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There are a number of primitive communities scattered around the world where old matriarchal practices and customs survive to a greater or lesser extent. These are usually called “matrilineal” communities because the line of kinship and descent is still traced through the mothers alone. But the matter goes deeper than this. In such regions the father-family is still poorly developed. A man may be recognized as the husband of the mother and yet not be recognized as the father of her children or, if recognized, has only an extremely tenuous connection with them. As this is usually expressed, the children belong to the mother and her kin.

This means that the children belong not only to the mothers but also to the brothers of such a matrilineal community. In other words, the mothers’ brothers, or maternal uncles, still perform the functions of fatherhood for their clan sisters’ children that in patriarchal societies have been taken over by the father for his wife’s children. For this reason such a community is sometimes called “the avunculate.” The term “avunculate” refers to the mother’s brother as the term “patriarch” refers to the father.

These matrilineal communities are survivals from the matriarchal epoch and, however much they have been altered since the patriarchal takeover, testify to the priority of the earlier social system. In fact, by the time anthropology began in the last century, most primitive clans had already become altered in their composition to a certain degree. Pairing couples, or what Morgan called “pairing families,” had made their appearance in communities that had formerly been composed solely of clan mothers and brothers (or sisters and brothers).

But the pairing family, which was still a part of the collectivism maternal clan system, was a totally different kind of family than the patriarchal family which came in with class society. A new man from outside the clan was added to the maternal group-the husband of the woman who became his wife. However, while the husbands participated in providing for their wives and children, so long as the clan system prevailed the husbands remained subordinate and even incidental to the mothers’ brothers. The mothers’ brothers remained the basic economic partners of their clan sisters and guardians of their sisters’ children.

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No place in San Francisco has changed more than the Embarcadero, which is now mostly a grand promenade. It wasn't always so peaceful. Saturday is the 80th anniversary of a day of riots and deadly violence, a reminder of the bloody history of the city's waterfront.

On July 5, 1934, striking workers and police clashed in a series of riots that swept the waterfront from Rincon Hill to the Ferry Building. Two men were killed by police and more than 100 were injured.

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The 1934 strike is "a basic part of the history of San Francisco and a seminal event in labor history in general," said Catherine Powell, director of the Labor Archives Project at San Francisco State University.

Labor strife may seem a distant and irrelevant memory to people strolling on the Embarcadero these days, but the events of that summer 80 years ago established union power in the Bay Area, and turned the International Longshore and Warehouse Union into a major player on the Pacific Coast.

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Vergara v. California is the latest in a series of court struggles stemming from teacher layoffs that resulted from the $10 billion cuts to education in 2009 demanded by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Reduction in force" cuts resulted in the loss of more than 2,000 teachers in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) schools, with some schools, like Markham Middle School, seeing up to a 72% reduction in teaching staff.

The first round of court cases centered around Reed v. California, a class action lawsuit which argued that these layoffs adversely and disproportionately affected schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The lawsuit claimed that because of the teachers union's "last in, first out" layoff policy, teachers who wished to stay at these schools were being displaced by older staff with greater seniority rights. In 2011, a judge ruled that student rights to a quality education were affected by this policy, and an exemption was granted to 45 low-performing schools.

However, in 2012, the California Second District Court of Appeal overturned this exemption, stating that the teachers union, United Teachers of Los Angeles, was not given an opportunity to present its side of the case, and that special exemptions violated state education law. The union at this time also stated that there was no evidence that less-experienced staff were the key to improving at-risk schools, and proposed its own reforms to stop layoffs, which included addressing the root issues of high teacher turnover and hurdles to student success.

Little mention at the time was made of the fact that several of the schools, including Markham, which had seen draconian layoffs due to budget cuts, were also part of an earlier education reform project, under the umbrella of Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, spearheaded by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Under the partnership, in 2008, 11 LAUSD public schools were placed in a "turnaround" system, where all existing veteran school staff were fired and told to reapply for their jobs.

