[Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Marx was not a Greeny The attempt by John Bellamy Foster of Monthly Review to show that Marx was a greeny requires some rather weird interpretations of Marx's writings. https://youtu.be/12zU8z8e6x0 Duration 5:27 All videos, audios and transcripts https://sites.google.com/site/communistmanifestoproject/home/audio-1/audio-page The Communist Manifesto Project Website http://tinyurl.com/tcm21c-project Transcript Marx was not a Greeny There is a prevailing view that being left-wing means being green. We are all meant to be watermelons - green on the outside and red on the inside. This is a view that I totally reject and I have covered the issue to some extent in the recent video on economic growth. Staking a claim to be the biggest watermelons are people who call themselves "ecological Marxists". They claim that if Marx were around today he too would be a greeny. In their view he would be like them and support organic agriculture and a steady state economy based on renewable resources that would provide everyone with so-called "sufficiency". In such a world, the economies of the poor countries would increase a bit while those of the rich countries would shrink a lot. The most notable exponent of this view is John Bellamy Foster, the editor of The Monthly Review. He goes through the writings of Marx and tortures them until they deliver what he wants. Foster draws our attention to a number of Marx's views that you could use to start building a case that he was a Greeny. Marx was concerned about the destruction of natural stocks of fertile soil, forests and fish that were needed by future generations. He also commented on how consumption often included frivolities that reflected people's alienation rather than real needs and that human thriving requires more than increased consumption. Foster also correctly points out that when Marx talked about mastering nature he did not mean destroying it but mastering its laws and harnessing it accordingly. However, from here on the argument begins to get really weird. Foster tries to extract greenness from the fact that Marx was a materialist who believed we lived in a material world where we depended on plants and animals for food, water to drink and air to breath. This is a rather silly argument given that you would be hard to find someone who disagrees with this view. Foster also misconstrues Marx's constant reference to the fact that capitalists are compelled by the forces of competition to accumulate capital in order to survive. He tries to make out that Marx actually disapproved of this phenomenon. In fact, Marx’s view was that this is what made capitalism superior to previous class societies where the ruling class wasted all the surplus value on conspicuous consumption. Instead of being compelled to accumulate these societies were compelled to stagnate. By reinvesting most of the surplus value, capitalism delivers economic and social progress. Foster also picks up on Marx's analysis of the contradiction between town and country. In the separation of town and country, Marx was concerned about two things. Firstly it stunted the brains of those in the country and ruined the physical health of those in the city. Secondly it meant a break in the nutrient cycle as human waste and food scraps were not returned to the farm but instead dumped in rivers and oceans. This transfer of people from the land to cities was an inevitable part of capitalist development. Capitalist farming needed less workers and the cost to the soil and to workers of concentrating the latter in the cities was of no concern to industrial capitalists. However, these contradictions are being resolved without having to spread the population evenly over the landscape. High density living in large cities can now be quite healthy and comfortable. Living in the countryside no longer means being cut off from the world, given modern modes of transport and communications. This modern transport can also truck in fertilizer, be it human waste, animal manure or the synthetic kind that is now produced in abundance. Indeed, the present concern is excessive nutrients and resulting emissions into ground water or the atmosphere. The best hope for dealing with this under present capitalist conditions is through increased regulation and better management including greater adoption of precision farming. The greening of Marx of course requires Foster to explain away how Marx and Engels talked about communism unleashing the productive forces. He claims this thoroughly un-green viewpoint was confined to their youthful less mature
[Marxism] NZ imperialism, ANZAC Day and Gallipoli
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Next Tuesday (April 25) is ANZAC Day in New Zealand, the main 'patriotic' day. It commemorates the attempt of New Zealand, Britain, Australia, Canada etc to invade Turkey in 1915 - an invasion that turned into a bloody defeat, as it happens. Folks might be interested in these articles about Gallipoli, NZ imperialism. . . https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/gallipoli-and-new-zealand-imperialism/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] on plant closures and other disasters for the working class
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Walter Benjamin Thesis IX My wing is ready to fly *I would rather turn back* For had I stayed mortal time I would have had little luck. *– Gerhard Scholem, “Angelic Greetings”* There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Jared Kushner: Top White House Adviser and NYC Rat Lord | Village Voice
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.villagevoice.com/news/jared-kushner-top-white-house-advisor-and-nyc-rat-lord-9875824 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] In ‘Janesville,’ When the G.M. Plant Closed, Havoc Followed,
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * All too close, both in geography and tragic outcomes, is this story also from today's Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/business/economy/united-mine-workers-retiree-health-plan.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] In ‘Janesville,’ When the G.M. Plant Closed, Havoc Followed,
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The review of the book about what happened in Janesville, Wisconsin after the GM plant closed is interesting. When I quit teaching and took to the road, Janesville was where we spent our first night, on the way to work at Yellowstone National Park. We knew about what the author of the book describes a long time ago, during the 1980s in Johnstown, PA and other factory towns in the Rust Belt. Studies then, one of which I helped with, showed that retraining of laid off workers was a dead end. I used to teach a good many of them. And the social consequences of plant closings were readily apparent. During the 1990s I taught auto workers at a GM plant near Pittsburgh. Some were far from home, like some men in Janesville, working at other GM plants, as their contract gave them the right to do. I heard some awful stories. Suicides, illness, family troubles, not to mention that some were working 7-day weeks and 12 hour days, to earn enough money to get through the next disaster. Some had suffered multiple plant closings. When economic catastrophes occur, lives and communities are shattered. Bad things happen, and they get worse for the next generation. Drugs, crime, you name it. Then the economy improves and the media, capitalists, and public officials sing the praises of the resilience of the free market economy. But underneath the surface, hidden from most of us, is extreme human misery. We act as if what happened didn't happen. Oh well, we say, life goes on. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: bellingcat - Anatomy of a Sarin Bomb Explosion (Part II) - bellingcat
