[Marxism] Colombia: Coca, Cocaine and Negotiating with the State
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 coca issue has gained a new lease of life in Duque’s Colombia, although to be truthful it never really lost its importance to the state. Trump’s scolding of Duque for not doing enough to halt the flow of cocaine to the USA and both his own vision and that of his master, Uribe, once again have placed centre stage the use of glyphosate to eradicate the crop. It is something which many thought was in the past, but is now part of our present, regardless of . . ." full at: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2019/06/14/colombia-coca-cocaine-and-negotiating-with-the-state/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Michael Heinrich Marx bio, volume 1
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. * I think that this will be the definitive Marx bio. It is a remarkable work of intensive and comprehensive scholarship. https://mailchi.mp/monthlyreview/new-karl-marx-and-the-birth-of-modern-societythe-life-of-marx-and-the-development-of-his-work?e=7c9269ff30 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Australia has been seduced by creeping authoritarianism – and its citizens need to wake up | Jeff Sparrow | Opinion | The Guardian
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.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/14/australia-has-been-seduced-by-creeping-authoritarianism-and-its-citizens-need-to-wake-up _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
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. * “Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes”, a documentary directed by Sophie Huber, opens tomorrow at the Metrograph in New York. If you are not a jazz fan, the name Blue Note might not mean very much to you but as analogy, it is to jazz as Sun Records is to early rock and roll or Chess Records was to the blues. Founded in 1939 by Alfred Lion, a Jew who had fled Nazi Germany and Max Margulis, another Jew who put up much of the seed money for the label, it was unlike the commercial labels like Columbia that were always looking for a way to get over on Black musicians. While it will be obvious that I found the film to be an essential contribution to the jazz documentary genre, it is unfortunate that it did not even mention Max Margulis, who reviewed music and wrote for left-wing periodicals, including the Daily Worker in the 1930s and 1940s, under the pen name Martin McCall. full: https://louisproyect.org/2019/06/13/blue-note-records-beyond-the-notes/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Sanders’ Speech Explains His Vision of Socialism—It Sounds a Lot like New Deal Liberalism | Left 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. * https://www.leftvoice.org/sanders-speech-explains-his-vision-of-socialism-it-sounds-a-lot-like-new-deal-liberalism _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] What Is Democratic Socialism? Whose Version Are We Talking About?
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, June 13, 2019 What Is Democratic Socialism? Whose Version Are We Talking About? By Maggie Astor Democratic socialism has become a major force in American political life. Just look at Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is planning a national address on Wednesday on what it is and why he believes it’s needed. Yet if you ask five self-described democratic socialists what the term means, you’re likely to get five different answers. Here’s why. Democratic socialism has a definition … Political theory isn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser on the campaign trail, but you need some of it to understand why “democratic socialism” means so many things to so many people. Leftist political theory encompasses a wide range of ideologies, which can be divided roughly into three categories. Communism is what existed in the Soviet Union and still exists in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam. It isn’t monolithic, but the common thread is a fully centralized economy achieved through revolution. This is the image some critics evoke against less radical ideologies, as the “Fox & Friends” co-host Pete Hegseth did when he called Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s $15 minimum wage for her staff “socialism and communism on display.” In reality, no federal official or Democratic candidate advocates communism. At the other end is social democracy, which is common in Europe. It preserves capitalism, but with stricter regulations and government programs to distribute resources more evenly. Consider Elizabeth Warren: She supports capitalism, but her proposals would remake the American economy in an effort to reduce inequality and guarantee basic needs. Democratic socialism falls in between. If we use the standard definition, democratic socialists don’t support capitalism: They want workers to control the means of production. In social democracies, by contrast, the economy continues to operate “on terms that are set by the capitalist class,” Maria Svart, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, told The Times last year. “Our ultimate goal really is for working people to run our society and run our workplaces and our economies.” Unlike communists, however, democratic socialists believe socialism should be achieved, well, democratically. This requires a long-term outlook, because they know theirs is a minority position. Their goal is to convince a majority, but in the meantime, they support many social-democratic policies. Ultimately, though, Sweden isn’t what democratic socialists like Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin magazine, a quarterly socialist journal, are looking for. “We come from the same tradition,” he said of democratic socialists and social democrats. But generally, he added, social democrats see a role for private capital in their ideal system, and democratic socialists do not. … but Americans use it to mean a lot of things In countries that have multiple leftist parties, these distinctions are commonly understood. In the United States, they aren’t. Because a binary view of “liberals” and “conservatives” dominates American politics, ideologies to the left of mainstream Democrats tend to get lumped together — which often means the left conflates democratic socialism and social democracy, and the right casts all of it as socialism or communism. “Here in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” President Trump said in his State of the Union address this year. “Tonight, we resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” Mr. Sanders