[Marxism] Fwd: The Trump-Putin Fallacy by Masha Gessen | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

2016-07-28 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/07/26/trump-putin-fallacy-failure-of-imagination/
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[Marxism] Protesters Fume as Zimbabwe Vice President Runs Up a Hotel Bill

2016-07-28 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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Looking at Zimbabwe, we see a true model for Africa: an independent path 
to progress and equitable development. It is for this reason that the 
imperial powers look to destroy all that has been built in Zimbabwe…and 
for this same reason, we must stand to defend her.


Eric Draitser, 
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/05/zimbabwe-the-revolution-continues/


---

NY Times, July 28 2016
Protesters Fume as Zimbabwe Vice President Runs Up a Hotel Bill
By JEFFREY MOYO and NORIMITSU ONISHI

HARARE, Zimbabwe — The country’s A.T.M.s have run out of cash. Even the 
police and the army — linchpins of the government’s control — are not 
getting paid on time.


But as economic protests have multiplied and shut down the capital 
recently, Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko has enjoyed a special 
privilege, courtesy of the state: nearly 600 nights in the presidential 
suite of Zimbabwe’s most luxurious hotel while his official mansion is 
being prepared.


The vice president’s extended stay in the Rainbow Towers presidential 
suite — he checked into the hotel in December 2014, at a taxpayer cost 
of $1,000 a night, including meals — has drawn regular demonstrations 
outside the five-star landmark, where visiting dignitaries stay.


But Mr. Mphoko and his wife, Laurinda, would not move out, local news 
reports said, because they kept rejecting official residences as 
inadequate, too small or too close to the homes of other government 
ministers.


“This hotel is going to break,” Sten Zvorwadza warned last month as he 
and other demonstrators took over the lobby, threatening to shut down 
the hotel unless Mr. Mphoko checked out.


“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Mr. Zvorwadza continued as the police surrounded 
him, lifting him in the air and then dragging him across the marble floor.


Now, after hundreds of thousands of dollars in hotel bills, Mr. Mphoko’s 
stay could finally be coming to an end. A local newspaper has reported 
that Mr. Mphoko is moving to a $2 million mansion in a neighborhood 
called Highlands. Residents there said that they, too, had heard of the 
vice president’s impending arrival and pointed to the recent, unexpected 
filling of potholes on their street as credible evidence.


Mr. Mphoko has not commented on his plans. The minister of state in the 
vice president’s office, reached on her cellphone, hung up.


“If he’s leaving the hotel, the country needs to know,” said Mr. 
Zvorwadza, the leader of the protesters who have held demonstrations 
outside the hotel since last December. “This is the syndrome we are 
fighting. A public figure must be accountable to his citizens.”


The unconfirmed move — a similar report said that the vice president was 
bound for a $4 million mansion late last year — could bring some relief 
to the government of President Robert Mugabe, who is facing an unusually 
broad challenge to the nation’s crumbling economy.


The government is struggling to pay its workers, and for the past two 
months it has fallen behind on salaries for the army and the police, Mr. 
Mugabe’s core supporters. Much of the capital, Harare, and other cities 
ground to a halt this month as Zimbabweans stayed home to protest the 
deteriorating economy. It was one of the biggest popular protests in 
years against the 92-year-old Mr. Mugabe, whose increasing frailty has 
fueled political infighting and instability in this Southern African nation.


Given the dire conditions, the vice president’s stay in the presidential 
suite has even raised eyebrows among the president’s traditional allies.


“It’s something unheard-of where a vice president can remain in a hotel 
for so long,” said Cephas Msipa, a retired politician who was a senior 
member of Mr. Mugabe’s party, known as ZANU-PF. “His behavior is quite 
strange.”


Responding to local reports that the couple had turned down a $3 million 
mansion, the vice president sounded annoyed last month.


“People don’t know what they are talking about,” he told the state 
newspaper, The Herald. “The house that the government has bought me is 
not even worth $3 million. It’s $1 million and something.”


