Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of conc iousness | Aeon Essays

[Jim Farmelant via Marxism]

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 Not my work, its Boris Hessen's work.
 
This link works fine for me.
https://rtraba.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/v1_hessen.pdf
 
or can use this link.
 
https://tinyurl.com/zpl9md3
 
 
Jim Farmelant
http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
http://www.foxymath.com
Learn or Review Basic Math
 


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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of conc iousness | Aeon Essays

[Jim Farmelant via Marxism]

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  Not my work, Boris Hessen's work. This link works fine for 
me.https://rtraba.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/v1_hessen.pdf or use this link. 
https://tinyurl.com/zpl9md3  Jim 
Farmelanthttp://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelanthttp://www.foxymath.com 
Learn or Review Basic Math

-- Original Message --
From: David McDonald via Marxism 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of 
conciousness | Aeon Essays
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2017 15:42:42 -0700

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Jim F: link to your work is broken.
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[Marxism] Down Under

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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The recent state election in Western Australia (WA) has provided us all
with some material to work through on the prospects of the Far Right (FR)
in Australia. The FR  is led federally by Qld's own Pauline Hanson - former
owner of a fish and chip shop. Her *One Nation* *Party* is in many ways a
personality cult. She has been around for some time having been a member of
parliament from 1996-8. As always on the FR she has a Feared Despised Other
that she uses to whet the appetite of her supporters. In her first
incarnation the Feared Despised Other was the Aboriginal - no surprises
there. Then she made a mistake and nominated the Chinese as the Feared
Despised Other and claimed they were "swamping" Australia.  the Murdoch
Press which had been mollycoddling her dropped her like a hot brick.  At
that time Murdoch was negotiating deals in China and was about to marry a
Chinese wife. So being anti-Chinese was simply stupid.

With the cracks that have emerged in the neoliberal paradigm Hanson has
re-emerge and was elected to the Senate in 2016. A significant change to
her politics is that firstly she has soft-pedaled on Aborigines, claiming
she was only ever concerned about violence towards women. More
significantly, perhaps, she has now nominated Muslims as the Feared
Despised Other and has dropped all references to being swamped by Chinese.
We are now being swamped by Muslims and the imposition of Sharia and the
Hijab is just around the corner.

Not surprisingly arch Zionist and hater of Muslims, Rupert Murdoch has
allowed his press to once again give her lots of oxygen.

Following Trump's victory it was widely predicted in the same press that
Hanson would do very well in the State election.  We have a directionless
conservative government led by a neoliberal social progressivist- Malcolm
Turnbull.  He has the narrowest of majorities and is a prisoner of the hard
right of his party. That means that Turnbull cannot play to his strength on
issues such as advocating more humane treatment of refugees, Australia
becoming a republic, or marriage equality. His economic policies veer from
Austerity lite to much harder measures.  Basically he seems to follow the
Say Mantra - Supply makes its own demand.  He likens the federal budget to
the family budget and calls the  deficit a moral betrayal of future
generations. The result is a stagnating economy and simmering discontent
which the Murdoch Press has attempted to shepherd towards One Nation.

Hanson growing ever bolder arranged a preference swap with the governing
conservative party in WA.  Polls put here before the deal at 13%.  In the
Federal Parliament Hanson worked closely with the Government to pass
anti-union laws, argued for wage cuts in the form of a lowering of penalty
rates.

What she did not understand, because she is born under the Sign of Stupid,
is that her support for the Federal Government diminished her radical
protest image.  When push come to shove whining about Sharia does not put
"food on the family" as George Bush Jr used to say, nor can anyone show how
it can improve job prospects for the unemployed.  What One Nation lacks is
the Bannon factor - someone who will launch a reactionary Keynesian
program.  Hanson is so anti-worker that she cannot play the role of the
Savior of Australian Jobs.

As a consequence her campaign in WA stalled and instead of 13% she got a
mere 4.8%.  It is true, though, that nationally she is still polling around
11% and her base in Queensland has not been tested.

