guardian actually "reveal"? Let's see:

* That the occupation forces kill lots of civilians at checkpoints and botched raids, then lie about it afterward.

* That these killings make Afghans angry and fuel the insurgency.

* That elements of Pakistani intelligence are involved with some elements of the many resistance groups known collectively (and incorrectly) in the West as the Taliban.

* That the Americans are using more and more robot drones to kill people.

* That the Americans are running death squads in Afghanistan aimed at Taliban leaders.

* That Afghan officials are corrupt, and that Afghan police and military forces are woefully inadequate.

Is there anything in these breathless new recitations that we did not already know? How does this alter the prevailing conventional wisdom about the war?

It doesn't, of course. These leaked "bombshells" will simply bounce off the hardened shell of American exceptionalism, which easily justifies the slaughter of civilians, "targeted killings", "indefinite detention" and any number of other atrocities. In fact, I predict the chief "takeaway" from the story will be this:

American forces are doing their best to help the poor Afghans, but the ungrateful natives are too weak and corrupt to be trusted, while America's good intentions are also being thwarted by evil outsiders.


Getting this message out via "critical" stories in "liberal" publications is much more effective than dishing up another serving of patriotic hokum on Fox News or at a presidential press conference.

In fact, it is so much more effective that one almost begins to wonder about the ultimate provenance of the leaks. Did some deep-delving gamester allow these files to get out? Most likely not; but their ultimate effect does provoke the age-old question, cui bono?

The assumption is that these 92,000 files about the Afghan war were obtained by an American private serving in Iraq, the unfortunate Bradley Manning, who is now under arrest for the "crime" of leaking something far more disturbing than any written document. That was a video showing the slaughter of Iraqi civilians by American Apache helicopters in 2007 [see above].

Washington knows that a couple of moving pictures on the tee-vee have a far greater potential to disturb the moral sleep of the American people than tens of thousands of newspaper reports -- or leaked documents -- detailing similar killings.

That said, in the end the Apache video has had zero effect on public perceptions of the Iraq War, which most people believe is "over," or on public support for the murderous machinations of the Terror War in general, which most people believe needs to continue in one form or another, to "keep us safe."

The only kind of grim truth attended to by anyone in America these days is that which can be shown in moving pictures. (Although the number of people who are upset even by that seems to be rapidly diminishing. That's why Manning had to be put away.

I don't question the bravery or sincerity of Manning or of Julian Assanage in bringing the latest material to light. And I suppose on balance it is better to have it than not to have it.

But I still question the usefulness of rolling out mountains of raw "human intelligence".

It's precisely the same kind of unfiltered junk that was "stovepiped" to build the false case for the mass-murdering invasion of Iraq -- about Iran, al Qaeda, Pakistan; even North Korea gets into the mix.

None of this can be checked -- but all of it will be extremely useful to those who want to build cases for more and more military action, death squads and covert actions around the world.

And it seems very odd that intelligence reports and bureaucratic memos by forces carrying out a prolonged, brutal military occupation of another country are now being treated by "liberal" media outlets as holy writ.

It claims to paint a "true" picture of the war -- a picture that omits any reference to American war-related corruption, for instance, not only in Afghanistan but more especially in Washington, or to America's wider "Great Game" machinations in Central Asia, involving pipelines, strategic bases and "containing China," etc.

Nothing will come of this document dump. It won't lead to the prosecution of even one single person for a war-related crime, or to a genuine debate over the morality of the war in the political and media establishments. There won't be a rise in public opposition to the Terror War project.

If any of that happened I would rejoice, and embrace the flashy packages of the NYT, Guardian and Der Spiegel at their own self-inflated valuation.

I believe the net effect will be simply to entrench the conventional wisdom about the war in the halls of power and in the echo chambers of opinion on both sides of the Atlantic.

