This set of articles, written in the early 1990s, is even more relevant today than when they were first written. In contrast to the George Bush the elder's boast that the US was leading us all into a "New World Order" of peace and prosperity, the perspective here is a sober and realistic one: the US is leading the world toward economic depression, a renewal of fascist movements, and if the working class does not take power, World War III. This assessment was based on a series of events, including the gigantic stock market crash of 1987. Preventing World War III, and all that would accompany it, is the challenge facing working people around the world and we need to organize NOW to make sure this is not our future. In light of this, this issue of New International includes an extremely informative article on Cuba, which shows that despite the "Special Period" they were living through, without aid from the Soviet Union, the Cubans were still fighting for a socialist society and because they refused to bow down to capitalist America, they continued to be a thorn in the side of the US. All of this is even more true today, as the stock market bubble of the 1990s has now decisively burst. And what is most striking today is how the jockeying for position heading into the war with Iraq is showing just what this article said: that competition between "allies" within NATO would sharpen. Just look at all the anti-French and German propaganda going around right now and you'll see just how accurate this set of articles was and still is today.

This book explains the meaning of the 1987 New York stock market crash and its repercussions; the "Special Period" (term used in Cuba for the economic crisis caused by the collapse in trade with the former USSR and Eastern Bloc, the tightening of the U.S. trade embargo, and the revolution's own admitted errors); the struggle against Stalinism and the "pockets of capitalism" in Cuba, led by the Cuban Communist Party and the revolutionary government; and why the Cuban revolution is still an inspiration for working people all over the world. The march led by Yanqui-U.S. imperialism, in the first place, toward fascism and world war, against its allies/imperialist rivals, against the post-capitalist economic foundations which survive in the workers states ( ex-USSR, Eastern Europe, China, etc.) and against the workers and farmers the world over, including those in the imperialist countries, is explained as well. Finally, this book points out that there is only one road forward for the resistance to this barbarous future: to follow the example of the Bolshevik revolution and the example of the Cuban revolution, applied to the specific conditions of each country, which is both possible and necessary even in the imperialist countries, the U.S. included. Above all, this book is a message of hope and scientific confidence in the workers and farmers of the whole world, based on the experience of the militants who are building the beginnings of a revolutionary workers party in the belly of the Imperial Beast.

This 1994 volume takes up the long-term economic crisis of capitalism and how it drives the U.S. rulers toward more severe conflicts with their international rivals, and toward a showdown with workers and farmers at home. It explains the rise of fascist perspectives, such as those of Patrick Buchanan and Jean-Marie Le Pen, as the inevitable product of the social crisis that is unfolding. And it describes the increasing use of military force to defend the interests of U.S. capitalism as the result of the needs of a declining empire, not just as the choice of certain politicians.

Socialism Dead ?Or Capitalism Marching Us To WW III ?
As the market system slides into the New Depression and a catastrophic war--not against 'terrorism', but for markets , oil, Yankee domination--young and not-so-young fighters for a world fit for humans to live in NEED THIS BOOK.The author analyzes the roots of the present crisis, and relates the collective experience of a revolutionary party of industrial union workers --in the belly of the Imperial Beast ! -- preparing to help lead the resistance to come.

To those who think that the idea of replacing the system died with the mass movements of the 1960s, to workers who want to see a way out of the constant grinding down of our standard of living and conditions, to young people who want to understand a way forward to education, to people of the world who want to get up out of the poverty and oppression that we all face. THIS IS THE BOOK. This the book that tells us where we have come, even though it was written several years ago. This is the book that puts these things in perspective not of our job, our school, our neighborhood, but of the world, of history, of working people, farmers, youth. No one can really understand our time in history without reading this book written from the standpoint of working people. It is not the product of the author alone, but of the collective discussion and experience of fighting, thinking, struggling Marxist workers, farmers, youth, and intellectual around the world.

For those people who are involved in the struggle for affirmative action, workers on strike to defend their standard of living, marchers against the Confedeate battle flag, or against police brutality, this book will help explain why the bosses are compelled to attack our rights. This book is a Marxist appreciation of the crisis of capitalismm, why the bosses are forced to solve their problems on the back of the working class, and why socialist revolution is the only realistic answer to the problems of today. For this, Barnes explains a revolutionary working class party is necessary and can be built today out of the struggles taking place around the world.

