[Marxism] “Really living life” vs the Russian Revolution: Watching Doctor Zhivago fifty years on
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://convincingreasons.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/really-living-life-vs-the-russian-revolution-watching-doctor-zhivago-fifty-years-on/ This appeal to the petty-bourgeoisie to abandon the Russian revolution is also the key to why the Soviet bureaucracy saw it as a mortal threat. The Soviet bureaucracy was itself a petty-bourgeois layer, but one with a particular defining characteristic: it depended for its entire existence on identifying itself with the October revolution. An appeal to this petty-bourgeoisie to abandon the revolution was therefore a dagger aimed at its heart _ 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] Podemos inicia su campa�a electoral con una marcha en Madrid
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. * Podemos inicia su campaña electoral con una marcha en Madrid (El País) La dirección de Podemos ha convertido este sábado la llamada marcha del cambio, una movilización abierta a todos y convocada en Madrid para escenificar la ruptura con la vieja política, en el arranque de su campaña electoral. Pablo Iglesias y su núcleo de confianza han intentado afianzar sus principales mensajes y estrategia ante decenas de miles de personas congregadas en la Puerta del Sol, después de un recorrido de menos de un kilómetro entre Cibeles y la plaza que simboliza los entusiasmos del 15-M. Según los cálculos de este diario, a la una de la tarde había unos 153.000 manifestantes 100.000 para la policía y 300.000 según la estimación de los organizadores. más aquí: http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2015/01/31/actualidad/1422673981_619047.html -- Jim Moody (j...@redunity.org) on 01/02/2015 _ 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] The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times Sunday Book Review, Feb. 1 2015 ‘Gateway to Freedom,’ by Eric Foner By KEVIN BAKER GATEWAY TO FREEDOM The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad By Eric Foner Illustrated. 301 pp. W. W. Norton Company. $26.95. Eric Foner Revisits Myths of the Underground RailroadJAN. 14, 2015 Jacobs had fled from Edenton, N.C., to get away from the attentions of the father of a little girl who “owned” her. These had persisted even after she had two children by another white man (and a member of Congress), so she “hid in a small crawl space above her free grandmother’s kitchen in the town” for seven years, as Eric Foner informs us in his illuminating new history, “Gateway to Freedom.” Eventually, passage north was secured on a ship with a “friendly captain,” and Jacobs settled in New York City. But as an escaped slave, she was never really secure anywhere in the United States, especially after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, part of the Compromise of 1850. When, after 10 years of freedom, she learned that her owner “was making preparations to have me caught,” she fled again, to Boston, where abolitionist feeling was higher than in New York, which had long been debased by bigotry and the dollar into more pro-Southern sympathies. It may seem difficult to believe that slave owners and hired slave catchers prowled the streets of Manhattan before the Civil War, openly carrying whips, pistols and manacles in order to reclaim their “property,” but such was the case. They “entered black churches during Sabbath services looking for runaways, and broke into blacks’ homes and carried them off without legal proceeding,” Foner tells us. Fugitive slaves in the city, wrote the Southern-born abolitionist Sarah Grimké, were “hunted like a partridge on the mountain.” Unsurprisingly, the men who would make their living in this way were not terribly scrupulous about just which black face they decided to seize upon. Once the slave trade from Africa was banned in 1808, and as slavery in the North was slowly wound down, “an epidemic of kidnapping of free blacks, especially children,” occurred all over the Northeast. After the new federal statute of 1850 was passed, Foner writes, “the abolitionist William P. Powell departed for England with his wife and seven children, although no member of the family had ever been a slave.” The 1850 law — supported by some of the most illustrious figures in congressional history, and hailed as vital for preserving the Union — was particularly odious. It rendered null and void the longstanding state “personal liberty” laws that had been used to declare runaway slaves free in the past, and provided “severe civil and criminal penalties for anyone who harbored fugitive slaves or interfered with their capture.” Special commissioners were given the final say on all fugitives, along with a financial incentive — $10 a head! — to decide in favor of the slave catchers. Federal marshals could deputize anyone they wished or “call on the assistance of local officials and even bystanders” to help in apprehending suspected