Nevertheless I think one can say that Hanson failed in WA because she was
not sufficiently radical.  Unlike the Nazis before they took power in 1933,
her decisions in parliament are pro-establishment. Hitler of course did a
dirty deal with the Hindenburgs and got rid of his radical followers in the
Night of the Long Knives.  But Hanson has done her dirty deals before she
has power and it looks like it is her conservatism that was punished in the
polls in WA.

comradely

Gary
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of conciousness | Aeon Essays

[David McDonald via Marxism]

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Jim F: link to your work is broken.
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[Marxism] Confusion on the left

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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Confusion on the Left

Posted on March 14, 2017
 by
oaklandsocialist 

*'“Iran, Hezbollah and Russia are fighting in solidarity with Syria in
defending Syria’s soverienty and this is a great act of international
solidarity.  The liberation of Aleppo was a victory for the people against
imperialism.  The US role has been to support and **enable ISIS with
tremendous military aid from the US along  with  Turkey.  They support
ISIS, Nusra, El Quaeda and the so-called democratic **opposition forces  in
Syria, which are just as terroristic and violent as ISIS.  They all attack
and commit genocide against the people of **Syria.  It is foremost a war
against the people and the entire infrastructure of the country.  ISIS is a
neo-colonialist force for the imperialists.”*

So wrote somebody on a left e mail list, expressing a view that is all too
common on the left. Let’s dissect this statement:


*Analysis*'“Iran,* Hezbollah and Russia are… defending Syria’s sovereignty
and this is a great act of international solidarity.” *

"Really? Here we have the right wing, chauvinist Putin regime, the regime
which bases itself on chauvinism at home and allies itself with far right
bigots and racists and neofascists throughout Europe such as Jobbik in
Hungary and the National Front in France, the regime that bombed Grozny (in
Chechnya) to smithereens, and the right wing, religious fundamentalist
Iranian regime, and Hezbollah – the representative of Shia capitalists. If
anybody thinks they are sending troops into Syria, or bombing Syria (in the
case of Putin’s forces) as an act of solidarity or to help the Syrian
masses, or not acting in the interests of their own respective capitalists,
they are living in an alternate universe

"*Historic Role of Working Class*

"What lies behind this sort of “thinking” is not only a refusal to take a
serious look at history; it’s also a failure to consider the working class
as a potential subject of history; it sees the most powerful capitalist
country in the world – US capitalism – as having unlimited power to
manipulate and control everything. It refuses to see that there are not
only laws of motion of the capitalist economy; there are also laws of
motion of political development.

"If foreign policy is just an extension of domestic policy, then the
reverse is true also, and this is the problem. Much of the same left that
doesn’t see international struggles in clear class terms also doesn’t see
the struggle here like that. The same light-minded, ahistorical approach,
the same refusal to look beneath the surface, the same failure to see the
*class *forces at work apply at home too.

Hopefully, this will change as a more open class struggle opens up in the
US."

See more: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2017/03/14/confusion-on-the-left/

-- 
"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."
Asata Shakur
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com and //
www.facebook.com/WorkersIntlNetwork?ref=stream
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[Marxism] Geopolitical horse manure

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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World Socialist Website, 25 January 2017
Trump threats on South China Sea heighten risk of nuclear war

Just days after taking office, the Trump administration has set course 
for a conflict with China over the South China Sea that threatens 
military clashes and war.


---

NY Times, Mar. 14 2017
Kushners, Trump In-Laws, Near $400 Million Deal with Chinese Firm
By CHARLES V. BAGLI and MICHAEL FORSYTHE


666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, whose owner, the Kushner Companies, is 
negotiating a $400 million sale of its stake to the Chinese company 
Anbang Insurance Group. Credit Pablo Enriquez for The New York Times
A New York real estate company owned by the family of President Donald 
J. Trump’s son-in-law is negotiating to sell a $400 million stake in its 
Fifth Avenue flagship skyscraper to a Chinese insurance company with 
ties to leading families of the Communist Party.


The Chinese company, Anbang Insurance Group, would pay to get a 
high-profile piece of Manhattan real estate, and would commit to 
spending billions more to completely transform the 60-year-old tower 
into a chic condominium and retail citadel.


If signed, the deal would mark the financial marriage of two politically 
powerful families in the world’s two biggest economies, but it also 
presents the possibility of glaring conflicts of interest. The Kushner 
family, owners of the tower, would reap a large financial windfall 
courtesy of a Chinese company, even as Jared Kushner, a senior adviser 
to Mr. Trump as well as his son-in-law, helps oversee American foreign 
policy.