You want to fight but your union's too weak and buddy-buddy with management...everyone sits in their own language groupings in the cafeteria - will people ever get together?...how can we get out of the mess that lay-offs and soaring cutbacks in social services are making of our lives? This book is a fantastic handbook for those of us who want to figure out what step to take next. It isn't an easy recipe for bandaids. It lays out that we have to be worldly-wise strategists who understand that unity forged through struggle is key. The prize: taking political power like working people did in Cuba over 40 years ago. We have to use the tools we have - the unions, for example, exasperating though they may be -- to reach each other and create a political party, a real fighting communist party, that can lead us to help transform all of society. Thought-provoking and concrete. A real treat.

The face of the social class that produces the wealth changed forever in the US thanks to the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.We work side by side : Black and white and Latino, etc., men and women, immigrant and 'native-born.' This is what scares the daylights out of the big-boss class - the multimillionaire and billionaire families- about affirmative action and other such gains.We spend so much time working, and sweating, and facing the same enemy side by side that stereotypes collapse. If we fight back, we have to be brothers and sisters in action to win. That's why these gains are under such fierce attack.
This is one subject of this book.Another is the birth and survival - yes, even today ! -of the Vietnam Syndrome. Working people know the US government lies as a habit.In our millions we will relearn in all our generations that this government in war or 'peace' serves the superrich.We will be forced to resist, yes, this war, and the next one.Millions will cast off the blinders this society tries to force on us.In the process we will transform our unions into fighting machines for all working people.And change ourselves.
This book is based on the experience of revolutionary socialist industrial workers active in their unions, and in social movements, and against the Empire's wars from the late 70s into the 90s.Any fighter for serious social change today and tommorow : you need to read this book !

"This is a handbook for the generations of workers coming into the factories, mines, and mills - workers who will react to the uncertain life, ceaseless turmoil, and brutality that will accompany the arrival of the twenty-first century. It is a handbook for young people who, in growing numbers, are repelled by the racism, women's inequality, and other intolerable social relations reproduced daily by capitalism on a world scale. It is a book for fighters who sense that this social system, if not replaced, will lead to economic devastation, fascist tyranny, and world war. Above all, it aims to show why only the working class can lead humanity out of the social crisis endemic to capitalism in its decline. It shows how millions of workers, as political resistance grows, will revolutionize themselves, their unions, and all of society" (from the back cover).

Cuba And The Coming American Revolution by author and political activist Jack Barnes, is a provocative and forcefully worded examination of the history and the future of American and Cuban politics. Ranging from the utter disaster that was the Bay of Pigs to predicting a socialist revolution in American policy and a counterrevolution in Cuba, this is an informed and informative account of class struggle. Barnes especially underscores the ways in which the American working class has been steamrolled and the consequent incentives that call for change. Cuba And The Coming American Revolution is a thought-provoking look at where two nations mights well be headed and a very welcome contribution to Cuban History and Socialist Studies academic reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

Jack Barnes, the author of this boook, points out: "The greatest obstacle to the line of march of the toilers is the tendency, perpetuated by the exploiting classes, for working people to underestimate ourselves, to underestimate what we can accomplish, to doubt our own worth." This book proves that like the Cubans the working class in the United States has the capacity to win political power. Barnes explains how after a visit to Cuba in 1960 he and other student activists defended Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion. They stood up to both campus administrators and right-wing thugs and won the the right not only to speak out but to become the makers of history, like the Cubans. Barnes explains how the Cubans as a people demonstrated remarkable courage and determination in standing up to an imperialist terror campaign, arms in hand, while continueing their revolutionary work, which included a literacy campaign the likes of which has not been seen before or since. IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A BOLD SOCIAL VISION, I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO YOU!

