Last week’s Marxist IQ was not posted because of the Hurricane.  Although I am still without electricity and heat and hot water  and with sporadic cell phone coverage, FEMA has been good so far in providing ice and clean water (and got that at the beginning when I needed it) and also shelter to the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands in far worse shape than I and my family are as we struggle to recover.  So here we go.

1.        Observing capitalist media’s response to this disaster Marx and Engels would  probably consider the following to be the most egregious class based omission

       a. the inefficiency of government in dealing with the crisis

       b. the great achievements of private industry in coping with the crisis

    c. the clear role of global warming/climate change in both bringing about the disasters and setting the stage for future disasters in the U.S. and abroad

      d. the need to establish a House Un-American Nature Activities Committee(HUNAC)

2. The deregulation of energy compan of the Reagan administration and beyond,

      a. enabled these companies to act swiftly to restore power

      b. enabled these companies to work together cooperatively to meet the crisis

      c. enabled these companies to work effectively with local, state, and the federal government to meet the crisis

     d. has hindered the restoration of power through rival and competitive plans, attempts to repair first what is most profitable, and overall lack of coordination with all public authorities.

3. The crisis could have been handled  much more effectively if the following New Deal era programs had either been in place or had been developed

a. Works Progress Administration (WPA) public works agency for the unemployed which could have dispatched tens of thousands of reconstruction workers to New Jersey immediately

b. Coordinated regional public energy systems on the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) model, which could have been able to rapidly develop and implement a repair and reconstruction program

c. Maintenance of the powers of the Federal Power Commission and its successors to regulate power companies

d. all of the above

4. In the aftermath of President Obama’s re-election, Marxists, Communists, Socialists and all progressives  must actively fight against

a.  a likely fascist coup

b.  “bipartisan” legislation to trade off tax increases with social spending cuts.

c. national legislation to legalize marijuana

d. attempts to abolish the electoral college

5 For Marxists  Communists , Socialists, and all progressives  the main line of class  and social struggle in a second Obama administration should in all likelihood be

a.       Preparation of the working class to establish a mass party of socialism and labor

b.      Opposition to the Obama administration’s initiatives in the Middle East

c.       Organization of the working class to struggle to retax capital and the wealthy, reregulate capital and restore through public sector and social spending restoration the trillions stolen from the people  from the Reagan presidency on

d.      Repeal of NAFTA and all free trade agreements

Since I have limited internet access, I will give the right answers to both the last Marxist IQ and this one next week, assuming that the reconstruction continues