(snip)
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Re: [Marxism] Indigenous Leaders Denounce Ecuadorian Government over Mining Conflicts

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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I've been out of the loop on Ecuador but I do know one thing. The Shuar are
not a group you wanna fuck with. Nothing good will come of this. Curious to
see if the Chinacos will mobilize in the cities if called upon by CONFENIAE.

Greg
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[Marxism] Indigenous Leaders Denounce Ecuadorian Government over Mining Conflicts

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39833-indigenous-leaders-denounce-ecuadorian-government-over-mining-conflicts
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[Marxism] A Song: “Men of England”

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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A Song: “Men of England”
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?

The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.

Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap:
Find wealth—let no imposter heap:
Weave robes—let not the idle wear:
Forge arms—in your defence to bear.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells—
In hall ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

With plough and spade and hoe and loom
Trace your grave and build your tomb
And weave your winding-sheet—till fair
England be your Sepulchre.
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Decline and Fall - GeorgeScialabba.Net

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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You can get much the same proportions surveying college students (ie. high
school graduates with some education beyond high school).

That's why I stopped doing it twenty-five years ago.  :-)

ML
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[Marxism] Fwd: Decline and Fall - GeorgeScialabba.Net

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Here is a sample of factlets from surveys and studies conducted in the 
past twenty years. Seventy percent of Americans believe in the existence 
of angels. Fifty percent believe that the earth has been visited by 
UFOs; in another poll, seventy percent believed that the US government 
is covering up the presence of space aliens on earth. Forty percent did 
not know whom the US fought in World War II. Forty percent could not 
locate Japan on a world map. Fifteen percent could not locate the United 
States on a world map. Sixty percent of Americans have not read a book 
since leaving school. Only six percent now read even one book a year. 
According to a very familiar statistic that nonetheless cannot be 
repeated too often, the average American's day includes six minutes 
playing sports, five minutes reading books, one minute making music, 
thirty seconds attending a play or concert, twenty-five seconds making 
or viewing art, and four hours watching television.


Among high-school seniors surveyed in the late 1990s, fifty percent had 
not heard of the Cold War. Sixty percent could not say how the United 
States came into existence. Fifty percent did not know in which century 
the Civil War occurred. Sixty percent could name each of the Three 
Stooges but not the three branches of the US government. Sixty percent 
could not comprehend an editorial in a national or local newspaper.


full: http://georgescialabba.net/mtgs/2012/05/decline-and-fall.html
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[Marxism] Fwd: The Right’s Model Nation | Jacobin

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Mandelista Alex de Jong discusses Dutch elections.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/netherlands-dutch-elections-pvv-geert-wilders-sp-greens-islamophobia/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Tickling Giants | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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In March 2011, a heart surgeon named Bassem Youssef living in Cairo was 
inspired to produce Youtube videos in which he provided satirical 
commentary on the Mubarak dictatorship, which rapidly grew viral—so much 
so that he landed a weekly TV show titled “The Show” that enjoyed the 
same kind of popularity. He had an audience of 30 million people, while 
Jon Stewart’s show, which Youssef openly credits as his inspiration, 
never reached more than 2 million.


His meteoric rise and his demise under General al-Sisi’s dictatorship 
are documented in a film titled “Tickling Giants” that opens today at 
the IFC in NY and a number of other cities a week later (check 
http://ticklinggiants.com/ for venues.) It is directed by Sara Taksler, 
a senior producer for “The Jon Stewart Show” who decided to make a 
documentary about Youssef after he made a guest appearance there in June 
2012.


When you see excerpts from Youssef’s show, the influence of Jon Stewart 
is unmistakable. From the body language of the host, his grimaces, to 
the mocking of the high and mighty, you are reminded that comedy is 
universal.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2017/03/14/tickling-giants/
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of cons ciousness | Aeon Essays

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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More context to reinforce Jim's correct points:

Hessen stressed the impact of English military developments on Newton,
specifically the need of the military for a science and math which could
solve such problems as weapon trajectories. (This point was later taken up
by Robert K. Merton, who knew of the conference and "borrowed" Hessen's
theme.)

Naturally the bourgeoisie couldn't give a flying fuck what Newton or his
colleagues believed in their personal time, as long as they kept churning
out extremely useful theoretical tools for the above needs, as well as for
corresponding civilian applications.