runaways. In other words, the new law would corrupt all citizens into aiding and abetting America’s great moral crime. But as Foner explains, fugitive slave laws were part of the warp and woof of the country from the very beginning, dating back to the 17th century in colonial New York. The Northwest Ordinance of July 1787 held that slaves “may be lawfully reclaimed” from free states and territories, and soon after, a fugitive slave clause — Article IV, Section 2 — was woven into the Constitution at the insistence of the Southern delegates, leading South Carolina’s Charles C. Pinckney to boast, “We have obtained a right to recover our slaves in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before.” Resistance to this sprang up in societies for manumission, and sometimes for the “colonization” of freed slaves back to Africa. But as it became clear that slavery was not going to die the natural death that had been devoutly wished for, “vigilance” and antislavery committees were set up. They came to form the Underground Railroad, a loose network of black and white individuals intent on actively helping slaves gain freedom (only in Canada was it truly secure) and evade recapture. Foner, who as one of our leading historians has written or edited 24 books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery,” does a superb job of focusing the story of the Underground Railroad on a human level. He makes vivid the incredible risks and hardships so
[Marxism] Fwd: Yanis Varoufakis Newsnight interview - YouTube
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=85114404x-yt-ts=1422579428v=BiIO4YciewU#t=463 _ 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] ‘Guantánamo Diary,’ by Mohamedou Ould Slahi
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times Sunday Book Review, Feb. 1 2015 ‘Guantánamo Diary,’ by Mohamedou Ould Slahi By MARK DANNER GUANTÁNAMO DIARY By Mohamedou Ould Slahi Edited by Larry Siems 379 pp. Little, Brown Company. $29. On or about Sept. 11, 2001, American character changed. What Americans had proudly flaunted as “our highest values” were now judged to be luxuries that in a new time of peril the country could ill afford. Justice, and its cardinal principle of innocent until proven guilty, became a risk, its indulgence a weakness. Asked recently about an innocent man who had been tortured to death in an American “black site” in Afghanistan, former Vice President Dick Cheney did not hesitate. “I’m more concerned,” he said, “with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent.” In this new era in which all would be sacrificed to protect the country, torture and even murder of the innocent must be counted simply “collateral damage.” “Guantánamo Diary” is the most profound account yet written of what it is like to be that collateral damage. One fall day 13 years ago Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a 30-year-old electrical engineer and telecommunications specialist, received a visit at his house in Noakchott, Mauritania, from two officers summoning him to come answer questions at the country’s intelligence ministry. “Take your car,” one of the men told him, as Slahi stood in front of his house with his mother and his aunt. “We hope you can come back today.” Listening to these words, Slahi’s mother fixed her eyes on her son. “It is the taste of helplessness,” he writes, “when you see your beloved fading away like a dream and you cannot help him. . . . I would watch both my mom and my aunt praying in my rearview mirror until we took the first turn and I saw my beloved ones disappear.” That was Nov. 20, 2001. Slahi’s mother has since died. Her son has never returned. He had begun, that fall day two months after 9/11, what he calls his “endless world tour,” courtesy of the various American national security bureaucracies, traveling, after a week of interrogation in Mauritania, via “extraordinary rendition” to a black site in Jordan, where he was interrogated, sometimes brutally, for eight months; thence he is flown, blindfolded, shackled and diapered, to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, for two weeks of interrogation; and finally, to Guantánamo, where he suffered months of strictest isolation, weeks of sleep deprivation, extremes of temperature and sound, and other elaborate tortures set out in a “special plan” approved personally by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — and where he remains to this day. He composed these memoirs in his isolation cell in the summer of 2005, and a six-year legal battle has finally brought them to us. Written in the colloquial if limited English he picked up during his captivity, its pages disfigured with thousands of pitch-black “redactions” courtesy of the American intelligence agents who play such major parts, the work is a kind of dark masterpiece, a sometimes unbearable epic of pain, anguish and bitter humor that the Dostoyevsky of “The House of the Dead” would have recognized and embraced. At its root is a maddening ambiguity born of a system governed not by any recognizable rules of evidence or due process but by suspicion, paranoia and violence. Blindfolded, earmuffed and shackled, Slahi is rendered to a secret prison in Jordan (though he is supposed to have no idea where on the globe he is) and interviewed on arrival by two dim clerks straight out of a Beckett play: “ ‘What have you done?’ “ ‘I’ve done nothing!’ “Both burst out in laughter. ‘Oh, very convenient! You have done nothing, but you are here!’ I thought, What crime should I say in order to satisfy them?” What crime indeed? If guilt is assumed, how to prove innocence? And as with Kafka’s Joseph K., the third great literary spirit looming over these pages, the signs of Slahi’s guilt are everywhere: He fought in Afghanistan in the early 1990s with Al Qaeda (then indirectly supported by the United States); his distant cousin and sometime brother-in-law became a key bin Laden spiritual adviser; he had studied in Germany, like the 9/11 conspirators; had prayed at the same Montreal mosque as the “millennium” plotter; had known the 9/11 planner Ramzi bin al-Shibh. These signs and others meant he fit the profile, Slahi says, of “a high-level, smart-beyond-belief terrorist.” That will be the American interrogators’ premise, and nothing the Mauritanians and Jordanians will tell them, let alone what Slahi will say in the months of
[Marxism] Reies Tijerina, 88, Dies; Led Chicano Property Rights Movement
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Feb. 1 2015 Reies Tijerina, 88, Dies; Led Chicano Property Rights Movement By SAM ROBERTS In the year of sixty-seven June fifth was the day, There was a revolution Over there by Tierra Amarilla. The “revolution” was a bungled plot, with Keystone Kops overtones, in which rebels seized an isolated courthouse in northern New Mexico on June 5, 1967, and it lasted only 90 minutes. But it would be immortalized in ballads (as in “Corrido de Rio Arriba”), elevate a former itinerant evangelist into a quixotic national prophet and propel a radical Chicano property rights movement into America’s consciousness. The onetime evangelist, Reies Tijerina, who died on Jan. 19 at 88, never had the tangible success of Cesar Chavez and his nonviolent campaign to improve the lot of migrant workers. He never achieved his goal of reclaiming — for Mexicans, Indians and descendants of the original Spanish settlers — the millions of acres that changed hands when northern Mexico became the American Southwest in the mid-19th century. And his legacy was later marred by apocalyptic and anti-Semitic undercurrents. Nonetheless, in the view of Lorena Oropeza, a history professor at the University of California, Davis, and author of a coming book about Mr. Tijerina, “Probably no person did more to shift our understanding of the history of the American West from a celebratory tale of ‘manifest destiny’ to the now-prevailing notion of a ‘legacy of conquest’ than did Tijerina.” “One way to think of Tijerina,” she added, “is that he led an anticolonial movement within the continental United States. With only a few years of elementary education, and then time spent in Bible college, he developed a devastating critique of the American empire at the height of the Cold War. “To young people involved in the Chicano movement, moreover, he gave them not only a militant alternative to Cesar Chavez, but also an understanding of the long history of Spanish-speaking people in the American Southwest,” Professor Oropeza said. Mr. Tijerina, who died in a hospital in El Paso, had diabetes and heart problems, said Estela Reyes-Lopez, a family spokeswoman, who confirmed the death. Reies Lopez Tijerina (pronounced tee-heh-REE-na), the son of cotton-picking sharecroppers, was born on Sept. 21, 1926, in Fall City, Tex. After he served as a Pentecostal pastor, he and more than a dozen families who constituted his followers bought 160 acres in Arizona in 1956 and founded Valley of Peace, a utopian commune. Often skirmishing with neighbors, the group did not live up to its name. Mr. Tijerina, inspired by what he said was a heavenly vision, later uprooted his followers and led them to New Mexico, where by the early 1960s they had formed the Alianza Federal de los Pueblos Libres, or alliance of free city-states. Members of what he called his republic staged symbolic land seizures and citizen’s arrests and held mock trials of forest rangers. (Much of the land they claimed was in national forests.) There were arrests, prosecutions and prison terms. The raid on the Rio Arriba County Courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, the county seat, was their most dramatic action. Mr. Tijerina and about 20 armed followers sought to liberate 11 Alianza members who they believed were being held there. The 11 had been charged with threatening to seize the 600,000-acre Tierra Amarilla land grant and to make a citizen’s arrest of the district attorney. But neither the prisoners nor the prosecutors were at the courthouse. In the raid, a state police