Re: [Marxism] Color Out of Space | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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Jesus Christ Lou

I got scared just reading your blog. Never ever going to see this movie.
Would not be able to sleep ever again.

Gary








On Sun, Jan 26, 2020 at 7:39 AM Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> Based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story, “Color Out of Space” opened
> yesterday at the IFC Center in Manhattan and the Alamo Drafthouse in
> Brooklyn. It was directed and co-written by Richard Stanley, a relative
> of the man who said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” The film stars
> Nicholas Cage as Nathan Gardner, the head of a household that goes off
> its rocker after a small meteorite lands near their rural home.
>
> Unlike the more typical space invasion movie that pits such a family
> against little green men with ray guns, the only threat to their
> well-being is the odd clouds of colored light that have begun appearing
> nearby. They have the effect of making food taste weird and inducing
> strange behavior in human beings, such as Mrs. Gardner slicing off her
> fingers while dicing carrots. It also makes their pet dog, plants, and
> mother nature in general go off-kilter as well.
>
> Cage, who is—as you must know by now—America’s greatest actor turns in a
> scenery-chewing performance as a husband who ignores his children’s
> warnings that things are getting weird. Even as the family starts
> behaving like the Texas chainsaw murderer’s worst nightmare and flowers
> start growing that look like they were painted by Salvador Dali on LSD,
> he soldiers on.
>
> full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/01/25/color-out-of-space/
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Re: [Marxism] Democrats wrap up their case in impeachment trial

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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If we had been building up to this point over recent years, there could be
mass independent mobilizations that could have thwarted some of the most
objectionable initiatives of the administration and could be pushing
towards removal.
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Re: [Marxism] Democrats wrap up their case in impeachment trial

[A.R. G via Marxism]

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In other words, it is important in a general, theoretical sense of being
politically aware. As an actual tool for social change it is basically
useless except that it gives unique insight.

On Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 5:04 PM John Reimann via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> A summary of the last two days of Democratic testimony on the Trump Senate
> trial... and why it matters.
>
> https://oaklandsocialist.com/2020/01/25/impeachment-matters-the-democrats-wrap-up-their-case/
>
> John Reimann
>
> --
> *“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
> Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
> Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] Democrats wrap up their case in impeachment trial

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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A summary of the last two days of Democratic testimony on the Trump Senate
trial... and why it matters.
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2020/01/25/impeachment-matters-the-democrats-wrap-up-their-case/

John Reimann

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] Color Out of Space | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story, “Color Out of Space” opened 
yesterday at the IFC Center in Manhattan and the Alamo Drafthouse in 
Brooklyn. It was directed and co-written by Richard Stanley, a relative 
of the man who said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” The film stars 
Nicholas Cage as Nathan Gardner, the head of a household that goes off 
its rocker after a small meteorite lands near their rural home.


Unlike the more typical space invasion movie that pits such a family 
against little green men with ray guns, the only threat to their 
well-being is the odd clouds of colored light that have begun appearing 
nearby. They have the effect of making food taste weird and inducing 
strange behavior in human beings, such as Mrs. Gardner slicing off her 
fingers while dicing carrots. It also makes their pet dog, plants, and 
mother nature in general go off-kilter as well.


Cage, who is—as you must know by now—America’s greatest actor turns in a 
scenery-chewing performance as a husband who ignores his children’s 
warnings that things are getting weird. Even as the family starts 
behaving like the Texas chainsaw murderer’s worst nightmare and flowers 
start growing that look like they were painted by Salvador Dali on LSD, 
he soldiers on.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/01/25/color-out-of-space/
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[Marxism] Mildred Solem obituary

[Alan Ginsberg via Marxism]

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Letter to the editor
The Militant
Feb. 3, 2020

Mildred Solem, a member of the Socialist Workers Party in the 1940s and
’50s, died this month in Minneapolis. She was 105 years old.

As a young woman Millie moved from Hallock, Minnesota, a small town near
Canada, to Flint, Michigan, where autoworkers were fighting for a union,
and then to Minneapolis where she got a job as an office worker downtown.
Her first contact with the communist movement came when a protest by
unemployed workers passed by her workplace and she came out to join them.

