[Marxism] Guardian: In America, only the rich can afford to write about poverty
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. * This was a good piece until the very last paragraph, which pretty much reads like a non sequitur... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/06/america-rich-write-about-poverty?CMP=ema_565 _ 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] Hiroshima, Hersey, and Schlosser
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 Schlosser is an amazing journalist and writer but his political conclusions and historical judgments are almost invariably awful. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/02/hiroshima-bombing-70-years-on-eric-schlosser _ 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] Guardian: How developing countries are paying a high price for the global mineral boom
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.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/aug/15/developing-countries-high-price-global-mineral-boom _ 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] Lars Lih and Lenin’s April Theses | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentent 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. * On 8/16/15 12:06 PM, Joseph Green via Marxism wrote: Most activists are familiar with Stalinist hostility to Trotskyism, but in fact Stalinism and Trotskyism are twin sides of the same coin. If we examine Trotskyism and Stalinism in the light of the experience of the many revolutionary movements since the death of Lenin, it turns out that Trotskyism and Stalinism have a lot in common. This is nonsense. Stalinism, except for the brief Third Period, has had the same basic strategy as the Mensheviks. Instead of seeking common cause with the Cadets, it oriented to FDR, the bourgeois parties in Spain and France in the 1930s, etc. The fatal flaw of Trotskyism was its assumption that by pointing out the errors of class collaboration, the scales would fall from the eyes of the masses and a new vanguard would emerge. This is fundamentally the illusion of Antarsya in Greece, which like the ineffectual Trotskyist movement in Spain during the Spanish Civil War was awfully good at pointing out the errors of the anarchists, the Stalinists et al, was just awful when it came to building a party. _ 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: Roundtable on the Palestinian solidarity movement and Alison Weir – Mondoweiss
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://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/roundtable-palestinian-solidarity/ _ 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: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace - The New York 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. * Molly Jay, an early member of the Kindle team, said she received high ratings for years. But when she began traveling to care for her father, who was suffering from cancer, and cut back working on nights and weekends, her status changed. She was blocked from transferring to a less pressure-filled job, she said, and her boss told her she was “a problem.” As her father was dying, she took unpaid leave to care for him and never returned to Amazon. “When you’re not able to give your absolute all, 80 hours a week, they see it as a major weakness,” she said. A woman who had thyroid cancer was given a low performance rating after she returned from treatment. She says her manager explained that while she was out, her peers were accomplishing a great deal. Another employee who miscarried twins left for a business trip the day after she had surgery. “I’m sorry, the work is still going to need to get done,” she said her boss told her. “From where you are in life, trying to start a family, I don’t know if this is the right place for you.” A woman who had breast cancer was told that she was put on a “performance improvement plan” — Amazon code for “you’re in danger of being fired” — because “difficulties” in her “personal life” had interfered with fulfilling her work goals. Their accounts echoed others from workers who had suffered health crises and felt they had also been judged harshly instead of being given time to recover. A former human resources executive said she was required to put a woman who had recently returned after undergoing serious surgery, and another who had just had a stillborn child, on performance improvement plans, accounts that were corroborated by a co-worker still at Amazon. “What kind of company do we want to be?” the executive recalled asking her bosses. The mother of the stillborn child soon left Amazon. “I had just experienced the most devastating event in my life,” the woman recalled via email, only to be told her performance would be monitored “to make sure my focus stayed on my job.” full: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.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] Fwd: The Kremlin’s Manichaean delusion. How Moscow came to embrace fringe anti-Western conspiracy theories — Meduza. News, reports, interviews, videos from Russia