officer and a jailer were wounded. (The jailer was later beaten to death just before he was to testify that he had been shot by Mr. Tijerina; that crime was never solved.) Pursued by tanks and helicopters in a National Guard manhunt, the rebels fled for the hills with two hostages. The getaway car got stuck in mud, and the kidnapped men were eventually recovered and most of the suspects captured. Mr. Tijerina successfully defended himself at one trial but was tried a second time and convicted of charges stemming from the raid. He served six months in a state penitentiary. He also spent more than two years in federal prisons on charges arising from other protests. Nicknamed King Tiger, Mr. Tijerina was likened to other Chicano activists like Corky Gonzales of Colorado and José Angel Gutiérrez of Texas. But his views were more idiosyncratic. He prophesied an apocalyptic future linked to American policy in the Middle East. He also “turned many previous supporters away as he moved toward a singularly novel, but unmistakable, anti-Semitism,” Rudy
[Marxism] 'Stalinist' = ?
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I think that the use of this term muddies rather than advances an analysis. 'Stalinist' clearly has a negative meaning, but it lacks any specificity. Stalin, and the CPs in or oriented to the Soviet bloc, had many bad characteristics; current CPs whose roots can be traced to the Soviet era also have bad characteristics. But which of these bad characteristics is being referenced? Thanks for the list. Best - Mike _ 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] Manichean Anti-Manicheaism
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 submit that Louis's essay, “Against Manichaeism” is itself an example of the Manichaeism of go-with-the- flow. On the one side is arrayed the great global army of all those in combat against (in Theodore Roosevelt’s phrase) the “malefactors of great wealth”, and on the other small clots of sectarian purists, i.e. genuine sectarians and all those who, unlike Proyect, refuse to trade in their critical faculties for a seat in the left-reformist cheering section. Take Syriza. Louis assures us that its victory will “swell the army” of all those fighting injustice around the world, and justifies its coalition with ANEL on the grounds that it is a minor compromise in the service of their larger goal of “beating back” austerity . Now granted that the party’s electoral victory is acting as a major fillip to Podemos and other anti-austerity forces throughout Europe and beyond. But has Proyect ever stopped genuflecting before Tsipras-Veroufakis long enough to consider the prospect that Syriza may just fail? What effect would that have on anti-austerity forces? Let us take stock. I don’t claim to know how things will turn out, but if I were a pro-austerity Eurocrat or banker, I might calculate as follows: “We have within our power an enormous capacity to make the Greek economy scream even louder than it already is, and to underwrite anti-Syriza forces. Greece is a small country whose default, even exit from the Eurozone, is something we can withstand. It therefore makes more sense to tighten the screws and make an example of Syriza now than pursue some genuine compromise that will only embolden Podemos and others. We can certainly offer Tsipras a few sops in return for his agreement to act as the human face of austerity. But, beyond that, what’s to be gained by compromise?” How could Syriza respond? Its base has indicated that it is fed up with austerity, but not fed up enough to leave the Eurozone, and Alexis Tsipras has put himself forward as the political conjurer who can fulfill this self-contradictory dual desideratum. But can he? What would be his options in the face of EU intransigence? Proyect never seems to ask himself these questions, let alone answer them. There may perhaps be a Russian card to play here, in light of the growing Russian-NATO falling out, and Tsipras seems not entirely unaware of this option. But it would also be difficult to imagine an effective counterthrust without strong measures against Greek and foreign capital, which would in turn require mass support and mobilization. But it seems to me that such a mobilization would demand, inter alia, a strong alliance between the Greek working class and the immigrant population—two major groups on the receiving end of austerity. Is such a potential alliance made more or less likely by the coalition with ANEL? Will the hundreds of thousands of immigrants now in detention centers, or under threat in their neighborhoods from fascist thugs, be inclined to regard this nod in the direction of anti-immigrant demagogues as a minor tactical expedient? Will this lash up enhance or retard the possibilities of a unified fight against Golden Dawn, which is likely to supply Greek capitalism with needed shock troops should the confrontation with the Eurocrats move from parliament to the streets? One pole of Proyect’s Manichean political universe obviously