She soon met her husband, Chester Johnson, an electrician who was a
founding member of the SWP and had helped lead a sympathy strike in the
building trades for Teamsters during the historic 1934 strikes that made
Minneapolis a union town.

Millie maintained her membership in the SWP until a stroke incapacitated
Chester and left her to care for him and their three small children. Over
the years Millie contributed money to the SWP and opened her house to party
members who needed a place to stay.

In 2015 a plaque was placed in the old warehouse district of Minneapolis
commemorating the 1934 Teamster strikes. A photo captures Millie, then 100
years old, at the event with her fist raised in the air.

Bill Scheer
Minneapolis, Minnesota

https://themilitant.com/2020/01/25/letters-23/

[scroll down to Letter from lifelong partisan of the ‘Militant’ for her
recollections, published in 2003
https://www.themilitant.com/2003/6743/674346.html]
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Re: [Marxism] An Open Letter to the Green Party About 2020 Election Strategy

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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Just a couple points.

The assumption that inept, incompetent, dishonest, and pointless electoral
activism must necessarily be something other than working class is
mistaken.  Maybe we should even expect that working class electoral
politics has to be so if there's no mechanism for collectively evaluating
experience.  We have to work with what we've got.

More importantly, the discussion always seems to veer from the most
fundamental concern we have: to foster self-organized, independent
political action. Talk about parties, candidates, labels, and abstract
"positions matter only insofar as they advance (or retard) the development
of the only force that can address these issues.  That's keeping our eyes
on the prize not dogmatism, blueprints, etc.

That might mean something different for those who have a vehicle that can
seriously make a real bid for power and something else when we don't have a
vehicle in electoral politics to get anywhere near power.  But the idea
that we can address we address the weakness of that power by voting against
it doesn't make sense.

My objection isn't to voting for Sanders in a primary, though I wouldn't
put much time, energy or effort into what's surely a doomed attempt.  My
objection is that, in the end, most of the people making that argument
always wind up supporting Biden, Clinton, etc.

But here's an idea.  Everyone in any and all socialist groups agree to shut
down the treehouse in terms of electoral politics.  Get together and agree
on a few points as the basis of a class platform.  Pick candidates.
Doesn't matter what club they're in, so long as they agree to campaign on
those points.  Vote, pull the names out of a hat, do it in alphabetical
order, but put together a united labor ticket and stick to it until
November.

Cheers,
Mark L..
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Re: [Marxism] Day of action today

[A.R. G via Marxism]

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Code Pink is small and mostly about grabbing attention.

ANSWER has essentially no social base. It simply organizes the protests and
people with no affiliation to the organizers beyond abstract political
agreement show up without knowing who or what ANSWER is.

On Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 12:14 PM Tristan Sloughter via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> > From where I am, it appears that ANSWER
> > https://www.answercoalition.org/  and
> > CodePink https://www.codepink.org/  are two
> > of the organizations that have some authority in this movement.
>
> Exactly why it is hard for me to feel right engaging. While the DSA has a
> number of members with problematic and ANSWER-ish politics, overall we do
> not and with the size and reach of DSA today I hope it is not long before
> ANSWER is pushed out from the role of calling every protest and littering
> them with their signs.
>
> But it will take a decision on the DSA's part to make this happen. Which
> means getting people in the national anti-war committee who think this is a
> necessary task.
>
> Wish I could say that was going to be the case any time soon.
>
> Tristan
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Re: [Marxism] Day of action today

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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> From where I am, it appears that ANSWER 
> https://www.answercoalition.org/  and 
> CodePink https://www.codepink.org/  are two 
> of the organizations that have some authority in this movement.

Exactly why it is hard for me to feel right engaging. While the DSA has a 
number of members with problematic and ANSWER-ish politics, overall we do not 
and with the size and reach of DSA today I hope it is not long before ANSWER is 
pushed out from the role of calling every protest and littering them with their 
signs.

