Gang Warfare

For weeks following Israel’s murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, the world wondered if (and when) Iran would retaliate. Haniyeh was heavily involved in diplomatic activity to end Israel’s genocidal bombing in Gaza. He had been in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezehkian.

Iran was widely expected to react by launching a drone and missile counterattack on Israel as in April, but this time to causing greater damage. Much to the surprise of most observers, Iran took no military action. It seems that the Iranian leaders were engaged in intense diplomatic activity to arrange a ceasefire to end, or at least suspend, Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign on Gaza.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese political-religious resistance organization, was also negotiating for a ceasefire. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was one of the most popular and respected political leaders in Lebanon.

The Problem: Marx Didn’t Leave a Completed Crisis Theory

Introduction

Sam Williams
March 1, 2015

This book is based on my blog Critique of Crisis Theory. The blog is focused on one question of Marxist economic theory: What are the causes of periodic economic crises such as the one that occurred in 2007-09 that have marked the concrete history of the world capitalist economy since 1825?

The blog and this book are built on the foundations of Capital, which, during the panic in 2008, became a bestseller once again. However, that work itself, though it lays the foundation, is not about the periodic crises capitalist production goes through. Nor is there a section within it dealing with crises as such.

Since Marx and Engels put so much emphasis on crises in the Communist Manifesto and other works, this omission seems surprising. However, according to Marx’s original plan, Capital was to be only one of a series of books he intended to write on economics. According to this plan, Marx would crown his economic work with a book on the world market, the state, competition, and crises. However, Marx did not have the time to produce this work.

A Marxist Guide to Capitalist Crises

Editor’s Note

In 2010, a project was announced to compile the main posts into a PDF eBook.

By 2015, an update on the eBook’s status indicated that the first draft had been completed, with 37 chapters organized into seven sections, a general introduction, and individual introductions for each section. The update suggested that the project was expected to be finalized within the following year, 2016.

However, as is often the case, unforeseen circumstances delayed the project until now.

The second draft of the eBook, building upon the 2015 first draft, has been finalized and is currently being prepared for publication.

In the coming weeks, we will share the completed chapters on this blog between our regular postings.

Elections, Genocide, and a Federal Reserve Cut

Recent polls confirm that the U.S. presidential race is extremely tight between Kamala Harris – supported by the Party of Order, including prominent Republicans such as Bush’s warmongering and powerful Vice President Richard Cheney – and Donald Trump. While many individual capitalists support Donald Trump, the really big money is behind Harris. This gives Harris a considerable advantage. When the big money deserted Genocide Joe Biden earlier this year, he was forced out of the race. The big money wasn’t concerned about his support of Israel’s Gaza genocide. The money bags didn’t believe Biden could win after his disastrous performance in the June 27 “debate” with Trump.

Polls taken on the eve of the September “debate” between Harris and Trump showed the election either even or leaning toward Trump, though Harris took the lead afterward. (1 )

Trump, however, can still win. What determines the presidential election in the U.S. is not the popular vote but the vote in the electoral college. The electoral college strongly favors Republicans. There is a good chance that Harris will win the popular vote – though this is far from certain – only to lose to Trump in the electoral college. This is exactly what happened in 2016 when Hillary Clinton defeated Trump by two million votes, but Trump carried the electoral college.

(1) I put the word “debate” in quotation marks because the “debates” between the Democratic and Republican candidates for president exclude all third-party candidates. Actually, these are not debates as traditionally defined about contending policies but instead are more like commercial, promotional advertisements aimed at deceiving the listeners. For example, in the September 10 debate, neither Trump nor Harris denounced the U.S.-supported genocide in Gaza. Instead of seriously discussing foreign, domestic, or economic policy in these debates, the rival candidates concentrate on putting their opponent in the worst light possible while trying to drum up enthusiasm for their personal qualities. The Democratic and Republican candidates use deception and, when necessary, outright lies to do this. A poster supporting Harris declares: “Vote Joy 2024.”

Assassinated in Tehran

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by an Israeli-planted explosive device on July 31 in Tehran, Iran. Haniyeh was in Iran to attend the inauguration of the new president, Masoud Pezeshkia. Haniyeh had been heavily involved in diplomatic activity for some kind of ceasefire to partially pause the Israeli genocide in Gaza. I say partially because disease, hunger, and thirst will continue to take a toll even when the bombing stops. His murder occurred just weeks after Netanyahu, addressing Congress, received standing ovations as tens of thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of Washington, D.C., demanding Netanyahu’s arrest.