The hotel, which used to be part of the Sheraton chain, is owned by the 
Rainbow Tourism Group, a private company. The government owns the 
building, which was constructed by a company from the former Yugoslavia 
in the early 1980s.


“Yugoslavia was our fair-weather friend from the war, so they got the 
contract,” said Ibbo Mandaza, a former chairman of the Rainbow Tourism 
Group and a political scientist. “That’s before the demise of Yugoslavia 
as an entity.”


Every visiting head of state stayed in the 17th-floor presidential 
suite, Mr. Mandaza 

[Marxism] Hundreds of Sanders delegates walk off Democrat Convention floor to protest 'rigged' election

2016-07-28 Thread Stuart Munckton via Marxism
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https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/62263
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[Marxism] After Lying Low, Deep-Pocketed Clinton Donors Return to the Fore

2016-07-28 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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NY Times, July 28 2016
After Lying Low, Deep-Pocketed Clinton Donors Return to the Fore
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and AMY CHOZICK

PHILADELPHIA — In a luxury suite high above the convention floor, some 
of the Democratic Party’s most generous patrons sipped cocktails and 
caught up with old friends, tuning out Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont 
on Monday as he bashed Wall Street in an arena named after one of the 
country’s largest banks.


On Tuesday, when Hillary Clinton became the first female nominee of a 
major party, a handful of drug companies and health insurers made sure 
to echo the theme, paying to sponsor an “Inspiring Women” panel 
featuring Democratic congresswomen.


And in the vaulted marble bar of the Ritz-Carlton downtown, wealthy 
givers congregated in force for cocktails and glad-handing, as 
protesters thronged just outside to voice their unhappiness with Wall 
Street, big money in politics and Mrs. Clinton herself.


“This is a good place to be — for a lot of reasons,” said former Gov. 
Charlie Crist of Florida, a Democrat now running for Congress, as he 
glided through the room on Tuesday. “We must have set up five 
fund-raisers today. This is the bank.”


After a wrenching yearlong nominating battle with searing debates over 
the influence of Wall Street and the ability of ordinary citizens to be 
heard over the din of dollars changing hands, the party’s moneyed elite 
returned to the fore this week, undeterred and mostly unabashed.


While protesters marched in the streets and blocked traffic, Democratic 
donors congregated in a few reserved hotels and shuttled between private 
receptions with A-list elected officials. If the talk onstage at the 
Wells Fargo Center was about reducing inequality and breaking down 
barriers, downtown Philadelphia evoked the world as it still often is: a 
stratified society with privilege and access determined by wealth.


“The Clinton people would always argue, ‘Well, there’s no connection 
between the money and the actions that we take,’ ” said Jonathan Tasini, 
a liberal organizer and Sanders delegate from New York. “That’s what 
these cocktail parties and receptions are all about. It’s about access 
and whose phone calls get answered.”


For many Clinton donors, particularly those from the financial sector, 
the convention is a time to shed what one called the “hypersensitivity” 
that had previously surrounded their appearance at Mrs. Clinton’s 
fund-raisers or at her political events, during a period when Mr. 
Sanders repeatedly attacked Mrs. Clinton’s connections to Wall Street 
and her six-figure speaking fees from financial institutions.


“I think we’re past that,” said Alan Patricof, a longtime donor to Mrs. 
Clinton, when asked about the need to lie low during the primaries.


In Philadelphia, donors were handed preferred suites at the Ritz-Carlton 
and “Friends and Family” packages created for longtime Clinton hands — 
some of them also longtime benefactors. Some were granted time backstage 
or in the Clinton family box with former President Bill Clinton and 
Chelsea Clinton. Blackstone, the private equity giant, scheduled a 
reception at the Barnes Foundation on Thursday with its president, 
Hamilton E. James, one of the leading Wall Street contenders for an 
economic policy post in a future Clinton administration.