If you think, or rather I should say believe, that the "market" is the best of all possible systems, this the best of all possible countries, in the best of all possible worlds, then this is not the book for you.But if you are serious about doing something effective about meaningful social change in the "new millenium", then you owe it to yourself to buy this book.The author begins with the efforts of a small band of young people at a small Midwestern college to oppose the Yankee empire's efforts to overthrow the Cuban Revolution at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, and during the "Missile Crisis" in 1962. He shows you how and why the Cuban people then, and still today, were willing to fight and die to defend their nation and revolution, and how those everyday ordinary working people changed themselves into better humans in the process.He then explains that the only way to rid the earth of war, racism, discrimination against women, enviromental catastrophe,etc., is to do what the Cubans did, here in the "belly of the beast" --make a revolution. The alternative, he affirms, is fascism and a new world war. Finally he points to a concrete program to unify working people here and now,at home and abroad, necessary to fight back against the economic catastrophe looming before us to anyone with eyes to see.

If you are serious about making a human world, buy this book ! And pass it on to others.

¿Que hacer? ¿Que podemos hacer: trabajadores, agricultores, jóvenes-- viviendo todas las consecuencias de la creciente crisis capitalista? ¿Y cómo hacerlo juntos, y no en formas aisladas e ineficaces?
Este libro contiene muchas materiales para estudiar, aprender y aprovechar sobre estas cuestiones tan importantes. Se trata sobre todo de experiencias de trabajadores socialistas en Estados Unidos, pero las lecciones son bien relevantes en cualquier parte del mundo. ¡Un libro de historia y de acción obrera!
Analiza el desarrollo de la sociedad capitalista desde los años 70, el impacto de los movimientos de mases para los derechos civiles del pueblo negro y los chicanos, las luchas reivindicando igualdad para las mujeres, la lucha en contra la guerra norteamericana en Vietnam. También ricas experiencias de lucha obrera: la huelga nacional de los mineros de carbón, la lucha para organizar el astillero Newport News y más. Y cuestiones de tácticas y estrategias para organizarse: relaciones entre obreros de conciencia de clase y la burocracia sindical, propaganda y agitación, organización y formación de un partido de vanguardia de los trabajadores.
Me gusta mucho la sección de fotos, que presenta imágenes vivos de los seres humanos envueltos en distintas luchas del pueblo trabajador.
¡Léalo y compártelo con otros compañeros y compañeras!

El sindicato es demasiado débil. La dirección es un amigo del patrón.
Toda la gente se queda con los que hablan su lengua y en la cafetería no
se mezclan con los demás. Uno quiere luchar junto por los demás, a favor
de todos los trabajadores, ¿pero cuando vamos unir? Este libro es un
manual para los decidios a tomar un próximo paso. Plantea como debemos
ser internacionalistas; pensar y actuar en términos internacionales;
usar, cambiar y transformar nuestros sindicatos en armas políticas y
sociales en contra todos los súper ricos. Tenemos que construir la
unidad de todos las "razas", entre hombres y mujeres, entre los
inmigrantes y los trabajadores "nacidos en los Estados Unidos". Sobre
todo, tenemos que construir el partido revolucionario de los
trabajadores más consciente y más solidario de todos. El premio para
este proceso es un futuro realmente humano: tomar el poder político, tal
como los trabajadores cubanos hicieron hace más de 40 años -pero aquí en
las entrañas de la bestia imperial yanqui-. Esto es un libro por cada
trabajador y trabajadora consciente.

To understand the world you need this book. Since the middle
1970s life for working people in the US has been the ups and downs of attacks on our standards of living, little depressions,booms,more attacks, more wars, racism, even threats of fascism, a stock market crash, and now a looming world economic
crisis. The documents assembled in this book from the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s chart this development from the standpoint of the Socialist Workers Party. Just as importantly, they chart the lessons and strategies of building a working class response to
this change, and the creative experience of the SWP in building a revolutionary workers party into the twenty-first century. Some day this book will rank with Lenin's What is to be Done, Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, and Cannon's Struggle for a proletarian party among the tools socialist workers use to change the world

What strategy is needed to advance the cause of the working class and progressive people? Since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, many labor, Black, and other progressive movements have supported the "lesser evil" -- usually the Democratic party candidate. Debated here is whether working people should dump this course and seek instead to replace the system which is alternatively administered by "lesser evil" Democrats and "greater evil" Republicans. Read the book and consider the consequences of "coalitionism" vs. independent working class political action.