consists of non-dogmatic, with-it, up-to-date progressive-ecumenicists like himself, who seize every opportunity to burnish their anti-sectarian credentials with effusive praise for the left-reformist flavor of the month. At the opposite pole are the Socialist Equality Party, the Spartacists, etc., who reflexively denounce any left-tending popular movement for non-conformity to their preordained ‘revolutionary’ script. Joined by the latter at this pole—and virtually indistinguishable from them according to Louis—are all those in the least inclined to evaluate the slogans and promises of left-reformists in the light of past experience and present possibilities rather than simply enthusing. A Manichean universe, if ever there was! Jim Creegan _ 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] ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
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. * February 1, 2015, Issue 213 ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER Contact us or Subscribe to Newsletter at jac...@earthlink.net. Articles at http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/ 1. Photo of The Month 2. Have Obama and the Democratic Party Become Liberals? 3. The 1% Own Half of Global Wealth 4. Obama Mourns Death of Saudi Tyrant King 5. Castro: End Embargo, Return Guantánamo 6. AFL-CIO Steps Up Effort to Boost Low Wages 7. PSL: Greece: The Shift Left, Class Struggle And Communist Tactics 8. Islamic State: Weakened, But Not Defeated 9. Myths About Keystone Pipeline 10. Enslaved by Technology 11. Albany Rally Defends Public Education 12. Cold Winter Misery in Devastated Gaza 13. Help Wanted: Fast Food Worker $15 an Hour 14. Obama Seeks to Protect Alaska Wilderness 15. Your License Plate Tells All to Uncle Sam 16. China Aids Venezuela and Ecuador 17. Is This Country Crazy? http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/ _ 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] Bloody Sunday - 43rd anniversary
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The British Army's Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry on January 30, 1972 raised the stakes dramatically in the north of Ireland. Since you could now get shot dead for peaceful mass protest, it made more sense to many young people from the nationalist working class to join the IRA and engage in armed struggle with the state responsible for the killings. The stakes were also raised in the south of Ireland, as mass mobilisations there against the killings and the whole British presence in the north led to the burning of the British embassy in Dublin. Over the next few years, however, the Dublin government managed to get the initiative back. They were very much in control again by the time of the 1981 hunger strikes; now mass protests in Dublin would be batoned off the streets. A few years ago I wrote a piece trying to get to grips with what had happened, with how the southern state responded in 1972 and how they got back the initiative. Folks might be interested: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/the-burning-of-the-british-embassy-40-years-on/ Phil _ 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] LA summits of govt's, popular movements discuss unity, liberation
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro told a meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Costa Rica on January 28 that Latin America is living in a “new historic era” marked by unity and great opportunity. https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/58165 -- “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism “The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker _ 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] Manichean Anti-Manicheaism
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 2/1/15 3:48 PM, James Creegan via Marxism wrote: I have cataracts in both eyes and a macular pucker in the left. Your bullshit is trouble enough to read by virtue of its ultraleft setarianism this is just beyond my patience to wade through. I am afraid that I will lose my sight entirely after 100 words. You fucking have to learn how to skip a line between paragraphs to start with. You posted a thread from the Weakly Worker here the other day that was even worse than this in terms of readability. It truly reflects on your utter indifference to get people on your side--the art of politics, in other words--by neglecting the most important question: how to communicate. Take Syriza. Louis assures us that its victory will “swell the army” of all those fighting injustice around the world, and justifies its coalition with ANEL on the grounds that it is a minor compromise in the service of their larger goal of “beating back” austerity . Now granted that the party’s electoral victory is acting as a major fillip to Podemos and other anti-austerity forces throughout Europe and beyond. But has Proyect ever stopped genuflecting before Tsipras-Veroufakis long enough to consider the prospect that Syriza may just fail? What