The Philadelphia convention offered other symbolic contrasts to the 
party’s last two gatherings, when President Obama sought, with mixed 
success, to restrict his party from raising money to pay for the 
conventions from lobbyists or political action funds. Those shackles 
were thrown off this year, waving a green flag to Washington’s influence 
industry. Lobbyists and corporate representatives flooded the city, 
where much of the Democratic Party’s elite — and potential senior 
members of a future presidential administration — had gathered.


The railway giant CSX brought in old railroad cars for a reception led 
by Rodney E. Slater, the former United States transportation secretary 
turned lobbyist, who also headlined a panel on transportation policy in 
a future Clinton administration. At the Loews Hotel bar on Tuesday 
night, old Clinton hands, some now working as lobbyists, caught up with 
Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a longtime family friend and one of 
the party’s most prolific fund-raisers.


At a private luncheon on Wednesday at El Vez, a Mexican restaurant, over 
a dozen Democratic governors mingled with representatives from a host of 
labor unions and companies, among them the Apollo Education Group, an 
operator of for-profit colleges that has faced a series of state and 
federal investigations 

[Marxism] Fwd: Is Trump a Russian Stooge? | Foreign Policy

2016-07-28 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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Let me suggest something: The fact that Trump, after so many attempts 
and with such warm intentions toward the country, was not able to build 
anything in Russia– when Ritz Carlton and Kempinski and Radisson and 
Hilton and any number of Western hotel chains were able to — speaks to 
his abysmal lack of connections to influential Russians. Since his first 
foray into Russia in 1987, the head of state changed four times — 
Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, Medvedev, Putin — but one thing stayed 
constant: In such a deeply personalized system of patronage, nothing 
could’ve been built without the right people inside the Kremlin helping 
you maneuver in the complicated web of whose palm to grease. The fact 
that pretty much every major hotel chain in the world was able to build 
something in Moscow but Trump wasn’t speaks to his inability to navigate 
this shadowy world, and to his weakness as a businessman. If Trump truly 
was in bed with Putin, there would be a Trump Tower in Moscow by now, if 
not several.


full: 
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/25/is-trump-a-russian-stooge-putin-dnc-wikileaks/

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[Marxism] Fwd: Profile of a dedicated Gulenist in Turkey's army

2016-07-28 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/turkey-coup-attempt-profile-of-gulenist-soldier.html
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Re: [Marxism] Erdogan

2016-07-28 Thread Michael Karadjis via Marxism

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Yes. Which again shows it was never correct to see Erdogan's increasing 
repression over the last couple of years as "Islamist." Actually it was 
more a reconstitution of the Kemalist state (sure, with a bit of Islamic 
colouration, and Erdoganist colouration). In particular once the 
decision was made to abandon the AKP's relatively good (by Turkey's 
historical standards) Kurdish policy and re-launch the 80-year Kemalist 
war against the Kurds. The recent foreign policy reversal (rapproachment 
with Russia, Israel, Assad etc) also fits this same bill.


These two articles give more detail about the AKP's growing 
reintegration of the Kemalist old guard, and its new alliance with the 
Ergenekon group in particular: 
http://www.wsj.com/articles/turkish-militarys-influence-rises-again-1463346285 
and 
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/12/turkeys-deep-state-has-a-secret-backchannel-to-assad/?utm_content=buffer1a643_medium=social_source=twitter.com_campaign=buffer


The AKP's Daily Sabah openly now says the Ergenekon trials were wrong, a 
frame up  by the "Gulenists", of course: 
http://www.dailysabah.com/investigations/2016/04/21/court-overturns-verdicts-in-coup-case-allegedly-tied-to-gulenists


Hence the blame for everything on "the Gulenists". Ridiculous, of 
course, but no doubt half true. Appears to be an odd alliance not based 
on any political agreement between newer Gulen-connected forces in the 
state and the most recalcitrant Kemalist elements of the old deep state. 
Doesn't make a lot of sense for the latter given the AKP was moving 
their way, but seems the most hard-line element were either going to 
lose out in upcoming dismissals, or were never in the mood to compromise 
with the AKP no matter what.


