Sheila D. Collins

The New Underground Railroad

In the midst of one of the bleakest periods for the North American left, the most vital resistance to U.S. imperialism is coming from the religious communities. While Marxists hold conferences to speculate on how to revitalize the connection between theory and practice, forty people, recruited through religious institutions, leave every two weeks for Nicaragua to live and work among the people in the most dangerous zones of the country, documenting contra atrocities, experiencing the acute pain of poverty and war, and then returning to their communities to talk about what they have seen and heard and to agitate for an end to U.S. intervention in Central America. Coordinated by a dedicated grassroots network of religious activities, the movement, known as Witness for Peace, has already sent over 2,000 American Christians and Jews on such tours of witness and solidarity.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Breaking the Mold? Venezuela's Defiance of the Neoliberal Agenda*

Something remarkable is happening in Latin America. In four of the continent’s countries, including its largest and most industrially advanced, popular elections have brought to power administrations that, to varying degrees, are bucking the Washington Consensus and beginning to forge a regional economic and political bloc that poses a direct challenge to the Washington Consensus and the Monroe Doctrine. In addition to the left-leaning governments of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Uruguay, Mexico seems poised to elect a populist president and popular movements with a decidedly anti-neoliberal agenda in Ecuador and Bolivia have more than once toppled their neoliberal governments, portending more trouble for the United States. In short, America’s “backyard” can no longer be considered safe to play in. Nowhere is this process more advanced than in Venezuela, where the nation’s geostrategic position as the world’s fifth largest oil producer, a particularly astute, charismatic and visionary leader, a poor majority that has discovered the power of popular struggle and a conjuncture of geopolitical events have combined to produce the continent’s strongest and most interesting political phenomenon— one that holds the possibility of altering north-south hemispheric relations for the first time in nearly 200 years. John Lombardi has argued that Venezuela’s economic dependence on the “Hispanic extractive engine” (first cacao, then coffee, now oil) has condemned it to a cycle of rising hope and crushing defeat following declines in world prices for its single commodity. This has certainly been the recent history of Venezuela. The question this article seeks to address is: can Venezuela, under the

The Rainbow Coalition and the Challenge of Class; Racism and Class: A Response to Vicente Navarro

Dear Sheila Collins: I have just read your book, The Rainbow Challenge: The Jackson Campaign and the Future of U.S. Politics (Monthly Review Press, 1987). What a treat! When I started reading it I could not stop. I was so absorbed in it that I had to put aside everything else I was doing in order to finish the book. It is an excellent piece! You have put together the best written record of one of the most exciting pages of our history. As an overall coordinator of the 1984 Jackson campaign, you were in a unique position to explain and analyze our movement. And you did it very well. As a participant of the struggles you refer to in this book I feel that your analysis of events and prescriptions for change are superb. Thank you for having written it. All progressive forces in this country owe you a vote of gratitude.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Religion and Class in the Construction and Deconstruction of the Myth of American Exceptionalism

As John F. Kennedy once said, “the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”1 Myths play a powerful role in political life. They frame our experience, setting parameters around our political imagination, causing us to see it only in a certain way and not in others. The American national myth goes something like this: America was founded by people who were fleeing religious persecution, rigid class hierarchies, and tyrannical governments.2 Here they founded a beacon of liberty, opportunity, and democracy for all the world to emulate. Successive waves of people came to these shores seeking the opportunity to govern themselves and to rise above their humble material origins—to achieve the “American Dream.” If they could not realize that ambition in one generation, they could be assured that their children and grandchildren would.

War without end: the domestic economic fallout of empire

While the effects of the Bush doctrine on our relations in the world and our civil liberties at home have received widespread scrutiny, there has been relatively little attention paid to its effects on our domestic economy. This is surprising in light of Paul Kennedys thesis that empires tend to overextend themselves militarily, depleting their revenue‐generating and productive capacities at home and making them vulnerable to decline in relation to nations whose economies are rising. This article brings together many threads of a discussion about the economic impacts of war that have been scattered across disciplines, buried in government documents and in the reports of government watchdogs groups, or are just beginning to emerge in the press, and suggests some areas for investigation that are being ignored. Far from “protecting our American way of life,” the garrison state the Bush administration is building may in fact be leading to our political and economic decline.

Special Issue on: The Challenge of Full Employment in the Global Economy Editorial Introduction

Low unemployment and commitment to full employment were widespread after the Second World War. Today, there is mass unemployment and weak commitment to-full employment, which is still necessary and attainable. This article discusses divergent concepts of full employment, its history and the impact of the global economy. We dispel the notion that Europes high unemployment is due to labor market rigidity, that the US model is a good alternative and that technology has made work obsolete. Unemployment, both morally unacceptable and economically irrational, weakens welfare states. The global economy makes attaining full employment more difficult but not impossible. Political and economic strategies, needed at both national and international levels, are suggested, along with possible actions by intellectuals.