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. * While the English version of Strategic Culture Foundation's website looks relatively ordinary, its Russian version (there's also a Serbian one) is outright bizarre. The 'About' section states harmlessly enough: “Benefiting from the expanding power of the Internet, we work to spread reliable information, critical thought, and progressive ideas.” But right beside this text is an op-ed by Dmitry Sedov full of diatribes so astonishingly racist that you want to rub your eyes to make sure you've understood. “The trumpeters of democracy from [liberal radio station] Ekho Moskvy don't need those grants, Sedov says of supposed US government funding for aspiring journalists in the Baltic countries to counter propaganda out of Russia. They are already covered in chocolate like the negroes in Harlem!” In another piece, titled “America's Dark Side,” published on August 6, Sedov (whose credentials are unclear, as no biography is provided and his writings can only be found on SCF's website, or reprinted on other loyalist outlets) explains that the US, led by a black president, is falling to the onslaught of black racism: there are bars that are off-limits to dogs and whites and armed gangs of black fascists facilitate white flight from major American cities. A Whois search reveals that the domain strategic-culture.org was registered in Moscow by a certain Andrej G Areshev—apparently a Moscow-based political scientist specializing in Asian and Caucasian affairs, who pens op-eds like “Frau Merkel's Karabakh Fantasies” in publications like Regnum and Lenta.ru—outlets considered to toe the Kremlin's line. (In 2009, for instance, Regnum's chief editor was barred from entering Latvia and Estonia.) Areshev is also a prolific author on the Strategic Culture Foundation's website. One of his latest pieces is titled Climate Warfare: Is It Really a Conspiracy Theory? There, he blames the latest wave of droughts and wildfires in Russia on climate warfare waged by the United States by way of HAARP, an ionospheric research program based in Alaska. HAARP as a tectonic weapon is a popular conspiracy theory, but what's peculiar is the source that Areshev uses to support his argument: the findings of “Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa Michel Chossudovsky.” While Chossudovsky is indeed a tenured professor with verifiable credentials, he is also known as the founder of the Center for Research on Globalization. Despite the grand-sounding name, it's a fairly standard conspiracy rumor-mill that runs the whole gamut from 9/11 truthery and to anti-vaccination hysterics. What makes GlobalResearch.ca different from other similar websites is the disproportional weight it enjoys in news coverage by the Russian state media. Global Research is prominently featured as the only source in numerous stories by Russia's leading newswire RIA Novosti, where it's referred to as a think tank or publication whose experts or journalists regularly reveal or uncover some fact that fits into the Kremlin's current foreign policy agenda. RIA's latest story based on content that appeared on GlobalResearch.ca is titled “Media Uncovered a US Resolution that 'Recognizes' Donbass' Sovereignty,” and refers to the Captive Nations resolution, otherwise known as Public Law 86-90, adopted in 1959 by US President Dwight Eisenhower. While the original draft of the resolution did include some dubious claims (the list of captive nations included the nonexistent states of Cossakia and Idel-Ural) and was criticized by prominent American scholars for being based on historical misinformation, it doesn't take much effort to discover the resolution, as it's not classified and is widely available online. Describing GlobalResearch.ca as the media is also problematic, insofar as it is less a news outlet and more an amateur conspiracy website whose founder has subscribed to the Kremlin's narrative simply because it opposes the one promoted by the “deep state” and its subservient “mainstream media.” full: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2015/08/14/the-kremlin-s-manichaean-delusion _ 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] Lars Lih and Lenin’s April Theses | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentent 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. * Lars Lih's and Proyect's views on this question center in large part on their evaluation of the Trotskyist version of permanent revolution. This is not just a historical argument about the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. It concerns the tactics for movements in general. In brief, permanent revolution is the claim that the former Marxist distinction between bourgeois-democratic and socialist movements is outdated and obsolete. This theory is widespread because it dovetails with the naive view that any struggle can proceed to full liberation if only the people are militant enough and there are no betrayals. But the reality is different. Today we see democratic movements around the world which have no possibility of immediately bringing workers' rule or socialist revolution. Yet even if these movements are successful, they will not bring bourgeois-democratic social revolutions of the old type, because the extensive development of capitalism in the last century has generally eliminated the social basis for this. As a result, the democratic struggle, while essential if the working people are to be able to raise their voice and organize, will generally lead to disappointing results even when it overthrow the old tyranny. Yet any realistic appraisal shows that the socialist revolution isn't imminent either. The working masses are far too disorganized for this. The are faced with going through a series of struggles against oppression in which they will have to organize themselves as an independent class force. The theory of permanent revolution can't deal with this. It has resulted in euphoric declarations that workers' rule is near whenever a people rise up, and then a long period of depression when one sees what actually happens in the struggle. This is what has been seen in the reaction of many groups to the Arab Spring or other democratic movements