Meanwhile today we have something of a reverse result of the connection
between scientists' personal beliefs and their scientific theories. Richard
Dawkins' reactionary obsession with the micro/genetic level "explanation"
of biological evolution (which Niles Eldredge has effectively demolished
for denying events at species and above levels), fits perfectly with his
equally-mechanical and narrow social beliefs, i.e. his perversion of
atheism, transforming it from a liberating philosophy into a racist,
Islamophobic mania.
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of cons ciousness | Aeon Essays

[Jim Farmelant via Marxism]

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  I tend to approach discussions of the philosophical implications of quantum 
mechanics with a degree of caution for reasons that should be apparent in one 
my old posts, which can be found below. Jim 
Farmelanthttp://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelanthttp://www.foxymath.com 
Learn or Review Basic Math--  
Probably at least a few people here have heard of Boris Hessen,- the Soviet 
physicist and historian and philosopher of science, whose groundbreaking paper, 
"The Social and Economic Roots of Newtons Principia"
(https://rtraba.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/v1_hessen.pdf) would have a 
profound impact on the emergence of the history of science as a distinct 
discipline in the West, following that paper's delivery by Hessen at the Second 
International Congress of the History of Science in London, as part of a 
delegation of Soviet scholars and scientists that included Nikolai Bukharin. 
While many people were influenced by Hessen's paper, it made a strong impact on 
at least several young British scientists, including J.D. Bernal, J.B.S. 
Haldane, Lancelot, Hogben, and Joseph Needham,all of whom achieved eminence in 
their respective scientific specialties while also becoming very influential 
writers concerning the history and social functions of science, from a Marxist 
perspective. A while back, I read Loren R. Graham's book, *Science in Russia 
and the Soviet Union: A Short History*. He has a discussion of Hessen and his 
groundbreaking paper on Newton. What is interesting about Graham's discussion of
  Hessen, is that he sees Hessen's work on Newton as having been motivated in 
large degree by his concern with defending modern physics - Einstein's theory 
of relativity and quantum mechanics, as developed by de Broglie, Heisenberg, 
Schroedinger, and Bohr, from the sustained ideological attacks that these 
theories were enduring in the Soviet Union at that time. Both relativity and 
quantum mechanics were being denounced as "idealist" and "bourgeois." 
Furthermore, the writings of Einstein, Heisenberg, and Bohr along with such 
people as James Jeans and Arthur Eddington were widely cited by Soviet 
ideologists in support of their attacks on these two theories as being 
idealist, since some of these scientists, especially Eddington were in fact 
quite insistent that the new physics lent support to an idealist metaphysical 
worldview. In addition the fact that Einstein explicitly acknowledged drawing 
upon the ideas of Ernst Mach was cited against relativity, since Lenin after 
all, had in his b
 ook, *Materialism and Empirio-Criticism*, ma!
 de the philosophies of Mach and Avernarius the chief targets of criticism. 
Most of the Soviet opponents of modern physics championed Newtonian physics as 
the physics that was most consistent with Marxism and dialectical materialism. 
Graham reads Hessen as attempting to undercut Soviet criticism of modern 
physics by attempting to show that Newtonian physics was vulnerable to the same 
sorts of criticism. Newton himself was the proponent of a highly theological 
view of the universe. He saw his science as lending support to theism and 
Christianity. Furthermore, Newton's work was very much tied to the class 
interests of the rising English bourgeoisie. Yet, despite all this, his science 
was of genuine and permanent value. Graham takes Hessen as attempting to 
present a similar case on behalf of relativity and quantum mechanics. Though 
both theories could and were often given idealist metaphysical interpretations, 
such interpretations were not the only ones possible. Both theories could als
 o be given materialist philosophical interpretations too, just as was the case 
with Newtonian physics. Newton himself and many of his disciples were quite 
pious and they presented theological interpretations of their science, but 
materialist interpretations of Newtonian physics were possible and those indeed 
were the ones that were accepted in the Soviet Union. But if Newtonian physics 
could now interpreted in materialist terms, despite the intention of its 
founders who were decidedly not materialists, then the same sort of thing could 
happen to relativity and quantum mechanics. The founders of these theories 
might not have been materialists, but there was nothing to prevent us from 
giving these theories materialist interpretations. Now, I find this view of 
scientific theories and the philosophical interpretations to which they may be 
given quite similar to the view that the logical empiricist Philipp Frank gave 
in his writings such as *Modern Science and Its Philosophy*, and *Philo
 sophy of 

