Recent Blog Posts – The Multiracial Unity Blog

1. Fighting Fascist Attacks on Education

Introduction and Key Note Address

The Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association held a virtual roundtable discussion in April, 2023 on the significance of and resistance to the assaults on education, exemplified by banning books and all discussion of critical race theory, LGBT issues, and any other working class, anti-imperialist history. The presentations are presented here and numbered one through five.

In his introduction, Caucus President Geordie Miller, who is an English professor at Mt. Allison University and a leader of the faculty union, explained that:

From its inception in 1968, the Rad Caucus has been a site of organizing and struggle on campuses as well as within and against the institution of the Modern Language Association—an institution that currently has 22,000-plus members representing approximately 145 countries. The Radical Caucus is devoted to organizing a Marxist response in the MLA to the racist offensive against Higher Education. In the fight against fascism and its many forms and faces in higher education, the stakes are ourselves (to amend a line from Diane di Prima). The future that the ruling class is busy securing for higher education workers—indeed, for the workers of the world—is a future fuller and fuller of immiseration and other deadly, systemic commitments. Union busting and the repression of academic freedom are only the beginning of the worst to come. We don’t mourn; we organize.

Organizing a Marxist Response to The Racist Offensive Against Higher Education

by Barbara Foley

I don’t know about you, but I am thrilled to be at this gathering today. I visited the picket line at Rutgers University-Newark earlier this week and was struck by the unity of students and workers, as well as their shared understanding that the union, which comprises everyone from grad students to TAs to lecturers to Part Time Lecturers (PTLs) to full time faculty, can advance only if its most exploited members take the lead: “the last shall be first!” I have been appreciating how our colleagues down in Florida have been placing antiracist and antisexist politics front and center in their opposition to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s attempts to destroy their unions, gut academic freedom, and smother the class-conscious teaching of US history. And these comrades are not alone: working-class rebellions are cropping up around the world as the rulers ratchet up their attempts to make the workers pay for the increasingly evident failures of capitalism.

Reform, Revolution, and Abolition: Historical Reflections

The Paris Commune

By Rodney Green

This talk was given at the Abolitions Conference of the University of California Washington Center, May 6-8, 2023. Recorded sessions can be accessed at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gI31ZV45xfNcgCdtljdrrEWfyOTfuQbDsg_iBbHxIf4/edit?usp=sharing

The fight against state repressive institutions has a long history. Central to this history is strategic conflict between reform and revolution. Can change can come from reforming the system (working from within) or does it require a revolution that destroys the state and bring to political power the exploited and oppressed?

Today’s “abolition” initiatives share this conflict. Most participants in today’s abolitionist movements are deeply skeptical of racism, capitalism, and imperialism. All of us in these various movements have faced enormous frustrations in trying to bring about systemic change.

Ukraine’s Zelensky Sends Love Letter to US Corporations, Promising ‘Big Business’ for Wall Street

By Ben Norton

Reprinted from Scheerpost, January 27, 2023

Editor’s comments: This article clearly delineates Western-backed Ukraine’s dedication to repressive capitalism, on top of the wholesale corruption that has long characterized the country. A Western victory would also add on austerity and anti-worker policies dictated by the IMF. Ukrainian workers have nothing to gain from this war which only offers a choice between competing imperialist exploiters. Ukrainian, Russian, indeed all soldiers and workers need to fight for an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist society.

Ukraine’s Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky sent a love letter to US companies, thanking “such giants of the international financial and investment world as BlackRock, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs” for buying up his country’s assets. “Everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine”, he enticed, claiming that the reconstruction of his nation “will be the largest economic project of our time in Europe” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFhrg3S8eMk). Zelensky likewise praised the Starlink company of billionaire Elon Musk for its technological support, and he called for more Western weapons shipments, including Patriot missiles and Abram tanks.

US Capitalists Supported Nazis to Stop Communism and Earn Millions

By an antiracist educator, 5-9-2023

(This article adds more examples of US collaboration with the Nazis to those cited in Fighting Fascism, https://multiracialunity.org/2023/04/24/fighting-fascism-from-the-past-to-the-future/).

The book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (2002) by Anthony C. Sutton, documents the collaboration of US industrialists and bankers who bankrolled Germany from the 1920’s through the post-WWI period and then proceeded to assist the Nazis re-arm themselves and prepare for WWII, despite the specific prohibition against re-armament in the Versailles Treaty ending WWI in 1919. The US government did not officially support Hitler and declared war on Germany in December 1941. However, a large number of Wall Street bankers and industrialists did support Hitler in ways that were critical to Germany’s ability to prosecute the war: