9/22 - Building the Struggle We Need

Join us for this week's Organizing meeting
7pm in Savery Hall Room 156

1. News & Politics Roundup: Building the Struggle We Need
We'll discuss the mid-term elections and how Socialists and other activists can take advantage of the opportunity presented by the October 2 "One Nation" rally in DC to put forward our solution to the crisis -- We'll read Socialist Worker's article How do we build the fight we need? and two articles from the International Socialist Review on The political terrain of the mid-term elections Preparing for a Republican comeback? By Lance Selfa and The Democrats’ broken promises by Phil Gasper


2. Local campaign update: Initiative 1098 organizing at UW
We'll get updates from the first UW for 1098 campaign coalition meeting of the quarter (1098 would tax the rich and raise $2billion for health care and education in WA state,) and discuss plans for Dawg Daze campaign outreach.

3. Business
We'll discuss fund-raising plans going in the fall quarter at UW (house party in the U-district??) and other business.

NEXT WEEK:
Fundamentals of Marxism Summer Study Series session six:
The Paris Commune -- Wed 9/29

Anyone Reading The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels can't help but be amazed at the pamphlet's relevance after 150 years. But already by 1872, on one critical point, Marx himself was convinced that the Manifesto was "out of date." The occasion for this revision, not just in the Manifesto, but in one of the fundamental tenets of Marxism, was the epic struggle in 1871 of the Paris Commune, a mass movement of workers and the poor that for the first time in history established a short-lived workers' government in Paris. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the Commune was a spectacular demonstration that the future belonged to the world's working class.

The central lesson of the Commune, which had Marx and Engels scrambling to rewrite Marxism's founding document, is of such importance that socialism is ultimately impossible without it. "One thing especially was proved by the Commune," writes Marx. "That the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes." In order for workers to govern themselves, the workers must first assure that the bourgeoisie cannot simply use their military forces to repossess what they have temporarily lost.

Recommended prerequisite:

• Elizabeth Lalasz, The Classics of Marxism: The Civil War in France
  http://www.isreview.org/issues/34/civilwarinfrance.shtml

Main Reading:

• Marx, The Civil War in France: The Paris Commune (45 pages)
  http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm 

If you prefer to buy the books: The Civil War in France: The Paris Commune