One point where they and the Gulen crowd may have lined up was 
Kurdistan. Despite the AK's renewed war and alliance with the old deep 
state in this, it was notable that the top military leadership involved 
in the Kurdish war were heavily involved in the coup. Now there are 
suggestions that they struck because they feared the AKP would weaken in 
that war: 
https://www.buzzfeed.com/borzoudaragahi/document-reveals-what-really-drove-turkeys-failed-coup-plott?utm_term=.fkEpvvXOz. 
That may be fantasy, of course, and would contradict the direction of 
the AKP and its reaccommodation with the Kemalist old guard. But then 
again it could be a wing that preferred to go Assad-style against the 
Kurds.


One clue to that is that the government is re-opening investigations on 
the terrible Roboski massacre of Kurds of late 2011. As you may guess, 
Daily Sabah tells us that the massacre was deliberately orchestrated by 
"the Gulenists" in the military in order to sow discord between the 
Turkish and Kurdish peoples ...


-Original Message- 
From: Louis Proyect via Marxism


My wife just got finished with a Skype call to her mom in Istanbul who
reported that Erdogan has released the Kemalist officers who were in
prison as a result of the Ergenekon trials in order to use them against
the Gulenists. She says that he has begun to adopt Kemalist coloration,
even to the point of condemning schools that have an Islamist agenda--of
course targeting the Gulenist schools. Is there any politician on the
planet today who is more Machiavellian than Erdogan? I can't think of 
any.


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[Marxism] Al-Nusra breaks with al-Qaeda!

2016-07-28 Thread Jeff via Marxism

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http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nusra-front-announces-official-split-al-qaeda-520293064

Nusra confirms split with al-Qaeda 'to protect the Syrian revolution'

Abu Mohamed al-Golani says creation of the Levantine Conquest Front aims 
to 'close the gap' between fighting factions


Last update:
Thursday 28 July 2016 16:52 UTC

Nusra Front leader Abu Mohamed al-Golani confirmed late on Thursday that 
his group has formally split from al-Qaeda and has renamed itself the 
Levantine Conquest Front.


"The creation of this new front aims to close the gap between the jihadi 
factions in the Levant," Golani said in his first televised appearance, 
soon after Nusra released the first photo of the leader ever seen 
publicly. "By breaking our link, we aim to protect the Syrian 
revolution."


"We thank the leaders of al-Qaeda for understanding the need to break 
links."


Golani's comments come several hours after al-Qaeda's leader, Ayman 
al-Zawahiri appeared to give his blessing to the anticipated split with 
its Syrian affiliate in an audio recording released on YouTube.


Speculation had been growing in the past week that Nusra Front leaders 
had decided to cut their formal links with al-Qaeda, with sources close 
to the group telling Middle East Eye that an announcement was imminent.


In a clip within the six-and-a-half-minute audio message attributed to 
Zawahiri, he said that Nusra should split from al-Qaeda if the decision 
improved the unity of groups fighting a common enemy in Syria


The Nusra Front has long been among the myriad of rebel groups battling 
both pro-government forces since the beginning of the country's civil 
war in 2011, often working closely and fighting alongside other groups.


"The brotherhood of Islam that bonds us is stronger than any obsolete 
links between organisations," Zawahiri is heard to say. "These 
organisational links must be sacrificed without hesitation if they 
threaten your unity."


Also speaking, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, a deputy to Zawahiri, said 
al-Qaeda approved "any possible action" that would improve the unity 
among the rebel factions fighting in Syria and form a "new generation" 
of fighters.


"After studying the situation in Syria... we approve any possible action 
that will preserve jihad in the Levant," Masri said. “We say now to the 
leaders of the Nusra Front: do what preserves the unity of Islam and 
Muslims, and jihad in the Levant.