effect would that have on anti-austerity forces? Let us take stock. I don’t claim to know how things will turn out, but if I were a pro-austerity Eurocrat or banker, I might calculate as follows: “We have within our power an enormous capacity to make the Greek economy scream even louder than it already is, and to underwrite anti-Syriza forces. Greece is a small country whose default, even exit from the Eurozone, is something we can withstand. It therefore makes more sense to tighten the screws and make an example of Syriza now than pursue some genuine compromise that will only embolden Podemos and others. We can certainly offer Tsipras a few sops in return for his agreement to act as the human face of austerity. But, beyond that, what’s to be gained by compromise?” How could Syriza respond? Its base has indicated that it is fed up with austerity, but not fed up enough to leave the Eurozone, and Alexis Tsipras has put himself forward as the political conjurer who can fulfill this self-contradictory dual desideratum. But can he? What would be his options in the face of EU intransigence? Proyect never seems to ask himself these questions, let alone answer them. There may perhaps be a Russian card to play here, in light of the growing Russian-NATO falling out, and Tsipras seems not entirely unaware of this option. But it would also be difficult to imagine an effective counterthrust without strong measures against Greek and foreign capital, which would in turn require mass support and mobilization. But it seems to me that such a mobilization would demand, inter alia, a strong alliance between the Greek working class and the immigrant population—two major groups on the receiving end of austerity. Is such a potential alliance made more or less likely by the coalition with ANEL? Will the hundreds of thousands of immigrants now in detention centers, or under threat in their neighborhoods from fascist thugs, be inclined to regard this nod in the direction of anti-immigrant demagogues as a minor tactical expedient? Will this lash up enhance or retard the possibilities of a unified fight against Golden Dawn, which is likely to supply Greek capitalism with needed shock troops should the confrontation with the Eurocrats move from parliament to the streets? One pole of Proyect’s Manichean political universe obviously consists of non-dogmatic, with-it, up-to-date progressive-ecumenicists like himself, who seize every opportunity to burnish their anti-sectarian credentials with effusive praise for the left-reformist flavor of the month. At the opposite pole are the Socialist Equality Party, the Spartacists, etc., who reflexively denounce any left-tending popular movement for non-conformity to their preordained ‘revolutionary’ script. Joined by the latter at this pole—and virtually indistinguishable from them according to Louis—are all those in the least inclined to evaluate the slogans and promises of left-reformists in the light of past experience and present possibilities rather than simply enthusing. A Manichean universe, if ever there was! Jim Creegan _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/lnp3%40panix.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options
Re: [Marxism] 'Stalinist' = ?
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 2/1/15 2:59 PM, Michael Fahey via Marxism wrote: I think that the use of this term muddies rather than advances an analysis. 'Stalinist' clearly has a negative meaning, but it lacks any specificity. Stalin, and the CPs in or oriented to the Soviet bloc, had many bad characteristics; current CPs whose roots can be traced to the Soviet era also have bad characteristics. But which of these bad characteristics is being referenced? It all depends. The KKE is straight-out Stalinist and practically brags about it. I tend to use the term crypto-Stalinist to apply to a whole slew of individuals and organizations that function more or less like the CP's used to but on behalf of the Russian state that not only defends capitalism but aggressively so. The best example of crypto-Stalinism is the journalist Andre Vltchek. This will give you a flavor of his analysis: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/14/do-western-leftists-hate-socialist-countries/ Eritrea, Iran, and North Korea, are standing defiantly against Western embargos and intimidation. Their people work hard in order to maintain their freedom to move forward their own way, without taking diktats from the same nations that used to plunder and humiliate them. And Russia, the mighty Russia that was once on its knees, during that monstrous government of the pro-Western puppet Boris Yeltsin, is now back in its saddle, standing on the side of many progressive nations, all over the world. It has forgiven a tremendous, multi-billion dollar debt to Cuba, it is forging powerful alliances with Venezuela, Brazil, and other left-wing nations, and above all, it is finally creating a grand alliance with China. The world has never been so close to a real breakthrough – to true freedom. _ 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] Saudi tyrant dies, hypocrisy abounds