We have already seen far too many atrocities, brutalities and acts of criminal folly countenanced, when they are not actually praised, far too many times -- over and over and over again -- in the course of the last decade to believe that these disgorgings of junk intelligence and apparatchik memos will make any difference.

Any difference for the better, that is. For I believe they will supply plenty of ammunition to those bent on further murder and plunder.

Pro-life Socialim

 Pro-Life from a socialist perspective

By Jessica R. Dreistadt

The Socialist Party, like many left-wing political parties in the United States, supports a woman’s choice to have an abortion. The party’s analysis of this issue is grounded in solid Marxist theory and represents the consensus of party members.

However, some Socialists and other progressives disagree with this predominant position; we also base our beliefs on leftist ideology and a desire to promote and create a socialist society.

Unfortunately, the perspective of pro- life Socialists is sometimes met with ridicule and contempt. The purpose of this essay is to dismantle the dominance and dogma of some pro-choice Socialists and to encourage discussion and diversity within our movement.

This essay represents only the opinion of its author and is not meant to characterize the beliefs of all pro-life Socialists. The information presented here is offered in the spirit of a friendly reminder to all comrades that we should accept and love one another despite our differences of opinion.

A radical view and call to action

As a Socialist woman, I stand in solidarity with all who are oppressed including people who are poor, people of color, people with disabilities, and the unborn.

Women and children are relegated to an inferior social status throughout the world. Capitalist societies, in particular, determine the worth of women and children based on their contribution or relation to economic production and growth. However, the worth of women and children cannot be measured by any man. Women and children are intrinsically valuable and deserve every opportunity and privilege available to men and women of means.

Abortion reinforces this imposed inequality. Pregnant women who do not have adequate social and economic support become alienated in our capitalist society. As Socialists, we must support all women in need by addressing the root causes of gender and economic inequality.

Women often choose to have abortions because they feel stuck in an undesirable situation. We must work to change the conditions that lead women to have abortions rather than encouraging the women themselves to change and adapt to their situations.

The pro-choice worldview reduces women and children to material objects whose value in the home and society is based, in large part, on male desire and convenience. When a woman chooses to end a life because of lack of male support, she and her child are victim to the patriarchy. Men who support a woman’s right to choose are also taking advantage of their ability to use women’s bodies and abuse their relationships.

A woman who has an abortion materializes and assumes ownership of her child to justify her right to end his or her life. Mainstream feminists, now free from male domination in many ways, put our children in an inferior social position - similar to the one women once held.

When a woman chooses to have an abortion, she is subjugating the needs of her child and society to her own individual desires while supporting the opportunistic, money-driven abortion industry. These are the hallmarks of a capitalist society.

Abortion negates women’s ability to create life, reducing the societal value of our unique physical abilities because they are considered ‘inferior’ to the physical capabilities of men. Manipulating nature and its resources is detrimental to environmental harmony and disrespectful to the essence of womanhood. Abortion disrupts the natural flow and process of life and rejuvenation.

Many Socialists are pacifists and as such we condemn unnecessary violence. The taking of a life or the possibility of human life, especially when it involves pain, dismembering, and mutilation of a baby and emotional turmoil of a mother, cannot be reconciled with a belief in nonviolence. Being pro-choice and pacifist are incompatible positions.

Abortion is sometimes defended because the fetus is of a different age, appearance, and physical capacity than a ‘normal’ human being outside the womb. When the value of human life, and its right to continue living, is based on these subjective qualities, the floodgates to discrimination and domination are opened.

Abortion is always a compromise. Women and children deserve, and must demand, real choices that unconditionally meet our needs.

ACCEPT NO COMPROMISES!!

The abortion controversy will only be resolved through the elimination of all forms of violence, sexism, discrimination, income inequality, abstinence-only programs, and corporate controlled healthcare (and everything else) along with support for safe homes and communities, equitable resource distribution,
respect and opportunities for all, adequate childcare, comprehensive sex education programs, and easy access to birth control. A socialist society is the only solution.