Also, does this definition assume that the interests of the working classes in the global North are aligned with those of their own bourgeoisie? If we are to consider the United States, for example, as a “bourgeois nation,” it would seem to follow that working class people in the United States benefit from US imperialism. If this is the case, how does one explain why working class living standards in the United States have declined for over 30 years, even after the fall of the USSR and the victory of the Washington consensus?

Far from “polarizing into a dichotomy of “Us vs. Them” between wealthy countries of the global North and impoverished countries of the global South,” the global South is making an appearance in the cities and rural areas of the global North as the “employers’ offensive” continues to attack wages, benefits, and social services. In the US, imperialism is quickening this trend, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan burn money while tens of millions of working class residents lack access to health care, decent housing, job security, and other basic services. This is exactly the kind of polarization that Marx was talking about, and it exists North and South.

You’re kidding, right?

If there were the remotest threat of a genuine laissez-faire or free market policy, the Fortune 500 would forestall it with a coup d’etat.

Corporate globalization is about as far from laissez-faire as you can get.

For one thing, damn near the central focus of the globalization movement is the enforcement of so-called “intellectual property” [sic] rights, which are state-enforced monopolies fundamentally at odds with any genuine free market principles.

For another, corporate globalization relies heavily on taxpayer subsidies to the operations of TNCs. If it weren’t for foreign aid and world bank loans to build the road and utility infrastructure which is a prerequisite for profitable Western investment in the Third World, we’d be buying a lot more stuff built here at home.

Corporate globalization also requires the fundamental violation of genuine private property rights (namely, the traditional property rights of peasants in the land they work), the preference of artificial property rights based on feudal land grants from the state (i.e., those of the latifundistas and landed oligarchs), and collusion between the U.S. national security state and local landed oligarchies in robbing peasants so their land can be used for cash crops and the peasants themselves can be forced into wage labor. For that matter, Anglo-American industrial capitalism did not emerge from the free market; it required Enclosures for the same purpose as the modern-day land thefts in the Third World.

Corporate globalization requires a massive national security state to guarantee access to foreign resources and markets, protect merchant shipping at general taxpayer expense, and to guarantee the security of overseas investments.

It’s not by coincidence that the dominant profitable sectors in the global economy are those most dependent on direct state subsidies, or on state-enforced “intellectual property” [sic] monopolies: agribusiness, biotech, military hardware, electronics, software, and entertainment.

“Laissez-faire”? I think not.

Working class people in the North are beginning to respond to the growing gap between rich and poor that affects them as well. The leftward shift in consciousness that is currently underway in the United States is evidence of that, as are the May Day protests of 2006 and 2007. Consciousness lags behind organization, and when organization begins to catch up it will be vital to link working class struggles in the North to those in the South, to argue that the interests of working class people are the same across all boundaries, national or otherwise.

Finally, Marxism is not prophecy. Marx recognized tendencies and trends within capitalism, and the potential for the working class to sieze power and run society in the interests of the vast majority, but he never said it was an automatic process. It requires people like us to organize, agitate, and build organizations that can win the demands we make. This is something we need to do for ourselves. Your point that the “masses are arranging themselves” independently of leaders like Chavez is well taken. Chavez is certainly doing some great things in Venezuela, and in challenging the neoliberal agenda he is opening up much-needed space for strategic political debate on the topic of working class emancipation, and in this he deserves the (critical) support of socialists. This is what Marx had to say on the topic, probably his most fundamental idea (and I agree with him): “the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself.”

In practice, Europe’s communist dictatorships were nothing like US propaganda made them out to be (which was why Americans were so surprised when they were overthrown). Now that the dirt has come out here in Europe, we can see that communism was utterly corrupt, with a small clique of wealthy, middle class, party fatcats living on the backs of the working people and thieving openly from the public purse. The repressive apparatus of the dictatorship kept that under wraps but, the “street” had ceased to beleive in the regime years before the end. For obvious reasons, US propagands also kept all that under wraps!

Socialism has undoubted suffered from its “hijacking” by the communists (many Americans don’t even seem to know the difference between the two!) but in 20th century Europe, socialism did an immense amount of good, consolidating and building upon the immense good done by liberalism in the 19th century. Many people are attached to the positive achievemnets of both, in particular, democracy and the welfare state. There is no doubt, though, that socialism is now running out of steam but the idea of trying to go back to liberalism seems absurd (you just “unsolve” the problems in liberalism that socialism solved!). Indeed, it was the desire of the communists and other fascists to reject liberalism and go back to 18th century absolutism that got them into the mess that eventually discredited all of them.

What is needed is a new ideology for the 21st century, a “third storey on the democratic house” so to speak, which builds upon the positive achievements of liberalism and socialism without calling either into question. Judging from what interests the (highly impressive!) youth of today, I would guess that the new ideology will be some form of political ecology. A clear rejection of globalisation is obviously a part of that.

So marxism in the 21st century is dead buried and discredited, and sends no shivers down any spines outside the US! That Ms Long sees some future for it merely reveals the “disconnection” of Americans, of all political persuasions, from the real world. Basically, America is living in the past, with the right still looking for reds under the beds and the left still hoping they’ll find them! That disconnection has produced the disaster in Iraq and it would produce a similar disaster in Latin America if the gringos, whether of the right or of the left, were to meddle there.

Moral of the story: Yankee stay home!

Even as our economy has soar over the past 20 years or so, wages have stagnated and benefits have been lost. Labor unions continue to see a declining memberships as the role of unions has increasingly become that of negotiating concessions and layoffs to their members. Who in their right mind wants to pay 2 hours of wages per month to the company’s negotiating team?

The environmental groups continue to be ignored even as we rape the planet at an alarming rate and find ourselves at the threshold of ushering in a potential catastrophe of epic proportions. The science community is in consensus on the reality of global warming and its causes, yet they find themselves politically ignored.

The ACLU finds itself with a Bill of Rights that is now in shreds and swirling around the lower levels of the abyss.

The underclass will eventually come to the realization that liberalism cannot protect them in a capitalist society where every liberal asperation must eventually bow down to the capitalist’s demands for profits. As this realization grows among the underclass, socialism will reemerge as the only viable alternative to the raping of the masses and the destruction of the environment.

There is an old union rallying cry that goes, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” In a world where capital is global, that rallying cry must also become global. But the foundation of capitalism rests upon massive amounts of virtual slave labor throughout the world. Forty-one percent of the world’s people live in abject poverty on less than $2 per day. That figure, of course, doesn’t count the many who live in developed nations and earn far more than that yet still live in poverty. A global movement which successfully begins to protect the slaves who toil at the bottom of the pyramid of capitalism could do no other than to utterly destroy capitalism.

It is only when we begin to organize on a global basis for the protection of worker’s rights and environmental protection that we will start to put the world on a sustainable track, free of the imperialist wars and predatory capitalism that inflict so much death, destruction and misery for the benefit a relatively tiny handful of super-rich welfare-elites.