around the world. It is one of the theoretical reasons for the devastating error of the Revolutionary Socialists group in Egypt, who didn't see what was really happening with the military overthrow of Morsi in Egypt until it was too late. In the midst of the revolutionary fervor of the struggle against various tyrannies, it is important that the most conscious section of activists have a sober picture of what is going on. Contrary to what the advocates of permanent revolution say, opposing their impatience doesn't mean upholding Stalinist theories and bowing down to the bourgeoisie. It is necessary to have a sober assessment of the ongoing movement in order to be able to uphold the specific class interests of the working masses against the bourgeoisie. When one recognizes that, even if the old tyranny is overthrown and even if socialist phrases are thrown around, the overall movement is not going to lead to socialism, one can understand the need for the working masses to form an independent section of the movement. The workers must fight against the local tyrannies and push the overall movement as far as possible, but also seek opportunities to build up their own section of the movement, a section with socialist interests separate from the simply democratic framework of the movement as a whole. This critique of the theory of permanent revolution is quite different from that of the Stalinists. Most activists are familiar with Stalinist hostility to Trotskyism, but in fact Stalinism and Trotskyism are twin sides of the same coin. If we examine Trotskyism and Stalinism in the light of the experience of the many revolutionary movements since the death of Lenin, it turns out that Trotskyism and Stalinism have a lot in common. I have worked with other comrades on developing a critique of Trotskyism from an anti-Stalinist standpoint. In part one of an extensive survey of Trotskyist theories, I dealt with the theoretical basis of permanent revolution. I wrote: 'Permanent revolution' was Trotsky's first major distinctive theory of his own, and it would become the banner of the Trotskyist movement. Indeed, this term is sometimes used in a general sense as a synonym for Trotskyism in general. But strictly speaking, it refers to Trotsky's view that the former Marxist distinction between bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolution is outdated and obsolete. Instead, Trotsky held that revolution in any country--no matter on what issues it breaks out, what the local alignment of classes was, and what the economic level of development is--would either be utterly defeated, or directly go on to a proletarian dictatorship and socialist measures. The only type of revolution possible in the current era
Re: [Marxism] Roundtable on the Palestinian solidarity movement and Alison Weir (Mondoweiss)
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. * At 09:50 16-08-15 -0400, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/roundtable-palestinian-solidarity/ I'm glad to see this issue brought up again on the list, since as far as I'm concerned this discussion -- yes pointing to Alison Weir in particular but about so much more! -- has barely begun and needs to be resolved. A filthy open letter was circulated ostensibly in defense of this poor defamed individual, but in reality trying to force the Palestinian solidarity movement into the paradigm of a right-left alliance; such an orientation would be destructive to our vision of advancing toward socialist revolution and to the struggle of the Palestinians (which is not exclusively anti-capitalist but includes nationalist and democratic content) as it profoundly changes the goals of those struggles. These struggles would be reduced to an emotional but vacuous front against imperialism, Western liberalism, and Israel; these are terms that have a very different meaning to rightists and leftists (which includes essentially all Palestinians whether they describe themselves as left or not). By removing their underlying content, it becomes possible for the left and right to agree on many very specific facts and figures which we together decry, while hiding/ignoring the very opposite goals of the left (those who want to advance the interests and power of the working class internationally) and the right (those who want to consolidate the power of the capitalists within their scope). Because most of these movements have been mainly been associated with the left, the main effect of such a right-left alliance is not to expose right wingers to our vision (and perhaps win a few over), but the opposite. And to transform the political movements involved away from their original goals, rather to serve anti-progressive purposes even while retaining much of our original rhetoric. This matter of a right-left alliance subverting the content of our movements probably appears in no starker fashion than in the case of the anti-Israel movement, which we correctly call -- but which the rightists are now happy to call -- the Palestinian solidarity movement. I don't need to list the reasons we oppose Israel and Zionism, but for the right there are some very different reasons. One important one is that many among the ruling class in the West are beginning to see Israel more as a liability rather than a tool as it arguably had been in the past. The second of course is antisemitism which has been a common aspect of the far-right, and by joining in our call for Freedom for Palestine they have found a cover by which their filthy underbelly can be shielded. Among the 3 articles published by Mondoweiss (supposedly as a round table) the first I find major agreement with but