Eugene V. Debs the socialist revolutionist was fond of saving, "it is better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don't want and get it." Malcolm X was fond of simply pointing out that at every key point in the history of Black people, the Democratic party "has sold us out." This book explains why real revolutionists are trying to chart a course of indepedence for workers, farmers, and the oppressed from the twin parties of capitalism, the Demnocrats and the Republicans.

Can the Republicans and the Democrats help us. Or do we need some new kind of party like the Green party, whichis a more liberal or more progressive party but still built on the model of the Democrats and the Republicans.
The responses that leaders of the Socialist Workers Party give here to people who believe that working people can work in the Democratic party or build other capitalist political parties answer these questions. They point out that the fundamental problem in this society is not liberal ideas or non liberal ideas, but the existence of a capitalist class, the big corporate leaders, and a capitalist system. They explain that politics is a question of taking power out the hands of those people and that system.

This book chronicles a series of debates between supporters of the Democratic and Republican parties and leaders of the Socialist Workers party who believe that working class people, Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, women, and all who fight for change need to break from the Republican and Democratic parties and the wanna be capitalist parties like the Greens to form a working class political party, a labor party, a party that can fight for power to be placed in the hands of workers and farmers in this country and the world. Its simple, a system is something that seeks to preserve itself. The SWPers demonstrate that Democratic party and other capitalist parties are part of the capitalism system and are not vehicles for liberation, but traps

¿Era una victoria para el imperialismo estadounidense el derrumbe de la URSS? No. ¿Porqué? El fracaso del estalinismo comprobó que una capa parásita no es tan fuerte como las fundaciones del estado obrero. Pueda que en un momento dado el sistema basado en explotación no parece estar en crisis plena, no obstante estamos inmersos en una época generalizada de la caída permanente en la taza de ganancias, y la única manera que el capital tiene para revertir esta caída es destruir capital y quienes lo producen, es decir, llevar a cabo una nueva guerra mundial.

Editado en forma de tesis cuando el Bush mayor dio el primero grito de victoria frente la caída del Muro de Berlín, El imperialismo perdió la guerra fría representa la única corriente que ha entendido como ni los mismos capitalistas se sienten libres, porque son esclavos de su capital -un capital que encoja de forma permanente-.

El derrumbe del estalinismo nos representa para los trabajadores y campesinos la mejor oportunidad en más de setenta años a arrebatar de los superricos el poder estatal para construir su propio gobierno, y así acabar con el último imperio que pueda desgraciar la faz de la Tierra.

For those swayed by the surface appearance of things and the propaganda of U.S. rulers, this title may appear out of this world. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of pretense by current leaders of Russia and other former European "socialist" states of being the heirs of Lenin and the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the U.S. military seemingly unchallenged - - where is the evidence that the U.S. lost the cold war?

Read this book and you will find the answer. I will give you a hint: capitalism has not been restored in Russia or Eastern Europe. Cuba's unblemished revolutionary example and other genuine communists will have an easier time influencing today's fighters for liberation.

This book shows how the expanded rights, power, and freedom workers and oppressed people in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have achieved since the late 1980s strengthened the ability of workers in this country and around the world to struggle, and weakened US imperialism. This book sets these victories in the context of the growing tensions between the US, Europe, and Japan, and the growing economic crisis of the capitalism system. It sets out a continued perspective of struggle for working people, youth, farmers, and other oppressed people in this country and around the world.

Are the lives of your countrymen and women more valuable than the lives of Afghans, Iraquis, Palestinians, or those of the people of Northern Ireland? Should you support imperialist war against them? Should you restrain your struggle to improve your working conditions during today's "war on terrorism" or acquiesce to the restrictions on democratic rights for the "war effort"?

The authors of "Washington's Assault on Iraq: Opening Guns of World War II" say no, not if working people are going to advance and build a world free of inequality and war. This book is as relevant today as it was at the start of the Gulf War.