But it will take a decision on the DSA's part to make this happen. Which means 
getting people in the national anti-war committee who think this is a necessary 
task.

Wish I could say that was going to be the case any time soon.

Tristan
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[Marxism] (30) The Cave Trailer | National Geographic - YouTube

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(On National Geographic channel tonight at 9pm.)

From Oscar-nominated filmmaker Feras Fayyad, THE CAVE tells the story 
of a hidden underground hospital in Syria and the unprecedented 
female-led team who risk their lives to provide medical care to the 
besieged local population


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaZkwBWuN2A
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Re: [Marxism] An Open Letter to the Green Party About 2020 Election Strategy

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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Same arguments every four years. I wish either side could convince me their 
strategy was the best because then I'd at least feel like I knew there was a 
path forward.

I've voted Green every presidential election since I've been old enough to 
vote... though that is only 4. Each one I've lived in a different state (South 
Carolina, Illinois, California and now Colorado), and each time they don't 
matter.

Trump did not win California, so what is there to regret about my vote there?

I'll be voting for Sanders in the primary, (I'm now in Colorado), but I've been 
donating to Howie Hawkins and will vote for him in the general, whether Sanders 
gets the nomination or not.

If I ever live in a swing state I'd likely vote Democrat. The people hurt by 
Trump and the people emboldened by Trump is by far enough reason to do so. 

It was before my time (I mean, I was alive, just not voting) but the attempt in 
the 90's for a new party that fell apart partly because of the "don't run in 
swing states" issue makes me also realize building a new party that isn't 
trying to win will not work.

It has always felt there is way more to do outside of presidential election 
voting that is more important for building a working class movement, and that 
voting Green in a swing state does nothing to help with this goal (at this 
time, or any other time I've been voting).

Yet so much energy is spent on it.

Tristan
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[Marxism] Day of action today

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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I am impressed by the range of activities today and the range of organizations 
involved.  From where I am, it appears that ANSWER 
https://www.answercoalition.org/  and 
CodePink https://www.codepink.org/  are two of the 
organizations that have some authority in this movement.
ken h

Jan. 25 Global Day of Protest: No War on Iran! List of Actions and Endorsers
http://nepajac.org/jan25actions.htm 
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Re: [Marxism] An Open Letter to the Green Party About 2020 Election Strategy

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 1/25/20 11:04 AM, David McDonald via Marxism wrote:

So far none of this makes any difference. The people currently committed to
voting independent in 2020 are betting that Sanders can't win the
nomination, or they think it wouldn't matter if he did. I think he can and
I think it does. I like Louis' straightforward trashing of calling for a
labor party (the one political constant of every Trotskyist organization)
but the Green Party is just a slightly less stinking corpse in the middle
of the road. To think otherwise is nostalgia.


In the interest of transparency, David should have mentioned that he is 
a Sandernista.

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Re: [Marxism] An Open Letter to the Green Party About 2020 Election Strategy

[David McDonald via Marxism]

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Mark Lause, who has supported the Green Party earlier and longer than
anyone I know, admits that his local operation is a piece of shit and hopes
it's different somewhere else. John Reimann points out that the Green Party
2016 ticket was a nest of Assadists and that he should have paid more
attention. Someone pointed out that the Occupy forces are occupying Bernie
for Prez, not Howie. Michael M points to the already catastrophic Trump
impact on climate and the wholesale unleashing of the extractive sector.
Louis offers 150-year-old tactical advice from guys who went on to destroy
the International they said everyone should support, and they destroyed it
for tactical reasons. At least Mark finishes with "Get the Democratic
nomination for a socialist and then we'll talk." But he leaves himself the
out that Sanders may not be a socialist in his definition, otherwise why
not say "get the democratic nomination for Sanders" and then we'll talk.