it really focuses on the second aspect (antisemitism), and does so more in relation to this single individual. So the broader question of the right-left alliance isn't discussed as such. I hope to raise the discussion beyond that and invite readers to respond to what I shall later post today. The second article is rather apolitical (at least in terms of the relevant issues) and I don't consider it part of any roundtable discussion on the issue. The third is a predictable defense of one named individual on the basis of formalities, such as Weir's formal declaration against antisemitism and arguing that such an accusation against her can't be proven, which I sort of agree with. In a court of law she might very well have a strong defense case and be able to argue that her relationship to known antisemites counts as guilt by association. And frankly I don't know or care if she *personally* hates Jews. For that matter, I don't even know if Hitler was personally antisemitic; what's important is that he used antisemitism as part of a political project that didn't mainly have to do with Jews. Likewise for Weir, and in those terms must the discussion proceed. - Jeff _ 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] [Pen-l] Fwd: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace - The New York 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. * I was blown away by this article yesterday. The more I thought about it the more Amazon sounded like where academia is going. Brian On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: Molly Jay, an early member of the Kindle team, said she received high ratings for years. But when she began traveling to care for her father, who was suffering from cancer, and cut back working on nights and weekends, her status changed. She was blocked from transferring to a less pressure-filled job, she said, and her boss told her she was “a problem.” As her father was dying, she took unpaid leave to care for him and never returned to Amazon. “When you’re not able to give your absolute all, 80 hours a week, they see it as a major weakness,” she said. A woman who had thyroid cancer was given a low performance rating after she returned from treatment. She says her manager explained that while she was out, her peers were accomplishing a great deal. Another employee who miscarried twins left for a business trip the day after she had surgery. “I’m sorry, the work is still going to need to get done,” she said her boss told her. “From where you are in life, trying to start a family, I don’t know if this is the right place for you.” A woman who had breast cancer was told that she was put on a “performance improvement plan” — Amazon code for “you’re in danger of being fired” — because “difficulties” in her “personal life” had interfered with fulfilling her work goals. Their accounts echoed others from workers who had suffered health crises and felt they had also been judged harshly instead of being given time to recover. A former human resources executive said she was required to put a woman who had recently returned after undergoing serious surgery, and another who had just had a stillborn child, on performance improvement plans, accounts that were corroborated by a co-worker still at Amazon. “What kind of company do we want to be?” the executive recalled asking her bosses. The mother of the stillborn child soon left Amazon. “I had just experienced the most devastating event in my life,” the woman recalled via email, only to be told her performance would be monitored “to make sure my focus stayed on my job.” full: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html ___ pen-l mailing list pe...@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l -- Brian McKenna, Ph.D. Department of Behavioral Sciences CASL 4025 Dearborn, Michigan _ 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] Fwd: Racism and the “Overhunting” hypothesis | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant
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 quick review of the literature relative to Australia reflects the debate although here the climate shift was very palpable during time of human habitation.In the Australian context the argument jumps upon the indigenous use of fire as a major hunting tool and cause of megafauna displacement. However, I’m addicted to the problem of why the big critters were supposedly selectively killed off before the smaller ones were hunted? By that logic the elephant or the giraffe should not have survived the development of homo sapiens. Recent research on the human diet going way back also suggests that the consumption of starches was more significant that previous indications suggests –and even current studies of hunter gatherers or tribal peoples, suggest that hunting for meat is not the basis of these cuisines. It takes too much effort and encompasses so many maybes. In over 200 years of European occupancy of Australia — the massive fauna extinctions that have occurred aren’t due to conscious killings of targeted species but habitat loss and consequent changes in ecology. The megafauna would not have survived this…That begs the question of the role of fire here — but fire was deployed here not to kill species but to husband them, as it is built into the renewal of the landscape. The much more recent occupation(1200-1300 AD) of New Zealand by the Maori surely led to the killing off of the Moa and other large birds (megafauna) — both from direct hunting and maybe the introduction of the Pacific Rat. But then so too were smaller species driven to extinction there–in all 51 bird species. This summary is useful: http://austhrutime.com/marsupial_megafauna_extinction.htm dave riley _ 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] [Pen-l] Fwd: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace - The New York 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. * What this article shows is that what I call managerial control mechanisms can be applied to just about any kind of work. These go back a long way, to the centralization of workers in factories, the detailed division of labor, mechanization, Frederick Taylor's systematic analysis of these three elements of control and the formulation of scientific management, personnel management with its Theories X, Y, and Z, lean production (the Japanese-led refinements and extensions of Taylorism), etc. Amazon is applying managerial control to relatively highly paid, educated, and skilled white collar workers. What is interesting is that many people aspire to work for Jeff Bezos, and not a few of the people interviewed either relished the insane competitiveness and long hours or said that they learned so much about themselves and what they could accomplish under Bezos's psychopathic leadership, even as they left the company. Note that other companies are following suit, and former Amazon employ ees are highly sought after by these businesses. Think how powerful is the ethos of modern capitalism that workers were willing to sacrifice spouses, kids, parents, vacations, and every other thing that makes us human beings to help invent more efficient ways to sell things to consumers. And they say life in the Soviet Union was harsh! I don't think academe is quite like Amazon. In colleges, well-educated white collar workers no longer can get full-time employment. There are not tens of thousands of openings for one thing. The weeding out process occurs much more impersonally too. Performance is increasingly measured, though, and that is a similarity. I suppose too that you might consider Amazons' white collar workers like adjuncts in that they are very unlikely to make it to the top of the job hierarchy and will be kicked to the curb not long after they are hired. However, adjuncts are not sought after much when this happens. They just try for another shitty teaching gig. Also, it is harder, for me at least, to muster nearly as much sympathy for Amazon's white-collar laborers as for adjunct teachers. The Amazonians chose to work under Bezos's rules and surely went in with the knowledge of what they might be in for. It's not as if they were part of some reserve army of labor, desperately seeking employment. Whatever we make of this article, one thing is certain. Work in capitalism denies us our humanity, period. There is really nothing that can change the long trajectory toward alienating labor except the overthrow of capitalism, root and branch. As radicals we ignore the absolute necessity to transform work radically, and to eradicate the mindless consumption that now defines the limits of what human beings can expect from life and labor. _ 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] From the vaults: Demystifying the Dalai Lama
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://louisproyect.org/2007/02/28/the-angry-monk/ For most people, including me, Tibetan politics consisted exclusively of two radically opposed camps. On one hand, there is the traditional Buddhist leadership of the Dalai Lama that is highly visible in the West and that enjoys a reputation as spiritually enlightened and politically progressive. With celebrities like Richard Gere spreading the word and a Nobel Peace prize belt under his belt, the Dalai Lama is lionized everywhere he goes. There is occasional grumbling about his adherence to traditional Buddhist teachings that homosexuality is impure (but not for non-Buddhists, bless his heart) but nothing sufficient to drag him down to the level of ordinary mortals. On the other hand, there is the perspective of the Chinese government, especially when it had some kind of leftwing credentials, that the Buddhist priests were a kind of a parasitical feudal growth that needed weeding. When the Red Army poured into Tibet in the early 1950s, this was interpreted by Maoist-leaning radicals as something like the Union army taking control of the South during Reconstruction. It is to the enormous credit of Swiss director Luc Schaedler to reveal another player in Tibetan politics in “The Angry Monk,” his excellent documentary now available from First Run/Icarus Films. This is a portrait of Gendun Choephel (1903-1951), a legendary figure in Tibet, who was opposed to both the religious elite and to forced Chinese assimilation. The film not only sheds light on a most unique personality. It also is an excellent introduction to Tibetan culture and politics. Choephel began life as a Buddhist monk but evolved into a scholar of Tibetan history and a political activist during his extended visit to India in the 1930s, where he became inspired by Gandhi’s revolt. He decided to travel to India after coming into contact with Rahul Sankrityayan, an Indian researcher of ancient Buddhist texts in Tibet. Surprisingly, Sankrityayan was also a Marxist revolutionary who fought for Indian independence. (It should be mentioned that many of these texts were burned in huge bonfires during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a barbaric act that rivals the Taliban’s destruction of ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan.) When in India, Choephel not only politicized, he left behind the kind of Puritanism expressed in the Dalai Lama’s strictures against homosexuality. He was proud of his ability to sleep with 4 or 5 prostitutes in an