The US government never goes to war for 'democracy', 'freedom' , against 'ethnic cleansing' ,or against
'terrorism'. The US government goes to war for domination, markets, and profits, profits,
profits.Profits for families that have hundreds of millions and billions of dollars.It is their government,
not ours.In the Gulf in 1991 ( and in the region tomorrow ) war was,and is ,and will be, in the first place on behalf of Big
Oil. The superrich send working-class youth to kill and die for their interests. Not our own.In this now classic work
Jack Barnes explains the Gulf War and the increased rivalries between the market giant ( imperialist )
countries leading toward Depression, fascism, and a new world war. And what working class fighters
have done and will do -- here and all over the world --to resist and win.

This book shows how the Gulf war of 1990-1991 war not only a product of the continued conflict US Imperialism has with the Iraqis and other peoples of the Middle East. It illustrates how the growing tension between the US ruling circles and the imperialist governments of Europe and Japan played a decisive role in the Gulf War. Those conflicts continue to deepen to this day. As such this book is not an abstract tool about dead history, nor is this book an abstract analysis for academic or journalistic voyeurs. It is a handbook on the realities of world politics for working people, youth, and oppressed people who want to struggle against wars, imperialism, and oppression.

The fall of the Nicaraguan revolution was neither inevitable, nor caused by the lack of political consciousness of the workers and farmers who had made that revolution, neither was it caused by those same workers "voting with their stomachs" in 1989. No, it was the leadership of the Sandinista National Liberation Front ( FSLN ) and its policy of " concertación", of catering to the domestic capitalists of the city and the countryside that demoralized the working people, without gaining a single concession from Yanqui ( U.S. ) imperialism as the FSLN leadership had promised ! The working people I met in Nicaragua in 1986 during the war against the U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary terrorists were ready to make whatever sacrifice necessary ( and they were doing so ) in defense of THEIR workers and farmers government that then was in power, under the leadership of the Sandinista Front, that was still a revolutionary leadership then. The Nicaraguan people were betrayed by their leaders, who had and have to this day more faith in capitalism then confidence in the workers. The lessons of the degeneration of the FSLN and the defeat of the workers and farmers government that is treated in this book are based on the experience of of a revolutionary workers party in the U.S. defending that revolution here and opposing the U.S. dirty war, and on the socialist journalism of its permanent bureau in Managua during the ten years of the revolution. These lessons are just as important as the lessons of the victorious Cuban revolution , also covered in thumbnail sketches here .We workers and farmers here in the U.S. can still learn much from the FSLN during its revolutionary period, as we can learn from the works of comandante Carlos Fonseca, founder of the FSLN, on the road to power, referred to throughout this valuable book.

The 1979 rise of Nicaraguan workers and peasants inspired freedom-loving people around the world. The FSLN led a massive mobilization that uprooted the long-standing Somoza system of repression and subservience to U.S. capitalism. The armed people began a road of social justice and genuine sovereignty. Led by the Sandinistas, they defeated the invasion of counterrevolutionary contras -- armed and commanded by Washington. Yet the FSLN, at the moment of its greatest victories, turned away from the road of leading the workers and peasants forward to the overturn of capitalism. Instead, they reversed course and abandoned land reform, workers rights, and sought to become an inoffensive bourgeois political party. Even that modest ambition was thwarted, and they lost power in 1990.

This book is the most complete political analysis of the Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution, not for academics, but for working revolutionists, for workers, peasant and youth who want to change the world. It contains resolutions on Nicaragua adopted by the Socialist Workers Party starting in 1979, the historic Program of the Sandinistas by the FSLN's historic founder Carlos Fonseca, and several important articles and speeches by SWP leaders. Most unique are the fifty-page introduction by SWP leader Steve Clark and the articles by Larry Seigle, a leader of The Militant's bureau in Managua during the revolution. They document that the revolution failed, not because it was anticapitalist, but because it failed to go on to end capitalism.

Este libro se relata el impacto de la experiencia de un partido obrero revolucionario en las entrañas de la bestia imperial yanqui, practicando su política en el ambiente de los sindicatos fabriles cuando empezaron a retomar su base en los sindicatos después de una extendida ausencia desde los sesenta hasta los ochenta.