“We urge you to take the necessary steps in this direction. This is also 
a call to all the other jihadi factions in the Levant… You must form one 
rank to protect our people and our land.”


Middle East Eye understands that Masri was present at a 5 April meeting 
in Idlib city between Nusra members and Taha Rifai, a leading Egyptian 
Islamist who was trying to convince the group to set aside its global 
ambitions and focus on fighting the Assad government.


Soon after the meeting, Rifai was killed by a US drone strike.

Nusra has been one of the most effective anti-government factions in 
Syria’s civil war, particularly in the country’s north.


However, both the US and Russia had designated the group as a terrorist 
organisation because of its affiliation to al-Qaeda, allowing the 
countries to bomb Nusra fighters on the ground.


The split appears to be motivated by an attempt from Nusra to attract 
other opposition groups to unify with it just as the US and Russia have 
reportedly agreed to target Nusra and the Islamic State (IS) militant 
group.


Earlier this week, a writer purporting to be a Dutch associate of Nusra 
called Al-Maqalaat said that the timing of the decision was "no 
coincidence".


"The overall message of the break with al-Qaeda will be that the US is 
not enemies with al-Qaeda or any other so-called terrorist organisation, 
but their animosity is against the Muslim Ummah as a whole, especially 
the Muslims who are seeking to establish the rule of Islam," Al-Maqalaat 
wrote.


"If the other parties agree to any of these preconditions, then this 
would be the best deal in the history of Islam, or rather mankind. If 
the other parties agree to these preconditions, then the breaking of 
ties between Jabhat Nusra and Al-Qaeda will form a major backlash for 
the West."


'Playing chess'

Analysts say the official split has the potential to drastically alter 
the dynamics among Syrian rebels depending on which and whether other 
groups decide to join the new Nusra.


"My interpretation is that Nusra was not doing it to avoid being bombed, 
because it will be bombed either way," said Thomas Pierret, a lecturer 
in contemporary Islam at the University of Edinburgh.


Instead, the group is 

[Marxism] The Labour Party leadership election in the UK

2016-07-28 Thread Gary MacLennan via Marxism
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The courts have just refused to remove Corbyn from the ballot for Labour
Party Leadership.  So the election proceeds. The anti-Corbyn forces are
faced with a choice now. They seem divided along the lines of Soft-left/Old
Right and Blairites. The former got their candidate chosen as the sole
candidate over the Blairite choice Angela Eagle. The anti-Corbynites do not
know what to do.  The Blairites have promised perpetual war. Some of them
will try that.  But if the Left capture the National Executive Committee in
September then I think there is little chance their threats will be
tolerated.

The Soft-left/Old Right are in a similar bind. What do they do?  Their
candidate, Owen Smith, has been all over the place.  He began by smearing
Corbyn as permitting bullying and misogyny and being unpatriotic.  Now he
is doing imitations of Corbyn and has released policies that are far to the
left of anything the Soft-left/Old Right have ever contemplated. So the
original excuse for the rebellion against Corbyn's has been quietly
buried.  We should remind ourselves that this  excuse was that Corbyn was
unelectable because he was too left wing like Foot and Benn were in 1983.
We are now faced with a party contest seemingly between two left wingers.

Of course no one believes for a moment that Smith means what he says.  He
is PR to the core and he realizes that the selectorate - the Labour Party
members and registered supporters- are very left wing. The people, and I
use that term deliberately, are demanding relief from neo-liberalism. The
parliamentarians who have delivered neoliberalism, and who live comfortable
lives, are the last to understand that. But Smith knows his market and so
has released left wing policies.

The problem is that this means there is no reason for a challenge.  The
party was dragged to the abyss for what? The answer is of course the failed
model, that one gets elected by appealing to the centre. One has one third
of one's supporters rusted on.  There is a third who will never vote for
Labour and the party must struggle to win over the swinging third in the
middle.