That late-year turnaround resulted in a younger staff (generally also lower paid) with little experience being brought in to staff the schools, who, in turn, were then let go when the wave of layoffs hit. A revolving door of substitute teachers protected from seniority-based layoffs were then cycled through the schools to teach classes, heightening the instability for students. The narrative that younger, more competent teachers were being let go in favor of older and less competent teaching staff entered the media reports on Reed, with blame going to the tenure system.

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Tim Taylor, a firefighter in Columbus, Ohio, joined the Communist Party a year ago "because the governor of the state came after the firefighters union," trying to take away public employees' bargaining rights in the name of budget balancing.

So for Taylor, the Haymarket story was a case of deja vu. He was pre-radicalized by folk music, especially the songs of the Weavers, Pete Seeger's group. Now he hopes those records can inspire a younger generation.

"I'm marinating my kids in the Weavers," he said.

And for Hank Millstein, there's a wonderful irony in how Marx predicted society dividing into what we now call the 1 percent and everybody else. In palmier days his forecast was rejected. Now even mainstream politicians have to acknowledge the problem of runaway inequality.

"Just when Marxism was supposed to be dead," Millstein said, "it turns out that he was right."

The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that a persistent violation of ethics among bankers and rising inequality pose a major threat to growth and financial stability.

Christine Lagarde told an audience in London that six years on from the deep financial crisis that engulfed the global economy, banks were resisting reform and still too focused on excessive risk taking to secure their bonuses at the expense of public trust.

She said: "The behaviour of the financial sector has not changed fundamentally in a number of dimensions since the crisis. While some changes in behaviour are taking place, these are not deep or broad enough. The industry still prizes short-term profit over long-term prudence, today's bonus over tomorrow's relationship.

"Some prominent firms have even been mired in scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms - Libor and foreign exchange rigging, money laundering, illegal foreclosure."

Lagarde warned the too-big-to-fail problem among some of the world's largest financial institutions was still unresolved and remained a major source of systematic risk, with implicit subsidies of $70bn (£42bn) in the US, and up to $300bn in the eurozone.

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Bonus: irony alert

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1. Most are not helping kids. Rep. Roebuck’s new report shows that for the 2012-23 academic year, “the average SPP [School Performance Profile] score for traditional public schools was 77.1,” but for charter schools it was 66.4, and cyber-charter schools came in at a low 46.8. What’s more, “none of the 14 cyber charter schools had SPP scores over 70, considered the minimal level of academic success and 8 cyber charter schools had SPP scores below 50.” [Charter and Cyber Charter School Reform Update, April 2014] The latest national research found that charter students in Pennsylvania cover 29 fewer days of reading material on average, and 50 fewer days of math than traditional public schools. That puts us in the bottom three states in the country. [Stanford CREDO, National Charter School Study 2013] If we’re going to have charter schools, shouldn’t they be helping students?

2. Some are actually hurting kids. In a new report out last week, Gordon Lafer, a political economist at the University of Oregon, reviewed the growing low-budget-charter sector in Milwaukee, which has the oldest charter system in the country, and found startling results with national implications. Cost-cutting charters such as the Rocketship chain offer a narrow curriculum focused on little more than reading and math test prep, inexperienced teachers with high turnover, and “blended learning” products designed to enrich charter school board members’ investment portfolios. Lafer “questions why an educational model deemed substandard for more privileged suburban children is being so vigorously promoted—perhaps even forced—on poor children…” [Economic Policy Institute, 4-24-14] Others have pointed out significant problems with zero-tolerance, strict discipline charters made famous by the “no excuses” KIPP chain of schools. [EdWeek, 2-20-13]

3. Far too many are cash cows. When Pennsylvania is seen by hedge fund managers as prime ground for “investment opportunities” in charter schools, you know something is terribly wrong. And when four of the top political campaign donors in the entire state are connected to charter schools, you have to start asking why. [See “Charters are Cash Cows”] Publicly funded schools should not be serving to line the pockets of private companies and individuals.

