The World Still Says NO to Bush (art by Sue Coe)

The World Still Says NO

In this issue...

• GOP Up a Tree?

• Swinging Votes in Missouri

• Book Review - Socialism Betrayed, by Roger Keeran, Thomas Kenny

• From the Ashes of the Old: An Interview with David Laibman

• What Difference Does it Make?

• Marxist Quiz

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A broad-based movement has dramatically arisen in response to the grave danger posed to our nation and the world by the policies of the Bush administration and the ultra-right majority in Congress and the Supreme Court. Today’s anti-Bush movement is more diverse, broader, and more actively determined than the coalition to defeat him in the last election. The November election will neither be the last nor the greatest battle we as a movement will face but for the US people, this is the historic challenge of our time: the people must win.

The struggle to defeat Bush is a "fight for the future." That is according to the 1.6 million members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). SEIU is one of the largest, most militant unions in the country. Its national and local leadership is dedicated to organizing the unorganized, increasing rank and file participation, electing local, progressive, pro-labor candidates and ousting Bush in November.

In Socialism Betrayed, Keeran and Kenny discuss the collapse of the Soviet Union (SU). While I think they fail to accomplish their aim they have produced a narrative history of the last years of the SU. Their thesis is the SU collapsed "because of the policies that Mikhail Gorbachev pursued after 1986."

David Laibman is Professor of Economics at the City University of New York and editor of Science and Society. He is the author of Value, Technical Change and Crisis: Explorations in Marxist Economic Theory and Capitalist Macrodynamics: A Systematic Introduction. He was also formerly the assistant editor of New World Review.

What difference does it make who controls Congress? Here are voting records compiled by the AFL-CIO and the ACLU on issues such as eliminating overtime pay, the Medicare "deform" law, tax cuts for the rich, privatization, school vouchers, worker health and safety, judicial nominations, retirement issues, extension of unemployment benefits, free trade, reproductive rights, expansion of unconstitutional government surveillance powers and publicizing information about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and so on.