However voting is not compulsory in the UK and the consequence is that some
four million voters, the rusted on ones, have retreated into apathy and
despair. As well a huge swathe of young people - the salariat - have gazed
into the future and decided that they do not want to go to Precaria. Yet,
that is precisely where the economic crisis is taking them.

So the dog days of Neoliberalism have begun, and the status quo cannot be
restored easily.

If Corbyn can purge the party of the truly recalcitrant and get the Party
to adapt a left wing election program; if the economic crisis ripens, and
those voters in the middle shrink and the rusted on return, then it is
possible that a left wing Labour Prime Minister could emerge. I, myself,
think it is more a probability than a possibility given how the Leadership
challenge to Corbyn has developed. In other words I see a stronger Left
emerging from all this chaos.

Paul Mason, Aaron Bastani and others say that the Labour Party most morph
into a social movement to succeed. The idea is there now and I feel it will
become a material reality.

comradely

Gary
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[Marxism] Fwd: Sanders fans start to migrate online to Jill Stein - AOL

2016-07-28 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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http://www.aol.com/article/2016/07/28/sanders-fans-start-to-migrate-online-to-jill-stein/21440684/
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[Marxism] Spain, austerity, reprieve and the EU

2016-07-28 Thread Philip Ferguson via Marxism
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by *Susil Gupta *

It seems that the class struggle, or at least the fear of it, is indeed the
motive force of history. The EU has announced that it will not, after all,
impose a hefty Є2.2 billion fine on Spain for repeatedly missing its budget
reduction targets, as it had been threatening to do for months. EU
hard-liners, particularly the Germans, were until recently demanding a
Є5 billion fine. Spain has now been given another two years to get its
finances in order.

EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, who made the
announcement, explained that the Spanish people had already made sacrifices
and it was not appropriate to demand more of them, particularly at a time
when there is a question mark over the entire European project. Why has
Spain been shown such largesse, when the Greeks were not? The Greek people
also made sacrifices, larger than those imposed on Spain.

More significant still is that. . .
full at:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/spain-fear-and-austerity-in-the-eu/
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[Marxism] Notes on super-exploitation

2016-07-28 Thread Philip Ferguson via Marxism
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*One of the issues being looked at by the *Imperialism study group* is
super-exploitation in/of the Third World.  Below are notes to the
discussion.  Walter asks that readers here keep in mind this is *not* an
attempt at a full analysis of super-exploitation; it is some notes
contributed to the study group discussion.  He (and the rest of us) are
keen to get feedback on any material from the study/discussion group, so we
look forward to people contributing to the comments section below.  We will
regularly be sticking up notes by study group participants and reports on
the study group.*

by *Walter Daum*, July 28

The term “super-exploitation” has often been attributed to Lenin, but I
have not been able to find it in his writings. The closest is this:
“sections of the working class in the oppressor nations receive crumbs from
the super-profits the bourgeoisie of these nations obtains by extra
exploitation of the workers of the oppressed nations.” ( “A Caricature of
Marxism and Imperialist Economism,” 1916.)

In this context, “extra exploitation” does not simply mean exploitation of
additional workers but rather deeper exploitation of oppressed workers;
hence the super-profits extracted. Lenin did often use the term
“super-profits,” but as we discussed this past weekend, that did not
necessarily mean profits extracted from capitalistically employed
wage-workers. In the above passage, however, that does seem to be what he
is referring to.

The specific term “super-exploitation” is of more recent origin, having
been introduced by Latin American Marxist economists in the 1960’s. I think
the originator was Ruy Mauro Marini.

*Defining the Term*

There have been basically two definitions of super-exploitation. One might
be called. . .