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/saudi-tyrant-dies-hypocrisy-abounds/ Phil _ 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] State let oil companies taint drinkable water in Central Valley
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.sfgate.com/business/article/State-let-oil-companies-taint-drinkable-water-in-6054242.php Oil companies in drought-ravaged California have, for years, pumped wastewater from their operations into aquifers that had been clean enough for people to drink. They did it with explicit permission from state regulators, who were supposed to protect the increasingly strained groundwater supplies from contamination. Instead, the state allowed companies to drill more than 170 waste-disposal wells into aquifers suitable for drinking or irrigation, according to data reviewed by The Chronicle. Hundreds more inject a blend of briny water, hydrocarbons and trace chemicals into lower-quality aquifers that could be used with more intense treatment. Most of the waste-injection wells lie in California’s parched Central Valley, whose desperate residents are pumping so much groundwater to cope with the historic drought that the land has started to sink. “It is an unfolding catastrophe, and it’s essential that all oil and gas wastewater injection into underground drinking water stop immediately,” said Kassie Siegel , director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group. The problem developed over decades, starting with a bureaucratic snafu between state and federal regulators. It was made worse by shoddy record keeping and, critics say, plain negligence. The issue erupted into public view last summer when state officials abruptly shut down 11 waste-injection wells in Kern County, fearing they could taint groundwater supplies already feeding homes and farms. No contamination So far, tests of nearby drinking-water wells show no contamination, state officials say. But the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which helped uncover the practice, is threatening to seize control of regulating the waste-injection wells, a job it has left to California officials for over 30 years. The state faces a Feb. 6 deadline to tell the EPA how it plans to fix the problem and prevent it from happening again. “If there are wells having a direct impact on drinking water, we need to shut them down now,” said Jared Blumenfeld , regional adminstrator for the EPA. “Safe drinking water is only going to become more in demand.” California produces more oil than any state other than Texas and North Dakota, and its oil fields are awash in salty water. A typical Central Valley oil well pulls up nine or 10 barrels of water for every barrel of petroleum that reaches the surface. In addition, companies often flood oil reservoirs with steam to coax out the valley’s thick, viscous crude, which is far heavier than petroleum found in most other states. They pump high-pressure water and chemicals underground to crack rocks in the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing. They use acid and water to clear up debris that would otherwise clog their oil-producing wells. All of that leftover water, laced with bits of oil and other chemicals, has to go somewhere. Pumping the liquid — known in the industry as produced water — back underground is considered one of the most environmentally responsible ways to get rid of it. “If we’re not able to put the water back, there’s no other viable thing to do with it,” said Rock Zierman , chief executive officer of the California Independent Petroleum Association , which represents smaller oil companies in the state. “If you were to shut down hundreds of injection wells, obviously that’s a lot of jobs, a lot of tax revenue.” Farmers fear that the groundwater they increasingly need to nurture their orchards and crops may one day show signs of pollution, even if it hasn’t surfaced yet. “When I’m concerned for my farm, I’m looking at future generations and reaching a point where they can’t use the groundwater because of things we’re doing today,” said Tom Frantz , 65, a farmer and retired teacher who grows almonds near the town of Shafter (Kern County). The wastewater injection problem stretches back to 1983. EPA officials that year signed an agreement giving California’s oil field regulators — the state’s Divison of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources — responsibility for enforcing the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. The agreement listed, by name, aquifers considered exempt, where oil companies could legally inject leftover water with a simple permit from the division. If state regulators wanted to add any aquifers to the list, they would need EPA’s aproval. But there were two signed copies of the agreement, said Steven Bohlen , the division’s new supervisor. Eleven
[Marxism] Obama’s new Cuba policy: McDonald's in Old Havana?