[Marxism] More fallout from travel ban

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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Girl Guides of Canada cancelling trips to the U.S., citing travel concerns
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/toronto/girl-guides-of-canada-cancelling-trips-to-the-u-s-citing-travel-concerns-1.4022985

Sarah Kiriliuk, national manager of marketing and communications for the Girl 
Guides of Canada, said the decision is a precautionary move. 
"We have lots of girls across the country that travel every year overseas and 
to the U.S.," she told CBC News Network. 
"We really wanted to make sure that no girl gets left behind."
She said that trips are planned months in advance and it would be disappointing 
if anyone got to the border and was turned away. 
"We wanted to make sure there was zero risk," she said. 


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[Marxism] Peter Byrne on Gomorrah

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Peter Byrne is an old friend and co-contributor to Swans who has lived 
in Italy for years. He was commenting on my review of "Toxic Circle", a 
film being shown as part of Socially Relevant 2017 that examines toxic 
dumping in the Campania region of southern Italy. 
(https://louisproyect.org/2017/03/10/socially-relevant-film-festival-2017)


---

Roberto Saviano talked about illegal waste dumping in his book 
‘Gomorrah’ of 2006. He said, “The south of Italy is the end of the line 
for the dregs of production, useless leftovers, and toxic waste”. He 
calculated that “this heap of unregulated and unreported waste would be 
the highest mountain on earth,” 20,000 feet higher than Everest. He 
analyzed what is a highly efficient business. Middlemen offer 
industries, mainly in North Italy, a better price to dispose of waste 
than available elsewhere. Costs on moving the material are cut to the 
bone by using random, often immigrant workers. Sites are got cheaply by 
evading tax or any regulations. ‘Gomorrah’ was passionate investigative 
reporting. Some readers were disappointed in the movie Matteo Garrone 
made in 2008. They expected a documentary full of numbers and facts and 
got an action movie. But it did get the deadly social background 
absolutely right and revealed a society where everyone, willing or not, 
was involved in organized crime.


The movie tells five stories of people from the book’s world. One of 
these perfectly illustrates how illegal waste disposal works. The 
remarkable Neapolitan actor Toni Servillo is Franco, a waste management 
middleman, who is breaking in a young assistant, Roberto, a typical 
educated southerner without a job. Franco has procured by payoffs a huge 
quarry as a dump for toxic waste. He takes wide-eyed Roberto north and 
reaches an agreement with an industrialist who salivates over the low 
price quoted. When the toxic drums arrive at the quarry one splits and 
spills on a truck driver. Franco hustles him out of the way like 
something disposable, refusing to call an ambulance. The other drivers, 
all non-Italian and black, get the wind up and pull out of the job. 
Franco, always the seasoned operator, is not at a loss. He rounds up 
ten-and-eleven-year olds from the nearest town to drive the trucks 
around the quarry. For those who can’t reach the steering wheels, he 
furnishes cushions to sit on. The drums are buried. Roberto is learning.


In the next operation Franco buys permission from a dying landowner, 
deep in debt, to dump on his land. While Franco is busy soft-soaping the 
future widow in the sick room, Robert walks around outside. He notices 
the sad shape of vegetation in what has always been thought of as the 
garden of Europe. He talks to an old woman hoeing her cabbage patch. 
Franco appears, his deal closed, and the two men get ready to drive 
away. But first the old woman insists they accept a gift of peaches from 
her tree. A couple of miles down the road Franco stops the car and tells 
Roberto to throw out the peaches. Roberto, still learning, asks why. 
Franco says because everything down here is contaminated.


The impact of all this is heightened by Franco speaking in the dialect 
of the area he’s polluting, just as he made use of traditional 
family-value sentiment in hoodwinking the farmer. Robert ditches the 
peaches but won’t return to the car, or to the job. Franco taunts him. 
He needn’t feel superior. If they don’t dump the chromium and asbestos, 
someone else will. And, besides, without his middle-manning, Italy 
wouldn’t have met European Union requirements for cleaning up the North. 
That’s precisely the rub. Southern Italians are poisoning themselves. 
‘Gomorrah’ is a powerful movie pretty much without hope. It would be 
false if it were not. Roberto’s decency isn’t quite in tune. It’s more 
like citing one of the South’s many saints as an example to sinners.