4. The industry is rife with fraud and corruption. Who can forget the scheme by PA Cyber Charter founder Nicholas Trombetta, right here in Beaver County, to steal $1 million in public dollars? Federal investigators filed 11 fraud and tax conspiracy charges against him and indicted others in the case. [Post-Gazette, 8-24-13] And then there is the Urban Pathways Charter School in downtown Pittsburgh under FBI scrutiny for trying to spend Pennsylvania taxpayer money to build a school in Ohio. A related investigation by the state auditor general revealed a history of expensive restaurant meals, a posh staff retreat at Nemacolin Woodlands resort, and payments for mobile phones belonging to the spouses of board members. [Trib, 11-11-13] Not to be left out, Philadelphia just had its eighth charter school official plead guilty to federal fraud charges. [Philly.com, 2-10-14]

5. Lack of transparency and accountability. Charter schools are publicly funded, but often act like private entities. Here in Pennsylvania, the largest charter school operator has been fighting a right-to-know request for years in the courts so that he doesn’t have to reveal his publicly funded salary (data that is publicly available for traditional public schools). In 2012, Gov. Corbett and the Republican controlled legislature tried to introduce a bill that would have exempted all charters from the state’s sunshine laws. [See “Where are the Real Republicans?”] In California, charter school operators have even argued in court that they are a private entity and should not be treated as a public institution. [Ed Week, 10-7-13] We desperately need charter reform legislation that emphasizes accountability and transparency, just as we demand from traditional public schools. [See the top 5 reasons the current proposed legislation fails to do both.]

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It is immensely ironic that a private publishIng company is claiming the copyright of the collected works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the philosophers who wrote against the monopoly of capitalism and its origin, private property, all their lives.

Marxists Internet Archieve is an international, public archieve which gives free access to a wide range of academic and historical writings about Marxism in multiple langauges. Lawrence & Wishart is a private publishing house in Britain which claims to hold the copyright of Marx Engels Collected Works. During the last several years, the Marx Engels Collected Works have been read by the millions of people on the Marxists Internet Archeive (MIA). However, now the private publishing company, Lawrence & Wishart - which loves to position itself as a 'radical company', claiming historical links with the Britain's Communist Party - has directed MIA to delete all texts originating from Marx Engels Collected Works (MECW).

If this happens, MECW would not be accessible on the internet for free, from 30th April, 2014, and that would be a huge loss for the students and political activists who continue to utilize this free academic source.

You cannot privatize their writings -- they are the collective property of the people they wrote for. Privatization of Marx and Engels' writings is like getting a trademark for the words 'socialism' or 'communism'.

Say NO to the copyright law for the founders of scientific socialism. Let's protest against Lawrence & Wishart for this ironic monopoly.

The ultra-right Svoboda Party has scored six major cabinet ministries in the government of Arseniy Yatsenyuk approved by the Ukrainian parliament on Thursday. Svoboda is an ultra-right, anti-Semitic, Russophobic party with its base of support in the Western Ukraine.

The most important post was claimed by a co-founder of Svoboda, Andriy Parubiy. He was named Secretary of the Security and National Defense Committee, which supervises the defense ministry and the armed forces.


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The Right Sector is an openly fascist, anti-Semitic and anti-Russian organization. Most of the snipers and bomb throwers in the crowds were connected with this group.

Right Sector members have been participating in military training camps for the last two years or more in preparation for street activity of the kind witnessed in the Ukraine over the last few months.

The Right Sector, as can be seen by the appointment of Parubiy, is now in a position to control major appointments to the provisional government and has succeeded in achieving its long time goal of legalizing discrimination against Russians. The new parliament has passed legislation that declares Russian speakers no longer have equal rights with Ukrainians.

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SAN FRANCISCO - City College of San Francisco has regained accreditation, for now. With a Jan. 2 injunction Judge Curtis Karnow blocked last summer's action by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) stripping the college's accreditation. The disaccreditation would have gone into final effect July 2014 and would have effectively shuttered the school, which has served thousands of students for decades. Karnow's injunction delays the move pending a court decision on a lawsuit brought by San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera against the disaccreditation.

After hearing two days of arguments, on Dec.. 26 and 30, Judge Karnow noted in his ruling that the "consequences would be catastrophic" if the ACCJC were allowed to finish the disaccreditation process.

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