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 want to see Cuba before everything changes,” is how many reacted to Barack Obama’s surprise December 17 announcement that he would restore diplomatic relations with Cuba — severed by the US in 1961 — and urge Congress to lift the US blockade. Seeing Cuba for oneself can only be encouraged, but those who fear that it will soon be transformed by American tourists, US corporations and commercialism need not rush to book flights. http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/obamas-new-cuba-policy-mcdonalds-in-old.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] France, US profess sympathy for Syriza position
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. * Despite the predictable hardline posturing by Germany, the ECB, and the EU, this weekend’s sympathetic comments by French finance minister Sapin and US President Obama can’t help but reinforce the Syriza leadership’s conviction that it can exploit strategic divisions at the top concerning austerity and the debt crisis. I noted several weeks ago that “the likeliest outcome is an eventual compromise which limits, but does not entirely impair, Syriza’s ability to provide jobs, income support, and debt relief to Greece’s beleaguered population. Such an outcome would be in keeping with the growing conviction of the European elites that its brutal austerity regime is undermining economic growth and political stability throughout Europe and that some accommodation to mass distress and discontent is necessary.” France Supports Greece in EU Debt Battle By MARCUS WALKER, INTI LANDAURO and ANDREW ACKERMAN Wall Street Journal Feb. 1, 2015 (Behind a paywall) PARIS—France expressed sympathy for the new Greek government’s hope of renegotiating the tough terms of its bailout, amid growing international calls for Germany to rethink its austerity-heavy approach to the debt crises in Greece and Europe. French Finance Minister Michael Sapin said on Sunday that Greece needs a “new contract” with Europe, backing the demand of the Athens government, led by the left-wing Syriza party, to end the previous framework of Greece’s bailout program, which has become politically toxic in the heavily indebted nation. His comments—and similar remarks by President Barack Obama —are the latest example of a pushback in Europe and beyond against Berlin’s handling of the eurozone debt crisis. Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has pressed since 2010 for tight fiscal and monetary policies as the best way to force other countries to adopt supply-side overhauls to make them more frugal and competitive. But the eurozone’s chronic lack of growth, and a mounting voter backlash against political establishments that have given priority to fiscal retrenchment, are challenging Berlin’s hegemony over economic strategy in the 19-country currency bloc. The eurozone, second only to the U.S. in gross domestic product, remains the laggard of world economic recovery and is still struggling with the legacies of the global financial crisis. President Obama, in comments aired Sunday on CNN, echoed Mr. Sapin in urging compromise and said Greece needs “a growth strategy” to deal with a slump in which economic output has shrunk by some 25%. Mr. Obama acknowledged that eurozone members must have fiscal prudence and structural overhauls, but he said that “what we’ve learned in the U.S. experience…is that the best way to reduce deficits and to restore fiscal soundness is to grow.” The president added: “You cannot keep on squeezing countries that are in the midst of depression.” German policy makers have gotten used to criticism from Washington, but Mr. Obama’s comments caused a stir in Europe because they came in the context of Syriza’s election win on Jan. 25, and amid fears about whether Greece and Germany will be able to reach a deal in time to avoid a Greek exit from the euro. And while Germany’s financial clout still gives it an effective veto over many eurozone economic policies, the wind appears to be turning against Berlin. In moves that have worried German policy makers, France and Italy are pressing to slow down fiscal belt-tightening to help economic recovery, while the European Central Bank has announced large-scale asset purchases, known as quantitative easing, in an effort to lift growth and inflation despite strong reservations in Berlin. It is Greece’s election result, however, that poses the most dramatic challenge to eurozone economic orthodoxy. The small nation’s rejection of mainstream parties that cooperated with German-sponsored austerity has led to a game of chicken between the new Syriza-led government under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and northern European creditor governments led by Berlin. Athens is demanding a new financing arrangement outside the bailout procedures built up at Germany’s behest since 2010. Greece wants a relaxation of austerity, an end to intrusive inspections by a creditors’ committee, and a reduction of the country’s debt burden. German officials, including Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, are so far insisting that Greece abide by previous bailout agreements, and that no new framework can be offered. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it clear throughout Europe’s long debt crisis that Germany will agree to finance debtor
[Marxism] Greek Finance Minister Calls to go 'Cold Turkey' on Debt
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.telesurtv.net/english/news/Greek-Finance-Minister-Calls-to-go-Cold-Turkey-on-Debt-20150201-0013.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
