JuneFall

See title, this builds up on the previous request for reading lists, but is a bit more open ended and is supposed to be a contemporary update that I would like to post twice a year.

The texts at best are accessible without too much previous knowledge. Open for videos, and other media, as well as group formats, and activities too. You have to participate in protest training and actually cook for others to see how both those things feel.

I would be more happy with fewer thick works or only excerpts from complicated stuff, than to suggest the complete collection of Marx's works. Some popular and recent books i.e. Jakarta Method, Klein, or recent organizing books would be welcome, too.

The next time I post this question (and feel free to paste your own suggested template) will be December/January 2023.

See title.

https://archive.ph/mdLpi

Far from reducing extreme poverty, the expansion of capitalism from the 16th century onward was associated with a dramatic deterioration in human welfare. This is according to a study carried out by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) in collaboration with Macquarie University, Australia, which shows that this new economic system saw a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and a marked upturn in premature mortality.

...

"This is because capitalism is an undemocratic system where production is organized around elite accumulation rather than human needs," explains Sullivan. "To maximize profitability, capital often seeks to cheapen labor through processes of enclosure, dispossession, and exploitation."

Finally, the authors find that recovery from this prolonged period of immiseration occurred only recently: progress in human welfare began in the late 19th century in Northwest Europe and the mid-20th century in the global South. Sullivan and Hickel note that this coincides with the rise of the labor movement, socialist political parties, and de-colonization. "These movements redistributed incomes, established public provisioning systems, and attempted to organize production around meeting human needs," Jason Hickel says. "Progress appears to come from progressive social movements."

Source: https://hexbear.net/post/192977

Real source: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.261773/2015.261773.The-Grapes_djvu.txt

“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Brought to you by leftist text-meme gang

The upper number is the highest I could find, so it likely is a margin lower.

• German radio expects up to 200 million strikers

• NYT on twitter: "General Strike Throws India Into Confusion"

While :ukkk: newspapers title:

• Low turnout for India’s national two-day strike as 50 million join protests notes about repression of the strike are only afterthoughts:

The states of Kerala and West Bengal banned government employees from joining the strike, and Maharashtra invoked an emergency law banning the 80,000 workers in its power companies from striking.

• CPIM writes:

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) congratulates the working class for the successful 48-hour general strike held on March 28-29. Millions of workers responded to the call given by 10 Central Trade Unions and various sectoral federations.

Note: The 250 million number got removed from the original article I found it in.

The strike follows the 2020 general strike which might've been the largest in history till that moment

• ~~WSWS writes:~~ (I don't remember if the wsws was okay Yeah they aren't: https://hexbear.net/post/184287/comment/2302253)

• People's dispatch propaganda video

Millions of Indian workers to join two-day general strike against Modi’s ruinous pro-investor policies

• Times of India with pictures