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Trump and Russia: the Shortest Reset Ever

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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What was most interesting (and disheartening) was the extent to which the
media worked so fervently to promote the idea of a reset and, then, the
interpretation that Trump's reading from the script represented a reset.

The media made Trump, loves Trump for what he does for their ratings, and
will do everything to both keep him controversial and to keep him in
place.  One big, sick, sad reality show.

ML
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Re: [Marxism] Marx on Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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I should add that Marx's views reflect the particular ire of the German
radicals over Lincoln's removal of John C. Fremont after the latter
attempted to use his military authority to end slavery in Missouri.  That
decision, Lincoln argued, could not be left to local commanders, and would
alienate Unionist slaveholders in the border states. This issue continued
to be fought out right through to the end of the war, because Lincoln did
not include slave territory in Federal hands to be part of the Emancipation
Proclamation . . . though neither the slaves nor the Unionists in such
places paid this technicality much attention.

A journalistic piece, the essay makes several errors of judgment based on
accounts in the foreign press, including the exaggerated version of
Confederate successes in the fall of 1862.  Most importantly, though, it
errs in denying that Lincoln was the product of a popular revolution, a
position directly refuted in the letter the IWA sent Lincoln in 1864 . . .
or the Marxist assessment of the conflict as a Second American
Revolution--warts and all . . . a 'bourgeois revolution," to be sure.

ML
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Re: [Marxism] Marx on Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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It's from Comments on North American Events in October 1862.
http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/1862/10/12.htm


On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 1:54 AM, Ralph Johansen via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> Citation to Collected Works is at bottom of message. Unfortunately, MECW
> are not online, this version still under copyright by International
> Publishers or Lawrence and Wishart afaik.
>
>
> On 3/13/2017 10:24 PM, Thomas wrote:
>
>> Where can one find the article quoted?  MEC appear to be out of action.
>>
>> T
>>
>>
>> -Original Message-
>>
>>> From: Ralph Johansen via Marxism 
>>> Sent: Mar 14, 2017 12:14 AM
>>> To: Thomas F Barton 
>>> Subject: [Marxism] Marx on Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation
>>>
>>> I just stumbled on this while looking for something else:
>>>
>>> Lincoln is a /sui generis/ figure in the annals of history. He has no
>>> initiative, no idealistic impetus, no cothurnis, no historical
>>> trappings. He gives his most important actions always the most
>>> commonplace form. Other people claim to be "fighting for an idea," even
>>> when it is for them a matter of square feet of land. Lincoln, even when
>>> he is motivated by an idea, talks about "square feet." He sings the
>>> bravura aria of his part hesitatively, reluctantly and unwillingly, as
>>> though apologizing for being compelled by circumstances to "act the
>>> lion." The most redoubtable decrees - which will always remain
>>> remarkable historical documents - flung by him at the enemy will look
>>> like, and are intended to look like, routine summonses sent by a lawyer
>>> to the lawyer of the opposing party, legal chicaneries, involved,
>>> hide-bound /actiones juris/. His latest proclamation, which is drafted
>>> in the same style, the manifesto abolishing slavery, is the most
>>> important document in American history since the establishment of the
>>> Union, tantamount to the tearing up of the old American Constitution.
>>>
>>> Nothing is simpler than to show that Lincoln's principal political
>>> actions contain much that is aesthetically repulsive, logically
>>> inadequate, farcical in form and politically contradictory. as is done
>>> by the English Pindar of slaves, /The Times/, /The Saturday Review/
>>> and/tutti quanti/. But Lincoln's place in the history of the United
>>> States and of mankind will, nevertheless, be next to that of Washington!
>>> Nowadays, when the insignificant struts about melodramatically on this
>>> side of the Atlantic, is it of no significance at all that the
>>> significant is clothed in everyday dress in the new world?
>>>
>>> Lincoln is not the product of a popular revolution. This plebeian, who
>>> worked his way up from stone-breaker to Senator in Illinois, without
>>> intellectual brilliance, without a particularly outstanding character,
>>> without exceptional importance - an average person of good will, was
>>> placed at the top by the interplay of the forces of universal suffrage
>>> unaware of the great issues at stake. The new world has never achieved a
>>> greater triumph than by this demonstration that, given its political and
>>> social organization, ordinary people of good will can accomplish feats
>>> which only heroes could accomplish in the old world!
>>>
>>> Hegel once observed that comedy is in fact superior to tragedy and
>>> humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning. Although
>>> Lincoln does not possess the grandiloquence of historical action, as an
>>> average man of the people he has its humour. When does he issue the
>>> proclamation declaring that from January 1, 1863, slavery in the
>>> Confederacy shall be abolished? At the very moment when the Confederacy
>>> as an independent state decided on "peace negotiations" at its Richmond
>>> Congress. At the very moment when the slave-owners of the border states
>>> believed that the invasion of Kentucky by the armies of the South had
>>> made the "peculiar institution" just as safe as was their domination
>>> over their compatriot, President Abraham Lincoln in Washington.
>>>
>>> - MECW 19:250
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
> ---
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> 