evening and to get roaring drunk in the process, as Golok Jigme, a 85 old monk and former traveling companion of Choepel, reveals in an interview. In addition to writing the very first history of Tibet, Choepel translated the Kama Sutra into Tibetan! In the introduction to this classic work on sexual techniques, he wrote: As for me — I have little shame I love women. Every man has a woman. Every woman has a man. Both in their mind desire sexual union. What chance is the for clean behaviour? If natural passions are openly banned, unnatural passions will grow in secrecy. No law of religion — no law of morality can supress the natural passion of mankind. Choephel was the quintessential modernizer. Like Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal, he wanted to reduce the power of the clergy. In a 1946 poem, he wrote: In Tibet, everything that is old Is a work of Buddha And everything that is new Is a work of the Devil This is the sad tradition of our country In 1946 Gendun Choephel took up residence in Kalimpong, a town that sat on the India-Tibet border, where he joined the Tibetan Revolutionary Party, which was founded 7 years earlier. He designed (he was a gifted artist as well as a scholar) their logo: a sickle crossed by a sword. The Tibetan Revolutionary Party sought to overthrow the tyrannical regime in Lhasa. When Gendun Choephels arrived in Lhasa, the capital city, he was arrested by the Tibetan government, which had learned about his activity from British operatives working out of India. He was accused of insurrection and thrown in jail for three years. Two years after his release, the Red army overran Tibetan troops in eastern Tibet and took control of the country. A physically ailing and psychologically broken Gendun Choephel characterized the invasion in his characteristically blunt manner: “Now we’re fucked!” “The Angry Monk” is also an excellent introduction to some of the more sophisticated thinkers in today’s Tibet, who are interviewed throughout the film. I especially appreciated the comments of journalist Jamyang Norbu, who derided the Western obsession with Tibetan
Re: [Marxism] From the vaults: Demystifying the Dalai Lama
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. * On 16 Aug 2015, at 4:12 AM, Philip Ferguson via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/from-the-vaults-demystifying-the-dalai-lama/ https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/from-the-vaults-demystifying-the-dalai-lama/ I know there are very good reasons for the fanatical opposition to organised religion that one encounters among many Marxists (which doesn’t however mean that such fanaticism doesn’t generate blind spots). I also realise the Dalai Lama’s long record of favourable comments on Marxism were not widely known at the time this article was written. But I would have thought they were sufficiently well known by now as to warrant mention in a covering note upon dragging this piece up out of the vault and brushing off the cobwebs. One can certainly take issue with his interpretation of what has come to serve as Marxist orthodoxy - ironically one of the most anti-Marxist formulations conceivable - or even, maybe a bit less problematically, with his more social, inter-personal theory of revolutionary change - based more on waging compassion than on waging physical class struggle - but I think it strains credulity beyond the breaking point to dismiss remarks like the following, from 1993, as those of a feudalist-totalitarian agent of the CIA and its capitalist overlords, which the linked piece would seem to require: Q: You have often stated that you would like to achieve a synthesis between Buddhism and Marxism. What is the appeal of Marxism for you? A: Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. Marxism is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with the fate of the working classes--that is, the majority--as well as with the fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and it seems fair. I just recently read an article in a paper where His Holiness the Pope also pointed out some positive aspects of Marxism. As for the failure of the Marxist regimes, first of all I do not consider the former USSR, or China, or even Vietnam, to have been true Marxist regimes, for they were far more concerned with their narrow national interests than with the Workers' International; this is why there were conflicts, for example, between China and the USSR, or between China and Vietnam. If those three regimes had truly been based upon Marxist principles, those conflicts would never have occurred. I think the major flaw of the Marxist regimes is that they have placed too much emphasis on the need to destroy the ruling class, on class struggle, and this causes them to encourage hatred and to neglect compassion. Although their initial aim might have been to serve the cause of the majority, when they try to implement it all their energy is deflected into destructive activities. Once the revolution is over and the ruling class is destroyed, there is nor much left to offer the people; at this point the entire country is impoverished and unfortunately it is almost as if the initial aim were to become poor. I think that this is due to the lack of human solidarity and compassion. The principal disadvantage of such a regime is the insistence placed on hatred to the detriment of compassion. The failure of the regime in the former Soviet Union was, for me, not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist. From: http://hhdl.dharmakara.net/hhdlquotes1.html http://hhdl.dharmakara.net/hhdlquotes1.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