En aquel momento las revoluciones victoriosas en Nicaragua y Grenada estaban tomando un rumbo anticapitalista y el ejemplo de la revolución cubana dominaba el escenario mundial. En este contexto el Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores de los EE.UU. reexaminó su continuidad directa con la revolución bolchevique a través de la colaboración directa que tuvieron con Leon Trotski -co-líder con Lenín de la revolución rusa- durante su exilo en México. Trotski encabezó la batalla contra la burocracia estalinista que cortó la línea de acción internacionalista, así traicionando al flor de los luchadores proletarios y campesinos en los treinta y cuarenta. Esa burocracia, no el socialismo, cayó en 1990-1.

Los militantes del PST, con sus primeros pasos en los sindicatos industriales después de dichos años de ausencia (explicada en este volumen), se pusieron a aprender en la misma escuela de lucha y combate que los revolucionarios centroamericanos y caribeños, incluyendo las lecciones teoréticas que sirvieron como guía de acción para los cubanos. Intentaron aplicar las experiencias a la lucha de clases en los EE.UU.

Hoy en día, cuando el capitalismo está en crisis mundial y el imperio yanqui y el sistema imperialista entero está marchando a su única solución -el fascismo y la guerra mundial-, el proceso de los revolucionarios de los varios continentes y diferentes tradiciones aprenden teoría y acción uno del otro mientras participan en el combate de clases. Es más relevante que nunca plantear el curso hacia la revolución y establecer gobiernos obrero y campesino y así unir con la lucha por un mundo humano, es decir un mundo socialista.La introducción de este libro, escribido en 2002, elabora en esas temas.

Los fundadores del Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (SWP) de los Estados Unidos colaboraron íntimamente con Trotski desde la traición de Estalin en los años veinte. A finales de los setenta, sintieron que había la posibilidad de reestablecerse en los sindicatos, hicieron campaña para retomar la forma -además del contenido- de un partido que merece llamarse "comunista".

Pronto se hizo patente que muchos partidos filiales del Partido Mundial de Revolución Socialista no fueron más que sectas que rindieron homenaje a la personalidad de Trotski, sin contar con mayor interés en intervenir en el trabajo sindical cotidiano y arduo. El SWP revisó su raíces y fundaciones, retomó las lemas "para un gobierno de los trabajadores y campesinos" y "lo valioso del Trotski es era el continuador de Lenín."

El porqué se explica en el libro. Ya, a un año del veintavo aniversario de este discurso, todo se mantiene vigente.

El desarrollo y el avance del movimiento revolucionario de los trabajadores dependen de los esfuerzos de muchos individuos y de dirigentes destacados. Este libro impresionante analiza el trabajo y los aportes de León Trotsky, junto con V.I. Lenin un dirigente central de la revolución bolchevique en Rusia. Después de la muerte de Lenin, Trotsky era el único que continuaba luchando por el camino revolucionario y en contra la corriente contrarrevolucionaria encabezada por José Stalin.

El autor, Jack Barnes, es dirigente del Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores en los Estados Unidos y presentó el discurso publicado aquí como parte de la discusión política de perspectivas revolucionarias al comienzo de los años 1980. Analiza el impacto importante de la revolución sandinista en Nicaragua y la revolución granadina de 1979. También el papel destacado de dirigentes cubanos en los esfuerzos para forjar una nueva vanguardia revolucionaria.

Toca cuestiones claves incluyendo las experiencias de la revolución bolchevique, la perspectiva de un gobierno de obreros y campesinos en el proceso de lucha anticapitalista, la relación entre la clase trabajadora y el campesinado, la fracasada revolución china de 1925-27, los avances y retrocesos en la construcción de una vanguardia marxista a lo largo del siglo XX.

Este libro a mi me animó mucho a estudiar más estas temas. Le invita a hacer lo mismo, y a seguir con otros títulos relacionados por el mismo autor: El desorden mundial del capitalismo, El rostro cambiante de la política en EEUU, y el número 5 de la revista Nueva Internacional: El imperialismo norteamericano ha perdido la guerra fría.