Haniyeh’s murder shows that the Zionist entity wants to keep on bombing, a campaign that’s killed tens of thousands of Palestinians — many women and children — as long as they can get away with it. They aim to kill as many Gazans as possible while forcing the remainder to leave Palestine.

As they did last April, after the Israeli attacks on Iran’s embassy in Syria, Tehran promised retaliatory attacks. Unlike April’s response of largely demonstrative attacks, this time, they’ve hinted the attacks will cause real damage to Israel. So far (as of August 18, 2024), there have been no attacks while the diplomatic activity continues.

Genocide Joseph Biden Bows Out

On July 21, President Joseph Biden announced he was dropping his reelection campaign. He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the next Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Top leaders are rallying behind Harris to stop any challenge from another Democrat.

The closest thing to this in modern history was President Lyndon Johnson’s announcement that he would not be a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination for the 1968 election. In June 1968, the leading candidate, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated. This led to the nomination of Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, who lost to Richard Nixon.

Due to his advanced age, Biden was originally supposed to serve only one term, but somewhere along the way, he decided to run for a second. The Democratic Party seemed ready — with little opposition from its leaders — to nominate him at its national convention, scheduled for August 19 through 22 in Chicago.

Presidential Election Goes From Bad to Worse

Note

Since this was written, the U.S. presidential election has gone from worse to far worse due to Joseph Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 debate with Donald Trump. Though I am no expert on these matters, Biden seemed to show signs of dementia. Dementia is not at all unusual for a man of his age.

All types of dementia are progressive, which means they get steadily worse over time. It’s hard to see how Biden will be able to serve as president until January 20, 2029.

The Democrats are discussing whether they should dump Biden—which would seem to be a no–brainer—and how to do that. As things stand, there appears to be almost nothing between Donald Trump and the White House. The truth is that the U.S. political system is ill-designed to handle this type of situation. I will have more to say on this next month.

How Vietnam defeated U.S. imperialism

In the northern hemisphere, May brings the return of warm weather as summer approaches. The school year winds down for students, graduation ceremonies are held, and degrees are awarded. But this year, all this happened in the shadow of the continued genocide in Gaza, with its tens of thousands of martyrs, the majority of them women and children.

In the final month of the 2024 school year, the student intifada against the collaboration of universities and the government with genocide swept U.S. campuses and spread around the imperialist world. In the meantime, Democrats and Republicans responded by launching attacks against academic freedom.

Billionaire capitalists who donate to university institutions forced their presidents, their loyal servants, to resign for not sufficiently repressing students. Under this pressure, some students who had completed their undergraduate studies were denied degrees, faced criminal charges, or punished in other ways.

Student Protests Against U.S.-Supported Israeli Genocide Spread Globally

Building since October 2023, the final weeks of April 2024 saw an explosion of student protests against U.S.-supported Israeli genocide in Gaza on campuses across the U.S. and the world. The latest, at Columbia University in New York City, was the site of a previous protest in 1968. That one was against Columbia’s ties to the U.S. military during the Vietnam War and was part of a wave of student protests around the country. It spread to France and helped trigger the great workers’ General Strike of May-June 1968.

The 2024 Columbia students demand:

Divest all finances, including the endowment, from corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine.
Complete transparency for all of Columbia’s financial investments.
Amnesty for all students and faculty disciplined or fired in the movement for Palestinian Liberation.

As of April 29, protests have swept across so many campuses that we don’t have the room to list them. We can safely say nothing of this scale has been seen since the May 1970 student strikes against Nixon’s extension of the Vietnam War to Cambodia.

The Genocide Continues

Israel’s relentless genocide against the people of Gaza continues without letup as I write these lines. In recent weeks, U.S. imperialism has tried to create the impression they’re putting some distance between themselves and the Israeli regime. For example, the Democratic Senate majority leader Charles Schumer said, “As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed, radically, since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past”.

Schumer is right about one thing: The world changed after October 7 as massive protests broke out across the globe, including within the United States. It isn’t only Schumer. Genocide Joe’s administration, after vetoing every ceasefire proposed in the UN Security Council, introduced a resolution of its own, the nature of which was summarized by Russian representative Vassily Nebenzia.

“Nebenzia further described the vote as a ploy to throw [U.S. voters in support of a ceasefire] a bone’ with a false ceasefire call,” the web publication Truthout reported.