About This Issue

DB 112 begins with a Marxist examination of two recent events: the demonstration by anti-globalism groups at Genoa last year and the 9/11 terrorist attack. The author, Max Kolskegg, "... makes occasional comments on events and their deep structure from a Marx-informed and anarchist perspective." He posted this at Starhawk and Ervin, whose articles are mentioned below, also post their articles on the internet (see the bibliography). Kolskegg has also written an interesting article "9/11: A Desperate Provocation by U.S. Capitalism" available at , which he summarizes as follows: "The War on Terrorism is fraud. It's purpose is to maintain carte blanche for the ever more desperate agenda of American capital: the domination of the continent of Eurasia, and the crushing of the Left worldwide, especially its anti- capitalist core." Incidentally I hope readers will excuse the problems the scanner and I had with margins.

The next four letters and articles concern a longstanding political feud between two closely related members of the non-market socialist spectrum: The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Labor Party of America. How the two parties managed to get close enough geographically to carry on hostilities is an interesting story in itself. Around the turn of the 20th century the socialist movement worldwide split between the reformists and the revolutionaries. In Great Britain, many of the Scottish revolutionaries had been influenced by the American SLP and its paper, the People. Instead of keeping their agreement with the London revolutionary group to delay leaving the old party, the Social Democratic Federation until they had gather more support, the Scottish group jumped the gun and organized the Socialist Labour Party of Great Britain. This didn't endear them to the Londoners who left a year later in 1904. And of course it left Britain with two revolutionary parties. As one might expect, competition for members in the limited pool of potentially revolutionary workers resulted in open journalistic hostilities-at least on the part of the SPGB; I have no way of checking the extent to which the British SLP responded. In America the feud began during WWI when a couple of live-wire SPGB members arrived from Britain and organized what later became the World Socialist Party (WSP). Their journal the Western Socialist carried on the anti-SLP mission into the 60s-with no response from the SLP that I can recall. Around 12 years ago two London branches left the SPGB on the grounds that the organization had departed from its original principles. They organized a "reconstituted" SPGB and began publishing their own journal and other literature. The resumption of hostilities by the SPGB(R) is the most recent in Great Britain. In the U.S. the most recent outbreak was an entire issue of the WSPUS's World Socialist Review a few years ago.

Jon Bekken's letter reproaches me for errors in judgment regarding a couple of reprints from journals he is connected with and a review of a pamphlet he wrote. And I comment. Next the De Leonist Society of Canada expresses its disappointment at what it seems to regard as my willful misunderstanding of their position on Labor Time Vouchers. Again, I comment.

Anarchy in Kansas is convinced that people don't need no education and makes a good case for eliminating schools entirely, not just those mandated by the state but by any social organization including the family. A part of their argument recalls Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, which has a similar critique if not exactly the same solution to the problem of education.

Besides an eye catching graphic "noclass2002," like most radical groups, has a excellent grasp of the problems the working class must struggle with. It's all there except the answer to the obvious question: Why? And the obvious answer: the capitalist system. I suspect that it is the refusal to "name the enemy" that made noclass2002's leaflet acceptable to mindfully.org and writers for the San Francisco Chronicle.

As usual we end with some notes, announcements, and short reviews.

Finances

The dismal picture of DB finances reported in No. 111 has changed thanks to the generosity of supporters and an increase in subscriptions and sales. We shouldn't return to the level of optimism reached a few months ago, though, when I was suggesting that we could anticipate a dividend payment to stockholders. But we have avoided for the immediate future the deficits we ran from time to time until the mid nineties (The last reported in DB77).

Contributions: Joe Tupper (for the abolition of capitalism); Will Guest $11; Richard Evanoff $ 10; Mike Ballard $20; Anonymous $ 7; Monte Throneburg $ 20; Rado Mijanovich $ 100; Walter and Dorothy Petrovich $ 47; William Cashin $20. Total $ 255.00 Thank you, comrades.

BALANCE December 30, 2001
$ 47.02

RECEIPTS
Contributions $ 255.00
Subs and Sales 127.00
Total $ 382.00

DISBURSEMENTS
Postage $ 108.90
Bank Charges 8.00
Printing 36.29
Postage Due 5.70
Annual PO Box rent 55.00
Total $ 213.89

BALANCE February 23,
2002 $ 215.13

Fraternally submitted,
Frank Girard