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * There are firm reports of responders going to rescue people becoming victims. However there are videos taken in locations some distance away from the impact site. People wearing little or no protective gear are seen handling the victims. Why are they not being seriously affected by Sarin? The simple answer is that these victims were affected by aerosol and/or vapour. Very little material actually got deposited on them. Even if it did, it would have been in the order of a few milligrams. And it takes 1700 milligrams over a period of time to kill someone by simple absorption. Responders aren’t falling over because, simply, the math doesn’t work and Sarin isn’t a magical substance. full: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/04/20/anatomy-sarin-bomb-explosion-part-ii/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] In ‘Janesville,’ When the G.M. Plant Closed, Havoc Followed
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, April 20 2017 In ‘Janesville,’ When the G.M. Plant Closed, Havoc Followed By JENNIFER SENIOR JANESVILLE An American Story By Amy Goldstein 351 pages. Simon & Schuster. $27. Over the course of his career, Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker, has been described as a policy nerd, a lightweight, a canny tactician, a dreadful tactician, a man of principle and a man whose vertebrae have mysteriously gone missing. But in the opening pages of “Janesville: An American Story,” Amy Goldstein’s moving and magnificently well-researched ethnography of a small Wisconsin factory city on economic life support, Ryan is just another congressman, pleading on behalf of his hometown, population 63,000. It’s 2008, and Ryan has just received a phone call from Rick Wagoner, then the chairman and chief executive of General Motors, to alert him that the company will shortly be stopping all production in Janesville. The news is too improbable to register. Janesville has a storied place in labor history, changing and repurposing itself as the times required. Barack Obama used its plant as a backdrop for a speech about the economy early on in his 2008 campaign. Most presidential candidates eventually buzz through. The place has been manufacturing Chevrolets for 85 years. The congressman is stunned. “Give us Cavaliers,” he begs. “Give us pickups.” Any model other than the unpopular SUVs the plant is currently churning out, he means. “You know you’ll destroy this town if you do this!” he yells into the phone. Whether the closure of this fabled 4.8-million-square-foot facility does or does not destroy Janesville is for the reader to decide. Goldstein, a longtime staff writer for The Washington Post who was part of a reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002, opts for complexity over facile explanations and easy polemics. (Neither Obama nor Ryan comes off looking particularly good; and no, she does not conclude that these layoffs put Donald J. Trump in the White House.) Her book follows a clutch of characters over the course of five years, from 2008 to 2013, and concludes with an epilogue in the present, when unemployment in Janesville is less than 4 percent. Terrific news, you might say. But that number belies some harsh realities on the ground, as we learn throughout the book. Real wages in the town have fallen. Marriages have collapsed. And Janesville, a town with an unusual level of civic commitment, unity and native spirit — the Ryan family has been there for five generations — has capitulated to the same partisan rancor that afflicts the rest of the nation. It was not the sort of place, for instance, where a beloved local politician might find someone unfurling his middle finger at him during Labor Fest — until 2011, which happened to be the year that Scott Walker, a flamboyantly anti-union and polarizing figure, took up residence in the governor’s mansion. The town is now riven by “an optimism gap,” as Goldstein calls it, with dispossessed workers on one side and bullish businesspeople on the other. “Janesville” joins a growing family of books about the evisceration of the working class in the United States. What sets it apart is the sophistication of its storytelling and analysis. The characters are especially memorable. This may be the first time since I began this job that I’ve wanted to send notes of admiration to three people in a work of nonfiction. Readers will also finish “Janesville” with an extremely sobering takeaway: There’s scant evidence that job retraining, possibly the sole item on the menu of policy options upon which Democrats and Republicans can agree, is at all effective. In the case of the many laid-off workers in the Janesville area, the outcomes are decidedly worse for those who have attended the local technical college to learn a new trade. (Goldstein arrives at this conclusion, outlined in detail, by enlisting the help of local labor economists and poring over multiple data sets.) A striking number of dislocated G.M. employees don’t even know how to use a computer when they first show up for classes at Blackhawk Technical College. “Some students dropped out as soon as they found out that their instructors would not accept course papers written out longhand,” Goldstein writes. It makes you realize how challenging — and humiliating — it can be to reinvent oneself in midlife. To do so requires a kind of bravery for which no one gets a medal. But perhaps the most powerful aspect of “Janesville” is its simple chronological structure, which allows Goldstein to show the chain reaction that something so
[Marxism] Fwd: Statement On the Khan Sheikhoun Massacre and the US Strike Against the Assad Regime | Socialist Party USA
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://www.socialistpartyusa.net/single-post/2017/04/19/Statement-On-the-Khan-Sheikhoun-Massacre-and-the-US-Strike-Against-the-Assad-Regime _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Should Democratic Socialists Be Democrats? - In These Times
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * A debate--sort of--between two DSA'ers. Chris Maisano refers to the DP as a dung heap but adds "We should not reject electoral politics entirely." When he refers to "electoral politics", he means voting for liberal Democrats. The other DSA'er has a much more traditional "inside" perspective. http://inthesetimes.com/article/20034/should-democratic-socialists-be-democrats-sanders-perez-ellison-pelosi _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
