what-is-marxism-all-about-by-fist

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How many times has a company announced layoffs, all while CEO types get bonuses or raises for “tightening the belt”? A good example is that of Circuit City, which in early 2007 had 46,000 workers in Canada and the U.S. In April of 2007, Circuit City, the second-largest electronic retailer in the U.S., decided to lay off 3,400 workers because they were “being paid too much.” The company did this because it had only an 8 percent growth in sales in the previous quarter, and sales were forecasted to grow to only 10 percent in the next quarter. While Circuit City started off paying workers merely $7.75 an hour and its average employee made only $10 an hour, it stated that its chief rival paid its workers less on average and that it could not compete while paying an average wage that translates to just $19,200 per year before taxes. The poverty threshold in the U.S. for a family of three in 2006 was a little more than $16,000 before taxes. The workers were told they could reapply for their jobs at lower pay. But the CEO of Circuit City continued to receive $8.52 million, including a $975,000 salary, a year. Upon news of the layoffs, the stock value of the company rose 1.9 percent. Millions of people around the world go hungry and lack access to clean water, health care, adequate housing, clothing and transportation. Yet so much goes to waste in the so-called developed world. Factories close; companies go belly-up as each capitalist tries to outdo the other and in the process they produce and produce. As their unplanned, anarchic production leads to a crisis of overproduction they transfer the crisis to the workers, with pay cuts, mass layoffs and firings. This boom-or-bust reality is because of the nature of the system, which is to reap greater and greater profits regardless of what is actually needed. 8 What is Marxism All About
In times of crisis, the capitalists need new markets, cheaper access to resources and new, cheaper, easily exploitable labor. This fuels the drive to war. If one were to add the expense of war — both in monetary and more tragic human loss — the waste makes even less sense. The base Pentagon budget alone for fiscal year 2013 was $530 billion. This does not account for the billions spent on the U.S. imperial military adventures in Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, Pakistani, Libyan and Afghan people, and thousands of young women and men drawn into the U.S. military, have been killed and maimed. But what is the answer? The answer is the abolition of the capitalist system and the expropriation of the capitalist class. In the place of the capitalist system a system based on actual human need, in solidarity with the oppressed and workers the world over, needs to be built. The system of socialism removes the profit motive; the means of production are held and developed by the entire society for the need of all in society, not for profit. It is through this system that problems as they come are dealt with, as it is through need and solidarity that problems are solved, not through profit. Exploitation & Surplus Value 9
Page 3 and 4: What Is Marxism All About? Written
Page 5: Table of Contents Introduction v Cl
Page 8 and 9: that change. Marx was more than a t
Page 10 and 11: more. Most politicians in capitalis
Page 13 and 14: Capital & Capitalism In every socie
Page 15: The capitalist class owns all the m
Page 21 and 22: Private Property Private property,
Page 23: In the struggle to secure personal
Page 26 and 27: Dialectical materialism can be brok
Page 29 and 30: Class Solidarity & the Class Strugg
Page 31: ample, that male workers must activ
Page 34 and 35: either expand or die in its quest t
Page 36 and 37: that peacefully spreads wealth and
Page 38 and 39: upward mobility of women in the wor
Page 40 and 41: note that in these societies men we
Page 42 and 43: In the U.S. there are still oppress
Page 45 and 46: LGBTQ Oppression Until recent times
Page 47 and 48: Self-Determination All workers, reg
Page 49: clude Blacks and other oppressed pe
Page 52 and 53: the constantly changing world and h
Page 54 and 55: ecause hip-hop in its early days wa
Page 56 and 57: Examining history through the scien
Page 59 and 60: The State Today The previous chapte
Page 61: profits of the few. The Soviet stat
Page 64 and 65: City. The media, which has a dispro
Page 66 and 67: sion of this workers’ control. It
Page 68 and 69:
the crimes of capitalism are just a
Page 71 and 72:
The labor bureaucracy Sometimes uni
Page 73:
The main reason they were able to g
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Fascism celebrates the nation, the
Page 79 and 80:
Revolution The Bolshevik Revolution
Page 81 and 82:
The counterrevolutions in the forme
Page 83 and 84:
Socialism Socialism is a system in
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Socialist Countries Socialism, a sy
Page 87 and 88:
Socialist Cuba has managed to survi
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Communism The latest scientific vie
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FIST Program We, working and oppres
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to students. 3. The right to health
Page 95 and 96:
6. The right to a job or an income
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what is best for their own communit
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ally transmitted infections and you
Page 101 and 102:
World View Forum, 2012, paperback,
Page 103 and 104:
“Lucid, deeply accurate and infor
Page 105 and 106:
Marxism, Reparations & the Black Fr
Page 107 and 108:
The Prison-Industrial Complex: An i
Page 109:
A brief Marxist reading list: The C
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