identifies as a democratic socialist, but when asked on Tuesday how he defined that, he described something closer to social democracy. “What democratic socialism essentially means to me is completing the vision that Franklin Delano Roosevelt started some 85 years ago, and that is to go forward in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and guarantee a decent economic standard of living in life for all of our people,” he said. “And to do that, obviously we have to combat oligarchy and the incredibly unfair and unequal distribution of wealth and income, and to take on the incredible political power that the 1 percent have.” The policies Mr. Sanders supports — like single-payer health care, free public college, and higher taxes on the wealthy to fund safety-net programs — are also standard in social democracies. “His practical program is a program that would be pretty comfortable within the confines of any European country,” said Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College. “As
[Marxism] Sidney Rittenberg
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 was a segment about him this morning on NPR. Now 98, he was an American GI and American CP member who was in China in 1945 who joined the Chinese CP. Not long afterward, he was imprisoned for six years because Stalin falsely accused him of being a spy. When released, he continued to support the Chinese CP. In 2013, I reviewed a film titled "The Revolutionary" about Rittenberg. I wrote: Sidney Rittenberg is the quintessential anti-Zelig. Like Woody Allen’s character, he shows up in key moments of Chinese history next to all the big-time players but unlike Zelig is in a commanding position, most of all in the Cultural Revolution. He was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Charleston, South Carolina in 1921 and became involved with the labor movement while at the University of North Carolina, a long-time hotbed of the radical movement not unlike CCNY. Another famous red alumnus was the late Junius Scales, another scion of an upper-class family. When he was in the army, he got sent to language school to learn Chinese. Afterwards he was sent to China just as the war was ending. With his radical sympathies, he was inspired to seek out Mao Zedong who was organizing his Red Army in Yan’an province for an all-out assault on the KMT army. Upon meeting the 24-year-old Rittenberg, Mao invited him to take a senior position at Radio Peking, making sure that the CP’s communications with the West were conveyed properly in English. Rittenberg agreed to stay on but only on one condition—that he be accepted as a member of the Communist Party. That turned out to be a double-edged sword since this experience brought him terrible misery even as it offered him the most fulfilling moments of his life. Even though I and most of my veteran radical readers never reached such a lofty status, we surely can identify with him as he relates his being ground down as a member of what amounted to the largest socialist cult in history—Mao’s Communist Party. full: https://louisproyect.org/2013/04/12/american-meat-the-revolutionary/ As it happens, "The Revolutionary" can be seen on YouTube for $2.99. Highly recommended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMA6kCI8yRg _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] ZCommunications » Explanations for the Current Crisis in Venezuela
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. * By Steve Ellner https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/explanations-for-the-current-crisis-in-venezuela/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The seasons after the Arab Spring, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June 2019)
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://mondediplo.com/2019/06/05sudan _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] George Conway and Neal Katyal: Trump just invited Congress to begin impeachment proceedings - The Washington Post
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. * George Conway is the husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-latest-court-filing-is-an-invitation-to-begin-impeachment-proceedings/2019/06/12/339b08c8-8d29-11e9-8f69-a2795fca3343_story.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Vasily Grossman in War and Peace | The Nation
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. * Vasily Grossman is hard to pigeonhole. A Jewish novelist and journalist and not a party member, he was one of the Soviet Union’s leading war correspondents during World War II, first at Stalingrad, then with the Soviet Army moving westward. He wrote powerfully about the destruction of the Jews of the Ukraine and Poland. His big postwar novels, For the Right Cause and Life and Fate, drew on his wartime experiences, and at one point it seemed he might be a plausible contender for the role of the Soviet Tolstoy. But the novels, especially Life and Fate, had too strong a Jewish theme for the Soviet authorities. They also suggested a basic similarity between the Soviet and Nazi political systems, so he often had trouble with the censors, though his work was never under a total ban. Life and Fate was confiscated by the KGB in 1961 before publication, but his other writings stayed in print, and he remained at liberty and died of cancer a few years later. https://www.thenation.com/article/vasily-grossman-and-the-soviet-century-alexandra-popoff-book-review/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Left’s Failure to Envision a World Without Capitalism | The New Republic
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. * Bernie Sanders' speech on democratic socialism underscored the limits of a growing movement's imagination. https://newrepublic.com/article/154186/bernie-sanders-democratic-socialist-failure-envision-world-without-capitalism _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] “Hairpin drop heard around the world”: Fifty Years Since Stonewall and the Birth of Gay Liberation
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://regenerationmag.org/hairpin-drop-heard-around-the-world-fifty-years-since-stonewall-and-the-birth-of-gay-liberation/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Latino Radicals and the Communist Party in the New Communist Movement: A Case Study of Two Oral Histories - COSMONAUT
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://cosmonaut.blog/2019/06/11/latino-radicals-and-the-communist-party-in-the-new-communist-movement-a-case-study-of-two-oral-histories/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