Full at:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/from-the-imperialism-study-group-notes-on-super-exploitation/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Radical Linguistics in an Age of Extinction | Dissent Magazine

2016-07-28 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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In the early 1990s, a small subset of linguists began raising the alarm, 
trying to reorient a discipline whose well-meaning focus on elusive and 
trivial “universals” had led it to ignore actually existing linguistic 
diversity—an unfortunate legacy left by Noam Chomsky, who was a radical 
and a linguist but not a radical linguist. The new advocates of 
“language documentation” convincingly demonstrated that language 
death—when the last native speaker of a language dies—is accelerating 
dramatically. Would-be radical linguists, this writer included, have 
been joining local activists in recording, describing, and maintaining 
threatened languages, though our numbers and resources are still dwarfed 
by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a Christian organization of 
missionary linguists, whose ultimate goal is to translate the Bible into 
every human language.


Sources of Radical Possibility

There are political, educational, scientific, and cultural reasons to 
support endangered languages and the communities who speak them. There 
is the straightforward question of justice and minority rights, since it 
is always the powerful who impose their languages on the powerless. 
There are the vast reserves of history, literature, knowledge, and 
wisdom embedded in these languages, the loss of which leaves all of us 
impoverished. Children learn best when educated in their mother tongue, 
but, too obsessed with the imperatives of indoctrination and 
assimilation, few governments ensure this basic human right. Linguistic 
and cultural continuity holds people together, boosting the resilience 
of indigenous communities in crisis. Multilingualism is strongly linked 
to cognitive development, potentially enhancing our capacity for empathy 
and open-mindedness. Yet far from being a marker of advanced formal 
education, multilingualism is actually the preserve of the “bottom 
billion,” who have no choice but to learn their more powerful neighbors’ 
languages.


Leftists, liberals, and progressives have a bigger stake in the future 
of language than they know. We hardly realize how deeply embedded 
capitalist mentalities now are in our very language—the ways we talk 
about time, space, relationships. Liberals intensely aware of privilege 
based on gender, race, class, or sexuality seldom consider linguistic 
privilege—English (or Spanish or Chinese or Hausa) is just the air we 
breathe. The politics of language, when we practice it at all, has been 
about framing, about keywords, about sloganeering in the major 
languages. Meanwhile, the ground is shifting under us.


full: 
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/radical-linguistics-in-an-age-of-extinction

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[Marxism] Fwd: Cameraperson; Homo Sapiens | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

2016-07-28 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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Under consideration in this review are two documentaries that defy 
conventional expectations even for a genre not particularly known for 
commercialism. The first is “Cameraperson”, which is basically excerpts 
from documentaries in which Kirsten Johnson served as lead cameraperson, 
none lasting more than ten minutes or so and often without providing any 
kind of context for the excerpted film’s overall design. Although often 
mystifying, it is never without interest. The second is “Homo Sapiens”, 
a film by Nikolaus Geyrhalter that has an ironic title given that not a 
single human being is seen throughout the film. Indeed, it consists of 
nothing but scenes from abandoned cities and towns across the world and 
as such has a dystopian quality far more disturbing than any Road 
Warrior movie since it is all very real. I can recommend both films to 
students of film, which does not mean that you are enrolled at NYU or 
UCLA but that you have a taste for the offbeat and especially those 
works that are trying to get to the heart of the human condition in a 
world coming apart at the seams.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2016/07/28/cameraperson-homo-sapiens/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Democrats Begin Guilt Trip Campaign To Pressure People Into Supporting Historically Awful Candidate | Twist The Knife - Fiercely Independent Anti-Corporate Media

2016-07-28 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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http://www.twisttheknife.com/democrats-begin-guilt-trip-campaign-to-pressure-people-into-supporting-historically-awful-candidate/
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Re: [Marxism] Engels's reflections on writing fiction

2016-07-28 Thread Andrew Pollack via Marxism
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Great letter. (It can also be found at MIA.)
What motivated you to post it?

On Sun, May 8, 2016 at 5:34 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:


> Engels to Margaret Harkness
> In London
>
> April, 1888;
>
> Dear Miss Harkness,
>
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