So far none of this makes any difference. The people currently committed to
voting independent in 2020 are betting that Sanders can't win the
nomination, or they think it wouldn't matter if he did. I think he can and
I think it does. I like Louis' straightforward trashing of calling for a
labor party (the one political constant of every Trotskyist organization)
but the Green Party is just a slightly less stinking corpse in the middle
of the road. To think otherwise is nostalgia.
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[Marxism] How ‘Big Law’ Makes Big Money

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Reviw of Books, FEBRUARY 13, 2020 ISSUE
How ‘Big Law’ Makes Big Money
by Adam Tooze

The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
by Katharina Pistor
Princeton University Press, 297 pp., $29.95

“There is an estate in the realm more powerful than either your Lordship 
or the other House of Parliament,” one Lord Campbell proclaimed to the 
peers in the House of Lords, in 1851, “and that [is] the country 
solicitors.” It was the lawyers, in other words, who kept England’s 
landed elite so very, well, elite: who shielded and extended the wealth 
of the landowners, even granting them legal protection against their own 
creditors. How did they pull off this trick? Through a nimble tangle of 
contracts, carefully and complicatedly applied, as Katharina Pistor 
explains in her lucid new book, The Code of Capital: by mixing “modern 
notions of individual property rights with feudalist restrictions on 
alienability”; by employing trusts “to protect family estates, but then 
[turning] around and [using] the trust again to set aside assets for 
creditors so that they would roll over the debt of the life tenant one 
more time”; and by settling the rights to the estate among family 
members in line for inheritance. Solicitors maximized their clients’ 
profits and worth through strategic applications of the central 
institutions at their disposal: “contract, property, collateral, trust, 
corporate, and bankruptcy law,” what Pistor calls an “empire of law.”


The landowners themselves may not have understood this morass of legal 
relationships, this web, in Pistor’s words, of “claims and 
counterclaims, rights and restrictions on these rights.” No matter: by 
lawyers’ legal codifications, their wealth was increasing. The sort of 
legal logic applied in nineteenth-century England grows only more 
complicated, and more profit-generating, when the asset in question is 
not a hectare of country land but stocks and bonds and shares—when an 
entire organization is coded as a legal person (who can own assets and 
who can sue) through incorporation. The very form of a corporation, “by 
encouraging risk taking, by broadening the investor base and thereby 
mobilizing funding for investments, and by creating the conditions for 
deep and liquid markets for the shares and bonds that the corporation 
issues,” maximizes profit. And though today we live in a nominally 
democratic society, Pistor argues that a “feudal calculus” extends to 
our age: superior legal coding—that is, fancy private lawyers. Using the 
central institutions of private law, they make certain assets more 
valuable, and more likely to create value. “For centuries,” she writes,


	private attorneys have molded and adapted these legal modules to a 
changing roster of assets and have thereby enhanced their clients’ 
wealth. And states have supported the coding of capital by offering 
their coercive law powers to enforce the legal rights that have been 
bestowed on capital.


Corporate law is “no longer primarily a legal vehicle for producing 
goods or offering services but has been transformed into a virtual 
capital mint.” Nowhere is this more true than in financial services 
corporations.


In 2008, for example, when Lehman Brothers investment bank failed, its 
legal structure was byzantine. It consisted of a parent holding company 
with 209 registered subsidiaries spread over twenty-six jurisdictions. 
This structure, constructed by some of the sharpest legal minds on Wall 
Street, was a machine designed to minimize Lehman’s regulatory burden by 
placing assets in locations with lax oversight, while still maintaining 
control over those assets from its managerial base in Manhattan. Lehman 
took huge but carefully hidden risks and stretched its collateral 
wafer-thin. When the going was good, it was immensely profitable. It 
also turned out to be dangerous—allowing Lehman to take on giant levels 
of leverage that, when the subprime mortgage market collapsed and 
liquidity dried up in money markets, threatened not just the firm and 
its shareholders, but the entire financial system.


Since the 1960s lawyers associated with the school of “law and 
economics,” developed at the University of Chicago by Aaron Director and 
Ronald Coase, among others, have been explaining how legal devices are 
invented to enable transactions to be conducted more efficiently. The 
basic line of argument is clever but monotonous. In case after case, the 
true function of a legal construction is shown to be that it aligns 
incentives of various economic actors—businesses, consumers, workers, 
and governments—in efficient and productive ways. For