[Marxism] [UCE] Fwd: Marx's train - bookforum.com / omnivore

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Multiple links.

http://www.bookforum.com/blog/17521
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[Marxism] Fwd: Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of consciousness | Aeon Essays

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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It is easy to see how we got here. Materialism is an attractive 
philosophy – at least, it was before quantum mechanics altered our 
thinking about matter. ‘I refute it thus,’ said the 18th-century writer 
Samuel Johnson kicking a large rock as refutation to arguments against 
materialism he’d just endured. Johnson’s stony drop-kick is the essence 
of a hard-headed (and broken-footed) materialist vision of the world. It 
provides an account of exactly what the world is made of: bits of stuff 
called matter. And since matter has properties that are independent and 
external to anything having to do with us, we can use that stuff to 
build a fully objective account of a fully objective world. This 
ball-and-stick vision of reality seems to inspire much of materialism’s 
public confidence about cracking the mystery of the human mind.


Today, though, it is hard to reconcile that confidence with the multiple 
interpretations of quantum mechanics. Newtonian mechanics might be fine 
for explaining the activity of the brain. It can handle things such as 
blood flow through capillaries and chemical diffusion across synapses, 
but the ground of materialism becomes far more shaky when we attempt to 
grapple with the more profound mystery of the mind, meaning the 
weirdness of being an experiencing subject. In this domain, there is no 
avoiding the scientific and philosophical complications that come with 
quantum mechanics.


full: 
https://aeon.co/essays/materialism-alone-cannot-explain-the-riddle-of-consciousness

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[Marxism] Fwd: Modi rules, Harvard doesn’t | Michael Roberts Blog

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The Modi government remains optimistic that the Indian economy is going 
to pick up even faster this year and onwards, based on Modinomics, which 
boil down to privatisation, cuts in food and fuel subsidies and a new 
sales tax, a tax that is the most regressive way to get revenue as it 
hits the poor the most.  The aim here, as it always is with neoliberal 
economic policy, is to raise the rate of exploitation of labour so that 
the profitability of capital is boosted and thus provide an incentive to 
invest, something Indian capital is refusing to do right now.  Now that 
Modi has triumphed and look set to win the next general election in 
2019, India’s big business and foreign investors will expect Modinomics 
to be accelerated.


This can only increase inequality.  Already, India is one of the most 
unequal societies in the world.  The richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% 
of the country’s wealth, according to the latest data on global wealth 
from Credit Suisse Group.  The share of the top 1% is up from 53% last 
year. In the last two years, the share of the top 1% has increased at a 
cracking pace, from 49% in 2014 to 58.4% in 2016. The richest 10% of 
Indians have increased their share of the pie from 68.8% in 2010 to 
80.7% by 2016.  In sharp contrast, the bottom half of the Indian people 
own a mere 2.1% of the country’s wealth.


full: 
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/modi-rules-harvard-doesnt/

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[Marxism] Fwd: Notes on the Global Condition: Surrealism in Interwar Egypt & Trotskyist Cultural Politics – ADAM TOOZE

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.adamtooze.com/2017/03/14/notes-global-condition-surrealism-interwar-egypt-trotskyist-cultural-politics/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Is there a pro-Putin clique in the White House? | SocialistWorker.org

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Another useful analysis.

https://socialistworker.org/2017/03/14/a-pro-putin-clique-in-the-trump-white-house
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[Marxism] Fwd: Trump and Russia: the Shortest Reset Ever

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The only article you need to read to penetrate the New Cold War hysteria.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/14/trump-and-russia-the-shortest-reset-ever/
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